This is the earliest memorabilia metal tray we've found.

Though there are many other kinds of memorabilia items from the period:

Go to Busts

Go to Plates

Go to Teapots

Go to Pitchers

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Go to Medals

Go to Bugles

Go to Pictures

Go to Beavers

Go to Originals

Go to Repros

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If you skipped all those links this one is for you:

Go to Coke Head

Presented to

Lieut. Col. Henry Smith

Late District Officer Commanding

#1 Military District

CANADA

By Officers and Friends

In token for their regard of him as

A Soldier and a Man

Christmas

1898

Canada was defended mostly by civilian volunteers who trained as militiamen every summer and in evenings and weekends during the year.

A year after this tray was presented to Col. Smith, many of these militiamen wanted to try out what they had been learning for decades, on the Boers of South Africa.

Untold thousands offered their services; only a relatively few were chosen.

Within months, most of them wanted to quit. Real war and the misery it brought to Boer women, children, and men, as well as comrades who were wounded or died, greatly disappointed most of these young boys off civvy street.

But memories are short. Barely a dozen years later they would join up by the tens of thousands. And like never before in history they would get a chance to die for their country.

Which was, of course, a total waste because it was, easily, the most stupid war in history.

These beer trays were large, and used to carry glasses of hooch to tables in bars full of men loudly denouncing the Boers.

So some are chipped and show wear done in times of yore. Others were cherished as memorabilia and kept for display only.

Betrayed #1 - Trays are, of course, wonderfully patriotic tools, used by the Establishment classes to rouse national fervour among the hoi polloi, especially when cannon fodder is needed to pursue some economic gain for their cronies that can only be achieved through going to war, usually against a much weaker enemy: Indians, Métis, Boer farmers, Palestinians, Lebanese, Afghan pajamahadeen, etc.

Those who volunteer to "serve the country" end up realizing, too late, that they are only serving the greedy, self-serving rich and the super-rich. Then it's too late, and they are dead.

Go to Betrayed by Millionaires

(A dozen years later, he would become the first commander of the British - and Canadian - Forces on the Western Front in World War I.)

This early in the Boer War, the manufacturers had a hard time to pick out who would be the heroes of the day.

Colonel Kekewich, briefly of Kimberly fame, till he tangled with General French, is top centre. Probably his only appearance on tin or ceramic memorabilia.

Far left is General Wauchope, killed at Magersfontein. Though a Stevengraph was issued on him, this may be his only other appearance on a "hard" memorabilia item.

Generals Clery right, and Rundle bot, were divisional commanders who did not achieve celebrity successes, so this is probably their only appearance on hard memorabilia.

By "hard" memorabilia we mean wood, metal, parian, or ceramics. Everyone, no matter how minor, had his image published on trade cards.

It is extremely rare to find memorabilia plates, jugs, cups, tins, or busts that feature Canadian officers (though British figures are common). This must rank among the ultra rares, the only one we have ever seen.

Pin trays are the very small cousins of the large beer trays, were more affordable, and so are much easier to find today, though most are not in good condition.

This fabulous pin tray of Col. Otter, and a beaver, stems from a glorious time when women did lots of sewing.

If you had a hole in a sock it would be mended instantly - with the aid of Col. Otter, no doubt, holding the pins - unlike nowadays, when, if you show up with a hole, the Missus. just shrugs, throws out the sock, and you have to wait, wearing a mismatch - days or weeks - till she goes shopping...

Go to Pin Tray Coll

This scene from the Indian Wars of the 1860s in Minnesota, which resulted in the largest mass hanging in US history, of 38 Indians at Mankato, was picked to illustrate a beer tray in 1900 because it appealed to white guys at the time.

Remember that the Wounded Knee Massacre of women, children, babies, and men - no, no, don't get your wars, mixed up; we don't mean Afghans today, but American Indians - took place in 1891. White guys hankering for scalps was still strong in 1900.

So army officers, no less, getting drunk on the porch, surrounded by empties, while Indians are hanging in the background, was thought to be excellent publicity for the US military.

Yes Canadians did hang eight Indians in a group as a result of murders during the Rebellion of 1885.

But Canadians had the good judgment not to make beer trays out of the hangings.

Or for that matter, take body parts from the dead for souvenirs, which the Americans did during the Indian wars and on into modern times. In Afghanistan and Iraq, many soldiers - both women and men - posed laughingly with bodies of burned and tortured Muslims. Some took body parts - fingers, bones, teeth - off dead Muslims, to show the folks back home. Americans, as everyone knows, haven't matured much in 100 years.

The illustrations were picked to help the public celebrate the glorious accomplishment of the US Army at the time.

Why didn't beer companies issue trays celebrating the much more recent Wounded Knee Massacre (1891) which was widely praised at the time, by white men, as just deserts for Indian women, children, babies, and men?

Go to Wounded Knee

Of course American publishers have always given the masses pictures that celebrated the killing of Indians, or that portrayed Indians in beastly conduct, just to get the blood boiling.

Currier and Ives were masters of this.

It was all part of the propaganda campaign by the ruling classes to make all the beastly things they were doing to Indians - killing them, stealing their lands, moving thousands to remote, inhospitable, and unhealthy lands - palatable to the citizens.

