CALGARY – Stephen Harper, Canada’s 22nd Prime Minister, was spotted at a half-empty local Denny’s Thursday evening, eating alone and watching live footage of the Obama-Trudeau state dinner.
“He came in real quiet-like and asked if we wouldn’t mind changing the channel to CPAC,” said Darryl Lebourdeau, the restaurant’s evening manager. “He’s been in a lot, lately – Laureen calls to check up on him now and then, and she told us to call her if he ever orders more than four hot fudge brownies à la mode.”
Harper chose to watch the proceedings from Calgary’s finest Denny’s – the one off Macleod Trail, by the Marshalls, a couple blocks from the Calgary Shooting Centre.
The former first minister ordered the ‘Brooklyn Spaghetti and Meatballs’, the ‘Tilapia Ranchero’, a ‘Bacon Slamburger’, and then finished the meal with three hot fudge brownies à la mode. His attention was focused mainly on the screen, though he looked away frequently to check his phone and see how many people had liked his last tweet.
Lebourdeau said that he was “mumbling a lot to himself… he kept saying ‘nice hair, though’, then he’d laugh a bit, then get real quiet, then a couple more spoonfuls of brownie.”
Amy Maclean, who was waitressing throughout the evening, said that Harper stayed until closing time. “Nice guy, a bit sulky. I gotta say, I completely forgot who he was.”
