La República Bananera de Canadá

Stephen Harper is a jerk-faced pig dog!

But tell me something I didn't already know...

How can he, in all honesty and with a straight face, say it is undemocratic for representatives of 62% of the population to form the country's government? –Seems pretty democratic to me. Then, when things look like they're not going his way, he has the Governor-General shut down Parliament. Uh, hello, what could be less democratic?!

Now that Harper has shut Parliament, what's next? Burning it down à la Nazi Reichstag? Honestly!

I thought I liked Michaëlle Jean. I thought she was the kind of person who would be bold enough to do something visionary and actually make this country a better place, run by MPs with the support of two-thirds of the population. I guess not. It's very unsettling to me that I haven't seen any newssource comment on her justifications for being a kowtow lackey to our new Toad King despot, Stephen Harper. I can only assume the worst.

Your Excellency, The Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, you are oh-so-clearly Dead to Me!

"I believe in distinct society – as long as someone else pays for it"

Oh those crazy Québécois; they'll do anything!

Have to admit though, cheese with french fries does make sense.

My Walk Across Canada

Alternate title: My Walk From One Canada to Another

A sunny September day, I set out to walk across Canada in Paris.

I started at the Place du Canada and set out for my destination, la rue du Canada, seeing what I could along the way.

Place du Canada is tucked away behind the granite Belle Epoque extravagance of the Grand Palais (the Rocky Mountains?), right on the bank of the Seine (the St Lawrence?). I thought it bizarrely apropos that the intersection of Franklin D Roosevelt Avenue and Queen's Way was the Place du Canada.

Ironically, the Rue du Canada abuts the Rue de la Guadeloupe, which the French decided to keep in exchange for handing over Canada to the British after the Seven Years War in 1763.




A beautiful view of the place. Maybe meant to represent the Praries?


Some friends I picked up along the way.


My Canada includes Quebec.


Weird and spooky abandoned market I came across.


Canada Retouch? Indeed it does.


Destination: Rue du Canada




Rue du Canada seen from the intersection of Rue de la Guadeloupe.

1, 2, 3, 4

Um, Feist is like, my new favouritest person in the whole universe ever!

Canadian Humour

A French friend of mine asked me "What iz zee Canadian yumour?"

I thought I would have to go into this whole lengthy explanation of how Canada is stuck in some kind of grey zone between reruns of Are You Being Served? and sight gags with Balki and Cousin Larry. But then I realised, no, this is Canadian humour, and thank bloody God for it! :



Pure brilliance. Yeay Canada!

Homecoming Queen Dilemmas

I've been thinking and debating about when I should finagle my escape from the land of brie and Bordeaux to schedule some QT with all my amazing confreres and countrymen back in TO.

I have my return plane ticket which must be used before 12 September. The problem being that if I visit late summer-ish, I'm away when I should be making money. This is a big problem, because I have no money :-( On the converse side, the weather is hot and sunny, frisboi beckons, everyone is happy, pitchers of sangria abound.

Were I to visit at Christmas, I forfeit the return part of the ticket have and buy a new Paris-Toronto-Paris ticket. Not as much fun weather-wise, but more of course more family, turkey, stuffing, presents and tourtière. Speaking from past experience, holiday visits skew towards the hectic as there is always much scuttling across the frozen landscape to be done; Toronto, Belleville, Toronto, relatives, friends, New Years. It all gets to be a bit much.

Then of course there's always the problem of not knowing exactly when the semester starts or finishes... Decisions, decisions.... Unfortunately I don't think I can afford to do both.

Thoughts?

Religious schooling for none!

He hasn't even been elected yet, but candidate for the Ontario premiership, John Tory, has gone straight to the bottom of the barrel with his plan to fund all faith-based schools in the province. Already dead to me before he even had a chance to do anything, tsk tsk. Shame really, though entirely expectable I'm afraid – with a last name like 'Tory' he had nowhere to go but down.