In 2011 this is still the task of the media: propagandise the people so the rich and the super-rich that run the governments in all the western democracies, can pursue wars overseas to gain economic advantages for their cronies in the war materiel, and armaments industries.

Most notoriously, the media has been preparing the masses for military strikes against Iran for years.

Go to Currier & Ives

Eight Indians were to be executed on a scaffold that was erected on this spot. And to make sure that other Indians would learn the lesson well, all the native children from the local industrial school were brought in on a field trip to watch their fellow countrymen strangle to death.

125 years later there is still no plaque or marker here to note this important event in the history of Canada.

Dealing with shame is an important element in historical commemoration, whether that of whites or Aboriginals. Ignoring it merely perpetuates the old racist stereotypes.

Forcing contesting communities to come together to deal with it, and publicly posting the story, is the only reasonable way to deal with uncomfortable historic events, and give white people and Aboriginals, both, a truth they can live with in public and in private.

Part of the ongoing problem of non-Aboriginal people having difficulty in coming to terms with the history of the white occupation of traditional Indian lands and the means they took to secure them.

And using their power to refuse to post a major historic event because they don't want to embarrass themselves and/or native people by doing so.

If First Nations people, or non-racist whites, were in charge, some kind of historical marker would have been erected here, long ago, to remind Canadians of the darker side of history that still plagues the lives of many Aboriginal people today.

Go to Canadian Mass Hanging

The Mainstream Media is hugely to blame for the miserable state of Canada's Aboriginal Peoples.

They are by far, the most powerful informational publication service out there. But there is no money to be made in heavy duty, long term reporting on distressed native communities and the Government's chronic neglect of its Treaty obligations.

In fact TV news like CBC aids the racism, by constantly airing complainers who repeat the common saw of racists: "why should they get special privileges when I made it on my own."

If journalists and anchor babes weren't so abysmally ill informed, and more intellectual, they would correct this common misperception, strongly, "Hey, it's about Treaty obligations we owe natives, which the Government signed with them long ago, and is repeatedly trying to get out of honouring or paying."

But then CBC can't upset the Government too much or its funding will be even further reduced.

And the other media bosses - all from the rich and super rich classes - don't want tax hikes on their profits, just to benefit some drunken Indians because of some silly paper signed a long time ago... They hugely favour the billions in tax money being spent, instead, on their corporate cronies in the war armaments industries.

Thousands routinely drink water contaminated by human and animal faeces, and live jammed four and five to a room, in draughty plywood shacks. Have lousy health care and educational facilities. Many have no running water, many have "honey buckets," plastic bags for toilets. No wonder their infant mortality rate and youth suicide rate are by far the worst in the entire country. Most drink heavily to forget their troubles; kids sniff gasoline at a frenzied pace. Boys hang themselves to escape; Indian girls who run away in despair, are murdered by white creeps at an alarming rate. And the RCMP - responsible for Indian policing out west - don't give - have never - given a damn. Serves them right; they're only Indian girls after all.

"Run like your hair is on fire" - RCMP whistle blower Cpl. Catherine Galliford (Nov. 2011) is hardly uncovering new territory here, when she says the RCMP in British Columbia was indifferent to the many disappearing native girls, with the result that many more were murdered before serial killer Robert Pickton was caught, by accident, in a tangential investigation.

The historic tradition of the RCMP is heavily anti-Indian, and racist. During the Riel Resistance many RCMP members were killed fighting Indians. The RCMP is hugely military tradition based; new recruits are taught to remember, and their modern policing of Indians - seen against the benchmark of the systemic sexual harassment of its own female members - is nothing if not an embarrassment to decent people everywhere.

Galliford's advice to new female recruits, to run from the RCMP "like your hair was on fire," to avoid sexual assault by fellow officers, should tell you how much RCMP members sexually victimize helpless Indian girls who get drunk and they arrest; in fact they have lots of scurrilous "in-group" jokes about doing it to "squaws."

(An early Justice Critic, when he was in the Reform Party Opposition - Stephen Harper's Alma Mater - was tried on several sexual assaults against native girls done when he was a Mountie.)

Aboriginal people are a huge proportion of the inmates in the jails of western Canada. It's where governments and the police are most comfortable having the Indians put. A huge proportion of Canada's native people have criminal records as a result, as they flog about trying to make a go of it, in a society which is hostile to them and their needs, and marginalizes or victimizes them wherever turn.

It's been that way for over 100 years, in dozens of Canadian Indian communities.

The same party that nurtured and harboured the raping Mountie, unceremoniously and suddenly refused to honour the Kelowna Accord, a historic agreement between the Liberal Government of Paul Martin and Canada's First Nations to address historic wrongs done to Canada's native people by successive governments.

The mainstream media,.all dominated by fancy rich white TV babes in the big cities, pretend to be aghast for a few days, when another Indian freezes to death, another teenager hangs himself, another Indian girl disappears, or another epidemic breaks out, then go back to their high society parties and concerns. Indians are treated as entertainment, not chronically victimized people. And when the entertainment value has evaporated, they move on to more important topics, like the Pakistani woman who killed and cooked her husband, or the latest rich married man sex scandal. The high-flying TV babes like Lisa LaFlamme want plane tickets to Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, not Attawapiskat, or God's Lake Narrows.

And for a few more years the Indians go back to dying premature and miserable deaths in private again.

Till there's a slow news day... for Lisa and the girls...

Living in a non-caring, racist white society is the permanent condition for Canada's poverty-stricken Aboriginal Peoples.

Tragically very, very few Canadians know that it exists, and what is signifies.

The gate, at the Au Pied-du-Courant prison, at the waterfront in downtown Montreal, where in 1838-39, 12 French - Canadian Patriotes were hanged on a scaffold erected over the gate.

The "Canadian Spring" of 1837-38 - They were fighting for Canadian Democracy against the British imperial forces - who were ruling Canada as a colony - to gain democratic rights for French-Canadians, who had been there for the 150 years before the British arrived. (In Ontario, democrats under William Lyon Mackenzie were doing the same thing. Ringleaders who were caught were also hanged.)

The British army, including militiamen from Ontario, marched through the Richelieu Valley, and the area around Montreal, burning and shooting up towns, homes, churches, and manor houses, and killing scores of civilians who rose up to defend their homes, families, and rights.

The leaders of the resistance, who could be caught, were hanged here.

The Conscience of Canada - It is why the Québécois, from personal bitter experience at the hands of burning, murdering, and marauding troops, massively opposed the Canadian Forces being sent as a party to doing exactly the same thing against the Boer freedom fighters in South Africa (1899-1902), and the Muslims in Afghanistan (2006 - .......) All historic expressions of the French-Canadian experience, that justly confirms them as the "Conscience of Canada."

The British soldiers were there to make sure no popular surge of the crowd would make an attempt to save the men, many of whom were leading and highly respected members of society, including several lawyers.

Interestingly, lawyers today are widely regarded as having totally fallen from grace, consigned to the lowest rank of public esteem, as unprincipled, greedy, and solid Establishment cronies of the rich and the super-rich.

The men spent their last days alive in the prison, then were walked out the front door, along the path and up the steps to the scaffold.

It is sickening to contemplate that some of the descendants of these very men, may have been sent, as members of the Canadian Forces, to Afghanistan to carry out the same depredations against the locals as the British did in Quebec in 1838.

Much of the original wall has been removed but fortunately for Canadian heritage, the gate and a large piece of the wall, as well as the prison itself, have been preserved - one hopes forever - as probably the single most important founding heritage site on which Canadian democracy rests.

Chevalier de Lorimier, one of the greatest Canadians, whose sacrifice, most Canadians have never heard of... Patriote... why not Patriot...? By default, Canada's racist past continues to be administered in history lessons across Canada. Shockingly, because of the deliberate negligence of Parks Canada, Heritage Canada, the Historic Sites & Monument Board of Canada, Chevalier De Lorimier and his fellow victims of early Canadian injustice are dismissed as some kind of minor tribal fanatics unworthy of major public notice, instead of as the Great Canadian Patriots that they were. These public spirited men paid a far greater price for advancing Canadian democracy than their more celebrated colleagues, Louis-Joseph Papineau, and William Lyon Mackenzie. It is mean-spirited at best that the Government of Canada does not honour their sacrifice on behalf of all Canadians at the site these Great Canadian Democrats last drew breath.

Hush, Hush... - Shockingly, though there is a monument to some of the Patriotes - like De Lorimier - nearby, we could not find a Parks Canada, or Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada marker anywhere here, marking this as the place 12 Canadians were hanged for their Democratic beliefs.

Clearly Parks Canada and Heritage Canada does not want modern CanadIans to remember depredations carried out against Canada's minority populations, whether French-Canadian or Indian.

So Anglophone Canadians, and foreign tourists, who end up here would never know they are walking on sacred ground... or why...

And miss the significance of a key historic site that has influenced mightily why French-Canadians can be rightly considered the "Conscience of Canada."

Last Testimony of Chevalier De Lorimier

Montreal Jail, February 14, 1839 at 11:00 in the evening.

"The public, and my friends in particular, expect probably a sincere declaration of my feelings, as the fatal hour approaches, that will separate us from the earth.

"For my part, on the eve of my spirit being sent to its creator, I want you to know how I feel and what I think. I would not do this if I did not fear that some would like to represent my feelings in a false light; we know that the dead can no longer speak, and the same reasons of state that are responsible for hanging me, can create false stories about my political beliefs and motives.

"Luckily I have some time, and a strong desire, to prevent such misrepresentations of who I was, and what I did, and to do so with all the solemnity and truthfulness of one who is in the last hours on this earth. Not on the scaffold, surrounded by a mob attracted to a blood spectacle, but in the silence and reflection of the dungeon.

"I die without remorse as I only ever wanted the good of my country in the rebellion, and our drive for independence; my views and actions were always sincere and honourable, and were not tainted by any of the crimes which dishonour humanity, and which are all too common in the heat of unleashed passions.

"Since I was 17 or 18 years old, I have been active in almost all the popular political movements, and always with conviction and sincerity. My efforts were always to promote the independence of my countrymen, a goal we have unfortunately not achieved to date. Death has already been the fate of many of my colleagues. Many groan in irons in prison, a greater number have been exiled to distant shores, and their property destroyed, their families left to fend for themselves without food, shelter, or support, against the rigours of a cold Canadian winter.

"I leave behind my children, burdened with the legacy of my misfortunes. Poor orphans, it is for you I cry; you're the victims of the bloody and arbitrary martial law that causes my death. You will never experience the sweetness and pleasure of embracing your father on family occasiond or on festive holidays! When you will, someday, grow up, you will see that what your father suffered on the gallows created a better world for others. The only crime of your father is in failing in the short term. If his efforts had succeeded, his actions would have won honour and acclaim.

"Remember,"The crime done to us, and the the scaffold that kills me, makes the shame." Men of superior merit to mine precede me on the sad path from the brooding prison to the gallows. Poor children! You will now only have a frail and devastated mother to look after you. If my death and sacrifice reduces you to destitution, demand for help in my name. After all, I was never indifferent to the misfortunes of my fellow men.

"As for you, my countrymen make use of my execution, and that of my fellows on the scaffold, to promote your cause. It should make clear what you can expect from the British government!

"I have only a few hours to live, and I want to take the last few precious moments sill left to me to prepare myself and my compatriots to meet our Maker. For my countrymen I die on the gallows the infamous death of the murderer; it's for them I am being separated from my young children and my wife, leaving them without support; it's for them that I die, exclaiming: Long live Freedom, long live Independence!"

Chevalier de Lorimier

At the same time the Americans were producing their mass execution trays to great cheers from the beer swilling crowd, Canadians were issuing this tray on their own kind of heroes.

A very rare and fabulous memorabilia tray in very fine condition featuring cameos of all the notables who were being celebrated on the occasion.

The monument in the centre was erected in the early 19th century in honour of Wolfe and Montcalm and sits at the foot of the Governor's Garden beside the Chateau Frontenac overlooking the Lower Town where it all began in 1608.

No King or Queen attended the festivities, not even a royal pair.

George the Duke of York came over to host the event, without his consort Princess Alexandra. Though both had toured Canada in 1902. Within two years George would be crowned George V (in 1911).

In 2008, for the Quadricentenary Celebrations, no British royalty of any kind was formally invited, as the nationalist fervour was for celebrating the French, not the British fact, in their province.

Even though a huge part of the money for the celebrations came from Canadian Government sources.

Amid these ethnic controversies many regard these festivities as a pale imitation of the Tercentenary Celebrations of 1908 when Canadians, not just French nationalists, proudly took part in what was actually the founding of Canada.

Go to Tercentenary

Coronation memorabilia was almost always dated June, 1902, because that had been the plan, until Edward fell suddenly ill, and everything was postponed till he got well.

Betrayed #2 - Exercising the sexual entitlements unique to wealthy and powerful men everywhere, ("Lucky" Lindbergh, Charles Kuralt, Steve Fossett, Bill Cosby, Jack Kennedy, Clint Eastwood, John Edwards, Jessie Jackson, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Clark Gable, Peter Gzowski, Steve Jobs, etc.***) the Prince had for decades, boinked everything in sight, married or single, to whom he took a momentary fancy.

Alix knew it, put up with it all, including - horrors - exposing herself to all manner of truly awful social diseases he brought home from God knows where, in exchange for having all the money she could ever want, and an elite social position. A good trade say rich mens' wives everywhere...

They are, of course the poster child of sex among the rich and super-rich celebrity couples, whether royalty or not - the Randolph Churchills******, Jack Kennedys, Robert Kennedys, the Clintons, Eliot Spitzers - make your own damn list.

Luckily wives of the rich have all the money necessary to engage the best gynecologists to fix them up after the husbands return for meals at home.

The Great Patriot Calls on All Americans to Serve their Country - "Now, aah... Marilyn, I want you to be... aaah... nice, to my brother Bobby. He's the Attorney-General of these, aah... United States now. And we must all, ahh... do our patriotic duty... Remember, now Marilyn, ask not what your country can do for you, but what, aah...you can, do for your country..." (The only known photo of all three (l to r Bobby, Marilyn, Jack-in-the-Box) together. Jack, who had been a regular with Marilyn since 1953, and only five months after he married Jacqueline, can hardly look her in the face; Bobby can't keep his eyes off her obvious charms, which will soon be a family hand-me-down. Leering in, on the civics lesson and hand-off, is rich man wannabe, Art Schlesinger, regretting that he wasn't born with a rich father to make him President or Attorney-General, so he too could get the best nookie in the country, instead of just ending up as a lowly writer, who has to, aah... look after himself...)

*** All these are only a few of the many eminent rich and super-rich Americans and Canadians - though all properly married at the time - who left a string of bastards behind on several continents.

******Winston Churchill's mother, a friend of Alix, had sex with everybody but her husband after he came home from somewhere fatally infected with syphilis.

The gals must have shared many a tête-à-tête about being married to rich and powerful men, and the unwelcome presents they brought home...

Rich Men's Girls - Serial sexual predation is a terminal condition among rich and powerful men. Women who chose to marry them, know out the gate, that their men suffer from "serial porneurities" a condition that has only two known cures - poverty or death.

Joe P Kennedy was a notorious serial adulterer with Hollywood actresses. His rich inheriting sons learned well, making regular visits - without their wives - to the town famous as Harlot Haven for the Rich and Super Rich and its endless supply of slutty actresses who are used to doing it regularly, for jobs or status, at the drop of a rich man's drawers.

Jack's list included: Marlene Dietrich, Kim Novak, Janet Leigh, Gene Tierney, Rhonda Fleming, Angie Dickinson ("the best 20 seconds I ever had") and hundreds of other whores and wiling females in documented trysts that produced a number of bastards and abortions with prostitutes and wives of other men (David Niven, Edmund Purdom.)

British star June Duprez, after Four Feathers went to Hollywood and quickly found out how to get work, and how to lose it... from the rich and super-rich men who controlled the women in the town. Now you know how Tierney got the part... She had been practicing with Jack Kennedy...

No wonder he - like Winston Churchill's father, Lord Randolph - suffered from terminal venereal disease, a present many rich and super-rich men bring home to their wives.

Robert Kennedy got a hand-me-down - Marilyn Monroe - from brother Jack, and was the last person known to be with her the day she committed suicide.

So much for the morality of the top man in the US legal system - he was Attorney-General when he went by to drop off his DNA.

Did Marilyn feel used, or abused, by rich and powerful men, or both...? Was she murdered so she wouldn't vent her rage publicly, and "out" and embarrass the brothers? Or had her notoriously fragile mental state destroyed when she realized she was just a piece of meat handed around by rich men.

A rich and powerful man advises a young employee... Reticent, about Columbia studio boss, and old fart Cohn, she dropped everything, for Jack Kennedy...

How coincidental is her death within hours of Bobby dropping his drawers?

Apparently Bobby's last words to her were: "Aaah...Teddy will be coming by next week..."

Dying to Get Laid - Alas, by then it was too late. Teddy would have to grow up, get married, and have to find his own extracurricular girls. He would become a worse offender than his brothers, driving Mary Joe Kopechne to her watery grave at Chappaquiddick, her reward for going out for some late night nookie with a married man, just because he was rich and powerful (in 1969.)

Rape & Pillage - In 1991, Teddy was at a bar with nephew William Kennedy Smith and took some silly girls back to his house. It led to a rape charge against the younger Kennedy, for whom Teddy eagerly testified. The case was dismissed, in spite of three other women who were willing to testify they were raped by him as well. Years later another rape charge was filed against the same nephew and a sexual harassment suit brought by another woman settled.

Boinking the Sitter - In 1997, Bobby's own well-married son, Michael, was revealed to have been screwing the family baby sitter, and had started when she was 14! This is a crime that would get a non-rich man instantly registered as a sexual predator. The Kennedy money paid her so she wouldn't press charges. Luckily he was killed in a skiing accident to save the family further disgrace.

We misspoke... What is disgrace among the rich and super-rich.

A Rich Man's Entitlement - Looking Over the Girls - Bobby and some of the non-stop stream of girls attracted by rich and powerful men. Most probably never intended to become sex toys for the Kennedy boys, but with a few drinks in them, and isolated in one of the family retreats, they suddenly found themselves "put upon." Bobby's brother Teddy would pick out Mary Jo Kopechne far left, for a late night "ride." She would die for her infatuation and carelessness; others were merely raped, or sexually harassed, and chose to forget and move on... One of the perks of being a rich man is you never have to keep your penis in your pants. The wives all know it's a terminal condition of their husbands - money creates enormous opportunity - and are notoriously willing to "stand by" their man: Hilary Clinton, all the Kennedy women, the wives of Strauss-Kahn, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Cosby, Arnold's wife for years etc. Willful blindness to preserve a connection with a rich and powerful man they would never achieve again were they to protest or separate.

Bastard Kennedys - Bobby's other son, Joe, a former congressman had his 12 year marriage to Sheila Rauch secretly annulled by the Vatican. She only found out about it years later, saying that only the super-rich and powerful like the Kennedys could unilaterally have a marriage annulled, making her two sons, at the flick of a bic, bastards forever. The Kennedys being fervent Catholics, Joe wanted to pave his way into Heaven by not having his record stained by a divorce - frowned on by God and the Vatican.

Papal Pedophiles and Pederasts - Of course only the Vatican has spent more money, than the Kennedys, in paying off victims of sexually rampant rich and powerful men: Cardinals, Bishops, and Priests of the Catholic Church - pedophiles and pederasts to you.

The Pope and his cronies used Vatican gold to silence thousands of sexually violated, mostly innocent young altar boys, in thousands of communities around the world, where the church leader was a revered and powerful community leader - just like a Kennedy. And decided, just like the First Family of Massachusetts, to turn the power advantage into sexual pay dirt at the expense of weaker victims.

The Vatican is doubly scummy, for using money donated by devout parishioners for Godly purposes, to fund legal cover for thousands of despicable but powerful church leaders who used their cassocks merely as a convenient disguise for generations of sexual predation.

Bobby's Slutty Daughter - Bobby's daughter Kerry, who married Andrew Cuomo, the son of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, during a 13 year marriage that produced 3 daughters, had been regularly boinking, the entire time, another married man. The revelation, during the younger Cuomo run for the governorship, forced him to abort his campaign, oh, and also his marriage.

Kerry Kennedy: Like Father; Like Daughter - A fine role model of a Catholic mother - of course only among the rich and super-rich - for her three young daughters, and still looking good after 13 years of regularly boinking two married men - her own, and someone else's - at the same time. Clearly, Bobby raised his kids well, with a no holds barred attitude, in the world of sexual entitlement, all other considerations be damned.

