Bravo to the employees for trying to form a union to improve their lousy working conditions and measly wages. Good luck taking on one of the world's most powerful corporations with a reputation for union-busting.

Whether the outlet closed because of a huge rent increase or because the company wanted to pre-empt the union drive is immaterial. What's important here is that one set of golden arches has gone the way of the eight-track.

Only 28,000 to go.

Admittedly, it's a Sisyphean task. In the past five years in Quebec, only 12 McDonald's outlets have shut - allegedly because they were unprofitable - while during the same period, 68 new stores opened.

There are now McDonald's outlets in 120 countries with about 2,000 new ones opening every year. Anyone who travels knows that it is becoming increasingly difficult to take a souvenir photo without capturing the golden arches in the frame.

There is even a McDonald's about a kilometer from Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. The company used to distribute flyers that said "Welcome to Dachau and Welcome to McDonald's" until the curator of the camp museum complained.

Let me confess right now that I have taken my children - ages 5 and 21Ž2 - to McDonald's maybe three times. I'll also confess that we didn't eat.?????

The visits took place during fits of desperation while driving that most boring stretch of Canadian highway between Montreal and Toronto in the dead of winter.

For lack of a healthier alternative like an old-fashioned park, it was either find a Playland for two very squirrely kids or cross the median and drive head-on into traffic.

The whole experience of walking into this epitome of globalization - whether it be in Berlin, Paris or Bangkok - and seeing people eating the same food that tastes and smells the same in restaurants that look and smell the same no matter which continent you're on makes me uneasy.

There are many reasons for this - how McDonald's treats its employees, what it does to the environment, how it brainwashes our kids and how it is contributing to an obesity epidemic.

Not to mention the food tastes bad.

I find it depressing that for a growing number of families, a Big Mac, Super Size Fries and soft drink passes for the modern-day version of the home-cooked meal.

And we're turning into a nation of McBlimps as a result.

The number of overweight children between the ages of 7 and 14 has doubled in the past 15 years in Canada. Sure, we can blame the tube and computers for part of this. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you eat lots of high-fat, high-calorie fast food, you're not going to fit into those jeans.

McDonald's is by no means alone in padding our hips but it has certainly set the industry standard and been the most aggressive in its advertising, especially ads aimed at children.

Food preferences are established at a very early age and a child who develops a taste for fast food will return to it later - making them customers for life.

McDonald's knows this. They lure kids in with shameless Happy Meal give-aways like Furby, Teenie Beanie Baby and Winnie the Pooh - a marketing strategy that has made McDonald's one of the largest toy distributors in the United States.

I resent this deliberate attempt to get my kids to pester me to the point where I'll either give in to their demands or go postal.

Sadly, this pervasive promotion seems to work. My son, who has had so little exposure to McWhatever, let alone life, often asks if we can go to McDonald's.

I'm not even sure he knows what it is, but he, like millions of kids around the world, knows the name.

Of course he doesn't understand my concern that the growth of the fast-food industry has gone hand-in-hand with the expansion of powerful agribusiness and the decline of the family farm. Nor does he get all my other gripes mentioned above.

What I hope he will one day grasp is that we consumers have the power to make or break these huge corporations.

Without us, they are nothing.

Are my kids getting the message? Maybe it would help if I dressed up like Ronald McDonald.

Copyright © 2001 CanWest Interactive and The Montreal Gazette Group Inc

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