Calgary’s city hall is already looking less lemming-like

New councillor Farkas injects good ideas into the debate

You take one fact and extrapolate it to fill a resume.

Lemmings have been given a bum rap and it’s our city’s fault.

It is wrongly believed the small, furry critters are sometimes seized with a collective death wish: deliberately following each other off cliffs and into rivers to suicidal doom.

And why would we think that? Well, back in 1958 a nature “documentary” called White Wilderness appeared to show exactly such an event — the animals jumping to their deaths into waters below.

But it was fixed. The film crew for the major U.S. studio — think Mickey Mouse — placed a large turntable at cliff edge, disguised under snow, placed a few dozen lemmings on it and then catapulted them over the edge and into cinematic eternity. They didn’t jump: they were pushed. Clever editing then made it seem as though thousands were indeed merrily rushing and jumping to needless death.

And what river did the poor creatures fall into? It would be called the Bow. And where were those cliffs? Oh yes, in a Canadian prairie city called Calgary. Yep folks, we’re ground zero for the suicidal lemming myth.

Yet while lemmings — who do sometimes drown in large numbers while hunting out new territory — have more sense than to mindlessly follow the critter in front, the same can’t always said for the two-legged variety in our city.

Whether the fault of today’s constant social media onslaught, where we exist in echo chambers of our own prejudices, passions and opinions, or just simple laziness, there’s undoubtedly a dreary tendency to jump to conclusions about people based on the flimsiest of evidence. If someone balks at provincial government borrowing of $10 billion a year, then that person, by association, rejects man-made global warming and will deem transgender people as some bizarre blight on God’s creative design.

It doesn’t make sense, yet increasingly we’re immediately assigned a full slate of opinions based on a solitary viewpoint on a single issue.

Which is where my own mea culpa arises in regards to a new city councillor, Ward 11’s Jeromy Farkas. That’s my ward and I didn’t vote for him. I reckoned someone aged 31 shouldn’t be campaigning about being fiscally conservative. Admittedly, this is somewhat silly as I share his viewpoint on the issue, but I jumped to the conclusion he must be a right dweeb worrying about this at his relatively young age.

See what happens? You take one fact and extrapolate it to fill a resume. So when I discovered he’s openly bisexual and an avid conservationist, it caused a double take. It was remarkably surprising, like finding a $20 bill in that old pair of pants.

Since then he’s impressed. Farkas politely but firmly rejected a transition allowance available to councillors leaving city hall. He says he’s young enough to make enough money after to not need such a safety net.

Then, having campaigned on the issue, he’s asking council to revisit the whole BRT transit plan for southwest Calgary. This immediately set mayor Naheed Nenshi off who, once again, gets into that personal, derogatory mindset he can’t shake, calling the suggestion “a terrible idea.”

Farkas showed more maturity in stating that, with a looming $170-million hole in the civic budget, surely all major transit spending plans could do with review regardless of what was decided a half-dozen years ago. Sounds sensible — economic times have changed, after all.

It makes you wonder who appears the emotional young council newcomer and who’s the calm, veteran politician. Yep, Nenshi might face a battle with this lad. Certainly Farkas is someone to keep an eye on.

It’s early days, but imagine a fiscal conservative who’s also a libertarian on personal choice and an avid environmentalist. That type of opponent would cause the likes of Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau many a sleepless night.