As I mentioned earlier, McCormick Place is a massive convention centre redevelopment in Chicago’s South Loop that appears to have bulldozed several blocks of old city land. Indeed, I suspect that McCormick Place is so large, Chicago could have New York over for a visit. It dwarfs Toronto’s convention centre by an order of magnitude.

It also, I have to say, reminds me terribly of Hull’s Place du Portage.

Way back when I was in grade seven, my father went to a librarians’ conference in Ottawa and took my mother and me along. To keep me entertained, my mother took me on a tour of Ottawa’s bus system (yes, I was a transit geek, even then). I’d noticed that OC Transpo’s buses crossed the Ottawa River into Hull, and as I had no memory of ever being outside of the province of Ontario, I asked if we could pay a visit to the province of Quebec. So we took the bus to the end of the line.

Big mistake. Although Hull’s downtown is said to be nice, our bus bypassed the downtown and continued on to a government complex overlooking the Ottawa River that I suspect was built to survive a nuclear attack. The buildings were concrete slaps, the doors were all recessed and hard to locate, traffic screamed along the roads with the noise amplified by all the hard surfaces, and there were no other pedestrians about. It was cold. It was unpleasant. And we caught the next bus and got the heck out of there. I wouldn’t leave Ontario again for another ten years, paying a visit to the much nicer city of Montreal.

I get the same vibe here in McCormick Place. The inside of the Hyatt Regency is posh, but the design of the place is clearly skewed to getting people indoors as quickly as possible. Covered bridges connect the buildings at several locations. The car traffic screams along Martin Luther King Drive. They’ve taken the step of boxing in an elevated expressway to spare us from exhaust fumes, and they’ve gardened up the sidewalks, but walking along the sidewalks along King Drive, you face nothing but slabs of concrete and glass. And, tellingly, there are few other pedestrians. Which is not a situation you want to have after dark in a city like Chicago.

Which is a double shame because McCormick Place is right next to a charismatic community called Bronzeville. This web site has more information on the history of Bronzeville:

The black area of the south side of Chicago was originally called as the “Ghetto” by outsiders. However, the “Ghetto” is a harsh term, carrying overtones of poverty and suffering, of exclusion and subordination. In the Midwest Metropolis it is used by civic leaders when they want to shock complacency into action. Most of the ordinary people in the black belt refer to their community as the “south side” , but everybody is also familiar with another name for the area ——- Bronzeville. According to Cayton and Drake of the Black Metropolis (1945) , this name seems to have been used originally by the editor of the Chicago Bee, who, in 1930, sponsored a contest to elect a “mayor of Bronzeville.” A year or two later, when this newsman joined the Defender Staff, he took his brain child with him. The annual election of the “mayor of Bronzeville” grew into a community event with a significance far beyond that of that of the circulation stunt, in which tens of thousands of people used to participate. In 1944 - 45, a physician was elected mayor. It was after this in 1945 that people started to use the term “Bronzeville” for the Black Metropolis because it seems to express the feeling that people seem to have about their own community. Cayton and Drake also say that the expression “bronze” when counterposed to “black” reveals a tendency on part of the Negroes to avoid referring to themselves as “black”. And, of course, as a descriptive term the former is even more accurate then the latter, for most Negroes are brown. Hence in conclusion we can say that the term Bronzeville was brought about to give the Black Metropolis the much needed upliftment and also so that people would not keep looking down on it as the “black” neighborhood.

Bronzeville proudly calls itself a minority neighbourhood, and what I’ve seen of it defies the stereotypes you might have of the Chicago south side. New townhouses and condominiums are moving into the area, and prices are jumping up. Martin Luther King Drive becomes a lot more walkable once you cross under the boxed in expressway and actually encounter buildings which face onto the street. There’s a McDonalds near the expressway which we’ve eaten at twice, now (the first time during our St. Patrick’s Day visit earlier this year — see the picture above), and its walls are covered with art depicting famous African Americans and community leaders. And we’ve had interesting conversations there.

Back in March, we met a woman who was going through a bunch of pictures, working on a book about the history of Bronzeville. She was more than happy to talk to us about the community, and the migration of African Americans it saw following the Civil War. My mother-in-law talked to her about a book that she had read, the award-winning Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, depicting the life of the first child of the underground railroad born into freedom in the Ontario community given over to the former slaves.

And earlier today, while we went out to have breakfast (the McDonald’s is the least expensive place in walking distance) an older gentleman happened by to show us a bottle of sugar-free syrup that he’d brought to have on his hot cakes, saying that it was a shame that McDonald’s didn’t offer a sugar-free variant for those who were diabetic, especially considering how diabeties is more prevalent in ‘minority neighbourhoods’. This lead to a conversation about how much sugar there was in McDonald’s food in general, as shown by Morgan Spurlock’s movie, Super Size Me.

It is the stereotype that big cities are impersonal, that strangers talk to each other as little as they can get away with. But that’s not the case here. Bronzeville feels like a open and friendly community, and I think that comes through pride.

Despite losing our computers and passports during our last trip, I’m looking forward to seeing Chicago again. Among other things, I’m finally going to have a chance to visit the Illinois Railway Museum. During all of my previous visits to Chicago, we’ve never been in town at a time that the museum was open — or, it was, but we were leaving that day, et cetera. It was like a curse. But that curse gets broken on this trip. I hope.