For those not in the know: way back in the days of Upper and Lower Canada, two separate school systems were set up to protect the religious freedoms of Protestants and Catholics. Over time the Protestant system became secular and most provinces realised that schools are for learning while churches are for religion, and subsequently merged the two systems together. Ontario, however, decided to eschew this crazy, new-fangled, division-of-church-and-state thinking and has held on to the two systems, spending public money to fund both the secular and Catholic systems. — I don't know about you, but I'd prefer not to have my taxes go to the No Gays, Condom-free, Pope-raganda Hate machine of the Catholic School System, but that being said, provinces are actually constitutionally obligated to fund both systems.

Now instead of ignoring this constitutional requirement like all the other provinces have done*, Ontario continues to fund religious education for Catholics — but only for Catholics. Those who wish to send their children to private Jewish, Muslim or Protestant schools are on their own to foot the whole bill. This is obviously discriminatory. But rather than making it all even Steven by saying 'no funding for any faith-based education,' John Tory wants everyone to put a finger in the pie and spend $400 million to fund any pastor, imam or rabbi who wants to teach religion as fact.

Great, because the exact thing that Ontario needs is for hundreds of millions of dollars, which could be spent on homelessness, climate change or health care, to instead be spent teaching children the "facts" of Creationism.

Religion's place is not in a school –infuriating young minds à la Northern Ireland– but rather inside a church where it's easily avoidable for people who don't care.

Mr Tory, your policy is stupid and will serve only to further segregate more people from the Ontario mainstream. — Although, since religious people tend to be conservative, and the Ontario mainstream too lefty-loosy, perhaps this is exactly what you are intending. A generation of religious zealots to grow up and vote for you and your Conservative Party of Jerks. I see right through your smoke and mirrors and am putting you directly to 'Dead to Me' Level Two (just one step above your evil overlord Stephen Harper). Thankfully you will most likely lose the upcoming election and you can go back to obscurity where you belong and stop bothering decent secularists like me.

North York – North Yuck!

Alternate Title: Suburbs; the Worst of Both Worlds

Almost one year into working in the blanched concrete monotony that is North York, I can truly say that suburbs are my own personal vision of hell. Depressing Stalinist apartment blocks huddled together against the vast anonymous spaces of wasteland. Strip malls and car lanes. Hulking fortresses of big box stores defended by moats of endless parking lots. Isolated people buffered from real human contact by six lanes of traffic and cracked, decaying sidewalks.

I can’t think of a single positive thing to say about suburbs; sprawl destroys farmland and greenspace, makes public transit impossible and forces an even greater dependence on the almighty Mammon of the car. Really, people who live in suburbs are eco-terrorists with their huge carbon footprint, greenhouse-gas cars and pesticide lawns. If were up to me, we’d blow them all up and start all over. (Or conversely, we could build a wall around the suburbs, blow them all up, and then start a specialty channel where we watch the survivors build a new society out of the rubble of Pickering or Thornhill).

In honour of MMC and my Battleship Adventure* to the furthest reaches of North York, the Fairview Mall and to the very end of the pointless Sheppard line, I present to you my North Yuck Photo Essay.

Budget Has Votes In Mind

The headline says it all really.
(Original TorStar article here).

Bullet-point open letter to Stephen Harper:

Thought: Your budget is smoke and mirrors.

Thought: Your budget has no policy.

Thought: Your budget is designed only to win votes.

Thought: Your American style of smear campaigns and vote pandering have brought Canadian politics to a new low.

Question: Does the billions in "new funding" have something to do with the billions you cut in funding last September? (See here)

Thought: You are a jerk.

Dead to Me: Gilles Duceppe. I already didn't like him anyway, but propping up Harper and his regime of neo-con Bush puppets is inexcusable.

Suggestion: Instead of trying to win a popularity contest like a lame high-schooler, why don't you worry a bit more about –oh I dunno– actually running the country?

