So what does the video have to do with peddling propaganda? Nothing really, but I couldn’t find any trace of the Vaughn Munroe song from the same era that the first sentence of the story by the Freep’s Aldo Santin - Transcona train plan back for 2nd look, immediately brought to mind - “A controversial plan to allow Canadian Pacific Railway to park its trains in the middle of a residential neighbourhood in northeast Winnipeg is going back to city hall“.

The song also by Vaughn Munroe was called ‘The railroad runs through the middle of the house“, and the words of the first verse went like this;

The railroad comes through the middle of the house

The railroad comes through the middle of the house

The trains all come through the middle of the house

Since the Company bought the land.

From that point on the rest of the story isn’t humorous in the least because it seems someone at the Freep is quite intent on blowing political smoke up the body orifices of the local citizens and I’m getting more than a little tired of it, because it’s getting far past the point of being news with a ‘liberal bent’ into engaging in peddling propaganda filled with lies and distortions.

Last week I did a piece Monopoly is a bored game that involved coverage the Freep’s Aldo Santin had given about Winnipeg City Council dealing with matters related to the CPR. In that so called breaking news story Santin makes the statement “The proposal will allow the CPR to block traffic on three streets in east Winnipeg — Panet Road, Plessis Road and Peguis Street — for up to an hour at a time, possibly several times a day, during a 11-month period beginning in September, as its east- and west-bound trains shuffle past each other.”

The statement is an outright lie, and doesn’t reflect what the Councillors were dealing with then, and the latest story about the so called second look is less than the whole story too. The council minutes and consultants report are available at this link as report number 10 and attachment to it. Here is the links to the second and thirdstory the Freep carried written by Santin.

“People are very upset with this plan,” Wyatt said Friday afternoon. “… People aren’t willing to put up with this.”

Close but no cigar Councillor Wyatt. People aren’t upset with the plan. What they are upset about is manufactured lies and propaganda - and that’s what they aren’t willing to put up with, and someone is going to get their knuckles slapped hard for this little escapade.

According to rumours, Ernie Gilroywasn’t happy in the least bit about the spin the Free Press gave the story, and supposedly has written a letter of clarification to the Freep. So far it hasn’t appeared. Those same rumours say the Minister of Transport in Ottawa is not in the least amused at the antics and the political game playing either, which is probably why Bill Clement finally got off his ass - he probably got it reamed out by someone.

Now Russ Wyatt may fancy himself a protegee of another well known Liberal from the area Bernie Wolfe, which is why he runs around with that ridiculous Fedora hat and trench coat all the time, and supposedly he has pretensions of running for mayor. Given the amount of print space he gets at the Freep, obviously he’s someones pet project, but hell and Winnipeg will freeze over before that happens.

In a way I kind of feel for some of the journalists at the Freep. Joe Bowtie had a real number done on him while supposed City Hall Star Bart has been off on a journalistic vacation. It has to be tough to toe the editorial party line and duck the flack from both the public and management while trying to earn an honest living.

Last fall Santin trots down to the Empire Club in yet another of Wyatt’s political escapades, and pumps out the story Big mugging at Empire Cabaret, then 3 weeks later someone gets killed at the club. Can’t be easy to have to live with that kind of stuff and keep generating political PR stories for Wyatt.

Wyatt and City council and Ernie Gilroy will be told what is and isn’t acceptable to the Minister of Transport and federal legislation, not the other way around, so all the sound bites, verbiage, and claims by Wyatt amount to nothing more than fresh air, no matter how the Freep wants to portray it.

Here’s the words to the rest of the song, just in case someone is interested and remembers the tune;

They let us live in the front of the house

They let us live in the back

But there ain’t no livin’ in the middle of the house

‘Cause that’s the railroad track

When a bill collector comes to the house

He knocks and bangs on the door

So we sit him right down in the middle of the house

And he never comes back no more

No, he never comes back no more

Oh, he railroad comes through the middle of the house

The railroad comes through the middle of the house

It comes and goes through the middle of the house

And the trains are all on time

And here comes the five-o-nine

The railroad comes through the middle of the house

In and out of the middle of the house

Right smack dab through the middle of the house

Where the parlor used to be

There’s a great big door in the front of the house

There’s a little old door in the back

But we can’t have doors in the middle of the house

‘Cause that’s the railroad track

A relative came to visit the house

He liked to scream and fuss

So we sat him right down in the middle of the house

And he never more bothered us

No, he never more bothered us

Oh, the railroad comes through the middle of the house

The railroad comes through the middle of the house

It comes and goes through the middle of the house

Since the trains are all on time

I’m singing this song in the middle of the house . . .