It’s been a day or two since my co-author called me up to chat about guns, so…

I’m assuming Pete Vere and his bride Sonya have (finally) welcomed baby #4 into the world! Congratulations, or alternately, hang in there…

A few days ago, at the height of the “Who is a Real Conservative?” post-election blog battles, Pete posted something about regional political differences, and startling differences in perceptions and definitions, that is well worth pondering:

Nowhere was I more amazed by our differences than in going through the responses to my recent appearance on the Michael Coren show. Kathy talks about the most fun taking place in the green room before and after the show. My own green room discussion involved Coren, a Torontonian, taking me aside and gently urging me not to put in so strongly with hunters and gun-owners. This was a followup to an on-air exchange over the same issue, which ended with me saying: “In Toronto you shoot people, in Northern Ontario we shoot animals.”

But I digress. Coren, who I like and who certainly knows the Toronto market, was urging me to make alliances with people on the left who agree with us on free speech, but don’t go for guns and hunting. He mentioned similar concerns over my references to professional wrestling, which is still quite popular in Northern Ontario. He named several prominent leftists — all from Toronto or the 905. In short, he was cautioning me against coming across as too right wing to these folks.

Yet back home in the North, the response was the opposite. It’s Coren who is seen as the right-wing ideologue and myself as the centrist. The moment I pulled into the driveway, several neighbors ambushed me with congratulatory messages. Many of my neighbours are First Nations, almost all of them vote NDP. They were happy I had “stood up for Northerners against conservatives like Coren” who “want to impose their Toronto neo-conservative corporate agenda on Northern Ontario…”