You can't fire us because we fake quit - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson

There is a particular kind of late-May fatigue that does not announce itself with drama or collapse. It arrives more politely than that, like a well-meaning neighbour who has wandered into the wrong garden party and decides, after a few minutes of standing near the devilled eggs, that perhaps it is time to go home and re-consider everything. Better to stay away from those eggs - they are the devil’s eggs.

 

That is roughly where things now stand with The Chaff’s campaign to erect a statue of Betty White in Wingham, commemorating her ancestral link to the region through Margaret Hobbs, her grandmother. The idea remains excellent. The enthusiasm remains real. The infrastructure of optimism, however, appears to have temporarily wandered off to lie down in a shaded field somewhere and contemplate the sound of e-mail notifications without responding to them.

 

So, with the seriousness of someone dramatically closing a well-worn leather journal while sitting on a porch swing during a thunderstorm that is mostly aesthetic, The Chaff is this week announcing a withdrawal.

 

The project itself has not failed. It has entered that peculiar rural phase where every step forward requires three conversations, two gentle reminders and at least one person saying, “We should circle back after the thing after the other thing.” 

 

And yet, nothing is actually gone. The idea still stands there, stubborn as a barn cat refusing to acknowledge weather forecasts. A statue of Betty White is still a profoundly reasonable civic aspiration.

 

Somewhere in the background of all this, the idea is still doing what ideas do when they are not being actively supervised: it is refusing to die, refusing to sit still and refusing to stop looking mildly promising even when everyone agrees the timing is “complicated.”

 

There is also the small matter of expectation versus weather. May, in its usual Canadian performance, has delivered a dramatic mix of sunshine and emotional unpredictability, which has had the side effect of making every civic ambition feel like it is happening inside a half-built gazebo. Everything is possible, technically, but also slightly damp and subject to sudden gusts of re-consideration.

 

Meanwhile, those involved have begun developing a new skill set: the ability to say “progress is being made” with such conviction that it almost convinces the furniture. Notes are taken that look, upon later inspection, like prophecies written by someone trying to remember where they parked their enthusiasm.

 

So yes, this week The Chaff is stepping back.

 

But it is the kind of step back that is really just a theatrical shuffle to the wings, where one adjusts the costume, glares meaningfully at a stagehand and prepares to re-enter slightly louder, better organized and possibly carrying snacks for leverage.
Because next week is not this week.

 

Next week, the tone changes. The gears stop pretending to be decorative and start behaving like machinery again. The e-mails will be answered with unnatural speed. The enthusiasm will return wearing war paint and carrying a suspicious number of sticky notes. The statue, which has been briefly allowed to exist in a state of administrative limbo, will once again be spoken of as though it is inevitable, which is frankly the only way it ever had a chance.

 

There will also be a renewed confidence that the universe, despite all evidence to the contrary, is in fact vaguely receptive to politely persistent civic imagination. This is a fragile belief, easily disrupted by scheduling conflicts, but remarkably resilient when paired with enough stubborn optimism and the occasional snack-based negotiation.

 

It is worth noting, too, that every grand local project has this phase. The awkward mid-act pause where everyone pretends not to be thinking about how long things are taking. It is the narrative equivalent of standing in a field holding a flag while someone checks whether the flagpole has been ordered yet. Nothing is wrong, but everything feels like it might be one missing e-mail away from becoming a cautionary tale.

 

Even the statue, in its imagined future form, seems to understand this. One can almost picture it waiting patiently in conceptual space, politely refusing to become real until the paperwork catches up. A bronze Betty White, half-smiling in anticipation, quietly amused at the administrative drama unfolding in her honour.

 

And so, for now, we allow the illusion of defeat to sit in the corner like a coat we have decided not to wear outside. It is not real. It is just part of the choreography. And like all good choreography, it exists so that the next movement lands harder, funnier and with slightly more dirt on its shoes than anyone was expecting.