‘Alberta’ sounds like a cow's name

Let's face it; we all hate Alberta, even me (and I was born there). Tired of their bloated egos, oil sands self-importance and their conservative yahoos? It's time to show them who's boss. Sign my petition today.

Stephen Effing Harper!

As if it wasn't bad enough to be forced to watch our tax dollars being wasted on Stéphan Dion smear ads during prime time, then this poll came out showing that the Conservatives are actually gaining support! From who!?! Why?!?

Lets review a few of the asinine thing Harper has done since taking power just one short (though eternity-seeming) year ago:

¤ Reopened the (already settled by the Supreme Court) equal marriage debate
¤ Cut spending on social programmes despite having a 13 billion dollar surplus
¤ Cancelled a national daycare plan
¤ Reneged on the landmark Kelowna Accord, a ten-year, five billion dollar commitment designed to address First Nations poverty

Oh yeah, and he didn't address the World AIDS conference in Toronto, or ratify laws regarding the Kyōto Protocol. Really the list goes on and on, but why bother? We all know that Stephen Harper is a mangy, snake-faced, pig-dog boil on the scabby donkey ass of humanity. I really didn't think it was possible for me to have a lower opinion of him.

Until now.

During a speech in the House of Commons, Harper accused Sikh, Liberal MP Navdeep Bains of somehow being implicated in the Air India bombing over the North Atlantic in 1985, and accused the Liberals of creating a cover-up on Bain's behalf by refusing to to extend provisions in anti-terrorism law. Now never mind the fact that Bains was nine years old in 1985 — he's a Sikh, and Sikhs were involved in the bombing and therefore all Sikhs are bad. The alleged connexion between Bains and the Air India attack was that his father-in-law is on a list of potential list of witnesses for the Air India probe. Again lets ignore the fact that Bains had not yet met his father-in-law (being nine and all), and that hundreds of Sikhs are being considered as witnesses — brown people are all terrorists and should be sent back to where they came from.

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God Stephen Harper; I knew you were a liar, a pig, an idiot and a homophobe — but an outright racist? You even refused to apologise, saying that it was up to Bains to deny the facts reported about him. Clearly, I shouldn't be surprised by your bigoted behavior, but I still kind of am.

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Using racial stereotypes and personal attacks as a springboard to further your party's political agenda is unconscionable and disgusting. It's time to break out the big guns Stephen; You are officially: Dead to Me, Level Three. That's right, you heard me, Level Three! That's just one step above Hitler, Satan and Shannen Doherty. You are so dead to me that even my grandchildren's grandchildren will still sit around talking about what a horrible person you are.

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For the good of Canada, Navdeep Bains, and my personal sanity, I think we should turn Alberta back into a territory. That way Ottawa gets all their oil money and coo-coo conservative yahoos like Harper and the people who vote for him no longer have any say in parliament. Everyone in the rest of Canada would be a whole lot happier.

Chimo

Those of you who have read Douglas Copeland's Souvenir of Canada will recognise this word. For those of you who haven't, you should –but in the mean time I'll explain. In the 1970s with the Olympics and Expo, draft-dodgers, Trudeau, bilingual cereal boxes and kicking Soviet hockey ass, Canada-mania reached new, dizzying heights. We were hot hot hot, and we needed a word that was cool. A Canadian word. And that word was "chimo."

Ostensibly, this came from an Innuktitut word meaning “bellbottoms are awesome,” Chimo failed to catch on, and with it, Canada missed its big chance to make a linguistic mark on the world.

I say the time is ripe to bring back “chimo” and kick off another phase Canadia-mania; with all our subversive gay weddings, unlocked doors, nationally-subsidised medicinal marijuana programmes and lesbian witches for abortion, who wouldn’t want to be Canadian these days?

Canada is so chimo!

So let’s all do our part, dialectise ourselves and create a chimo Canadian patois. If we keep it up, soon we’ll be as colourful as our Aussie cousins with all their ‘crikey’ and ‘flaming galahs.’

Go chimo!