The trip down was uneventful. Traffic was light all the way, even though the weather was wet. There was congestion at the border, however, with cars backed all the way up the Bluewater Bridge. Was it all holiday travellers? Or was security extra tight in advance of the fourth of July weekend? I noticed that more than a few vehicles were asked to pop their trunks, allowing customs officers to search inside.

I should note that Nora is on the verge of walking. She’s actually taken her first toddling steps earlier this week, and she has long been sidling around while keeping her hand on the furniture, or standing up and looking pleased about herself, but she clearly still prefers crawling (it’s faster). But we’ll probably see Nora become a full-fledged walker by the end of this trip. It looks as though Grandma Rosemarie is going to be the grandparent who gets to see this moment.

(Update: 3:15 p.m. CDT): Made it to Chicago in time for Lunch, which we ate at the Adler Planetarium. Took Vivian to see her first movie there as well: Sesame Street’s One Sky, One World, a Chinese-American co-production featuring Big Bird, Elmo and Elmo’s Chinese equivalent. Among other things, Vivian learned that the sun is a star, and they pointed out the Big Dipper and the North Star. Despite our fears that Vivian would freak out, she did very well, as did Nora.

We’re booked into the Hyatt Regency hotel at McCormick Place, which had a deal on. McCormick Place is a recuperating part of town. They’ve clearly planted a major convention centre over top a much older neighbourhood, and you can see clues of that older neighbourhood. Outside the window of my hotel, I’m looking at an old industrial building (1920s, I think) that’s facing onto a street that doesn’t exist anymore. We have a good view of the Chicago skyline as well.

Grandpa Michael and Grandma Rosemarie are en route; last time we checked, they were due to arrive around 5:30, so we might head out to dinner.

But after about ten hours in a car with two young children, I have to say that I am taking any opportunity I can to put my feet up.

And I’d like to add: a happy Canada Day to all of my readers. I hope yours was a good one. In terms of Canada Day stories, few can top this one.

More than a few people have noted, with frustration, that the death of Michael Jackson and the sideshow of his passing, has deflected the world’s attention away from Iran. I share their frustration. The timing is such that one could even put together a tinfoil hat conspiracy story about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad having Jackson assassinated, knowing what the Western media would do next. Oh, look, a shiny thing!

In Iran, the situation looks grim. The regime has instituted a communications blackout, essentially trying to shut down the Internet in order to stop the dissidents from communicating and associating. Journalists, protesters, opposition politicians and others have been jailed and there are reports of torture. The group Avaaz.org has tried to help by providing funds towards anonymous proxy services. These services provide Iranians with a secure link through which they can access the Internet and keep the lines of communication open. The Iranian government is trying to shut these down, however, and it’s a game of whack-a-mole. I’m rooting for the mole.

In Avaaz’s own words:

We urgently need to help Iranians get back on the internet to have their voices heard in Iran and the world. Secure and anonymous “proxy services” are helping people to bypass regime controls and get online — but they’re overloaded and running out of funds.3 A small donation of just $10 can provide bandwidth for hundreds of secure emails - if 10,000 of us donate in the next 72 hours, we can help break the blackout:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/iran_break_the_blackout.

Proxy services provide people with a single link at which they can freely access the internet. The link is changed every time the regime blocks access to it. With 10,000 donors, we can scale up the proxy services massively — providing more servers, bandwidth and advanced technical support.

There are signs of hope in Iran. The clerics are not unanimous in their opposition to the protesters. As long as we stand up to the regime’s attempts to block open communication, to thwart freedom of association and freedom of speech, democracy has a chance to blossom in Iran. I’ve donated $25. So I challenge you to take a break from the Michael Jackson media watch and offer your support to the people of Iran.

Further Reading

• Aveez.Org: Iran, Break the Blackout.

“They’ve [her children] understood perfectly well that when you’re raising children, you don’t both go off to work and leave them for somebody else to raise. This is not a statement against daycare. It’s a statement about their belief in the importance of raising children properly.”

(link)

My initial reaction was to say, and I quote: “I’m thinking there’s a reason why we’re finding so many dinosaur bones out in Alberta.” Of course, that’s not fair to the millions of Albertans who don’t fit the stereotype. And, besides, Ms. Evans has since apologized for her remarks.

But I cannot let this remark pass without comment. Ms. Evans would have us believe that the number of two-income families out there, where the children spend a lot of time in daycare without parental supervision, could lead to increased mental illness and criminal activity. Now, I stay at home with the kids, and :Erin: works from home as often as not, and we would have to dispute this. If anything, I wonder if the correlation is less the number of daycare hours a child receives (or, conversely, the number of parental care hours the child doesn’t receive) and more the hours of television the child watches.

Here in this household, we have pulled the plug on cable television. We just don’t have it in the house. What television we receive either comes in off of an antennae (which means we get the CBC, CTV and TV Ontario), or through DVDs and downloads. So, what television Vivian has received has been strictly educational (or, as educational as Dora the Explorer can be).

Now, I have to confess, in moments when our parental juices have been in short supply, we’ve planted Vivian in front of the television with her favourite television show (currently The Magic School Bus) for an hour’s peace. And as educational as The Magic School Bus is, I have to wonder how much of the lessons take. Is she instead watching the colours and pictures, and not really taking in the science content? Because she can become a little anti-social after watching too many of these. And the experience she gets just does not compare to the richness of the experience received if she just spends time outside playing with her best friend Natalia, or at the University of Waterloo’s pre-school, where television sets are not in evidence.

