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The Good-Maker Gibbet Company

History and Commentary From a Prairie Perspective
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A brief news morsel, like an arrow gone astray, suggested the Masters and Mandarins in Ottawa were thinking of sentencing all the really nasty people caught by the constabulary to life imprisonment with no hope of parole. I don’t think this idea is off target. It’s a jolly good one. I have always thought the rotten rascals who are so much nastier than the folks on Parliament Hill and me should be made to disappear from sight forever and ever. It threatens my loyalty as a Canadian patriot, however, to observe this statesmanlike idea cannot come to fruition unless taxpayers are required to build scads of new prisons. Housing, feeding and watering all the people who should be incarcerated would be gigantically expensive. If we could avoid spending on an expanding prison system we would probably have enough money to buy some new airplanes and a couple of ships and maybe even some showroom-model submarines.

Accordingly, I offer this suggestion to my well-intentioned government. If there were legislation enacted to bring back capital punishment and the range of capital offences broadened, Canadian taxpayers would not have to pay for a lifetime of room and board. Instead, we could employ a Doctor Doom with a nasty hypodermic to send them all to the Great Beyond, where, no doubt, they would be punished some more, as they richly deserve to be.

 I don’t think it necessary for me to offer any suggestions about a new list of capital offences. There are mega-brains in Ottawa who can be trusted to make the required decisions. For the moment, I think it would be a good idea to include telephone and Internet scammers in the same group as murderers and thieves. Unless future events change my opinions, I think people who say naughty things about the government in Ottawa should only be incarcerated.

 I have a further suggestion my leaders may find helpful. People have little memory now of gibbets. They were iron cages in which the bodies of executed varlets were displayed hanging from posts. As a warning to people who hadn’t committed a crime yet, they were invaluable. Our government could add greatly to economic activity if it funded the set-up by a private corporation that I call the Make-Good Gibbet Company in every province and territory.

 I further believe that drilling holes all over the place for gibbet-holding posts would offend environmentalists. This should be avoided. It would be no trouble at all to use tripods to hold the posts up. This would be very necessary in Ottawa in order to avoid pockmarking the parliamentary lawn. Of course, for naughtiness in Ottawa, the gibbet manufacturers would have to provide a range of models. There would need to be one for members and senators and more elaborate ones for cabinet ministers and prime ministers.

 I want to assure CSIS and all the other spy catchers that I am not attempting to add to the list of terrorist conspiracies. Nor am I hoping to become the CEO of the Good-Maker Gibbet Company, with a fabulous salary, stock options and an enviable travel allowance.

 No, indeed. I offer up my brilliant proposals free of charge, out of the goodness of my heart.