In the Eastern Townships, the Inverness golf club has just been bought by Mark Pathy. In these times when justice and equity have given way to charity in the media, this multi-millionaire attached to the Stingray company sees himself presented, like so many other of his peers, under the pretty veneer of a nice philanthropist.
What is this Montrealer, son of a family that manages Fednav, Canada’s largest international shipping company, going to do with a simple golf club? The local population is worried. In fact, she cared less about the future of the golf course, located opposite Brome Lake, than seeing a real estate project suddenly spring up there. But those who were worried say they are partly reassured. It is that Mark Pathy enjoys the reputation of being a defender of the environment. The spokesperson for the Inverness safeguard committee, Chantal Brodeur, therefore warmly welcomed the news of this acquisition. She maintains that the Pathy family has a good reputation in the region. “They are pro-environment”, she drops for the benefit of a local newspaper. The local mayor thinks no less. He does not imagine for a moment Mark Pathy destroying the place. “I think he wants to keep the landscape,” he says.
Note that a golf course immediately has something a little offbeat in terms of landscape and environment. In golf, an ennobled version of an ancient game, the grass is rolled out under your feet. It is like a simple accessory that you have to know how to control as much as the ball and the stick. Nature is staged, in gardens inspired by those of the nobility of yesteryear. For such fat and homogeneous lawns to exist, this supposes the massive use of fertilizers and chemical products. So much so that for years there has been concern about cancer rates near these licked meadows. However, in the spaces that Mark Pathy has just acquired, the shadows are beginning to regain their rights. It is not tomorrow that we will play golf there again, if that is the objective of this acquisition.
“I believe in the importance of preserving the character and natural beauty of the Brome Lake region,” simply declared Mr. Pathy, quoted by Radio-Canada. “At the moment, I have no intention of developing this land. How can you doubt it? After all, even Jessica, the wife of the multimillionaire, is closely involved in the environmental sector. She is, among other things, a board member of the David Suzuki Foundation. “Our mission is to preserve the diversity of nature and the well-being of all forms of life”, declares this foundation, known for its desire to “carry out its action in favor of the conservation and protection of the environment in order to help shape a future for Canada. The future, by dint of seeing us enter it backwards and askew, ended up having a good back.
Still, Mr. Pathy, seen as a pro-environment man, hardly had time to explain himself. He was expected. He was going into space, on a private flight, clinging to the lucky star of his good fortune. Think: for just over 50 million US dollars, he bought himself a place aboard a spacecraft powered by the unpredictable Elon Musk. Go and understand why so many people strive to present the latter as a benefactor of humanity, while turning a blind eye to the delusions of consumption that he encourages: his personal flamethrowers, his chic cars sold at the price of gold that a good conscience commands, its spaceflights for millionaires in search of a meaning to their existence.
Mark Pathy had “the fantasy”, he says, just like Guy Laliberté, to go into space. And he does not hide that Laliberté inspired him. To each his own models.
In 2009, Laliberté gave a lot of money to Moscow to be launched into orbit. After a flight aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, the founder of Cirque du Soleil had published a book of his shots taken in space. There were plenty of such photos on the NASA site. They were free. But he asked that we buy his to raise money for One Drop, his foundation dedicated to promoting sound water management, while he threw his money into space. Knowing that space flights use at least a million liters of water for each takeoff, wasn’t there something doubly gross there?
What does Mr. Pathy tell us? He declares, at Globe and Mail, that his space project turns out to be bigger than his person. So here he is, carrying nothing less than the future of humanity on his shoulders. What grows him, he wants to believe. In all modesty, of course, because these benefactors of humanity are always presented as erased, reserved, full of proprieties. However, Pathy continues: “I think this is an important step in the future of human space exploration. And I hope investing early in that future will make it more accessible to others. »
But what does he want to make accessible to others, to his peers, if not his “fantasy”? Because what could such a multi-millionaire really do in space? In truth, this is a pure waste of fuel and resources. All this to travel vertically a shorter distance than between Montreal and Toronto, but in the name of the greatness that such people agree to have no accountability to the principle of reason.
The earth is more crooked than ever. But beautiful happy heads are delighted to go around it, their feet hanging in the air, in orbit. They are delighted to thus demonstrate that new perspectives on waste are always on the agenda, in the name of the fantasy of their fellow men, all happy multimillionaires accustomed to getting laid.