So, I would have to say that I’m particularly irked by Ms. Evans’ (even if inadvertent) dismissal of the value of daycare. There are probably good daycares and bad daycares out there, but the thing children need the most isn’t specifically time with a parent. They need time being enriched. There’s a reason why they say that it takes a village to raise a child. Vivian’s best times are the ones when she’s socializing with other children. And that’s something that doesn’t come automatically just because one parent happens to be home.

Strangely enough, Nora needed her first haircut a lot sooner than Vivian needed hers. Fortunately, we were prepared. And, this being Vivian’s third visit to Cookie Cutters, she was an old hand at this. She happily had her hair done while Nora initially freaked out, and then calmed down while her messy locks were trimmed back. Of course, we were there with a camera to capture the pictures:

	Mom! Don’t do this to me!
	Who the heck are you?
	Not the hair! NOT THE HAIR!
	Suck suck suck suck … It will all be okay if I suck!
	Hmm… My sister seems to be taking this well…
	Okay. I’ll go through with this. But I won’t like it!
	What? Am I done already?

You can see the full Flickr set here.

In other news, it’s a funny coincidence that my friend Greg should mention saving up for the girls’ cars. Now that the grants have come through, and on the heels of Erin’s advance for Plain Kate, we’ve taken some steps towards dealing with the massive tax bill that’s heading our way come April. One of the first steps is saving up for Vivian and Nora’s education with a significant Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP). Since the government contributes 20% per year to a maximum of $500 per child, that’s a rate of return that’s not matched elsewhere. Thanks to the government for setting up such a sensible program to encourage parents to save for their children’s education early.

We’ve also started building our RRSPs again, and will likely max out our contributions this year. Thus we came away from our meeting with the Credit Union’s investment adviser feeling like competent savers.

Thank you, Globe & Mail (dot com), for not making Michael Jackson your top story.

Shame the paper version couldn’t do the same.

Also, I notice that, on the web site, this story is:

Abdelrazik boards plane in Sudan

A Canadian citizen accused by the United Nations of being linked to al Qaeda flew out of Sudan today after a court order ended his six-year exile in Khartoum, his lawyers said.

Abousfian Abdelrazik, born in Sudan, has spent the past year taking refuge in Canada’s embassy in Khartoum, fearing arrest over his suspected links to militants. The federal government had until recently refused to offer assistance or issue a passport to Mr. Abdelrazik, 46, who is on a UN no-fly list naming him as an al Qaeda associate.

But a Federal Court judge ruled on June 4 that Ottawa had to arrange Mr. Abdelrazik’s return, a decision seen as a blow to the Canadian government’s security policies. “It will be a huge relief when we get to Canada. I can’t rest until that happens,” said Mr. Abdelrazik’s lawyer Yavar Hameed, speaking in Khartoum before the plane left.

This is a question of priorities, and the Globe had the right ones, today. As much of a contribution that Michael Jackson had on pop culture in the eighties, the question of a citizen’s charter rights, and our government being forced by court order to respect them, ranks as far more important to my mind, and far more worthy of national attention.

And now for something completely different, we bring you other pop-culture references…

When Buffy Met Edward

Not much to add here. Rebellious Pixels uses clips from Buffy and Twilight to show what would really happen if Edward Cullen ever encountered the Slayer. Buffy fans rejoice:

Back in February, when I applied for the Ontario Arts Council Works in Progress grant, I didn’t have any expectation that I’d receive any money from it. While the Arts Council does a lot of work encouraging the work of writers, artists and poets throughout Ontario, competition for their various grant programs can be fierce, and none are so fierce as the Works in Progress grant. This is grant is given only to professional writers who submit the best manuscripts to a blind jury. Competition can be fierce, and most who apply get denied. However, the only way to ensure failure is to never try to succeed, so I gave it my best shot, submitting the first chapter of The Dream King’s Daughter for their consideration.

So, when I received a thick envelope from the Ontario Arts Council the other day, that’s what I assumed it was: thank you for your attempt, better luck next time, here’s the information on how you apply. To my surprise, the envelope contained a letter saying that I’d won a grant for The Dream King’s Daughter, and there was an accompanying cheque. I have to say that I shouted at that point, and may have jumped up and down. Erin blogged more about my reaction here.

We were further delighted (though I was less surprised) to learn that Erin’s Plain Kate also won a Works in Progress grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

It is a very uplifting experience to win something like this. Just plain affirming. The funds will help cover our expenses as we continue to pursue our writing careers, and I have considerably renewed confidence that my unpublished books, both The Night Girl and The Dream King’s Daughter, will be going places. We shall see.

Thanks to all who have left good wishes both on my Facebook page and on Erin’s blog!

Just a reminder to everyone that the Waterloo Wellington Blogstravaganza is still on this Saturday at 4 p.m. Let’s all gather at the Huether Hotel in uptown Waterloo (at the corner of King and Princess) for fine food and multi-partisan conversation. I look forward to seeing you all there!

I am pleased to learn that the Canadian government will comply with the court order and no longer stand in the way of Abousfian Abdelrazik’s return to Canada. That it took this long is simply shameful, but it’s still good news, even if I won’t be fully satisfied until he steps off a plane onto Canadian soil and is reunited with his children.

