Charlie McKenzie, ‘concierge’ of the Party as reported by the Globe and Mail in a new conference in 1988:
‘We cannot fool all of the people some of the time, or even some of the people all of the time, but if we can fool a majority of the people at election time, that’s the time we need.’
It sounds like a description of a diagram from Stephen Harper’s election playbook.
The RPC was formed in 1963 by Jacques Ferron. M. Ferron was an accomplished writer. He received the GG Award for his book Contes du pay incertain. Later he became a member of the Parti Quebecois. He was awarded the Prix Athanase-David by the Quebec Government in 1977. M. Ferron committed suicide in 1985 at the age of 64.
Jacques Ferron took his inspiration for the RPC from Cacareco, a five year old female rhinoceros who was elected to city council in Sao Paulo Brazil through the mischievous intervention of a group of students. See the link below for more on Cacareco.
The Rhinoceros Party is still around as you will see from the link at the bottom of the page. They are running 14 candidates in the May 2nd election, mostly in Quebec.
Some pranks in the RPC platform over the years:
Freedom of screech for Newfoundlanders.
The Queen of Canada would be seated in Buckingham, Quebec.
Rather than award money as prizes in the lottery winners to be appointed to the Canadian Senate.
Replace chlorine in the water with steroids to make Canada the strongest country in the world.
Abolish oil exploration as that oil is there to keep the earth rotating smoothly on its axis.
Build one nuclear power plant per household, include monthly distributions of lead underwear to Canadians. Indoor lighting would then be provided by radioactive citizens.
Bottle acid rain and export it.
Repeal the law of gravity.
Provide higher education by building taller schools.
Institute English, French and Illiteracy as Canada's three official languages.
Tear down the Rocky Mountains so that Albertans could see the Pacific sunset.
Make Montreal the Venice of North America by damming the St. Lawrence River.
Abolish the environment because it's too hard to keep clean and it takes up so much space.
Annex the United States in order to eliminate foreign control of Canada's natural resources.
Provide more parking in the Maritimes and create the world's largest parking lot by paving the Bay of Fundy and the province of Manitoba.
Turn Montreal's Saint Catherine Street into the world's longest bowling alley.
Make the Canadian climate more temperate by tapping into the natural resource of hot air in Ottawa.
Store nuclear waste in the Senate. After all, we've been storing political waste there for years.
Adopt the British system of driving on the left; to be gradually phased in over five years with large trucks and tractors first, then buses, eventually including small cars and bicycles last.
Force people to exhale into bags. Those bags would then be placed over photosynthetic plants, reducing the amount of CO2 we emit.
Put the national debt on Visa.
Paint Canada's coastal sea limits in watercolour so that Canadian fish would know where they were at all times.
Ban guns and butter, since both kill.
Change Canada's currency to bubble gum, so it could be inflated or deflated at will.
Count the Thousand Islands to see if the Americans have stolen any.
The Rhinoceros Party of Canada:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2408860613
Cacareco:
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/cacareco_the_rhinoceros/
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