An anti-aging pill? Really?

Yep. Scientists think they’re on the verge of breakthroughs that could help us live until we’re well into our 100s. Just what we need – a youth pill that can wipe away all of our bad genes, bad eating habits, and bad luck.

And it might be closer than you think. There’s already studies out there suggesting that maybe, possibly, kind of, sort of, we could possibly eventually hopefully create a pill that could delay the effects of aging. Sold!

Some researchers have found that animals whose caloric intake is cut by a third live 30 to 40 per cent longer than animals on a regular diet. Then there’s something called rapamycin, which they think can delay the onset of age-related diseases. There are other drugs, too.

But a real youth pill? Who wouldn’t want that? If there was an anti-aging miracle drug, my softball team sure could use it, as we sit around gripping about our sore backs, pulled hammies and stiff muscles after yet another team of whipper snappers ran circles around us on the ball diamond.

Why, we could all be freaks of nature, like France’s Eugenie Blanchard, the oldest living person on the planet. She’s still kicking after 114 years, though she’s practically blind, extremely weak, and lives in a nursing home. Her secret? She worked as a nun for most of her adult life – so I guess that means no booze, no sex, no cigarettes.

And that sounds about as much fun as taking your mother to prom. If that’s what it takes to make it to triple digits, count me out.

Getting old is as natural as passing gas, but we’re convinced we can cheat our way around it.

We’ve been obsessed with the idea of a magic pill to stop aging since the ancient Greeks told stories of a mystical water source in Ethiopia that gave the people there long lives. Every age has had its take on that story.

Thousands of people still flock to St. Augustine, Fla., each year to sip from its reputed fountain of youth. And here I was thinking seniors liked it for the weather.

As recently as 2006, magician and Claudia Schiffer hypnotist David Copperfield claimed he’d discovered his own fountain of youth, hiding in a string of islands he bought for $50 million near Bahamas. And some people actually believed him.

We want to believe so badly there’s some magic thing out there that can stop aging, a process that happens to every living creature we know. OK, my apologies to all the immortal jellyfish out there who have the ability to revert to their spawn stage, and basically start their life all over again.

But who wants to live as a jellyfish, anyway?

Toronto sports doctor Anthony Galea has been prescribing human growth hormone to patients over 40 for years, claiming HGH reverses the effects of aging. He’s after the same thing that has tantalized explorers through the ages when they set sail for their own fountains of youth.

And that’s great – except Galea looks creepily young for a 51 year old, like that old guy who keeps showing up at high school parties.

And who wants to be that guy, really?

It’s a funny thing, aging. When we’re kids, we can’t wait to be older. When we’re older, we wish we could be young again. But an anti-aging pill? Really?

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com.

Here’s the thing, dog.

You’re cute as heck, and a lot of people really love you. But we need to talk.

It’s time you’ve started pulling your weight around here. I know it’s tough being a puppy, what with all the napping, destroying gardens, chewing shoes and all that.

At the end of a long day, you’re practically run off you feet. No wonder you sleep straight until 5:58 a.m., when you decide you must wake up everyone in the house to announce that you’re about to pee. Right. Now.

We called you Leroy, after the great pitcher Roy Halladay. But you still struggle with the concept of playing catch. Here’s a hint: when we throw something, it doesn’t disappear – it just moves to another location. I’m sure you can figure it out.

It’s a lot like when we leave the room. We don’t actually vanish. You just can’t see us. So no need to whine, OK?

I know your father was an English sheep dog, and he probably came by herding honestly. But I’ve got a feeling you’ve never even seen any sheep, because they’re fluffy, walk on four legs and generally live on farms. Those creatures you’ve been chasing – they’re people: less hairy and they walk on two legs. So until you meet some sheep, no need for this herding business, OK?

I don’t want to make you sit through any old episodes of Lassie or the Littlest Hobo. But when is the last time you saved a boy down a well or helped someone in need? The only thing you seem to be saving is the little surprises you leave behind on the carpet.

