TIM BELFORD

My personal closeted skeleton

I guess we all have skeletons in the closet.

Nobody can live an entire life without doing something they might regret a little. I suppose that's why so many residents of Quebec City are shifting uneasily in their seats.

You see, if you live in select areas of the city, particularly the old town, the Mounties want to have a talk.

Come April, when the heads of the governments of the western hemispere gather for the Summit of the Americas, these residents are going to need a pass to go to and from their homes and work places.

I suppose it's so we won't attempt to shoot the president of Surinam or blow up the prime minister of St. Vincent.

Understandable.

Mind you, the Mounties say it's just to make it easier on all of us.

They say they don't intend on investigating anybody's past. It's really just to ease traffic flow.

Nothing more than a glorified metro pass.

The only problem is, I don't believe them.

Now, before you brand me as a Nervous Nelly, remember a paranoid is just someone with all the facts.

I toddled down the other day to get my permit.

The very pleasant officer in charge took all the pertinent details: name, address, height, weight, eye colour, hair colour, occupation.

Then he said they'd contact me again at the end of March to tell me where to pick up my pass.

The end of March?

Why i asked would it take two months? Why couldn't they just do it right away -- If they weren't going to investigate?

This was the wrong thing to say.

He began to look at me strangely; the way Inspector Morse on A&E looks at someone just before he asks him his whereabouts on Saturday at nine p.m. -- the time of the murder.

And I'm not sure, but as i beat a hasty retreat i think he put my form in a different box from the others.

What if they cross reference, i wondered?

Would they turn up the fact I just got my firearms certificate?

Would I be listed as disgruntled and armed?

What about the Amchitka nuclear protest in the seventies? The anti-war marches? The NDP membership card?

Good God! What if they have a secret file on disgruntled, gun toting, pacifist, moderate social democrats?

I might never see my apartment again.

But it's too late now. I'll just have to wait it out.