Recently published in the Alberta Street News
By Allan Sheppard
Leo Rosten in The Joys of Yiddish defines chutzpah as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.” In this sense, chutzpah expresses both strong disapproval and condemnation. In the same work, Rosten also defined the term as “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.” –Wikipedia
I’d like to propose an alternative definition (or example) of chutzpah: that quality enshrined in a man (former Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant) who, having killed a cyclist with his car on a street in Toronto, writes a book—28 Seconds, A TRUE STORY OF ADDICTION TRAGEDY AND HOPE—that, among other things, (a) blames the victim and/or the car for what happened, (b) condemns the police for arresting and detaining him; failing to investigate the case rigorously; and showing bias against him in those and other instances, and (c) chides the media for rushing to judgment and reporting the incident inaccurately.
That is a nutshell summary of some of the points Mr. Bryant makes in his book released on August 21, just in time for my annual trip to Toronto to visit family and friends.
So what’s the point, you may ask. Mr. Bryant got much generous media coverage that gave him friendly opportunities to display his chutzpah and perhaps sell a few more books. Does it really matter?
It matters to me, because the cyclist who died at 33 was my son, Darcy Allan Sheppard, an off-duty bicycle messenger in Toronto. It matters to Darcy Allan’s brother (and my son) David and to the many members of their large adoptive and birth families. Our reasons should need no further explanation.