Pennies may be from heaven, but can go straight to…

First column for the Daily Observer in Pembroke. Other fine pieces of news can be found on http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/

 

The funeral arrangements are done, the dirges have been sung and all that is left is for us to say goodbye.

It took more than 150 years, but the fiscal nightmare is finally over and the dreadful Canadian penny has been relinquished to its rightful place: the depths of sofas nationwide.

For the past week, Canadians everywhere have been coming to grips with the fact that the iconic coin has been put out to pasture. For some, the news has been met with much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but others rejoiced. (Well, rejoice is a strong word, shrug apathetically would be more fitting in this case.)

The weepers are terrified that this change will translate into higher prices. Without that precious penny acting as a buffer, prices will have to be rounded up or down. Already several stores are proudly using their ‘round down’ policy as a selling point.

True, some unscrupulous merchants may constantly round up, but enough complaining should nip that trend in the bud.

I’ll concede that there is some nostalgia to the penny, but realistically it’s the lame duck of the financial world. Pennies aren’t even worth picking up off the floor. More importantly, nothing can be purchased for a penny, absolutely nothing. You can’t even purchase a penny for a penny as it costs 1.6 cents to produce.

Cutting them out will save the federal government (aka taxpayers) approximately $11 million. None of this money will ever be seen again by the average Joe, but it’s still nice to think about the bonuses Members of Parliament will soon mysteriously receive.

Saving money is probably just a small reason why the penny has been dropped. There are plenty more reasons to dislike pennies.

They are bastions of filth, they weigh down your purse, they hurt when your brother “accidently” throws them at you. More importantly, they are featured in my recurring nightmares.

In another life, I worked in a library in Ottawa. It was a good library, if a bit on the small side. Books were plentiful, the free Wi-Fi Internet was fast, we had a steady stream of interesting patrons, and we had been spared the bedbug plague that had affected so many others. Life was good. That is, until Pennygate. Mr. Red was a frequent evening visitor, often coming in minutes before closing. He always loaded up his old backpack with more books than he could carry, then ordered me to find him plastic bags to fit the extra. The bag always had to be white or else he would refuse to take it. He was a stubborn man, an unyielding man and, frankly, kind of a jerk.

So when he had managed to get a $15 fine, it was no surprise that he absolutely refused to pay it. Fed up with his behaviour and unwilling to get in trouble for him, I absolutely refused to forgive the fee. It became a standstill between Mr. Red and me to see who would break first. He would come in posturing, arguing about the unfairness of charging so much and I would smile sweetly before giving him a detailed breakdown of his fine.

Our battle of wills lasted nearly six months until his card finally expired and he was forced to pay the fine if he wished to renew his membership. I must admit that I was a little smug, OK more than a little, when he admitted that he had come in to pay. I was doing a little happy dance in my mind. Until he reached into his raggedy backpack to remove a grocery bag filled with pennies and deposited his change onto the circulation desk.

The smirk he gave me as he watched me count haunts me to this day.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen $15 worth of pennies, but it is a lot of copper. It also weighed approximately eight pounds and by the time I finished counting 1,500 coins (many of them were sticky), my hatred of the penny was sealed.

Now that they are no longer being produced, I can rest easier knowing that I will never go through that again. It is merely a matter of time until pennies are completely out of circulation. As of now it remains legal tender so banks and stores will still grudgingly accept them.

Yet there may be a more gracious way to spend this obsolete change. In fact, the Pembroke Public Library is currently accepting donated leftover pennies for its “Every Penny Counts” campaign.

Just do them a favour and roll the pennies up before you hand them over.

