Stockwell and Me

In the week after Christmas Vacation, I was flying home from visiting family in Alberta.
I was standing at the airport in Calgary, ready to get on my plane. I was in line to go through the metal detector, and I recognized the person standing in front of me.

I wasn't sure, but I was very certain that I knew who the man was. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to go up to him and ask him.

"Excuse me sir, are you Stockwell day?

It was him. The former leader of the Canadian Alliance Party, now the public safety finance minister under the new regime.

I have to say, the experience was surreal to say the least. I imagine that meeting Day was like meeting Adolph Hitler: I knew that the man was a reactionary of the worst kind, a very destructive force to the peoples of Canada, and yet I was still in the presence of a man who was once quite powerful and even popular among the deluded disenfranchised masses.

In a way, I was looking into the eyes of the enemy. Here before me was one of the servants of the capitalist class. Here was a fundamentalist Christian, a fierce homophobe, a man who is now committing millions to step up border security, a vocal supporter of President George.W.Bush
and the war in Iraq ( In March 2003, he co-wrote a letter to the wall street journal, criticizing Canada's unwillingness to get involved in the war in Iraq.).

What should I say to this man? Should I reveal that I was a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist?
Should I criticize him for his policies (This wasn't a good idea, anyways. Never start an argument in the line for airport security; That's a good way to get strip searched.)?

Should I do like my Comrade Julian Ichim during the 2000 federal election, and splatter him in chocolate milk? ( the airport staff made me drink all of my beverages before going through security. Perhaps a government Apparatchik getting soaked, was just the kind of terrorist attack that lead them to ban it in the first place.)

What to do?

He asked me if I went to the University of Victoria, (which he did.).I took a picture, to verify my story to relatives and friends, and then he was off.

Such an odd encounter, especially knowing as he walked away that one day I might be among those punishing him for his crimes. I had come face to face with a representative of the enemy.