Rite of passage

Boy, oh boy, was this corner ever wrong.

The Gros Morne gambit wasn't some bizzaro-world misguided attempt at negotiation, after all.

As Moira Baird reports in the Telegram today:

Williams initially mentioned the power lines as a joke during a keynote speech at an Energy Council of Canada conference in St. John's."

As for the UNESCO piece, deputy minister (Kathy Dunderdale), I was just kidding," he told the audience. "We were just testing your mettle, that's all. But we would like some financial help to go around the back, if you could do it."

So there you have it.

Danny Williams wasn't serious about pushing a transmission line through Gros Morne National Park.

It was all just an innocent ministerial hazing ritual.

Now, Ottawa, give us nine hundred million dollars.