Since my stats tell me my loyal readers liked the Quasi-royalty sighting! yarn, here's two more about close encounters with the vice-regal.

At one office building I worked in here in T.O., I was in surprise close proximity to John Ralston Saul, the GG's spousal partner.

It was in the can. I would have said hi, but he was staring intently into the mirror above the sink -- and smoothing his eyebrows. That's our JRS: A stickler for details.

There are two times in a men's washroom when you don't want to break someone's concentration: When they're patting down their eyebrows, and when they're (I think you can fill this part in yourself).

Anyways, on to the next yarn.

 I worked in Saskatchewan for a number of years.

For the first half of my tenure with the Regina Leader-Post, I was a legal reporter.

One time, I had to go up to Saskatoon to cover the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Bar Association's meetings.

The keynote speaker was Ray Hnatyshyn, who had been an MP and Progressive Conservative cabinet minister under Brian Mulroney. But he didn't survive the heated free trade election of 1988.

And while he was trying to be self-deprecatingly funny about it, his jokes were coming distressingly close to the line between self-deprecation and mauldin self-pity.

Now that I've said that, I must add that his words that night should be judged in the context that his political career had come abruptly to an end, and that has to hurt. And for the most part, he was known a witty, affable, down-to-earth man. I never heard anyone in the Saskatchewan legal/political community say anything bad about him.

While I chatted with him a bit that night (and enjoyed doing it), it's hardly like we were pals (an important point, as you shall soon see) and wouldn't talk again for years.

Anyways, on Dec. 14, 1989, Hnaytyshyn was named His Excellency, The Governor-General by Mulroney.

As I recall, he got good reviews, following up on the <sarcasm>well-loved "populist" Jeanne Sauve.</sarcasm>

Now, let's jump ahead three years to the summer of 1992.

The period 1991-1992 marked the centenary of Ukrainian immigration to Canada. The first homesteads at Edna-Star were just a few miles east of where my relatives farm today in Alberta. My dad's quarter-section of land is also nearby.

Saskatchewan held a centennial event in Canora, one of the main towns of Saskatchewan's "garlic belt" in the northeast part of the agricultural zone.

(As an aside, the Ukrainian immigrants all gravitated mainly towards the parkland -- slightly rolling land with lots of pothole sloughs, poplars along with little stands of birch and spruce. It runs mainly through Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba -- the three provinces with the highest proportion of Ukrainian immigrants. When I went to Ukraine in 1989, I could see why they grativated to it; they had found someplace just like home on a different continent).

Anyways, I went up to Canora for the centennial festivities one weekend.

There were a few oddities.

A major shower came out of nowhere. But the stalwart dignitaries on the stage didn't give up their positions (sort of like Trudeau during the St. Jean Baptiste day riot. What pluck!).

Mind you, GG Ray had his military adjutant to hold an umbrella over his head -- although the adjutant wasn't doing so good.

Ray was trying to hard to remain dignified nonplussed that I couldn't help but crack a smile.

Next to him was some high official in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church dressed in white robes with gold embroidery, wearing some ceremonial headdress that looked like an inverted trapezoid. It was bad enough that he looked like Boris the Mad Anarchist Bomber, with his black horn-rim glasses and bushy beard, but he'd wrapped a black garbage bag around his head and was holding the ends under his chin in his clenched fists.

His beady eyes kept scanning the crowd. Perhaps he was wondering who he was going to blow up.

When the amusement value of this scene faded, I went into the hockey rink, which was dry and had kubasa and beer.

Hnatyshyn sees me and starts coming through the sizable crowd, his hand outstretched, his eyes looking glazed and not quite human.

This weirded me out, so I moved through the crowd. He changed course; I was definitely the target of his tracking system.

After a few failed avoidance attempts, I was starting to feel like Linda Hamilton's character in the first Terminator movie.

Eventually, he does track me down, says hi, how are you, shakes my hand ... and leaves.

We would never meet or speak again.

And I'm still wondering why he was so determined to shake my hand, considering we'd chatted briefly once years before.

I can only guess it's the instinctual part of being a politician; you remember a face and even if you don't remember the name, go up to that person, say 'hi' and shake their hand.

I remember GG Ray as being somewhat robotic that day, and if you read my other post, you'll remember I refer to GG Adrienne as being a gloomy animatronic version of herself in the limo.

And all that has me wondering the following: Why don't we just make a vice-regal robot?

We wouldn't have to pay them, you could get by with a lot smaller wine cellar and they'd already be robotic for ceremonial occasions!

This sounds like a win-win situation to me! :)