What we need now is a full public inquiry investigating the faulty intelligence that one of our security services is alleged to have given Sudan six years ago, which started Mr. Abdelrazik’s epic ordeal in the first place. Who said what to whom, where and why? Until we see this through to its bitter end, and lay out everything in the open, our faith in the agencies we’ve charged with protecting us will continue to be tarnished.

I’d like to thank Dr. Dawg for following this case early on. Without his posts, I would not have known about Mr. Abdelrazik’s predicament. I’d also like to thank those posters who came at this issue from across the political spectrum, including libertarian Chris Selley and Conservative supporter Raphael Alexander. These posts did much to show that the issue went beyond partisanship, and was something that all Canadians needed to be concerned about.

And unfortunately these posts did stand out. Reading over the comments section of news posts here and elsewhere can be a discouraging experience. Seeing the racist vitriol that gets expressed, by people who initially cheered on Mr. Harper’s violation of the rule of law, who called Mr. Abdelrazik a terrorist despite there being no credible evidence of such a thing, who called Mr. Abdelrazik a ‘Canadian of Convenience’, makes me worry for the future of my country. I have to wonder if these people have to work hard to be this ignorant and hateful, and just how loathesome are they in real life?

Just the look on this guy’s face makes me worry and the fact that our spineless government are allowing him back into this country make me worry even more.

…

So another “Canadian” (of convenience) gets his right to return “home”. Why would you write one word supporting this piece of rubbish while Canadians are dying fighting the Islamic filth he represents. In 2003 he “returned to Sudan to visit his sick mother.” Give me a break. His wife divorced him. So should Canada.

Where does one begin with this? These people believe that Mr. Abdelrazik is a ‘Canadian of Convenience’ all because he returned to the Sudan to bury his dead mother and close out her estate? These guys have tried and convicted him in their own minds without any evidence but their own hate. They’re just one step removed from vigilantism, frankly, and they have as much respect for the rule of law as the terrorists they’re so afraid of.

It is unChristian of me to wish harm on these people, but I cannot help that those who would condemn a man to six years in exile based on their own prejudices get a taste of their own medicine. Let them go abroad, get into trouble, and have their government fail to protect their rights as citizens. Let their motives be questioned. Let their character be impugned by ignorant folk back home. Let them be called a ‘Canadian of convenience’.

Until then, I hope that Mr. Abdelrazik sues the Canadian government and wins compensation. I’ll be happy to pay my share of his settlement through my taxes, smiling in the knowledge that these ingrates will have to pay their share as well. Because this is the price you pay for a country that treats all of its citizens equally, and offers protection of people’s rights for all citizens, regardless of their place of birth.

Since I wrote this post, some more information has come out, specifically a series of memos that suggest that the United States government might have asked the Canadian government back in 2006 for information about Mr. Abdelrazik, and possibly assistance in his extradition to the United States. Dr. Dawg again has more details.

For some people, the timing of the release of these memos suggests something of a smear job, but I think we might also be getting some explanation of why the governments acted the way they did, even though they were still acting inappropriately. In his words:

We know, of course, that the US wanted information from Canada to help prosecute Abdelrazik under the lower standards employed by the Americans in such cases. But there is no evidence that the Canadian authorities had any such information to provide—it appears not, since no prosecution was ever launched.

Some of the information suggests an allegation by Abu Zubaydah, extracted under torture. That alone has to make the allegations suspect. Again, in Dawg’s words:

Zubaydah apparently implicated Abdelrazik in something. Omar Khadr, under torture in Guantanamo, implicated Maher Arar, too. But that story soon fell apart. Torture induces narratives, but they tend, in reality, to be the narratives of the torturer.

So, a smoking gun explaining why successive Canadian governments subjected Mr. Abdelrazik to his ordeal? A smear job to protect the current government as Mr. Abdelrazik comes home? Both? As you can see, this story is one that I think we’ll be following for months to come.

I have been following the news in Iran with a mixture of hope and trepidation. There’s hope in that those who are demonstrating for democracy don’t appear to be backing down. Unfortunately neither, it seems, are the ruling elite. The reprisals are ramping up, and obvious comparisons between the days to come and China of 1989 are already being made. I would like to see these demonstrators succeed and transform Iran into a more liberal democracy, but as big as the crowds are, they don’t seem big enough. And, more frustratingly, there seems to be nothing I can do to help.

Until now. By way of Candace at Waking up on Planet X, I’ve heard a very disturbing rumour. According to primo blogger/columnist/journalist Andrew Sullivan, the Canadian embassy is turning people away, and refusing to treat injured protesters.

Now, I realize that it is hard to verify all the facts in a situation as chaotic as what exists in Tehran, but the fact is that other embassies are agreeing to treat the injured. This is particularly important considering there are reports out there that Iranian police are gathering names of the injured from hospitals, and rumours abound that the Iranian government will be raiding one or more of those hospitals tonight.

Yes, Canada does have an embassy in Tehran. Are we being gun-shy for defying the regime before, giving safe harbour to American embassy officials during this theocratic regime’s rise in 1979? Should we be? While I admit that there is a risk here, how is it that Australia, Britain, Belgium, the French, the Irish and many others are taking that risk and lending assistance to those who ask for it? Do we not have a duty ourselves to lend assistance to those who ask for our help?

Candace suggests letters and e-mails to our elected officials and to our embassy in Iran, asking for a clarification, and opening our doors if we haven’t already. These addresses include:

• The Minister of Foreign Affairs email address: CannoL@parl.gc.ca
• Prime Minister Stephen Harper: pm@pm.gc.ca
• The Tehran embassy: teran@international.gc.ca (note that the misspelling of Tehran in the address is still the official e-mail address of our embassy there.

Update: Sunday at 11:29 p.m.

Candace provides me with an answer to my questions in the form of this report from CTV News. The relevant paragraphs:

“The Embassy was closed Saturday and there were no Canadians at the Embassy when the protests began. Reports that we were providing shelter to Iranian demonstrators are false,” foreign affairs and international trade spokesperson Simone MacAndrew said in a statement to CTV.ca.

“Canada’s Embassy is located in the centre of recent demonstrations. Due to the tense security in Tehran this week, the Embassy has been closing early so that staff can return home safely before the public and democratic demonstrations begin.”

(link)

I’ve said this before: those of you who know me know that I enjoy disaster movies. Specifically, I enjoy bad disaster movies. The hokier the dialogue, the sillier the science, the happier I am, especially if I get to watch the movie among friends, with a bottle of wine.

Well, this Sunday, ABC looks like it has a doozy. Impact tells a story of a meteor shower that gets out of control. Hidden behind the cluster of small rocks striking the Earth’s atmosphere is a honking big hunk of rock that strikes the Moon. Not only does this cause an intense cascade of falling stones on Earth, it shifts the Moon in closer to Earth, causing untold damage.

Now, so far, this story is following the plotline to the excellent young adult novel Life as we Knew it, until that is, the movie takes the silly science of an asteroid strike knocking the Moon out of orbit, and runs with it. Turns out the huge hunk of rock that hit the Moon was a “brown dwarf chunk” that’s now lodged in the Moon, increasing its mass to twice of what it used to be, further destabilizing the orbit and sending it crashing to the Earth. Oh, and the mass and density of this “brown dwarf chunk” has the effect of turning off gravity on random places of the Earth.

Yeah. Brown dwarf chunk. I guess that means this movie blows chunks. You can check out more of the bad science here, and I’ve included the trailer below. I apologize if this causes you to lose a few brain cells:

What I’m thinking is, these guys really wanted to say “dwarf star alloy” but got their terminology wrong. Add in some really silly special effects to complement the really silly idea of gravity being turned off at random, and I’ll be there to watch the movie and point and laugh.

And, James Cromwell? Why do you have to star in so many of these bad movies? Do you really need the money that much?

2012: A Mayan Idiocy

By an interesting coincidence, my friend :Cameron: writes to tell me of the latest disaster porn flick that’s taking advantage of the fact that the Mayans stopped counting the days on their calendar beyond December 21, 2012. This movie, by the man who brought you Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow does seem to promise a special effects festival. You can check out the eye-candy trailer here. And a subtle (did I actually say that in conjunction with this movie?!) teaser trailer can be found here.

I’ve said it before, but I have to wonder at if it’s possible for anybody to write a good disaster film: one that doesn’t play fast and loose with the science, which doesn’t sacrifice narrative for action. And I still have to wonder. Good disaster movies exist, but they seem to go for a different sort of audience. Supervolcano, about a mega-eruption of Yellowstone, plays itself as a reasonable documentary-from-the-future. It has its facts straight. And it plays on the Discovery Channel rather than at the theatres. Then there’s Don McKeller’s Last Night, which doesn’t focus much on the disaster itself but the reaction of the characters to it. It’s a brilliant movie, but I don’t see many theatre-goers from Armageddon checking it out. Heck, even the film Deep Impact (which should have swapped names with Armageddon) was criticized for having its characters stand around and wait for the end — rather than throw rocks at the approaching asteroid, I guess.

There’s got to be a middle ground, hasn’t there? The YA book Life As We Knew It, walked that line, once it stepped away from the silly science of an asteroid striking the Moon, and focused more on a family struggling to survive in the aftermath, and dealing with such mundane things as coping with imminent starvation. But that’s a tragedy, and not an action movie.

One interesting scenario I saw (again, played out on the Discovery Channel) had a massive solar flare threaten to EMP the planet. In the whole United States, only Brooklyn managed to escape having all its transistors blown out because one official had the foresight to black out the grid before the charged particles hit. The disaster here would be, how would humanity react dealing with a year or more with very limited technology. But would anybody be interested in seeing that?

Anyone?

Oh, look, a pretty wave is swamping the Himalayas!

Never mind.

Last year at this time, I made a promise. Jennie at Idealistic Pragmatist had previously been responsible for the past two years’ annual gathering of bloggers from the Waterloo-Wellington area. Last year, she warned us that she would not be returning to the area this year, and she demanded that we still organize the gathering on our own and lift a glass in her honour. After all, she was visiting from Edmonton, Alberta, and it was a little silly for the bloggers of Waterloo and Wellington to rely on her to show a little local spirit.

With this in mind, I would like to invite all bloggers and blog readers within the Region of Waterloo and County Wellington out to an afternoon of food, drink and fine conversation on Saturday, June 27 at 4 p.m. We will go to our usual haunt: the pub at the Heuther Hotel, where we will likely sit outside and listen to some live music and try to shout over all the noise. Everyone reading this is invited, and I know for a fact that Greg Staples of the former blog Political Staples will be there, so you can be assured that this will be a multi-partisan gathering.

So, how about it? Who’s up for some good company? See you a week from this Saturday!

Going Green for Iran

Not that it’s much, but as the protests against the suspicious election results in Iran continue and strengthen, I’m changing the background of this blog from its usual blue to green — a meme that some bloggers are doing these days to show their support for a true democracy within Iran.

Good luck, guys. I fear that the odds are stacked against you, but the world is watching, and hoping…

No Summer Election

I have to confess I wanted one. The issue of the government’s mishandling of medical isotopes, and its spiteful actions against Mr. Abdelrazik make me eager to vote this government down. So I am a little miffed that Michael Ignatieff has deprived me of this opportunity.

However, I will say this: he’s pulled no Dion, here. Back a few months ago, when the Liberals were doing all they could to try and avoid an election, Dion would huff and puff, rail against the flaws in various Conservative legislation, and then have his entire caucus walk out to abstain against various motions which could have defeated the Conservative government and brought the matter to the voters. The Liberals looked cowardly and hypocritical every time they did that — to the point where I seriously suggested that Stephen Harper should turn the tables on the Liberals; rather than break his own election date law, the next time the Liberals rolled over and tried to abstain their way out of an election, the Conservatives should abstain too, and force the Liberals to decide whether they wanted to take a stand in supporting the government rather than avoid the voters.

Ignatieff hasn’t done this. The fact that he negotiated with Harper, and the fact that Harper negotiated with him, puts a very different complexion on this. True, it’s more like a Conservative-Liberal coalition government here, but that’s not a bad thing, unless you’re in a particularly partisan mood. This is how coalition governments are supposed to work, and the Liberals are showing some spine, here, making it clear that they are negotiating from some position of strength. Indeed, this week’s events are win-win for both Ignatieff and Harper. Harper gets to look like a conciliator (something that is quite unlike him) and Ignatieff gets to look like a serious leader holding the government to account. No, this is probably not what actually happened, but this is the perception. And for the voters, perception is 9/10ths of reality.

While I’m on the subject, you should check out this post by Pario of Talk Talk Talk where he wonders why Ignatieff has been so cold to the idea of a coalition with the NDP. Pario’s take on the Ontario situation in 1985 is accurate. Although not a formal coalition, the deal reached by the Petersen Liberals and Rae’s NDP did produce a stable minority which governed for two years, during which time Ontario’s economy shook itself free from the early eighties recession. Being such a marked change from 42 years of Conservative rule, the voters were so grateful, they spent the next eight years trying to reward the coalition partner most responsible for those two years of good government. Petersen went first, receiving a landslide majority in 1987, which he promptly squandered. The people, unsatisfied with Liberal majority rule in Queen’s Park, remembered that between 1985 and 1987, the NDP had shown itself capable of governing, turned to the NDP in a big way in 1990. The rest, as they say, is history.

While Layton’s numbers now seem unlikely to make either Harper or Ignatieff nervous, it is worth noting that the Conservatives and Liberals continue to flirt with the lowest level of combined popular support between their two parties in the history of Confederation. There remains a definite sense of ‘a plague on all your houses’ among the electorate. It’s quite possible that, if any party outside of the Conservative/Liberal dichotomy shows itself remotely competent at governing, they may be rewarded with a historic electoral upset.

$134.5 Billion in U.S. Treasury Bonds.

If the bonds are real, it would be one of the largest seizure of its kind in history. If the bonds are fake… well, that’s the disturbing thing: they don’t look very fake.

Boing Boing can’t help but chuckle at the prospect of a windfall for the Italian government, saying:

Either these guys are the world’s dumbest, most ambitious counterfeiters, or they’re the biggest currency smugglers ever caught.

It gets better: Italian law says that the penalty for currency smuggling is 40% of the seized cash, and that 40% (US$28 billion) will take a huge bite out of Italy’s public debt.

If the certificates were real, for Italy it would be like hitting the jackpot. The fine alone would amount to US$ 38 billion, five times the estimated cost of rebuilding quake-devastated Abruzzi region. It would help Italy’s eliminate its public deficit.

But :Erin: and I have other questions. One: isn’t the U.S. Treasury likely to know whether $134.5 billion in bonds is, essentially, missing? And even if these bills aren’t fakes, well… Erin puts it succinctly: “any chance that we could declare them fakes?”

Much as we’d like to see Italy get a windfall, a transfer of $38 Billion into government coffers isn’t coming unless one particular government raises no objections, and I don’t see that happening. Do you?

The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3

I have to confess that I don’t get the need to issue a second remake of this 1970s movie. The first remake (filmed in the Toronto subway) was embarrassingly bad since it was so obvious that it was the Toronto subway masquerading (badly) for the New York system and the film had to (very obviously) be sped up so that the leisurely rolling train could appear as though it was rocketing down the tunnels.

I realize that this current version has star power in the form of John Travolta and Danziel Washington, but the original version with Walter Mathau is darn near definitive, in my opinion. And it is also more than just about a group of clever thugs taking a subway train hostage. The story is very much the product of 1970s New York, a rough-and-tumble city that’s fallen on hard times. It’s a story where the most notable thing about a hostage taking is not that gunmen have taken hostages, but they appear to want to use the train as their getaway car. It’s a story about an incompetent mayor who’s down with the flu, who does the right thing for “eighteen sure-fire votes” (the lives of the people in the car), and it is a story about the gritty dignity of New Yorkers as they cope with this terrible disruption. Matthau’s deadpan expression at the end of the final scene when he catches the final conspirator out on a fluke mistake, really says it all, and it’s significant that this, the most powerful scene in the original movie, doesn’t have gunfire.

Does the new version have these elements? Or does it just blow stuff up? I strongly suspect that it’s the latter.

Take a Load Off

Janet over at The Walrus Said talks about California governor Schwarzenegger’s proposal to buy schools e-books and do away with textbooks altogether. In Schwarzenegger’s words:

“It’s nonsensical and expensive to look to traditional hard-bound books when information today is so readily available in electronic form,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “Especially now, when our school districts are strapped for cash and our state budget deficit is forcing further cuts to classrooms, we must do everything we can to untie educators’ hands and free up dollars so that schools can do more with fewer resources.”

Janet’s response:

The devil is in the details, they say, and I’m sure many jurisdictions will be watching to see if the Governator actually saves the state money. If he does, you can be sure that there will be many imitators. It goes to show that hard times tend to stimulate innovation, as the status quo becomes too uncomfortable to maintain.

She goes on to talk about the benefits, and then asks:

What do you think? Is Schwarzenegger visionary or deluded? Will the peripheral costs erase the financial benefits?

I don’t have much to add, frankly. There’s sure to be a high initial cost to such a measure (think of the cost of a Kindle in every school locker), but after a couple of years, I think the state is sure to save money, not to mention a whole lot of paper. But the biggest winners, in my opinion, could be the students’ backs.

As I writer, I can’t conceive of e-books replacing books outright, but when it comes to textbooks, electronic ink can’t replace paper soon enough, especially when colour electronic ink is perfected.

The photograph above (my own) shows the aftermath of a burst of creativity, as grade four students devoured an art project in under thirty minutes. The leavings are almost as delightful as the art pieces themselves.

I’d like to thank the volunteers and organizers at Deloitte and the teachers and students at Ecole Communautaire Rawlinson Community School for inviting me to take part in their Literacy and Learning event. It’s always heartening to see young creative minds at work, and Rawlinson had these in abundance.

I got up extra early and drove to Milton where I caught the GO Train for the rest of my trip in. We started the day at the school promptly after nine. Over fifty grade four students were broken up into three groups who were then cycled to one of three stations. There, students were either asked to write about their dreams, or draw pictures, or listen to me read some passages from my novel, The Unwritten Girl. After recess, the students returned for a group project. I read to them the first half of the first scene from The Dream King’s Daughter and asked them to break into groups to write up their own versions of the ending. The students rose to the challenge, and a few groups got to present to the whole. It was fun reading their alternative takes (some of which were deliciously violent. No a lot of love for Mr. Scaly, that’s for sure).

The students were given a gift bag, including a free copy of The Unwritten Girl, which I happily signed.

So, thanks again to everybody behind the event, and especially to the teachers and students at Rawlinson. Once again it’s clear to see that the kids are all right.

	The school in question, at the beginning of the day.
	The library in the school in question, where groups of grade four students wrote about their dreams, drew, or listened to me read The Unwritten Girl.
	The artwork the students put together.

Pressure is mounting from various quarters for the provincial and federal governments to provide funding for Toronto’s $1.3 billion purchase of new streetcars to replace the current, aging fleet. Transport Minister John Baird inadvertently brought the issue to national attention when he was caught on tape swearing in frustration over Toronto’s application for economic stimulus money. Baird has since apologized for his intemperate words.

The deal that the City of Toronto reached with Bombardier to replace the TTC’s fleet of streetcars has a time limit. Bombardier’s price for 204 vehicles expires on June 27. The City of Toronto has committed to paying a third of this cost (roughly $40 million per year for the next ten years), and is hoping to have the province and the federal government step in to provide matching funds for the remaining two thirds. This formula matches the formula the province has adopted in the past in covering municipalities’ capital costs on public transportation, but ministers in the McGuinty and Harper governments have expressed surprise and frustration at this demand for more cash.

The rush in negotiations between Toronto, Queen’s Park and Ottawa highlights a flaw in the budget process for public transportation agencies in this province. Until 1996, Queen’s Park covered three quarters of the capital expenses of all public transportation agencies in the province, leaving the municipalities to cover the remaining quarter. This money was provided with few strings attached, and gave municipalities a predictable revenue source with which to pay for the bread and butter jobs that kept transit services operating in a state of good repair. At least, in theory.

Now, the fact that the province and the federal government are happy to offer Toronto two-thirds funding of such major transportation projects as new LRT lines across the city, but balk at funding the cost of replacing aging vehicles, suggests that the budget process is now being done on a far more piecemeal basis. Worse, it suggests that the province and the federal government are more interested in (and more willing to commit funds to) projects which are politically sexy; which they can cut ribbons in front of. So, major new LRT lines — which are needed and appreciated — get cash far more easily than new buses or streetcars for services that are already in place.

This is an unfortunate development. As was noted by a number of commentators, this is a return to the form of the early 1990s, when Toronto and Ontario politicians were far more interested in expanding Toronto’s subway system than they were in making sure that the system which remained had sufficient funds to operate safely. This rot increased to the point where a subway driver was able to take his train past a red signal that should have stopped him and accidentally plough it into a stopped train in front of him.