And we need to talk about who’s in charge around here. Like the late George Steinbrenner, I’m the boss. And you’re my Alex Rodriguez – you might make girls coo, but you’re no Rhodes Scholar. Remember when you got scared of the squeaky toy that you just made squeak? Case in point.

The house hierarchy goes like this, in descending order: The lady, her shoes, me, and you. Got it? Just do as we say, and we’ll get along fine.

There’s a few other things we need to discuss. As in, for an animal with such a heightened sense of smell, how is it you’re drawn like a magnet to some of the worst smelling things on Earth? I mean, goose poo? Really?

And how can you be so amazed at what comes flying out of your own body? We all saw, and smelt, what you did. No need to dwell on it. We all do that everyday, and nobody else goes around celebrating it. You’ll do it again tomorrow, and the next day. Better get used to it.

And this napping thing. I get tired, too. But you don’t catch me sleeping all day so that I’m wired throughout the night when everyone else wants to sleep.

So let’s work together, OK? When it’s play time, let’s play. No need to turn into an angry Dutch soccer player when it’s time for bed. And those rawhide sticks we bought you – just eat those, not my shoes.

Do that, and we’ll get along fine. Oh, and tonight – would it kill you to make dinner?

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

They’re the “the jewels of our country,” so says Environment Minister Jim Prentice. But we seem to care about our national parks less and less.

Instead, we prefer the Great Indoors, where we are in complete control and out of the sunlight. No wonder so many of us are starting to look like that pale, British vampire from the Twilight movies, except without the cheekbones that make women melt.

When it comes to our national parks, more and more of us are just choosing to stay home, according to a recent report in the Globe and Mail. There were 11.9 million visits to Canada’s national parks last year, down from 15.3 million in 1995.

In the U.S., meanwhile, they’re crazy about their national parks. Americans logged some 285.5 million visits to their parks last year, or about one per citizen.

There are plenty of theories on why Canadians are staying home instead of getting out into these great protected natural spaces. Some blame the high cost of gasoline, which has an incredibly reliable way of rising every long weekend.

Others say it’s a cultural thing, suggesting new immigrants don’t have the same connection to the outdoors that Canadians might have had decades ago. Or it’s that we’ve basically become a nation of city dwellers, far too urbanized to get back to nature.

I think we’ve just gotten too used to being comfortable. All. The. Time. We’ve gone so soft we don’t like the slightest thing out of our comfort zone. The idea of camping on a hard piece of ground, out in the elements, and cooking our own meals over a fire just doesn’t hold much appeal to us, hiding away in our air-conditioned, big screened, energy-guzzling homes.

We want cool, purified air surrounding us at all moments – in the car, at work, in our bedrooms. We don’t want to see or hear a single mosquito. Raccoons and deer are fine, as long as they’re behind the glass at the zoo, or dead at the side of the road.

Why go into the wild, when there’s special programs on TV that have nature scenes in high definition?

As Canadians, we love that image of ourselves as rugged, axe-totting lumberjacks who carved this land out of sheer wilderness. But the truth is we’re much more domesticated than that. We like our nature in digestible, easy to consume formats that we can turn off at our leisure.

We like to meet wilderness the same way Queen Elizabeth likes to meet most Canadians – at a safe distance, in short bursts that last a few minutes, and comfortably close enough to an air-conditioned car.

Yet we have some of the most beautiful, rugged national parks on Earth. And most of us will never, ever see them. We’ve created massive parks in the territories that no one visits. Ivvavik park in northern Yukon saw 136 visitors last year; only 26 people went to Aulavik in the Northwest Territories.

Parks Canada is trying to get more Canadians to realize how lucky we are to have these places. They’ve waived admission fees on July 1 and July 17. They’ve spent some $300 million sprucing up old camp sites and improving park infrastructure, trying to draw Canadians back.

Some of this spending may miss the point. You can pretty up our parks, but the real draw should be the wilderness itself, not new signs or fresh coats of paint.

But most of us will never know the difference, anyway.