A Streetcar Named Displeasure

While I appreciate the aesthetic pleasantry of streetcars, I hate pretty much everything else about them. From the jerky, lurching ride to the simply terrible on time performance records, there’s a lot not to love. Quite frankly I can not imagine a worse form of transportation (except perhaps harnessing a team of blind monkeys to pull me down the street on a sled).

Streetcars are eternally getting stuck in traffic, so then they get all bunched up, which means there are more people waiting for the next car, it takes longer to load all the people who’ve been waiting, then the cars get slowed down even more, then there’s even more people waiting, even longer loading; it’s a ridiculous cycle of inefficiency.

It also drives me crazy that when stopped behind traffic at a red light, streetcars have to wait for the light to turn green, then move ahead the few meters to the stop to let people on/off, and by the time everyone is on the light has gone back to red. It would be so much better if the streetcar stop was after the intersection (I know that’s never going to happen because of traffic-flow issues, but it would improve the passenger experience by, oh, a million-billion times). I once waited at Yonge Street on the Dundas car while the light cycled through three times waiting for everyone to get on; the light changed back to red, then more people came off the subway and the light change back to red again, then more people came again!! Aaaargh!

I live for the day when I no longer have to deal with the crowded-front/empty-back and every other obnoxious hassle that is TTC streetcars.

Oh yeah, and it costs almost three dollars to ride!

Streetcars: Ask anyone, I’m the biggest advocate of public transit there is; if it were up to me, private cars would be illegal. But my love affair ended the minute I had to depend on you everyday to get to work. You are ineffective and inefficient. There’s no real hope for change, you are officially “Dead to Me.”

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(Please note, none of the above applies to the Spadina streetcar, which by virtue of having its own right-of-way, is actually fantastic. All streetcars should have their own right-of-way, but they don’t, so they suck).

PM calls Quebec 'a nation'

Toronto Star article here

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I have rather mixed feelings about this. In a way it’s good, but in another way it’s rather insulting. Why are only Quebecers a ‘nation’ and not all French-Canadians? Does that mean that Anglo-Quebecers are a part of that nation as well? What about First Nations’ people who live in Quebec; do they belong to their aboriginal nation or their Quebec nation?

Declaring a nation of all the people who happen to live in the arbitrarily delineated geographical area of Quebec is problematic since it excludes the millions of Franco-Ontarians, Franco-Manitobans and Acadians who made this country part of what it is, and who struggled (much harder than Quebecers, I’d say) to maintain their cultural identity against the dominant Anglo culture.

Yet again I’m frustrated by how Quebecers have shanghaied this whole issue and made it about politics and self-aggrandisement and basically nothing at all to do with preserving French language and culture in North America. In a way this declaration is a double slap in the face to non-Quebec French Canadians; the perpetual we-don’t-care-about-you slap from the Québécois, and now the you-are-irrelevant slap from the federal government.

For a group which is the largest language minority in six out of nine provinces, we’re not getting much love!

Morning Radio Indignance

I was listening to the radio this morning while I was getting ready to go to work and an ad for the movie Flags of our Fathers about the American flag raising at Iwo Jima during the Second World War. Now normally I wouldn’t go in for this kind of Jerry-Bruckheimer-esque-schlock-o-rama, but if that’s your cup of tea, go right ahead —we can’t all like art flicks about suffering Albanian orphans.

However, after listening to this commercial, I’m now on a mission to make sure no Canadian worth their poutine sees this movie. The commercial announcer was talking: “Blah, blah, blah. Schlocky patriotic rah-rah …it was our country’s greatest battle…”

—I have a hard time understanding how the Battle of Iwo Jima could be Canada’s greatest battle since no Canadians were actually there!

Clearly, Warner Brothers just took the American commercial and slapped it on the radio up here thinking everything would be just fine, in a clear lapse of know-your-market advertising. Consequently, I’m calling for a boycott of this film (which you probably wouldn’t have seen anyway) to defend our national honour and to protest American ignorance and steamrollering.