(Alas - another perk of the rich - you won't find any of this on her Wikipedia page, which lists her as a human rights activist, and not a peep about her other achievement as an accomplished slut and role model for her daughters. It's assumed, of course, that's what wives of the rich and super-rich become, if they aren't already, and goes without saying... on Wikipedia, or anywhere else.)

Refusing a Kennedy - In 2002, a Kennedy cousin, Michael Skakel - from Bobby's wife's side - is found guilty of the vicious 1975 murder, during a failed sexual assault, of 15 year old Martha Moxley, after having successfully evaded arrest for 27 years. (The offspring of the rich start younger and younger; Skakel was 15 when he murdered her in a blind rage for not "coming across.")

Advantage Aaanold - Arnold Schwartzenegger married a Kennedy to help him further his career in politics. A long list of women, publicly testified he was a sexual predator, but Marcia Shriver playing the role of the typical rich and powerful man's wife, defended her husband's obvious - to everyone else - uncontrolled sexually rampant ways, and got him elected governor. She ran cover for him for years, until it hit the news he had fathered a bastard with a lowly domestic servant, in her own house. True to form, showing the uncanny ability of other rich men, like Strauss-Khan, Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Clint Eastwood, etc., to pull their penis out at a moment's notice.

The negative publicity, not the deed, caused Marcia to sue for divorce. Neither the countless women Aaanold had violated, and whom Maria had loudly and publicly disssed, while standing behind her rich and powerful man's penis, or anyone else, felt the slightest bit sorry for her. Like other wives of the rich and powerful, everywhere, she is not even a shadow of enlightened feminism of any kind. Like her sisters among the elites, she was merely a cover - a mouth-piece if you will - for a rich and powerful man's penis... well, for a while anyway... Then Aaanold, like other rich and super-rich men, was off again, on the hunt that never ends, "Tail-y Ho" - the rich man's quarry...

The Kennedy Curse - At Teddy's wedding to Joan, Jack, who was best man, was recorded telling his younger brother, that just because he was getting married didn't mean you needed to be faithful. His wife Jackie, inarguably, the coldest fish of a Presidential First Lady ever, knew all about the role she had chosen for herself in life, as meat for super-rich men. After a year of marriage a friend said, "Jackie was wandering around looking like a survivor of an airplane crash." But hey, the perks, the perks...

After Jack was shot - it might have been any one of a hundred irate husbands - she stunned the world by marrying a senile old Greek, just to get his millions. Teddy's wife Joan, whom he dumped years later, couldn't adapt as the wife of a super-rich man, and became a ravaged alcoholic as a way to cope, and so degenerated at the early age of 68, her children took over guardianship of her affairs.

The Kennedy men have spent more money paying off women they pillaged, in settlements for rape, abortions, etc. than the average Canadian earns in a lifetime.

All, of course, classic cases of how rich and super-rich men, use their money, power, and influence, to victimize powerless women, and then subvert the justice system to escape the legal consequences of their sense of entitlement to indulge their unfettered lust.

Clint Eastwood, on movie sets, would have regular "nooners" with an unending supply of celebrity besotted female fans hanging about. Then go home to his conjugal partner.

Witness French Presidential hopeful Strauss-Kahn in 2010, with a sordid string of sexual predations hounding him through the courts. His wife, admits she knows he does it, but says she cares only that he returns to her, afterwards.

Amazingly the President of Israel, Moshe Katsav, was actually jailed for a rape he denied, when he was in office, figuring as top man he could help himself to any girls in his employ.

In 1995, the former, very much married, Canadian Premier Gerald Regan of Nova Scotia faced no fewer than 18 sex-related charges including rape, filed on behalf of no fewer than 13 women who agreed to come forward - out of how many other accusers who wouldn't?

Canada's most expensive lawyer - Eddie Greenspan - got him off every single charge... Another perk of being rich.

The wife, in the tradition of those who are married to rich and powerful men, stuck by him, backing her man's story against that of 13 different women.

Above in a huge photo accompanying an exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, Premier Regan stands behind the Queen and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, in whose Federal Government he was a minister. Pierre briefly, and - infamously - tried marriage, with a woman thirty years younger who quickly picked up with a bunch of rock musicians, on the side. Pierre dumped her, opted for the single life, and à la Kennedy, boinking a succession of Canadian and American show business stars and stharlots.

Tom Catting Canadians - Carrying on the Tradition

But hey, you don't need to go back to the sixties or seventies to hear about rich and powerful men stepping out on their wives.

Bob Dechert, a Canadian Member of Parliament - always a reliable source for high-stepping men - and who is referred to as Prime Minister Harper's leading advisor on Foreign Affairs, proved he was up to the task, when it was outed by the media, in September 2011, that he was into exchanging hot and heavy emails with a cute and sexy Chinese journalist.

That's not her, right, but Bob's hugely embarrassed wife, Ruth Clark, who has been keeping her head low. She's probably angry that she never gets those kind of emails from her poetic husband...

The emails surfaced, and the Tom Cad was outed, because the Chinese girl's husband, back in China, quite angry, about his wife's dalliance with a Canadian Tom Cat, released them to the media from her computer.

Bob Dechert MP, had little choice but to own up to the emails, claiming that being an author does not mean you're a Tom Cat.

Clearly Bob doesn't think the voters in his riding are the brightest lights in the world...

