D

D’allaire, Romeo:

Canadian Forces Lt.-Gen. who tried to stop the genocide in Rwanda and then proceeded home to have a truly articulate and edifying public near-nervous breakdown over his failure. D’Allaire took command of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in July 1993, shortly after the genocide got underway and was the sole U.N. official in the entire—and still ongoing—mid-African nightmare that Philip Gourevitch’s remarkable book on Rwanda credits as having remained a morally competent member of the human species. The U.N. itself eventually admitted that D’Allaire "did not have the men he needed, they arrived late and without the right equipment." Those who would like to hear what he had to say about it can find it as A98-0291 in Canada’s Access To Information (ATI) archives. D’Allaire retired from the Canadian Forces and is currently NOT following in the footsteps of Gen. Lewis MacKenzie. See [Generals, Retired]

D'aquino, Tom

Propaganda director for whatever it is the corporate sector's lobbies want to have clouding the public view at any given moment. While he was directing the Small Business Alliance of Canada, he was trotted out at news conferences and business conventions to demonstrate that Canadian small businesses are against everything that is logically in their interest. Now doing the same work for the Business Council on National Issues, which is about as interested in the well-being of small businesses as Sylvester the Cat is in the welfare of mice.

Davies, Robertson

Faux-British Canadian novelist, now deceased. Why did a man born and raised in Canada, who spent less than four years at Oxford, speak like a Bloomsbury fop a half-century later? And how was it that no one ever teased him for it? Professor Davies led an unreasonably fortunate life, one that had so debilitating an effect on his common sense that he eventually grew confused over the differences between sneezes and orgasms, and went to his grave believing that a man can have an adequate view of the world from the hallways of the English Department.

Davis Inlet

If what goes on with the aboriginal communities up there isn’t cultural genocide, there is no such thing. The dark edge of the Global Village is visible at Davis Inlet for anyone who really wants to see it for what it is.

Day, Stockwell

Former Alberta Treasurer, fumbler, bungler, one-man Three Stooges for the Canadian Alliance Party and now Foreign Affairs critic for the federal Conservative party. His sole virtue is that he doesn't, unlike Preston Manning, sound like a turkey scratching in straw when he talks. The Day stewardship of the political right in Canada was an unrelenting comedy of errors: initially naming the part the Canadian Reform Alliance Party, (or CRAP); a homophobic inner circle that alienated the large and brainy queer segment of Ontario’s Provincial Conservatives; Day’s hilarious factual mistakes and/or misstatements (Ontario’s Niagara river running south, the referendum goof up, implying that the Flintstones is a documentary, etc). That, coupled with his less-than-stellar but definitely eager performance during the 2000 federal election campaign left the movement so lost in the wilderness that poor old semi-senile Joe Clark nearly blew it down.

De Kerckhove, Derek,

Superminded techno-enthusiast, gabber, corporate rah-rah machine, tenth-rate Marshall McLuhan, SuperMind. He'd like to believe he's Canada's answer to MIT Media Lab's Nicolas Negroponte, with whom he shares the thrill of never having met a question without a shallow answer. see, [SUPERMINDS]

Democratic Representative Caucus

The group of twelve Canadian Alliance MPs who found Stockwell Day extra loathesome, and thus formed a new political party. I guess Canadians ought to be grateful they didn’t name themselves The Caucus of Twelve Apostles, but since we’re reliably informed that Stockwell Day’s first choice for naming the Canadian Alliance was "MPs for Jesus", our suspicion is that they didn’t want the association.

Deroo, Remi :

Retired Roman Catholic Bishop of Victoria and ecclesiastic trouble-maker. He is the only Roman Catholic clergyman north of the Mexican border who seems to recognize that the mission of corporate capitalism is universal Mexico. Now being pursued, in his retirement dotage, for having recognized that there’s a gap between theory and practice so vast that 99 percent of human reality (and realty) resides inside in cheerful obliviousness.

Dhalla, Ruby

Former "Bollywood" star and current Member of Parliament for Brampton-Springdale. She was appointed as the Liberal candidate over the one chosen by the constituency's riding association, Andrew Kania, largely because she has ingested larger volumes of the Team Martin Kool-Aid. On the positive side, she'll give aging Liberal caucus members something better to look at than Claudette Bradshaw and Hedy Fry.

Diefenbaker, John

Loose-jowelled Conservative Canadian Prime Minister 1957-63 who dismantled Canadian government R&D capacity and transformed previously independent Canadian foreign policy to the mewling, puking synchophancy to U.S. foreign policy we know today.

Dion, Celine

The Carmen Miranda of Quebec music, and a role model for musical anorexics and others prone to depression and compulsive typing. No relation to either Whitney Houston or Edith Piaf, Dion represents Quebec's cultural future after it leaves Canada. There was a moment, at the 1999 Juno Awards, where she showed us how empty the lives of megastar songbirds are, and how brutally they are wired to their perches. Does anybody out there understand why there was such rejoicing when her newborn son turned out to be physically normal? And why were so many groans audible when she announced that she's planning to go get the other fertilized embroyo as soon as she can walk to the refrigerator?

Distinct Societies

Semantic maneuvre by the Mulroney-era Federal government designed to legitimize Quebec separatist need to suppress foreign languages, build hydroelectric megaprojects, and be exploited by France and the United States rather than Canada. Every other political entity in Canada, including the Boy Scouts, has subsequently demanded the same right. In fact, our constitution, our education system and our mothers have been guaranteeing this for fifty years. Wouldn't it be more constructive if we were asking to be "unusual", "attractive," "reasonable" or--dare we ask this?--"functional" societies? So here's the solution: Quebec is a francophone society.

Divisibility

A popular practice in the former Yugoslavia, it has been introduced into Canadian politics. Lucien Bouchard announced that Canada is divisible, Chretien retaliated by saying that Quebec is devisable, too-and so on down into the sewers of opportunism with Preston Manning and so on. Divisibility means denying one's own metaphorical ox can be gored while jamming one's horn deep into the adjacent ox. In the real world, fools can divide anything.

Dna Evidence

Relatively recent scientific procedure to determine who the guilty criminal isn't, as with Guy Paul Morin, who was wrongly convicted of murdering Christine Jessop a decade ago, and David Milgaard, who spent 23 years behind bars for a rape and murder for which the police were too lazy to track down the real pertretrator. DNA evidence is quite reliable in determining that some criminals are convicted simply because the authorities don't like their intransigence in the face of threats and accusations. The negative side-effect of DNA-evidence usage is the proliferation of bad television docudramas.

Domed Stadiums

Smarting under allegations that it is colder in Canada than in the U.S. and that Canadian cities would not be able to get and keep major sports franchises without an indoor stadium, planning geniuses across the country have built three domed stadiums without gaining a single sports franchise. On the positive side, the Domes give Canadians at least three locations where they can attend monster tractor pulls in the middle of winter, and offer suitably unhealthy but year-round environments for outdoor evangelical revivals, religious conventions, and airborne fungi of a wide and toxic variety

Domi, Tie

Toronto Maple Leaf designated goon, locker-room spokesperson and poster-boy for socially-sanctioned goofy behavior. There’s apparently a fad in Vancouver amongst the young and testosterone-crazed that involves shouting out "Tie Domi!!!" just before body-checking elderly persons off the sidewalks. Domi’s popularity in Toronto is partially accountable to the fact that the Italian community think he’s one of them. He’s actually an Albanian, an ethnicity that Mozart had strong opinions about, and he’s a fairly decent television actor. Also has a brother who sells computers to big, stupid, un-namable cities.

Drabinsky, Garth

Self-destructive ego mania, bad hair, slick-looking rats fighting in sewers--and then shwoooooshhh, he's gone. All we can hope is that those horrible local & serious culture-stiffling musicals he created are going to disappear with him. On the other hand, what has replaced Livent productions, such as the recent musical based on the music of ABBA and its semi-live members, bathes the Drabinsky era in a golden light.

Duceppe, Gilles

Began as Inspector Clousseau-style successor to Lucien Bouchard as Federal Bloc Quebecois leader, citing Mexico as an illustration of how business can continue despite internal trouble, and seemed destined to be the first in line to offer Carlos Salinas political asylum when and if the other shoe dropped. But Duceppe grew into his job, and during the 2004 federal election debate, he came off as the only leader English Canadians trusted. Unfortunately, he still wants to run a foreign country. Ah well.

Duffy, Mike

Aggrieved white guy, Gourmet newsperson and political contortionist. Despite being 5000 donuts over the limit, Duffy has able to fit comfortably into the breast pockets of two successive Prime Ministers and anyone else willling to slash a budget or enhance corporate powers. Duffy believes that the media is a left-wing conspiracy, which may indicate that it's time to ship him out of Ottawa for a reality check even if it requires a special rail car. The amazingly short time Duffy was removed from the airwaves after reminding Margaret Trudeau, at her exhusband's funeral, that it was the anniversary of her son Michel's death, is a testimony to how hard up the Canadian media is for news-readers, or a tribute to the top brass at CTV's fear of being sat on.

Dumont, Mario

Youth leader during the 1995 Quebec referendum, and flash-in-pan during recent Quebec election. What are the most important questions to ask people like Dumont? How about: Have you ever had a homosexual experience? And if not, why the hell not?