TIM BELFORD

Some thoughts about a special day for women

So another International Women's Day has come and gone.

I'm really of two minds about the whole thing.

On one hand it's great we celebrate women and their achievements -- after all none of us men would be here if it weren't for a woman somewhere.

On the other hand it seems a shame we have to put aside a special day since that means we're acknowledging we haven't got there yet.

As for me, I've always had a finely honed appreciation for the equality of the other 51 per cent of the population.

Long before I was bored to death by Betty Friedan's "Feminine Mystique" or heard Helen Reddy warble "I am woman" I knew instinctively that women were equal.

Mostly because of my mother.

When former Ottawa mayor Charlotte Whitton said "whatever women do they must do it twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult," I think of my mom.

Now, she would never have used the word feminist to describe herself. She was just herself.

The fact that she has hands as big as mine and used them frequently for emphasis made the point.

I remember one time many years ago we were out for a family walk.

As we strolled along, my father gave us instruction in the fine art of shooting crows off a telephone wire with a twenty-two calibre rifle.

Now remember, this was in the days when country folk could shoot crows to keep them from devastating a cherry tree without risking the wrath of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Scavaging Avians or some such group.

At one point my mom asked for a turn at the fun. This, of course, was met with a chorus of the kind of giggles only eight and ten-year old sons can conjure up when contemplating the women folk attempting a man's job.

Well, my mother , Annie Oakley Belford, proceeded to pick off the birds one by one. Sort of like a female version of Buffalo Bill.

It wasn't the only time she surprised me

She sat down one day and taught herself to use a sewing machine, kind of a female type thing, but she also got tired of waiting for my father to build a curb for the driveway.

The next thing I knew she was out there digging a trench, building wooden forms and pouring cement.

I can also remember sitting with my father watching my younger brother playing in the local men's softball championship.

This, of course, had been preceded by the women's final which had featured my dear old mom who pitched a mean game until she was sixty.

She never got a law degree. She didn't start her own dot.com empire. And she never held a cabinet post.

But she raised a bunch of sons who never really thought about Women's Day.

It just wasn't needed.