I officially give Flags of our Fathers two thumbs down!

Tout le monde en parle

When I was home for Thanksgiving this weekend, I sat down with my family after the turkey was tucked away to watch the Société Radio-Canada show Tout le monde en parle. For all you têtes-carrées out there, this is a hugely popular frenchie talk show sort of akin to Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher with lots of guests talking about different stuff. Now admittedly I don’t watch it often as it cuts into The Amazing Race, but things are always lively —for example CBC chairman Charles Fournier revealing that he likes pooing more than sex, or head of the Raelian church storming off after the host pulled his hair and made fun of his clothes.

This episode was interesting in that Michael Ignatieff was one of the guests. He spoke impeccable French, and if I were a Liberal, I would probably vote for him (being an intellectual Trudeauesque man of ideas and vision, both of which are in short order with this country’s politicians). He spoke in favour of equal marriage, gun control, etc., however, when the host asked him about Bill 101 –Québec’s French language laws– his answer really creeped me out.

He said he thought that Bill 101 was good because it promoted the status of French while protecting the rights of minority language speakers. I don’t know if saying this was pandering to Québec voters, but Bill 101 clearly violates the rights of minority language speakers in Québec. A Canadian Supreme Court judgment ruled that forcing businesses to have monolingual signs or making parents enroll their children in French-language schools impinged on rights guaranteed under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A United Nations tribunal agreed also that Bill 101 constituted a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Nevertheless, lovely premier Robert Bourassa used the notwithstanding clause to override these rulings and continue to “protect” French rights by taking away rights from others. I’m a bit disturbed by a potential prime minister thinking this is acceptable.

Was this misinformation on his part, or just vote-grabbing —or an accurate and real reflection of his views?

(As always, French media stories go unreported in English mainstream media. Find some info about MI on TLMEP here, and some more here)

When are we going to have "Defense Against Idiot Prime Ministers Act"?

Honestly, I’m getting tired of writing angry indignant blog posts about how much of a jerk Stephen Harper is. He is such a jerk! Now that it’s clear that his proposal to reopen the equal marriage debate is almost sure to fail, he’s planning to put forward a “Defense of Religions Act” to protect the rights of civil servants from performing civil weddings which they find objectionable because of their religious beliefs.

Now suffice it to say that religious freedoms are protected up the yin-yang under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; but if your job is to perform civil weddings for people whom your religion tells you are uncool, then you need to find a new job!!

Also to be protected under the purported act are the rights of people to criticise homosexual behaviour. Now in my mind this contradicts the provisions of the Freedom of Expression Act which protect people from harmful expression on the basis of their sexual orientation. Who is to say where to draw the line between what is critical and what is hurtful? –Conservative judges appointed by Stephen Harper perhaps? Well, isn’t that handy then.

The most surprising thing about this whole situation was that i didn’t read anything about it in the Toronto Star. I had to resort to getting my news from The Globe and Mail, (shudder), and even then I only knew about the story because I walked past a newspaper box and saw the headline. Only after some hunting did I manage to dig up stuff from the Star in the nether-reaches of their website. I can usually count on the Star to bring me the lefty-loosey progressive kind of news I need, but now instead I’ve got some kind of topsy-turvy world where the Globe is putting homo stuff on their front page. What is going on?

Anyhow, again, Pwpth!! –I spit on you Stephen Harper. My indignation knows no bounds.

(Globe & Mail article)

Best Moose Ever!

This past weekend I went camping in Algonquin Park with some friends. It was the first time I’d ever been up to Algonquin ever and the first time I’d been camping in about ten years as well. Superfun. Although it was stoopidly cold on the Friday night, otherwise the weather was really cooperative considering the forecast before going up had been horrible and rainy. We really lucked out in that when it did rain, we were either asleep in the tent or driving in the car. So all in all a Best Algonquin Ever!

