Please Advise! Should I Scoop Up a Cheap Fast Cat on Facebook?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

The fast ferries are for sale on Facebook Marketplace! First built for BC Ferries in the 1990s, the three aluminum catamarans commissioned by the then-NDP government are now being offered by their current owner for $5 million each. Care to put in a bid?

Signed,

Islander

Dear Islander,

Facebook Marketplace — a world of decisions. Dr. Steve was recently scrolling through and found himself undecided on whether to buy a rice cooker ($20), a jar of homemade sauerkraut ($12) or the aluminum catamarans that helped bring down a provincial government, original cost $460 million, now selling for just $5 million apiece. That's a huge markdown. And $12 seems like a lot for sauerkraut.

The ferries, known as “Fast Cats,” became a part of B.C. political lore by running hugely over budget and encountering practical problems once in service, so that ultimately their only successful function was transporting Gordon Campbell into the premier’s office. To be clear about that current price, the PacifiCat Explorer, Discovery and Voyager are being sold for $15 million as a trio. This might be like one of those grocery deals where you buy two and get the third half-price. You just have to decide whether you can use all three. It’s the same with yogurt.

There are good reasons to buy the fast ferries, beyond the 97 per cent price cut from the original cost. For instance, to stop your neighbour from buying them. Three fast ferries up on blocks in their yard, squeezed in alongside the rusty 1976 Ford F-150 sitting there already — there are property values to think of. And all those annoying BC Liberal tourists, too.

But there’s another investment strategy in play here, one that could offer a ground-floor opportunity. It's the political deodand. Dr. Steve believes this could be the collector’s item of the future.

Deodands are one of Dr. Steve's favourite historical curiosities. A deodand was an object or animal that was involved in a fatality. Not a murder weapon, but simply a benign object turned deadly — a bucket that fell on some unfortunate head, a tree that dropped a heavy branch at a fatal moment, a horse that threw its rider. Such items were forfeited to the government, or the owner was made to pay a fine commensurate with the deodand’s value. Although not always applied, the laws regarding deodands were part of British jurisprudence until the mid-19th century.

Politics has plenty of deodands, places and things that played an incidental role in scandal. The Watergate Hotel is a political deodand. Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress is a political deodand. Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh’s empty bottles, the wood splitter purchased by B.C. clerk of the house Craig James and the phone Alberta Premier Danielle Smith used to call anti-vax preacher Artur Pawlowski are political deodands. Smith’s personal supply of hydroxychloroquine, however, is her own property. Hands off.

As with everything political, what qualifies as a deodand is open to debate. Republicans will say Hunter Biden’s laptop is a political deodand but the Mar-a-Lago shower curtain that hid boxes of stolen classified documents is not. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s chequebook would be a deodand, but Stormy Daniels herself would have a legitimate objection to being forfeited to anybody, in whole or in part.

Fraud is another potential problem. You might see the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia try to pass itself off as the more famous Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

And as with pieces of the True Cross or the various skulls of St. John the Baptist, bogus scandal artifacts are going to circulate. If someone tries to sell you Doug Ford’s actual green belt, don't be fooled. Former Socred premier Bill Vander Zalm says that, despite the claims of Faye Leung, there was no paper bag full of cash handed over in the Fantasy Gardens deal. So if you see that item on Facebook Marketplace, pass it by, especially if it comes in a pack of six. Dr. Steve fell for that scam once. Total ripoff. Even if it was the real Vander Zalm paper bag, they had already taken the money out.

Are political deodands a hot investment? There seem to be different takes. The Watergate Hotel has leaned into its notoriety, creating a Scandal Room in the very place where burglars linked to Richard Nixon’s White House were caught invading the office of the Democratic National Committee.

But closer to home, the former Trump-branded hotel on West Georgia in Vancouver has now been renamed the Paradox. All references to the daffy, despotic dolt are long gone. Why not market it instead as a kitschy throwback to an appalling age? Break it down into parts and sell Trump Toilets, Trump Knobs and Trump Comb-Over Carpet Samples to Vancouver souvenir seekers? Well, probably because the doofus dictator has not yet quit the scene. You didn't see glow-in-the-dark Chernobyl keychains for sale while the reactor was still melting down.

The fast ferries, though, are an obvious political deodand, artifacts of rare significance. They offer many possibilities. How about three new McBarges in False Creek? A chain of Fast Cat Kitten Cafés? Floating Houses of Political Horror? Or market them to a very exclusive target, a client who might pay top dollar just for their sentimental value. Go ahead, Gordon Campbell, make an offer.