Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Goodbye Smokers, Hello Families
Ever since the local smoking ban started to affect the Toronto restaurants a couple of years ago, pub owners either had the choice of retaining their smoking areas at the expense of becoming primarily drinking establishments rather than restaurants. The choice was there – restaurants could opt to keep their smokers at the expense of families. It's not hard to guess which way the vast majority of these establishments went. I remember going to one of our favourite pubs with a young Vanessa and baby Annie, the day before the bylaw was to take affect, enjoying a family meal on the patio at Quigley's.

Today is the first day that the bylaw saying that all such places must now be smoke-free, and the little-publicized co-effect of that is that families and their kids are now allowed back.

I wasn't planning on taking immediate advantage of this fact, but when Glenn A. came around and suggested that we all head over to Murphy's Law for a meal with the kids, I was for it. It was his way of saying that we supported the local pubs and that the absence of smoking ought to be offset economically at least partly by the return of families such as our own.

So Glenn, I and our four collective children headed out to the local pub for dinner. There were some looks of surprise from people as we all came inside, and I heard one person murmur to another "yeah, kids are allowed back now".

While I think that some of the laws against smokers are verging on the draconian, this particular bylaw is especially welcome from my standpoint. One of the factors as to why I originally "retired" from the local Trivia league a few years ago – other than the birth of our first child, Vanessa – was that I couldn't stand the pall of smoke I had to endure, and the way my lungs felt the day after. Even now that I am back I usually aim to stay as far away from the smokers on the two teams as much as possible, and usually have a shower immediately after getting home to get rid of that pervasive cigarette odour the seems to permeate everything.

I'll never forget as a kid the regular visits we made to a local K-mart where we almost always had lunch on a Saturday that was more often than not blue with smoke. I seem almost to have born with an aversion to cigarettes and have always few things more disgusting than an ash-tray full of butts, and while I enjoyed eating there with my parents, I always asked if we could sit in the least smokiest part of the restaurant. The local library was in the same plaza, the toy selection was cool, and I remember liking to hang out and watch some of the Saturday cartoons on the larger colour TV sets that had on display there, so the smoking in the restaurant was the only down-side of things from my kid perspective. My mother had quit smoking cigarettes by this point herself, but I can't help but think that her old habit and going to places like this ended up as an eventual factor in her death not so long ago from lungs that required extra oxygen in order for her to breathe. It was certainly a contributing factor in my Father's death, was a pipe smoker pretty much up until the end.

At Murphy's Law we had a good time, and the kids were over the moon to all be out and having dinner out. I don't normally have a beer before putting the kids to bed, but I had a pint of Guinness in celebration of being allowed back with my family. The staff there seemed to be ready for us, and broke open the crayons and colouring placemats for the kids, and had a kid-friendly menu at the ready.

Goodbye smokers, hello families! I just hope it stays that way...