21 March 2019 – There are times where you just want to bellow, HANDS OFF!!, and slap the offending fingers for good measure. But you can’t, can you? Because you are Canadian, and, according to media clichés worldwide, we are too polite to go around bellowing at people.
So what-to-do, what-to-do?
Well, don’t fret. The Creekside Collaborative Garden …
has come up with a whole list of suitably polite euphemisms.
The Garden is well named. It is indeed both creekside (tucked near the south-east tip of False Creek) and collaborative (planted and maintained by people in the neighbourhood).
Everything is still a little stark …
but soon plants will burst into action, and fruit tree branches will be bare no longer.
Which is exactly when the Hands-On impulse might lead passers-by into temptation.
Which is why polite messages are already neatly tied into place.
They encourage interaction …
but with limits.
They appeal to our nurturing instincts …
they flirt with us …
and they invoke spiritual resonance.
And when all else fails …
they guilt-trip us.
In Other Other Words
In other gardens, I’ve seen a different compromise between the urge to protect and the urge to remain … umm … Canadian. Here & there, you spot a hand-lettered sign that simply says, “Please don’t steal.”
Masterful, isn’t it? That polite “Please,” followed by that blunt choice of verb.