My army experience, or the first time I shot a gun

I hear the ra-ta-tap of C7 A2 service rifles all around me, the sound dizzying even through my earplugs. I smell the cordite on the air, a blend of sulphur and acetone.
I can’t see very well. My helmet is much to loose and it keeps falling over my eyes. After some fumbling, I finally get a clear look though the sight.
I breathe out slowly, my finger on the trigger and pull. I probably miss the target but it doesn’t matter.  
I’ve been waiting for this moment for nearly two days.
CFB Petawawa opened its doors to its civilian employees as well as a selected few  members of local news outlets and offered them the opportunity of experiencing a soldier’s life. Namely on how to shoot an army calibrated weapon.
The two-day event would never be enough to truly understand the full scope of what soldiers go through, but it does offer a tantalizing glimpse into their daily experience.
Day one involved making my way though the labyrinth of unmarked buildings that constitute the base to try and find the “SIM centre”, a small blue building which hosts advanced weaponry stimulation.
Think Call of Duty is hardcore? It doesn’t hold a candle to this centre.
The walls within this building can be transformed into a virtual battlefield, complete with rifles that stimulate kickback.
It’s the closest thing to reality that the Canadian Army can offer and gives soldiers the opportunity to train and understand the mechanics of weaponry in relative comfort and complete safety before going on the range.
It’s not perfect.
These gas-powered rifle have less recoil and are much more finicky than the real deal.
It also wasn’t working.
A base-wide power outage had plunged us all into darkness and without access to the technologically advanced training, we had to do resort to the old-fashioned way.
A dozen practice rifles were brought out to the back of the building where more than 30 civilians gathered unsure what to do.
That uncertainty didn’t last long as we were quickly thought the basics needed to safely handle a weapon, learning to load, unload and clear our rifles without shooting ourselves or anybody else.
After making it onto the range the next morning, we finally figured out what it truly means to be in the infantry.
We waited.
It’s a little known fact that the military is based off the saying, “hurry up and wait.”
This, I was assured, is typical.
Soldiers often find themselves spending hours just waiting for their next move. It isn’t unusual to be told to meet at a certain time for a training exercise and have to wait more than four hours before actually beginning.
Between the safety procedures, the unending briefings and waiting for the range to be cleared, I was a bit surprised we weren’t there until sunset.
Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day, the people were interesting and the unending supply of cookies, drinks and packed lunches made it a bit tolerable.
The mountains of food, I was later told, was also typical.
Soldiers march, and shoot, on their stomachs.
Without a steady diet of caffeine, sugar and fat, the military would have long since been deserted of any actual combatants. Before noon hit, the supply of coffee had been depleted and the cookies were in low supply.
I take the blame for the cookies.
The sun was shining, at least, as I watched actual army personal go through their Personal Weapons Training test.
Every employees in the military, from experienced snipers to clerks in charge of insurance forms, have to go pass this test once a year. Some are more talented than others and pass the test with no problem while others can spend several hours trying to hit the target once.
They did make for a spectacular display. Gunshots broke in staccato as bullets hit the target and their body’s created perfect lines in the cold mud. Their concentration was only broken when orders were being shouted.
Once they completed their test, these men and women would be guiding us through our own shooting.  
I knew I was never going to shoot that well on my first go, but at least it was a beautiful day to try.
The nice day part, however, was a bit atypical.
Base Operations Officer for CFB Petawawa, Major Marc Lesage, cheerfully joked that he wished it were raining or unbearably cold.
“Because it gives you the opportunity to go through the misery and joy we go through on a daily basis,” he said with a smile.
He later told me that this shared misery allows the troupes to build a special rapport and camaraderie that cannot be found in other circumstances. It allows them to grow a thick skin and get through whatever life throws at them.
Most soldiers are proud of the daily minutia of their job, but rarely get to show of what they really do.
“It’s a great opportunity to have our civilian employees in the field and get them the opportunity to get the feel of what else we do here in CFB Petawawa,” said Major Lesage. “Every soldiers enjoys this a lot because we get to share what we do. We get to do and share our experiences, our training when generally we are only seen in passing or in parade where we can’t share what we are passionate about.”  
That doesn’t mean they weren’t secretly chuckling at us while helping us shoot. It just meant that they were very helpful, kind and patient while they were doing it.
When it came time for me to try my hand at target practice, I was suited up with an oversized helmet and eye protection, handed a rifle and given three magazines holding 30 bullets.
Laying, crouching, kneeling and standing in the mud, I was uncomfortable at first. I couldn’t help but worry that my gun would spontaneously break into a hail of unstoppable bullets.
Then this bubbling adrenaline began to raise inside of me, egged on with each shot. I unleashed by inner Rambo and hit the target.
Maybe. I think. That helmet really didn’t help with accuracy.