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

No, robots have not taken over your radio. It’s just the Auto Tune era, making its —hopefully—last few gasps for air.

If you’ve accidentally stumbled on a pop song on the radio in the past few years, you’ve likely heard Auto Tune at work. It’s that comically artificial, mechanical singing sound that goes in the place where people used to actually sing. You know, from back in the days when you needed to know how to sing to make an album.

Auto Tune filters a singers’ voice through software that nudges out all the imperfections and produces a flawless recording. And it’s everywhere in pop music – disguising missed notes for everyone from Britney Spears to Kanye West to Usher. Time magazine called Auto Tune “Photoshop for the human voice.” At its most over-abused, it sounds like cosmologist Stephen Hawking singing R&B.

The software program was invented by an engineer named Andy Hildebrand, who used to work for the oil industry interpreting seismic data. His invention has made hits for hundreds of artists who have no business singing pop songs, and has made its creator comfortably rich.

But even Hildebrand never expected Auto Tune to be used to such extremes. Now producers are treating it like a plastic surgery tool kit – nipping and tucking songs to get that perfect note and pitch. And they save the singer the effort of actually having to re-do takes, so they can get back to more important things, like adopting African babies and updating their Twitter accounts.

Producers are no longer using Auto Tune to fix a note or two. They’re using it to disguise singers’ entire voices, so they sound like they have talent. It’s making both singer and producer lazier than ever.

Plenty of artists have long used recording and post-production techniques to add different effects or layers to their voice. But using Auto Tune to make something sound falsely perfect, that’s a little more deceptive. As listeners, we’re getting used to hearing song after song on the radio, all in perfect pitch.

Most of us probably heard Auto Tune for the first time with Cher’s hit Believe. She used the software to cover the ravages of a voice box that has been singing pop songs since the American Civil War.

Then, in 2003, a little-known Tennessee rapper named T-Pain (Faheem Najm) found it worked to cover up his southern drawl. Since then, his robotized voice can be heard on a dozen hits that have cracked Billboard’s Top 10.

Suddenly, everybody was doing it. Kanye West flew T-Pain to his studio to show him how much they could alter his voice with the program. Every other big name in pop music, from Christina Aguilera to Shania Twain to P-Diddy started playing around with the technology.

For a while, it was a novelty act, something new and catchy. But now we’ve created a monster. There’s a whole generation of young listeners who probably don’t know what a real singing voice sounds like, with its off notes, missed pitch and other imperfections.

At least some people are seeing Auto Tune for what it is—a gimmick. There’s a group making hilarious songs out of news broadcasts by running anchors’ voices through Auto Tune. And if this software can make someone like Joe Biden sound like he’s in a boy band, it can pretty much make anyone sound like a pop star.

Even Alex Trebek has used it on Jeopardy – which would normally be the final nail in the coffin for a gimmick that long ago wore out its welcome.

But when will Auto Tune finally die? Who knows. My radio is on, and it says fake perfection is still in.

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

Let’s hear it for the fun sheriff.

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has crashed the party once again, and this time they’re after Guelph’s downtown sidewalk patios.

The provincial agency that regulates alcohol sales in Ontario says downtown restaurants that have sidewalk patios not abutting their entrances are breaking the rules. Simply put, they say it’s illegal to carry alcohol across a sidewalk to a patio area.

Like Mom coming home early to a high school keg party, the province’s inspectors swept in and said these patios must stop serving booze or be moved. Problem is, those provincial rules don’t jive with a local accessibility bylaw that requires patios to give pedestrians a six-foot berth between the building and patio chairs.

But the alcohol and gaming commission doesn’t care about people in wheelchairs trying to get down the street. They’re worried about far more serious problems, like a few drops of Trailhead spilling on the concrete.

Who are these party-poopers? Why, they’re the same agency that earlier this year banned an Austrian beer called Samichlaus — because it sounded too much like Santa Claus. They were worried the high-alcohol beer, which has an image of a man with a beard, would be too appealing to youth. Thanks for keeping us safe, Mom.

