And God said unto Toronto, lettuce pray

[Guest guest]

And God said unto Toronto, lettuce pray

 

DOWNTOWN Toronto has gotten the word from on high -

about three storeys up.

Not exactly nosebleed altitude in that part of town,

but the instructions on the

billboard come from the top guy in the organization -

God - and He wants us to go

vegetarian. I predict the city will respond in unison:

``Bite me.''

 

As the latest celebrity spokesman for People for the

Ethical Treatment of Animals,

God made his debut last week at the corner of King and

Princess Sts., holding a

handful of carrots, His message emblazoned beside him

on the sign: ``I said, `Thou

shalt not kill.' GO VEGETARIAN.'' This ad was intended

also to run on billboards in

meat-loving western cities from Edmonton to Winnipeg,

but the PETA pitchmen in

those towns were all turned away; some of them may

even have been eaten.

 

Folks here are more civil, of course, and the movers

and shakers downtown could be

expected to kiss up to God, a being so powerful He's

practically a Weston. But the

Almighty can't really expect the heart of Toronto to

accept the rules so readily when

it's a neighbourhood with more lawyers and

stockbrokers than, well, Hell itself.

 

They're born loophole hunters, even in the Sixth

Commandment, and the arguments

here are pretty obvious:

 

A. ``Hey, I didn't kill anything. I don't know how

this poor cow met its end. That said,

it would be shameful to let it go to waste; instead we

must respectfully bury it deep in

my colon.''

 

B. ``What do you think will happen to these animals if

we don't eat them? They'll be

eaten anyhow. It's not like chickens and pigs in the

wild tend to die of old age,

surrounded by family and friends urging them to `go

toward the light.' Being torn

apart by a wolf IS dying of natural causes when you're

a rabbit; they don't run fast

because they're trying to catch a streetcar.''

 

C. ``By eating lettuce and cabbage, I'm actually

taking food out of a starving rabbit's

mouth.''

 

D. ``If that no-killing commandment really does apply

to animals, why doesn't it apply

to vegetables? You killed those carrots when you tore

them out of their homes in the

dirt, and took them away from their friends: the

weeds, the weevils and the bacteria.

Sure, it's an alternative lifestyle, but who are you

to judge?''

 

At that point, the dissenter is probably silenced by

the appearance of boils on his

tongue the size of cane toads, but the point's been

made.

 

Maybe PETA and the Lord were hoping vegetarianism

would appeal to the

self-consciously sophisticated menus in Toronto's

better restaurants.

 

Meat-free options abound for diners here, but insofar

as I can tell that's accomplished

by subtracting ``beef'' from any given recipe and

replacing it with ``most obscure

cheese available.''

 

As a recent arrival in the big city, I'm baffled.

Where I last lived, even the vegetarian

restaurant had a menu livened up with a dead chicken

here and there. (In fact, its

best-selling vegetable product may have been Pilsner.)

 

But the bills of fare at tony eateries here, wary of

the pleasures of the flesh, load up

on dairy rarities instead: Asiago cheese, warm goat

cheese napoleon, shaved

bocconcini, agitated Port Salut, composted Cambozola,

palpitated platypus

provolone. They can't all be good for you, even the

ones I made up. With a diet that

rich, even a vegetarian lifestyle could end up killing

a pig - and that pig would be you.

 

Straining even harder to avoid meat can't be what God

intended. After all, what were

those people on Noah's ark eating - Fruit Roll-Ups?

Torontonians may be a bit too

savvy to fall for a billboard deity who, the more I

think about it, looks more like David

Crosby than the Creator.

 

The Bible records just one incident involving the

eating of an apple and nothing good

came of it, not even pie. This despite the waiter's

recommendation. If Adam and Eve

had wised up and eaten the snake, wouldn't we all be

better off?