WHAT’S UP WITH HARRY?

by William Thomas

Everyone wanted Harry. Surrounded by a sparkling inland sea, this tiny island paradise attracted beach and forest pilgrims from the planet ‘round. 
But across murmuring nighttime waters, Van Hoover’s inclined sprawl glowed like the campfires of follow-on armies. If Harry’s stewards did not remain vigilant, the fate awaiting this much-coveted isle was plain to see.

Storm clouds were gathering. Before implementing remote virtual control, unelected Plan Errs occasionally parachuted onto Harry’s fair flanks. Inspired by powerful industries and a shared mission to “preserve and protect” corporate profits, their ill-considered ethics and edicts sought to bring condos, cell towers, cabanas and chaos to a rural sanctuary held sacred by its first seasonal visitors. 

Oddly, the impulse driving those who most coveted Harry was to replicate what they were fleeing. Apparently unfamiliar with the concepts of karma, courtesy, common sense and community respect, Islands Bust Inc. green-lighted the inadvertent (though much forewarned) exhuming of the Cro’mox Nation’s ancestral bones. 

“Shame! Shame! Shame!” scolded three ravens. 

Resistance was growing. Early one morning, local defenders armed with their Official Community Plan, Local Government Act, Canadian Charter and Harry’s Vibe approached the snag atop which their jeering tormentors commanded and cowered. 

“On me!” the leaders shouted. But when they turned, only a few stalwarts had followed. 

“Where the heck is everybody?” someone cried out. 

“They must still be asleep,” came a suggestion.

“That roost looks pretty high.”

“What will my neighbours say?” fretted a voice in back.

Just when all seemed lost, a rustling in the forest grew into an exuberant roar as Harry’s wild inhabitants burst from the trees!

Cows mooed. Crows cawed. Bees buzzed. Gulls squawked. Eagles cried. Salmon leapt. Orcas spouted close inshore and an astonished fawn looked on with wide unblinking eyes as hundreds of islanders began arriving on foot, horseback, ebikes and old pickups waving the petitions they’d signed. 

“We love Harry!” everyone shouted in unison, accompanied by joyously honking geese. “Be nice to Harry!”    

“Hoooot! Hoooot!” Owl hollered for attention. “All attend to Harry’s Code of Right Conduct.”

“Tell it,” a human voice called out.

“Ahem!” Owl said, adjusting his spectacles to read, not from Pooh but a scroll that kept trying to retract. 

“Corporate predators are not welcome here. Ahem! Newcomers addicted to making commotion and demands are asked to reconsider whether they’ve caught the wrong ferry. Whether arriving via channel crossings, birth canals, hatchings or sprouting, the Way to be welcomed into this special place where so many interdependent creatures reside is to embrace the Spirit of Harry.”

Roosters crowed. Goats began cavorting with the horses. Soon, mothers, sons, dads and daughters were dancing too.

“What’s all that racket?” the overseers called down from their precarious perch. “Our avaricious predilection is to leave nothing alone — least of all, Harry. So get over it. We may know or care nothing about you, your lives and aspirations. But we do know what’s best for us. Er… you.”

“How do you figure that makes any sense?” hailed a sailor from the Cove.
“Our distant urban planning relies on ChatGPT and Toronto’s best models,” the over-developers boasted. “And we never suffer the consequence of our mistakes. If Nature is our own nature before all, leave your children’s impoverishment to us and go home.”

“We are home!” shouted every animal in unison, humans included. “We’re here to reclaim Harry!”

The flummoxed Plan Errs nearly dropped their personal distraction devices. “What are your demands?” they nervously demanded. Though they didn’t really want to know. 

“Simple,” came the reply. “Leave us alone.”

“But how will you govern without us?”

“Like we used to,” rat-tat-tatted a red-crested woodpecker. “Much bet-bet-bet-betta.”  

“Only after every voice is considered will we decide together what’s bestest for all the Fuzzy, Finned and Feathewy peoples,” chortled baby Emma at her mother’s teat. “And all those walking on two legs,” her father chimed in. “Or four,” added her mom, burping Emma.

The would-be usurpers grew alarmed. 

“You must be joking if you think that, along with local woods and water spirits, the millennia-old representation of critters, elders, children, mothers and warriors in Village Councils has any relevance to godless digital-wireless rule,” they spluttered, appalled by the real world feedback needed to achieve harmony and Not Screw Up.

“We’re not impressed by your city ways,” riposted an otter, shaking slogans, soundbites and seawater from its back. “We’ve seen what happens when a few outside rule-makers disregard community wishes and values, local knowledge, and the innate wisdom of Place.” 

“The mentality you want us to emulate cut me down,” a grandfather arbutus chimed in. “And thanks to your procrastination, Tribune’s trailside woodlands remain at risk.”

“Progress! Profits! Power!” the unrepresentatives chanted to reweave the spell they’d cast over themselves. “More Inappropriate Development Now!”  
“Not on the backs of our kids,” said the woodpecker. And chopped that snag down.

Photo-Captions: Goat on the way to protest -Will Thomas photo

Seahorse coming ashore -Will Thomas photo

This story appeared in The Grapevine on Sept 26/24