This in the same wet-blanket province that also banned the skull-shaped bottles of Dan’s Akroyd’s Crystal Head vodka, worried that they would also appeal too much to kids, who apparently only like booze that comes in cartoonish shapes.

Of course, it’s perfectly fine to serve alcohol within the patio area, and within the restaurant itself. But the law decrees you can’t walk that booze across a stretch of sidewalk to bring it to people’s tables. Never mind that a patio a full floor above the street is perfectly fine, regardless of what gravity has to say about it.

I’m struggling to understand the imminent danger to citizens posed by waitresses carrying beer across six feet of sidewalk. Cups full of steaming coffee, pitchers of water and precarious plates of hot food are fine, but alcoholic drinks are a threat?

These kind of black-and-white rules may make plenty of sense to bureaucrats carrying out legislation, but they seem to lack common sense. And they seem to throw yet another unnecessary obstacle in the way of businesses trying to bring a little more vibrancy to our city’s downtown area.

Meanwhile, after spending millions giving its main street a facelift, downtown Kitchener is finally bustling with people who are enjoying a new cluster of sidewalk patios. Many of these are detached from their buildings, and are filled with people smoking (gasp) and eating fatty food that has not been approved by the province (heavens, no!).

These sidewalk patios are bringing new life to that city’s core. The fun sheriffs must be seething.

Controlling alcohol sales should be all about ensuring public safety, shouldn’t it? If that’s true, small sidewalk patios aren’t the problem. Over-packed clubs, that’s another thing.

But I guess provincial agencies sometimes go looking for things to do. So while they’re at it, why can’t the liquor inspectors spend time on more pressing problems, like kids who drink those gross, overly sweet coolers instead of some refreshing, locally made lager?

For now, our downtown restaurants have to figure out how to appease both the liquor inspectors and the accessibility advocates and their contradictory rules. Maybe, just maybe, the alcohol and gaming commission will find a way to back off on this fight and realize there are much bigger bottles to break.

If they do, I’d say cheers to that.

Back in March, police in Waterloo went looking for stolen property. What they found was a closet pharmacy that ended up sinking an entire football team.

Three months later, players from the Waterloo Warriors stood in a hallway outside a press conference they were barred from, trying to keep from crying. After dropping the bomb that nine of their teammates had either tested positive for steroid use or admitted to using them, the University of Waterloo announced it was suspending its football team for the upcoming season.

By Monday evening, everyone near a television set or news website knew the dirt: The Waterloo Warriors were a tainted team destined to be more famous for steroids than their less-than-memorable play on the field.

Meanwhile, police are still investigating Warriors’ wide receiver Nathan Zettler, who they say was selling steroids, human growth hormone and a pile of other performance-enhancing drugs. As far as football stories go, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

But as the Warriors take the punishment for this one, other teams, including Guelph, shouldn’t be so smug. Everyone involved in this story – players, coaches, drug experts – will tell you Waterloo is not the only college football team with a steroid problem.

No more than six players have been tested on the Gryphons’ 60-plus man roster. Same for McMaster and the University of Western Ontario. Waterloo’s across the street rival, Wilfrid Laurier, has not been tested at all. Drug testers from the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport tried to test Laurier’s Golden Hawks, but went to the wrong place and found no team waiting for them.

Until those teams test everyone on their rosters and release the results, as Waterloo did, can they claim any sort of superiority?

But the rest of us shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss this as a football problem, either. According to pretty reliable studies, half of all steroid users aren’t even athletes – they’re regular guys who just want to look big. They don’t care about the stigma of cheating, because they’re not competing for anything.

And they’re here in Guelph, just as they’re everywhere else. Despite decades of bad press, steroids are as popular as ever. And they’re easy as heck to get – with a credit card and Internet access, you can have them delivered right to your door.

Texas’s Don Hooton calls these non-athlete users “mirror athletes,” because they’re obsessed with how they look in the mirror, not their athleticism. Hooton knows a thing or two about steroids: his 16-year-old son, Taylor, killed himself during a bout of depression he believes was caused by his steroid use.

