Peter Speight is a great guy. He often refers to himself as "Pedro." I've known Pedro for a long time. We go way back. I knew him before he started weight-lifting, and few people can say that. Petey is Mr. All-Canadian. That is to say he is every bit the typical "all-Canadian" dude. For example, he loves hockey & beer & girls. I'm pretty sure he's a Wayne Gretzky fan. Maybe he isn't. Anyway, you get the picture. What I didn't know about Pete is that he's an ardent believer in the Canadian Constitution, as well as the civil liberties enshrined within. I should mention one more thing about my good friend P.Spite.
He looks like a neo-Nazi.

PS was in TO sleeping on the old futon for a week, waiting for me to finish Xmas exams. The funny thing is, we weren't even supposed to be on that damn flight. A hippie friend of ours was driving his old beat pickup truck home to NB from out west. It was his annual cross-country Christmas pilgrimage, and he was going to pick us up in TO along the way. We were going to smoke weed and talk about old times. It would have been a good trip. Of course, the hippie never made it and Pete and I were forced to fly. Luckily CanJet Airlines (the national discount carrier) came through for us with some discount prices. I think it was like $100 each, after taxes, one way Toronto to Moncton, NB.

Pedro and I had tickets beside each other. I was reading Naomi Klein, "Fences & Windows." My friend Ryan from school just happened to be sitting on the other side of the aisle, one row back, and witnessed the entire scene. He lives in Moncton and was headed home for Xmas. You know that pre-flight safety bull-shit that they always do? It went down like this. The male and female flight attendants did the whole deal with the emergency exits and gas masks. When they were done, they disappeared somewhere out of sight and pre-recorded French started playing over the intercom. I don't understand a word of French, but it seemed safe to assume that what we were hearing was just the same safety bull-shit they just fed us in English, except pre-recorded, in French, and without the cheesy visual aid that had been such an integral part of the English version. I didn't think anything of it. Apparently Peter was fucking pissed.
"What the fuck is this?" He said. I didn't know what he meant.
"What do you mean?"
"This! The French."
"I don't know. What are they saying?" P.Spite is bilingual.
"It's the fucking safety instructions." Now I was confused. By the outrage in his voice I thought he was going to say that the French was telling us all to go Fuck our Mothers or something. When PS is mad you can always see it in the eyes. Pete's eyes told me he was MAD, so I didn't make any jokes.
"What's the problem?"
"The French safety instructions are pre-recorded. Which means that the flight attendants must not be bilingual! What if there was an emergency and a Francophone needed help...or to ask a question?!"
I have a long history of egging Peter on when he gets like this.
"This is bull-shit!" I said.
"It is!" He said. He was craning his neck to see over the seats in front of us.
"You should talk to someone about this." I said. I was grinning with anticipation on the inside. I kept a straight face for Peter. I didn't want to calm him down. The female flight attendant reappeared. I had the aisle seat so I asked Peter if he wanted me to stop her on her way by. He did.
"Excuse me." I said, as I stuck my arm out to block her path. She looked surprised and worried. Maybe I hadn't shaved. Maybe most passengers don't actually physically block the path of the flight attendant when they have a question. In any case, I could tell she was a bit off from the start. She looked at me and I looked at Pete to signal to her that it was actually Pete with the question.
"Are you bilingual?" She looked confused.
"No. I'm not." She said.
"Don't you have to be?" Pete said. And he looked PISSED.
"No. That's not a policy with this airline." She said, regaining some well practiced professionalism in her voice after the initial shock. But I could tell that Peter's eyes had gotten to her. It could have also been his huge frame, or the fact that his head was shaved to the skin.
"Well, you should have to be!" Pete said, leaning over me for emphasis.
"What if I was a Francophone? What if I had an emergency? You would be useless!"
"This is going well." I thought to myself. She was a little shaken up. I could see the fear in her eyes. By this time Ryan and everybody else around us were listening. She knew her next answer had to be good. So did everybody else.
"How is she going to calm this mad-man down?" They were thinking.
"I'm sorry sir, but this manual here is completely bilingual..." She passed PS the bilingual emergency instructions manual from the pouch in front of my seat.
"...you can read the emergency instructions in French right here."
"What if I had asthma???" Peter blurted out. He couldn't stand the injustice any longer. "What if I was choking? What if the plane is crashing? Do you think I'm going to have time to read a god-damn manual?" Her face turned pale-ish green. I think I heard Ryan laughing from behind me.
She didn't say a word.
I turned to her deadpan and said, "I'm not even French."
At that point I think she realized that I was just joking around. That didn't seem to console her any. She was genuinely scared of Peter. The plane hadn't even started to taxi to the runway yet. The possibility of being thrown off the plane crossed my mind.
"What's your name?" Pete said, still angry. His eyes were on fire.
"Rhonda."
"I'll be filing a complaint." Peter said in a tone that indicated that the conversation was over. He turned from her and looked straight ahead. She was still there, beside me, in that uncomfortable crouched flight attendant position, but Peter was done with her. He just looked straight ahead at the seat in front of him. Bizarrely, she didn't seem to want to go. I could feel the tension in the plane. All the middle aged French New Brunswickers around us were tired of listening to this ugliness. I could hear them all thinking, "This is your chance, you stupid bitch. Get up and walk away so we won't have to listen to this shit anymore!" Apparently she heard them too, and took her chance.

