Pubdate: Wed, 29 Mar 2006
Source: Manotick Messenger (CN ON)
Copyright: 2006 Manotick Messenger
Contact:  http://www.manotickmessenger.on.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3724
Author: Jeff Morris

YOU'VE GOT TO KNOW WHEN TO HOLD 'EM

John Turmel is not expecting to vote in the March 30 Nepean-Carleton 
by-election to replace John Baird as the riding's MPP at Queen's Park.

"If I don't show up for the victory party of the winner, you'll know 
where I am," he said at an all-candidates meeting in Stittsville last week.

Turmel expected to be in jail by the time the polls open. He may be 
in there for a long, long time. "It won't be the first time that 
people have voted for me when I've been behind bars," he said.

He wears a hard hat and calls himself the "Anti-Poverty Engineer". 
It's hard to get an accurate read when you first encounter him. You 
peg him somewhere on the charts between Steven Hawking and a 
character in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

As they say of some two-sport athletes, he's "a rare double". Combine 
the characters of Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, and you 
are entering the John Turmel zone.

Turmel takes credit for being the architect of unilets, a 
zero-interest alternative time-based currency, which he claims will 
erase Argentina's national debt. People laugh when they hear him 
because he sounds so far outside the box.

Yet, the more you listen to him hammer away at the economic theories 
of men like John Kenneth Galbraith, the more Turmel's zero-interest 
bond currencies make sense.

Although he sounds far-fetched and less-than-believable, Turmel was 
actually invited to draft the United Nations Millenium Declaration in 
2000. There is more - much more - to John Turmel than saving third 
world economies.

Turmel is in the Guiness Book of Records for having lost 60 
elections. The Nepean-Carleton by-election will be his 61st in the L 
column. Even the Washington Generals have beaten the Harlem 
Globetrotters before.

"I'm on the same page as the Queen!" he says with 
jump-out-of-your-skin enthusiasm, holding up the book. Then his face 
saddens. "But the American book is different. In the United States, 
I'm on the same page as the world's largest bagel."

Although he has never won an election, he wins regularly in his other 
profession. While Rain Man counted cards in Vegas while playing Black 
Jack, Turmel is Canada's most accomplished hold 'em poker player.

Turmel was, like Rain Man, a great Black Jack player, until he was 
barred from playing in most Vegas casinos. While at Carleton, Turmel 
scored an A-plus in Walter Schneider's The Mathematics of Gambling 
course. He became Professor Schneider's T.A.

"I'm the world's biggest loser in elections, yet I'm the world's best 
poker player. How does that happen?"

Despite the animation, Turmel is a genius when it comes to numbers. 
His history of legal trouble began with his gaming operations that 
employed more than 100 people. He said he kept moving to Nepean 
because it was the "most friendly" city to his gambling operations.

Turmel began running in politics to try and legalize gambling. The 
irony is that he was painted as a crackpot, but here we are a 
generation later and gambling is not only legal, but a key component 
of tourism both along the St. Lawrence and in the national capital 
region with casinos in Gananoque and Gatineau.

He has spent most of the last three years in Atlantic City and out of 
the local spotlight. "If you haven't heard from me in the last couple 
of years, there has been a media blackout," he says.

His recent legal problems, however, are not gambling related. Turmel 
is on a crusade to legalize marijuana, specifically for the treatment 
of epilepsy. In a publicity stunt in May, 2003, Turmel went to 
Parliament Hill with seven pounds of weed. He smoked pot at the Hill, 
left a pound at the door to be inspected, then he left a pound for 
P.M. Jean Chretien "to help him quit alcohol", and a pound for the 
Supreme Court and another for the Attorney General's Office and 
another at the court house on Elgin Street and another pound for the 
police station.

According to Turmel, 3,600 people a day die from epileptic seizures 
in Canada. Cannibis, he says, prevents seizures. Turmel was arrested 
that day by the RCMP on trafficking charges.

His sentence was to be handed down this week on the day before the 
election. He could face life. In the political arena, Turmel is the 
self-proclaimed king of the fringe, and he knows he will not win. But 
outside of politics, it's a different game, a different table, and 
Turmel rarely loses. Regardless of the verdict, you just can't bet 
against John Turmel.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom