By: Pat Daley

  Truckers are stopping traffic on the eastern leg of the Trans Canada Highway to protest diesel prices. Police are stopping traffic in Quebec to put pressure on for a new collective agreement. Mike Harris brought in wage controls but didn't tell anybody. Boys aren't learning to read and write as well as girls.
  But what's really getting under my skin? Coke- guzzling polar bears.
  Instead of counting sheep at night, I'm starting to count the ways Coca-Cola's television commercial ticks me off. It's the one where the Baby Bear doesn't want to jump off the ice floe and swim to Momma and Poppa.
  There's no question the animation is good - right down to the almost- subliminal Coke bottle encased in the submerged end of an iceberg.
  Sure, the polar bears are cute and I have no doubt the sounds they make are actual recordings of real live bears. But how do we know they're really saying, "Things go better with Coke?" Did the bears whose voices we're hearing agree to endorse this product? How many bobbing aluminum pop cans have they had to dodge while swimming around the neighbourhood?
  Then there's the Poppa Bear, Momma Bear, Baby Bear construct. Sweet and, I have to admit, realistic. The average number of people in a Canadian family in 1996 was 3.1 according to Statistics Canada. Even though I know lots of exceptions, 85% of families had a momma and a poppa.
  It's the way they treat Baby Bear that bothers me. There's something distasteful about luring a "child" with a bottle of Coke. (And that's another thing - since when are polar bears afraid of cold water?)
  If Baby is afraid, do Momma and Poppa swim alongside him/her/it to show the way? No. If Baby is stubborn, do they wait it out? No. In a day and age when everyone talks about how kids are out of control, when disorders like ADD are still the subject of nature/nurture/nutrition debates, we have two sleek parents trying to buy off their kid with a bottle of fizzy sugar and caffeine.
  Sometimes advertising just tries to sell us something. Sometimes it gives us a gift - a warning about who we are and where we're going.

Pat Daley is a freelance writer and editor in Athlone in Simcoe County, Ontario.