We were almost to Moncton when the male flight attendant came by. He had a name tag that said "Phillip." Apparently he was the Head flight attendant.
"Hello. My name is Phillip. I'm the Head attendant on this flight..."
I didn't like Phillip. Whenever you talk to people who don't like Toronto, its always because they claim that everyone from TO is like Phillip. I've never met anyone like Phillip in Toronto. Phillip had been talking to Rhonda.
"...I heard you gentlemen had some questions?" Phillip had that arrogant, cocky, condescending attitude that all flight attendants get once they've been promoted to "Head." There was no real reason for Phillip to come over and talk to us that day. There was no issue that he could solve, and he knew it. No, Phillip came down the aisle of CanJet Flight 505 to talk to Pedro and I for very different reasons. The man thought he could sweet talk us. He knew he had a couple of unruly customers on his hands, and he took it as a personal challenge to convert us. He was pretty confident as he walked down that aisle. He was going to use his years of experience charming old ladies, and his fancy corporate double-speak, and by the end of it we'd be apologizing to HIM, and admitting we were wrong all along.
"How can you get away without having bilingual flight attendants?" Peter blurted out, right off the bat. He was NOT amused by Phillip.
"This is a bilingual country, and you are flying to a bilingual province! What were you thinking?" And that's about all it took. That mirror-practiced corporate expression was wiped off Phillip's face. And it never came back. Peter was a bull in a china-shop and poor old Phillip looked just as pathetic and confused as Rhonda had.
"Fuckin EH!" I thought. "Lets stick it to these bastards."
"It's not your fault." I said. "Corporations are pulling shit like this all the time. Really, it's the Government's fault for not regulating you people." Phillip looked at me with Fear & Loathing. He wasn't touching that one with a ten-foot-pole.
"This kind of thing wouldn't happen with Air Canada." Peter said loud enough for everybody to hear. Phillip looked miserable. It was obvious he regretted coming over. I was laughing my ass off on the inside. I kept a straight face for Phillip. Phillip was gay, and the way we kept saying "YOU people" was making him uncomfortable. What did we mean by "you people"?
"Just my luck." Phillip thought to himself. "I come over to answer a few friendly questions, and what do I get stuck dealing with? A 250 pound raging Nazi skinhead who, through some horrible twist of fate, is also some kind of activist civil rights attorney!"
I didn't like Phillip's Gay-Head-Flight-Attendant hair cut. Peter didn't care what Phillip looked like, but he was certainly tired of looking at him.
"I'm...I'm sorry sir. Many of our flight attendants are in fact bilingual. But its not a requirement." Phillip finally blurted out when he regained some lost composure.
"Well...I'll be making an official complaint...Phillip." PS said, leaning over me to double check Phillip's name tag. And when he did this Phillip caught a terrifying glimpse into Peter's eyes and understood completely that he was out of his league. The shear intensity of Peter's personality could destroy us all. Phillip looked at me for a second like everything was MY fault! Somehow he knew. Pedro was looking at the seat in front of him. Phillip was looking at me. What the hell do you want? My face said.
"Well...if there are no more questions..." Phillip said with a dumb look on his face. But there was a little bit of pride in his voice. He said it in the same tone that he might use on old ladies, after making them understand that not only do they not need blankets or pillows, but, in fact, it is in THEIR best interest that CanJet NOT provide such unnecessary extras. He got up from his uncomfortable crouched flight attendant position and walked away.
"Go fuck yourself Phillip." I thought. "You don't make a speech about the glories of 'cost-cutting measures' to an angry bull. Peter's issues were of a higher order than your cheap bull-shit. You're nothing more than a low-rent hustler. What you swine don't understand is that certain things are more important than the bottom line."
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