That’s why Hooton’s foundation is trying to talk to kids about steroids, because so many parents and coaches aren’t. And in that vacuum, kids are learning about these “miracle” drugs that make you bigger and stronger from guys who really shouldn’t be teaching them.

“We want coaches, parents, trainers, everybody needs to be aware that the problem is as big as it is, and that it’s not just the University of Waterloo or its football program,” Hooton told me this week.

Never mind that steroids allow a player to cheat. They’re also incredibly dangerous. They can mess up your brain, cause impotence, enlarge your heart and cause irreversible kidney damage, as studies of bodybuilders have shown.

There’s no doubt this has been a bad week for the Waterloo Warriors. But think this steroid problem is their problem alone? Not quite.

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

Next time the man pushes you around, check your wallet. If you’ve got $75, you can fight back.

Small Claims Court has been long called The People’s Court, but now it’s really starting to look like it. From medical negligence to car crashes and police brutality, the cases are piling up.

Why? Back in January, the provincial government raised the maximum award in cases from $10,000 to $25,000, and the courts have never been busier. That $25,000 is the now same amount allowed in Alberta, Nova Scotia and British Columbia, and more than three times the maximum in Quebec, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

It looks like the increase may have been the extra incentive the little guy with a grudge needed. It suddenly means people who previously couldn’t afford lawyers’ fees – which can start at $10,000 and go up – can now hire professional help to take on police or former employers and still have something left over if they win their case.

The court that used to be for solving low-sum disputes between neighbours and companies is now much sexier: it’s helping people take on the man, for as little as $75 in fees.

Last week, a small claims court in Kitchener heard the case of Matthew Probert, who says he was beaten up by a Waterloo Regional Police officer in April 2009 for just walking down the sidewalk. Probert was left bloodied and bruised after being arrested by an officer who suspected him of being a gang member. He wasn’t.

Still, Probert was handcuffed and taken to the Kitchener police detachment, where he was strip-searched and put in a cell naked from the waist down before having his clothing returned. The cops charged him with resisting arrest and causing a disturbance (during his arrest).

They soon dropped those charges, though, and with the help of Davin Charney, a local social-activist-turned-lawyer using small claims as a cheap way to sue, Probert hit back.

Last month, police in Waterloo Region lost another small claims court lawsuit filed after they stormed an apartment building looking for a handgun that wasn’t there. The payout to the victim wasn’t huge – $8,500 – but enough to make him feel a wrong had been righted.

This week, a small claims suit was filed in a Brampton court against an Ontario Provincial Police officer who allegedly called two young men “retards” after confiscating their lawn care equipment that he suspected was stolen. The equipment wasn’t – it belonged to one of the boy’s father.

The lawsuit says the cop arrested the pair, including a boy with Tourette’s syndrome, and taunted them by saying he’d use their equipment on his own lawn that night. The cop soon realized his mistake and never filed a report on the incident.

School boards have been busy with small claims lawsuits, too. In neighbouring Waterloo Region, boards have been struck with a string of small claims suits over everything from bullying to neglect in their schools. In one case, they settled out of court.

At least one school official has expressed concern the new higher awards leave the court system open for abuse. The worry is anyone with a beef can file a lawsuit on the cheap, skipping over the usual complaint channels and costing these institutions a lot in legal fees.

But it’s not clear there’s a wave of frivolous lawsuits hitting Ontario’s small claims court. And anyone wasting the court’s time will end up paying for it, anyway.

Instead, it looks like people are suddenly seeing small claims court as an affordable way to seek justice. And that can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

A funny thing happened to a friend of mine a few years ago. I went to visit him and his wife at their new home, their first home, and was stunned by how nice it was.

There was art on the walls, flowers on the table and nice dishes in the cupboards. The laundry room was organized, the furniture was clean and it matched and they had fresh linens for guests.

I was floored. How was it possible this was the same guy who once drank 23 beers in my living room without even leaving the recliner? Here he was, acting like an adult. What could be behind such a transformation?

Women, that’s who. Lucky for us, they inherently know how to build a nest. They know how to make a home. And men folk ought to be grateful. Because without them, most of us would still be living in caves, sitting on milk crates and trying to figure out where to plug in the flat-screen TV.

But cave sweet cave just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

For all the jokes men make about being domesticated by women, the alternative isn’t much better. I like drinking beer and watching baseball—but without a good woman, that might be all I’d do if I had a dwelling to myself. OK, that’s if I could find a way to get electricity into the tent.

That’s because we’re stubbornly practical beasts. We’re perfectly fine with paper plates and drinking out of the same coffee mug day after day. Most real estate sales would go like this: “You say that roof will keep rain off my head? Sounds great!”

We don’t know any better.

The art of making a house a home is lost on most men. If interior decorating was a world dominated by us, house paint would come in colours like blue or white, not Tahitian Moonmist Glow and Spanish Eggshell Tempura. Couches would only have to be comfortable, not matching the accents in the drapes.

They say it’s a man’s world. But anyone who believes that has probably never lived with a woman. And they’ve probably never been to a wedding.

Yes, if all weddings were organized by men, there’d be no bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, stag and doe parties, engagement parties, receptions, gift directories and fancy invitations. Just a booze-filled bachelor party, then a barbecue, a keg of beer and straight to the consummation. No need to sign the guest book, just give the groom a high-five on your way out.

But no, women have a mind for the finer details in life. They want nice things. They want us to act more like adults, and less like cavemen.

And you know what? It ain’t so bad.

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

Guelph Mercury, 26/05/10

Editor’s note: Apologies to Michael Chong for a mistake in an earlier version that made it appear he spent twice as much on travel as Frank Valeriote. Valeriote, of course, was in office for only half as long in that fiscal year. Math!

Maybe they’re worried we’ll insist on car pooling. Or that they start packing their own lunches.

Either way, it’s worth asking your member of Parliament why they think it’s right to refuse Auditor-General Sheila Fraser’s request to open their books.

Last week, members of the Board of Internal Economy – the nine MPs from the four federal parties who oversee the House of Commons budget – rejected a request from Fraser to look at the $576 million of public money MPs and senators spend annually.

MPs say it’s their right to spend that money secretly without having to show the people footing the bill how they spent it. Even the Conservatives, who promised to bring transparency and accountability to Ottawa, are stubbornly defending the practice.

That $576 million includes money for food, translation costs, security, computers and printing, among other things. But it also includes more than $100 million in office expenses for MPs, which is used for travel, hospitality and staff salaries — and it’s completely hidden from the public.

Guelph MP Frank Valeriote says he’s fine with MPs opening their books, and wants his colleagues to send that message to their party leaders. But for now, MPs’ expenses remain secret, with only overall totals for things such as travel being made public.

So we can tell you Valeriote billed taxpayers for $39,306 in travel expenses during his first six months on the job as an MP, according to the Public Accounts of Canada for 2008-09, posted on the government’s Public Works website. But we can’t tell you exactly how he spent that money.

We can tell you his local counterpart, Wellington-Halton Hills MP Michael Chong, who was in office for the full year, billed the public purse for $79,000 in travel costs But we can’t tell you how that breaks down, either.

The same secret spending rules mean we can’t tell you why the NDP’s Jack Layton billed us for almost $220,000 in travel costs. Or why Bob Rae, the Liberal MP who lives in Toronto, an hour closer to the House of Commons, billed taxpayers for more than $115,000 in travel costs.

Mind you, Rae could argue he was thrifty, too, since his total travel allowance is actually $155,400 — or $436 a day, if MPs worked 365 days a year.

Though MPs collectively billed Canadians for $31 million in travel expenses last year, it’s still only a small portion of expenses that MPs quietly ring up every year.