Negotiations between various officials at the City of Toronto, Ottawa and Queens Park are continuing, and it’s possible that Baird’s intemperate remarks might help get Toronto the funds it needs to replace its aging streetcar fleet, but it shouldn’t have to be this way. The McGuinty government criticized its Harris predecessors for downloading the onerous costs of public transportation onto municipalities. Re-uploading this cost means more than just agreeing to fund two-thirds of various projects you happen to like. As much as there is a need to expand the capacity of public transportation systems throughout the GTA and the province of Ontario, the day-to-day cost of replacing old buses and streetcars, of repairing station roofs, tracks, refueling facilities, bus shelters, and keeping these facilities clean, is no less important. And it is this that Queen’s Park and Ottawa have given short shrift to.

If Queen’s Park and Ottawa truly want to ensure that capacity exists in the region’s public transit network to keep the economy moving in future, it cannot focus solely on expansion projects. Until someone comes forward with a predictable funding formula that treats expansion of the new and maintenance of the old equally, our agencies will continue to live hand-to-mouth, and be unable to properly address the congestion issues of the future.

I have no problem with removing the feint hope clause. I do have more of a problem with mandatory minimums. These have been shown not to work in the United States, and I believe judges should have the leeway to insure that a seventeen-year-old kid who makes a stupid mistake isn’t sent to prison with a twenty-five-year-old hardened criminal who can teach the kid everything he knows. But the Conservatives’ base likes the illusion that they’re “getting tough with criminals”, and with that base fatigued as a result of the Conservatives various un-Conservative policies of late, the party clearly decided that this bit of red meat was needed to keep their core voters in line.

What might surprise some viewers, however, was the Liberal reaction. While the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois have been firmly opposed, the Liberals under leader Michael Ignatieff have decided to support the government, despite the fact that these measures do not represent a confidence motion, and defeating the government here won’t result in an election that Canadians supposedly do not want. Some Liberal members in the crassroots are upset and calling for a revolt. NDPers are tsking, and saying that it proves yet again that the Liberals are the ones truly propping up the Conservative government. Even some Liberal members who support the move are citing political expediency.

For me, I believe that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is being pragmatic (if cynical). He has a base to shore up too. Indeed, his job is a harder one. The Conservatives’ social conservative and libertarian wings have few other places to go if they’re dissatisfied, and so the Conservative option has rarely, if ever, received less than one quarter of the popular vote. Ignatieff’s Liberals straddle the centre, with wings of support poking out among the centre-left and the centre right. His supporters have somewhere to go if they’re dissatisfied, and he does not want the centre-right bleeding off to the Conservatives.

He is, in effect, trying to fight the 1999 Ontario election, while not making the same mistakes that Dalton McGuinty made.

In 1999, Dalton McGuinty was a fresh-faced leader of a party that had gone into the 1995 election with polls suggesting they had 51% of the popular support, only to come out as the opposition party. They stood there in Queen’s Park as Mike Harris made waves through his Common Sense Revolution, and the NDP wrestled with the legacy of Bob Rae. Four years later, with Mike Harris’ record controversial at best, McGuinty appealed to former NDP voters, saying that the Liberals were the party most likely to end the Harris hatchet job on the province.

The ploy worked. NDP popular support dropped by over 8%, and much of that support went to the Liberals, who clocked in at a very respectable 40% of the popular support. They were unable to catch the Conservatives, however, who remained at their 45% plateau. Indeed, the Conservatives gained popular support, which suggested that, even as the Liberals sucked up votes from the left and the NDP, they lost votes on their right — either directly from their party, or from people who hadn’t voted in the 1995 election.

I believe that Ignatieff’s moves of late suggest that he is eying where the voters are likely to go in the next election. He sees a large pool of potential Liberal supporters in the current NDP block, but he doesn’t want to lose the support he has on the centre-right. So he matches the Conservatives on various ‘gimme’ policies such as law-and-order and crime, while conceiving of other ways to appeal to the centre-left. In this respect, he might be calling in a loan that’s about to come due.

In 2006, Jack Layton led the NDP through one of its most successful elections in a while by appealing to Liberal voters to ‘lend’ them his votes. His message to the electorate was this: “The Liberals have become tired and arrogant and need time in the political wilderness to learn some humility. You know this. But I know that you don’t like the idea of voting Conservative in order to accomplish this. Well, here’s my offer to you: lend me your vote. That way, you can send the Liberals a message, without giving Harper a majority mandate. You can feel good about your choice, and you can count on us to keep Harper on a short leash.”

It worked. The Canadian electorate finally gave the Liberals the defeat they needed, and the NDP walked away with 29 seats. And I think, at least at first, those loaned NDP voters have been happy about their choice. Harper has been kept on a short leash, the Liberals have been humiliated, and the NDP has made waves in the opposition.

The problem with that strategy is that it doesn’t work forever. Layton cannot run against the Liberal’s record, now, as they essentially have none, being two leaders removed from the last Liberal prime minister. The man who has the electorate’s attention is the one sitting in the prime minister’s chair, and he’s Conservative. The Liberals and the NDP thus rise and fall on his record, and are jockeying amongst themselves to be the party that is, in the minds of voting Canadians, most likely to replace the him.

So, as memories fade over the previous Liberal government’s misdeeds, and as Stephen Harper becomes an ever more polarizing figure, the opportunities increase for Ignatieff to do to Layton what Layton did to Martin in 2006. Indeed, I think that’s the strategy for the next election. As the Conservatives implode, Ignatieff can turn to former NDP voters and say to them, “I know I’m not your cup of tea. But you know what Stephen Harper and his party are doing to this country. I can stop them. Lend me your votes, and we can defeat what is the biggest threat to your vision of Canada.”

And I think it just might work.