We even saw some moose, which were actually pretty boring. I wanted to make loud noises and wild gestures to get them to do something interesting, like stampede or gore me with their antlers, but instead they just stood there in the swamp calmly eating grass like some dumb animal, with blatant disregard for my entertainment needs.

I had really hoped to see a porcupine, because I think they are really freaky and I’ve never seen one in the wild before. However, despite much treetop staring, all my efforts were in vain and I went home un-porcupined. I did come up with the next biggest haut-couture fashion item though; first it was stingray leather, then ostrich leg skin, and now porcupine pelts! –I’m calling John Galliano as we speak– All I have to do is to get Paris Hilton wearing a porcupine quill handbag on the red carpet and BAM, we’re millionaires. I can’t wait. –And I thought camping was a running-water, refrigerated insult to our pioneer ancestors who struggled so hard to build a civilisation and get away from all that dirt and clean air, but instead it’s a treasure trove of high-fashion accoutrements! Who knew?

Spend less when we have more

AAAaargh!!!! I would personally like to throttle the necks of every single person who voted for Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party of Jerks.

Why, why, why would you cut one billion dollars in government spending when you had a freakin thirteen billion dollar surplus!! It just doesn’t make sense. You make cuts when you don’t have enough money, not when you have too much! —I! Hate! Stephen! Harper!

Of course all of the cuts go to lefty-loosey-hippy things like museums, First Nations, conservation and adult literacy. I don’t know about you, but I think illiteracy costs our society a lot more than the 6.7 million that was being spent on that programme. And tourism, whose advertising funding is being cut, actually generates billions of dollars for our economy. Why would you cut funding to something that is making you money? It makes no sense! Conservatives make no sense!

Although all of the cuts are upsetting, none more so that cuts eliminating the Court Challenges Programme which assisted advocacy groups in funding court cases which they would be otherwise unable to fund; notably, but not limited to, the case which brought equal marriage before the Supreme Court. Also cut is the Law Commission of Canada. How convenient for the Conservatives that they would cut funding to two agencies which fought for the rights of the little people against bad government and big business.

This is so clearly and transparently an attention-getting scheme for the idiot hicks in 905 and Alberta that everyone involved should be flogged with copies of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People. “Hey- lets all be knob-wads and cut the programmes that the bad-ol Liberals created because we’re Conservatives and the Liberals suck.” Could you be more infantile?

Hey Stephen– If you want to appeal to a broad range of voters and win a majority in the impending election, you should know that cuts to social programmes don’t exactly appeal to anyone except the people who would have already voted for you anyway.

–I find Mr Harper’s offensive actions an attack on humanitarian values and an attempt to make us more like George W’s lapdogs. I can’t wait for the day when I can say “Good-bye to bad rubbish!” Pwpth!! I spit on you, Stephen Harper!

(Toronto Star article here)

That time of year again

The autumn sitting of Parliament is just around the corner, and with it is Stephen DonkeyFacedJerkKnob Harper’s promise to revisit the equal marriage debate so that he can pander to conservative redneck hicks in Alberta and be a kowtowing lackey for his best bud George W.

Now, he is doing this even though
1) Parliament has already decided this issue.
2) Legal experts have said that backtracking on this human rights issue is constitutionally impossible.
3) A growing and clear majority of people are opposed to reopening this issue. People who initially opposed equal marriage are now opposed to debating this issue all over again (maybe because several years of debating and royal-commissioning have already taken place).

God, talk about flogging a dead horse Steve! I am very temped to process Stephen Harper straight through to the “Dead To Me” section, but I will differ to correct procedure and first announce that Stephen Harper, you’re officially On Notice!

Now, hopefully it will be the last time I ever have I ever have to entreat you to email your MPs and remind them Canada is a nation of hippy granola pinko commie leftwingers who love bilingual cereal boxes and cheap prescription drugs and believe that everyone should do whatever they want; take a bear to church, read a book with your feet, change your name to Goobleglob, or even, saints preserve us, get married to whomever you want to!

Contact your MP through this handy