Prime Minister Harper gave some support to his position, and though other MPs called for the Tom Cad's resignation, kept him on in his sensitive post as the Government's lead on Foreign Affairs, saying curtly, that whatever his credentials as a Tom Cat, his principal secretary had not compromised national security.

It was the Pierre Sevigny defence, resurrected from the 1960s when another Conservative minister was caught with his pants down in the presence of an undercover spy.

Go to Gerda Munsinger

Ruth Clark has not commented on whether he compromised homeland security. Tellingly, she's not supported him in public.

But in the tradition of high society wives of powerful Tom Catting men, she's certain, like Hilary Clinton, to stand by her man for appearances at social functions, while "cutting him off" in private.

Security experts were not so forgiving, saying Canadians should be wary, that "sexpionage" in Canada, is as old as Gerda Munsinger of the 1960s.

And Dechert got caught, with his pants down, in the classic ruse, like "a silly old fool," falling for all that stroking from the Chinese tootsie about what a cute smile he had.

"There's no fool like an old fool" - Security experts have issued dire warnings, saying Dechert was as dumb as a bag of hammers, that the Chinese, with a huge and willing stable of sex trade workers, are up to the task of seducing powerful Canadian politicians who are willing to drop their drawers. as well as some state secrets, however inadvertently, when suitably lubricated in private.

They know that rich and powerful men in Canada are easy pickings, whenever the wife is not around, which for a traveling MP, is lots.

And the Harper Government which was notoriously hostile to the Chinese, was an especially good target for sexpionage.

So embarrassingly - for his wife anyway - Dechert was exposed, in all his nakedness, not only as a bad husband - over to you Ruth - but as a bad man, a lousy standard for an MP, but, of course, as the gold standard for men of the rich and powerful class.

The cute "under cover" sex spy returned to China and hasn't come back.

Dechert is back at his post with his boss, Stephen Harper, keeping his head, but certainly nothing else, up, for the foreseeable future.

Anywhere...

Our guess, he's on his own at home, probably sleeping on the living room couch, dreaming of his time with that "under cover" Chinese cutie.

Note how the pattern repeats, if you're rich and super rich, and act out your sexual extremes, because, well, you can afford to, and you don't think anyone will catch you with your dirty little secret, unless...

Oh, and how you can afford to hire Canada's most expensive lawyer - Eddie Greenspan; yep, he's back on this one again, to deliver "justice" for another super-rich guy, "caught with his pants down."

Ok, we're overstating the case. We admit he was wearing diapers...

Fast Eddie must certainly be a compulsive hand washer, from all the cases he chooses to take on...

We certainly wouldn't want to shake hands with him....

Oh, and note how the wife hangs in there, with her sexperimenting wayward hubby, with his comforting millions?

She shouldn't relax too much. The murder charge was not stayed because the plotting duo were found innocent, but because of a technicality, not with the central plot, but because of a problem with an outside witness who, it turns out was banging the police investigator handling the evidence.

Doesn't it make you yearn for the Lifestyles of the Rich and Super-Rich so you too could afford a good looking girl like her on the side?

Murdering People
Who Get in the Way

You can add to your own list of rich and super-rich people who murder, or brutally, run over, people who get in their way...

And then use their millions to get lowlife lawyers to bail them out.

Below is another classic behaviour pattern, of how the rich and the super-rich manipulate the "justice" system, in a case resulting from the sad end of cherished singer-songwriter Kristy MacColl, a multi-level victim of "justice" as it's practiced in modern western democracies.

Eddie Greenspan wishes he were born in Mexico. He could have made a bundle seeing that the speeding millionaire would get some justice.

Did you ever wonder what the rich and super-rich were doing to Canada's public buildings?

Go to Hilary's Megaliths

With this kind of chutzpah in public, guess what they do with their power that money buys, in private?

How about the Afghan Canadian corporate war against the Muslims?

With all the horrific private sliming and sleazing that the rich and super-rich do, with all that money, the worst, they do, by far, is how they buy and pay off politicians and civil servants to manipulate - let's make that undermine - the democratic process in Canada.

A fat-cat oligarchy runs the country, in which some 40% of the people refuse to vote in federal elections anymore.

And the numbers of these silent protesters has reached historic proportions, and will continue to grow.

As much as any Arab country, Canada has long needed its own "Arab spring."

And ultimately rejuvenation will only come by re-integrating the "Conscience of Canada" - the French-Canadians - back into the public political life of Canada. For the first time in Canadian history they have been shut out of the political process by the Harper Reformer/Alliance/Conservative cabal, running Canada, with just - we kid you not - 24.3% of the votes in the country. Which is an approval rating inferior to what Colonel Gaddafi had just before he was rooted out.

It's actually amazing that the rich and the super-rich can find the time - besides all the illicit sex on the side, murder plots, desecration of public buildings etc.,- to do anything else. But they have set up a system of democracy in Ottawa that allows less than a quarter of the voters to ram their racist, right-wing pro-war, anti-French, anti-Aboriginal views down the throats of over 75% of the citizens. You can do all that with money... And every year the tax rate on the rich gets smaller.

Waiting for the Conscience of Canada - Until French-Canadians are once more integrated into mainstream political life in Canada, the mean, nasty, right wing slide into racist malevolence, that have blighted Canadian self-respect at home and abroad, and has brought conduct in public life in Canada to its lowest point since Confederation, will continue its descent to hell in a hand basket.