So what’s the secret? It looks like MPs and senators want to avoid the embarrassment at having all of us lowly voters sniff through their spending habits, and find that they billed us for tooth brushes, fancy meals and sexual harassment lawsuits to former parliamentary employees.

They want to avoid bad headlines like the one involving Ontario’s own ombudsman, Andre Marin, who felt taxpayers ought to pick up the tab for his personal grooming products. Marin, who was paid a salary of $216,000 last year, felt that we also ought to pay for his Adidas body wash ($6.99), Degree deodorant ($4.49) and Gillette Fusion After Shave Balm ($7.99), according to records obtained by the Globe and Mail.

For the average Canadian, it’s hard to understand why MPs and senators ought to have a secret budget for themselves. Thousands of us submit to audits by the Canada Revenue Agency every year, or else face dire consequences.

But the people we elect to represent us say they’re beyond that kind of oversight. The message is we ought to trust them, and mind our own business.

That sounds like entitlement to me. And it needs to end.

Greg Mercer is a Guelph-based writer. His column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at greg_mercer@hotmail.com, and past columns can be read at gregmercer.ca

Vancouver has its natural beauty. Stratford has its Shakespeare and Bieber Fever. Montreal has its hockey riots.

A lot of Canadian communities have their thing. You know, that sense of identity that makes a city a place where things happen. A thing that makes it unique, helps it stand out, makes it a place you’d want to visit.

Then there’s Guelph. What comes to mind when visitors think of our city? The agriculture research city? The road work city? The Hanlon Creek occupation city?

Into this vacuum comes the idea that Guelph could become Canada’s running capital. It’s an ambitious suggestion that this town, with its cluster of Olympic and world championship-level runners and coaches, could be turned into a world-class training centre for runners.

Some think we could be known as a mecca for recreational runners, too, with more trails, clubs and marathons for hoofers of all stripes. I can see it now. You’re entering town and pass a giant sign that says “Welcome to Guelph . . . We’ve got the runs.” Sounds nice.

We’ve seen before how a small group of people can help define a place. In Tofino, B.C., a few hippies with long boards and wetsuits transformed a tiny, isolated fishing village on the western edge of Vancouver Island into a mecca for cold water surfing.

Today, it’s crawling with kids in shaggy hair, neon Ray Bans and beat-up VW vans carting boards to the beach. You can still find a few glimpses of the old village. But you need to fight your way past the organic burrito shops, fair trade coffee vendors and waterfront condos to do it.

Guelph doesn’t have much in the way of oceans. But we are blessed with an extensive network of trails that run along our rivers, across our many parks and around our gem of a lake. Our city is still small enough that a runner can leave downtown on a trail and within 20 minutes or so be out in the country, surrounded by fields, trees and water. That’s a quality of life thing, and we ought to promote it more.

The problem with building a reputation around non-elite running, though, is that it’s hardly unique to Guelph. Think you’re seeing more sweaty people pounding the pavement past your house? They’re seeing that across the country.

The popular appeal is obvious. Running is a cheap sport to get into, and free to do. But if Guelph really wants to be Canada’s Runnerville, it ought to look at an American city that already makes the claim.

Eugene, Ore., has long styled itself as Track Town, USA. It has infrastructure that Guelph doesn’t, including premier ovals such as the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field, one of the most famous track and field facilities in the world. It has major marathons, and trails exclusively for runners and hikers.

Guelph, not so much. Our ‘‘best’’ running tracks are potted with holes, unfinished and or in need of repair.

“I would say our facilities are woeful,” conceded local running coach Dave Scott-Thomas, one of the people behind this running mecca idea. “I wouldn’t put (Guelph) in the top 200 tracks in Canada . . . it wasn’t hard to come up with lots of smaller, more isolated or perhaps less economically advantaged communities than us that are way better off.”

And we’d need more high-profile running events. Our two biggest runs, the Thanksgiving Day Races and the Guelph Lake need to be bigger, broader and better-promoted. And while we’re at it, how about a marathon?

Runnerville, Canada? Heck, it’s just an idea. But it’s something.