03.29.04                    Melissa Selvaggi

                                                Shoe Story

            My owner and I had arrived in Upper Canada in 1820, with not many possessions, but the talent of a newspaper writer, politician and champion of democracy.

            “The people, they want me back, time after time they keep voting for me, re-electing me.”  I heard him say to himself, as he wrote in his journal.  “How do I get the government to understand and be responsible? And have a legislative council that was elected rather then appointed? And a curb on the lieutenant governor’s power of appointing his friends to public office?”  I watched William Lyon Mackenzie from the front door, as he racked his brain to find a way to make a point, not only a point but also a powerful one, but how? he asked himself. Then finally! It was great!  A parade of 134 sleighs and himself protesting down Younge Street, all the way to the parliament building.

                                    ………..The day of the parade………..

            The parade was stopped before he could make it to his destination, and Mackenzie had lost his seat, but in the midst of all the commotion, Mackenzie had gotten mad an angry officer, and threw me at him! Luckily I had missed his head and safely landed in a ditch.  I had been knocked out, and had been in a coma for about 160 years…until now. The cold and harsh winters of Canada had preserved me quite beautifully.

  I was found by a teenage girl by the name of Melissa Selvaggi.  She had taken me from the streets and made something good of me.  I had to admit I was looking a bit out of style…but now! I’m hip, I’m posh and I’m ‘stylin’.  I had been turned into a ‘groovin’ looking crocodile, for a school project.