by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

I hope nobody in Toronto reads this paper because I'd prefer they remain unaware of what I propose.

And what I propose is a military invasion and takeover of Toronto by Montreal.

There are a lot of good reasons to do this.

Firstly, in spite of the apparent harmony, Montreal remains divided. We're still in a cycle of referendums that snap families in two. Bickering about the Big Issue causes separatist family members to haul their pizza slices in front of the TV while the federalists stew in the dining room until they both come together to fulfill their cultural duties by watching the newest téléroman.

Nothing unites a population like a good military campaign, as we learned from Napoleon, who transformed France from a bunch of wiggly fingers into an angry fist. To this day, obligatory military service remains the tool for cultural preservation in Europe, fending off the corrupting and unrelenting influence of Adam Sandler movies.

So we need to focus our minds on something we all dislike, and I think we would all agree that nothing is more annoying or rotten than Toronto.

They've raided our city's population, economy, our Hockey Hall of Fame and our title as Canada's largest city. Their baseball club once even voted to eliminate ours. Sure, we swindled them on the John-Kordic-for-Russ-Courtnall trade, but revenge remains incomplete.

Plus, Toronto pumps way too much insufferable media into our city. MuchMusic, Newsworld, the National Post and on and on in an endless parade of smarmy, tepidly Canadian propaganda.

I'm no military strategist but I have a few notions on how to take Toronto down.

Firstly, it would be highly suspicious to roll tanks down the 401. People would ask questions. So we start an annual convention of military items at SkyDome. It'll become so routine that they'll never suspect when one year we fire up the tanks and take over the city from within.

We also need air support. I don't know if the Raëlians are reliable, but if indeed Raël has any pull with the spaceships that brought him to our planet, he'll pitch in. If not, we've always got unused balloons from those summertime hot-air balloon festivals.

Infantry would be easy to round up. Just get the usual college campus radicals to do their thing. They're well trained and hardened warriors by now. Tell them there's a secret G7/WTO/IMF conference. Combine them with the Gilles Duceppe Army, the soldiers who signed the Allegiance to Quebec First declaration in 1995, and a few nightclub bouncers from the Main. Then we roll.

Kanuk could provide some of those $700 walking billboard-style windbreakers as uniforms. Scratch that. I don't want my soldiers wearing the most harmless-looking clothing known to man. Torontonians would reflexively direct our Kanuk soldiers to the nearest mall.

I'd also get the Canadian Army, if there is such a thing, gone by sending them to clear snow in some afflicted, far-off city.

Needless to say we've got to take Ottawa first. It's payback for being built entirely at Montreal's expense. As you know, the nation's capital was HQ'd on McGill Street until a bunch of anglo loons burnt down Parliament. We'll take the House of Commons down brick by brick and relocate it to Île Bizard or Trembles Point. Or, if that's too complicated, we just hold Parliament in the Big O.

Yes, I know. It's possible that this initiative could fail. But humiliation has value too. It's had an undeserved bad rap here ever since Lac Meech, when former Premier Bouchard constantly snapped the word around like a wet towel in a men's sauna.

Since then humiliation-phobia is so rife here that local bureaucrats (most recently a swim meet boss, a police officer, hospital chief) routinely aerate their own foreheads at a distant whiff of shame.

In fact, humiliation is related to humility, as St. Francis taught us by walking around Assisi naked, expressing his exhibitionist tendencies in the process. So whatever the result of the plan, we'll still come out okay.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca