London has a city councillor who has come forward to make the one who lobbied on behalf of backyard chickens seem calm and rational.
I feel badly for Dale Henderson. He’s a first-time councillor who lost his wife to illness. He doesn’t appear to have anyone in his life to help keep him on track. His cannon went very loose at a public forum on smoking laws this week.
I spoke to Henderson after the morning rush, following the Free Press story that quoted his way-off-topic comments during presentations for and against toughening the outdoor smoking bylaw. After a woman from the Cancer Society offered reasons why second-hand smoke should be limited around places where children gather, Henderson went on a rant. He talked about suicide rates and how forcing people to stop smoking would contribute to more people killing themselves. He described sugar as a bigger killer than tobacco. He discussed the “thousands” of chemicals in cigarettes and said we should be working on getting “gun powder out of tobacco” to make smoking safer. He denied that smoking in general causes cancer. He claimed his wife didn’t die from cancer; chemotherapy killed her. Then the capper: He said he was involved with a clinic in Hamilton that cured cancer.
For starters, no one will force anyone to quit smoking. The committee took a middle-ground approach and decided to recommend banning smoking within 9-metres of city parks and buildings. Whether people choose to smoke is not for a municipality to decide. Where is another thing. When I spoke to Mr. Henderson I asked him to confirm each statement and he stood behind them all. His mistake, he said, was going off topic and bringing up too many “vision type” issues. He insisted that his Chinese medicine doctor, chiropractor and others at the Hamilton clinic did reverse cancer. I asked him why they didn’t take that cure to the rest of the population and he said, ‘I’m no longer involved with that clinic’. Stephen Orser, the aforementioned “chicken man” who made chickens his reason for being, is probably, silently, offering a big “thank you” for Henderson.
Someone needs to remind Mr. Henderson that his powers are limited to the city of London. Politics followers mocked him liberally on social media following the meeting. My colleague Avery Moore and I had the same reaction to his comments: he was like that kooky Grandpa at Thanksgiving dinner who says nutty things as he’s passing the potatoes and you think, “Oh, that’s just Grandpa!” But now he has a forum. The next municipal election is two years away.