Kootenay Crust

By Ian Cobb

Please indulge me with your patience and participation in imagining this scenario.

It is an alternate reality (it is best if you imagine this with Rod Serling’s voice).

It is the year 2014; Europe has been conquered for two centuries by North American aboriginals.

The ‘People’ have overrun every corner of European civilization since they ‘discovered’ Europe and the aboriginal Europeans, what’s left of them following several attempts at annihilation, live on reserves.

While the People are now the majority in Europe and their law is the way, and while time has washed away some of the sting of being conquered, the Europeans have been treated with more dignity and respect in the past couple of decades.

Education and awareness and a slight decline in racism have created bridges. As well, the People allow the Europeans complete religious freedom.

The Vatican in Rome, where now only five per cent of the population is ‘Italian,’ is still the centre of Catholicism.

However, the People have developed a fondness for expensive getaways where they can dance and sing and delve in all matters spiritual.

As it turns out, they discover the coolest and best places to do this stuff is in cathedrals and such and Europe, being lousy with beautiful old cathedrals and basilicas, offers enormous bounty for today’s upwardly mobile and financially solvent Person.

More than 20 years earlier in this alternate reality, a Person from the Ktunaxa Nation in the old world, a bullish architect of some renown who loved rejoicing in large echo chambers, came upon St. Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican.

His mind raced as he envisioned a sprawling enclave of spiritual practice, dancing and singing while devout Catholics prayed nearby and Latin murmured through the cavernous holy site.

The balding, bespectacled Person with an endearing snort proclaimed St. Paul’s to be the perfect location for his dream resort and embarked on an arduous process to secure the ability to build it.

Despite ardent opposition from other People and, worse, despite the shock, horror, disgust and angry opposition of Catholic Europeans who proclaimed the plans for St. Paul to be a desecration of a holy place, the government and the resort company ignore the cries of protest, citing greater good of the economy.

It goes to court, where the Catholics argue they were not properly consulted with by the government before and during the resort approval process. They also remind the court and government that building anything in St. Paul’s is exploitation of the freedom of religion and violation of their rights of freedom.

But the People’s court, in its august wisdom, rules the government’s consultations with the Catholics “passes the reasonableness standard.”

The Peoples’ court rules that no spiritual values or rights have been violated.

The Catholics beg to differ.

Meanwhile, despite all the back and forth, the venom, lies, deceit and backroom shenanigans, St. Paul’s remains as is; no People dance in it, save those who venture in themselves or are guided in by helicopter.

Despite years of promise, promotion and approvals, following years of process and even the establishment of a municipal council, because the government allowed the creation of a town smack dab in the middle of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the architect and his team of resort builders have built nothing. Their window dressing has not attracted anyone with deep enough pockets to enable the construction of such an ambitious project, it seems.

It is likely, considering the economic truths of this alternate reality, that St. Paul’s will never be violated and the Catholics’ holy place will remain as is.

All that foofarah and argle-bargle for nowt; but the Catholics don’t mind, it is a reasonableness standard they can live with.

Imagine if something like that happened in our reality! Thank goodness we’re not so ignorant and rude!

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