Now, isn't it truly amazing what lies behind a single commemorative tray?

Try and match that with your damn Coke sign collectible...

Prince Charles, in our day, is living the same waiting game into his old age, blessed with a mother who is hale and hearty and certain to be so, into her nineties.

The Duke was, of course, Queen Victoria's son.

Their daughter, Princess Patricia of Connaught, became the Colonel-in-Chief of one of Canada's main infantry regiment the PPCLI - Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

It would become the first combat unit from Canada on the Western Front.

Commanding it would be Lt. Col Francis Farquhar a personal staff officer right whom the Duke recommended for the job.

Go to PPCLI

Note the early film cameramen at far left, hand-cranking away to get moving pictures.

On the right is famed Canadian soldier Agar Adamson, and just beyond the Princess, is probably Mabel, Agar's wife, who, being an upper class snob would want to be in the front line of any celebrity action. It was she who had gotten Agar the job with the regiment.

Partly covered up by Pat is the regiment's first commanding officer, Lt. Col. Francis Farquhar, a Brit, who would die of his combat wounds only seven months later.

An enormous number - 1272 officers and men - died in the regiment during World War I. In fact the entire complement of a regiment if it were not constantly replenished with recruits.

Agar, a fine exemplar of a Victorian military officer, and who outlasted just about everyone in the regiment, would ultimately be the regiment's commander. But his years on the front line had irreparably damaged him as a marriage partner.

As he looks at the new regimental flag - sewn by Pat herself - he must be recalling when he himself captured an important battle flag during the Boer War.

Go to Agar's Flag

It's easy to date - within months actually - simply by determining who was in and who was out when...

All three Lord Jellicoe left, Lord Kitchener centre, and General French were the top British commanders when the war started in September 1914. So the tray may have been planned almost immediately, and manufactured shortly after.

Production with these portraits would have ceased in Dec. 1915, when General French, who couldn't make progress, against the Germans was replaced by General Haig.

Kitchener drowned in June 1916, when HMS Hampshire hit a mine north of Scotland as he was going to Russia.

Jellicoe was dumped in favour of Admiral Beattie in Dec. 1916, after his ineffective display at Jutland, the biggest naval battle of World War I.

On his watch, within hours, over 6,000 British sailors died - to the Germans' 2,500 - 14 of his ships were sunk - to the Germans' 11. He lost double the tonnage in ships, compared to the Germans, and more capital ships than they did. And the Germans escaped...

So the tray commemorates the British admiral who was responsible from more sailors dying than any other admiral in World War I.

This tray had an effective life of 16 months.

How many would buy a tray that would show the scene realistically, with, by 1916, showing a mound of tens of thousands of British corpses on shore, and many British warships sinking, surrounded by thousands of drowning men? And the three heroes? Most of their colleagues considered them inept or worse...

So it too was put out soon after the war began to take advantage of the enormous euphoria that accompanied the start of the war and brought thousands of volunteers to flood the recruitment centres everywhere in the British Empire.

But the murderous course the war took after the first year, soon brought the memorabilia trade to a standstill.

Who would buy a souvenir of the glorious war when almost everyone had a relative or neighbour who never returned?

The flood of memorabilia that marked the Boer War never developed during World War I.

The souvenir trade resurrected briefly with the coming of peace.

Below, Silly boys, in Toronto, Canada, just couldn't wait to sign up to get away from their humdrum existence in "muddy York" to go overseas to take a crack at those Huns.

The government - always the biggest threat in any democracy - was lying in wait for them. A dozen years before it had made eager volunteers sign a one year contract. When it expired, most had demanded to be repatriated home, even though the war was far from over.

The new contract these boys all eagerly signed said service was until the war was over. The boys thought it would be months; the crafty government guys knew better.

Most of these boys - the early birds - never survived the four long years of the biggest butchery in world history. Most were never found, just ground into the soil of France. All just turned into cannon fodder by the inept Allied political and military Commanders.

Left a tray from 1916, the same period as the Jellicoe-Kitchener-French tray above.

Right the earliest known Coca-Cola tray produced in 1897.

Collecting "pretty" things, from advertising, is for collectors who don't want to tax their brains too much, by concentrating on pretty vases, cups and saucers, or spittoons.

Since You Asked - No, collecting memorabilia or commemorative ware, is not for the faint of heart, or for those who are intellectually challenged. One has to know the people, places, and events, that are memorialized, in order to know why a tray was produced. An informed collector of the Colonel Otter pin tray would be able to tell you who Otter was, his role in early Canadian military history, his record during the Boer War etc., and regale you with a huge lot of Canadian local, British imperial, and overall world history at the same time.

And that's for only one tray. And now, since you asked about General French... or would you rather hear all about Princess Pat, Agar, Mabel, and their regiment...?

Coke Heads - While a Coke collector can only stand there and say "Pretty; pretty; pretty." Which is why, we say "pretty awful." But a lot of people like to collect in the "sleep" mode, to relax the brain, not engage, enervate it, or tax it, beyond the minimum... "Coke" stuff is for them... neon lights, clocks, metal signs, bottles, pins, coolers, pretty girl trays... But hey, you need stuff for collectors who didn't graduate from high school...