Tapestry

One of my favorite Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes is the one entitled Tapestry, which was aired during the show's sixth season.  

This episode begins with the death of captain Jean-Luc Picard, when he is attacked by aliens called the Lenarians while on a diplomatic mission.  He finds himself in the afterlife where he meets the infamous Q; a mischievous, if not malevolent being with almost god-like abilities whose path Picard has crossed before, and who always seems to have a hidden agenda.

Q informs Picard that he is dead, explaining that it needn't have been so if he had possessed a natural heart rather than an artificial one which was surgically installed during Picard's younger (and more reckless) days as a Starfleet ensign after he made the unfortunate decision to pick a fight with a group of very bad-tempered and strong aliens known as Nausicaans, only to be impaled by a Nausicaan spear-like weapon for his trouble.  Q explains that a normal heart would have survived the energy beam that had hit Picard's chest during his recent fracas with the Lenarians, but the artificial heart was, unfortunately, less resilient.

Picard expresses regret over his misadventure with the Nausicaans, not only because it apparently lead indirectly to his untimely death, but because he feels that he acted in a foolish and headstrong manner and he suggests that he might do things differently if given the chance.  On hearing this, Q transports Picard back in time, to two days prior to his tussle with the Nausicaans and challenges him to change the course of events and avoid the fight.  If he can do this, he can avoid getting stabbed through the heart which will mean that he has a normal heart when he is later attacked by the Lenarians, which in turn, will mean that he survives that encounter and regains his life.  In spite of his mistrust of Q, Picard reluctantly agrees to play along, not only for the chance to avoid death but also for the opportunity to change a part of his past of which he is not proud.

As events unfold for the second time, Picard makes every attempt to avoid confrontation with the Nausicaans but doing so requires him to act in an uncharacteristically reserved, at times seemingly cowardly manner, causing his friends from that time to question his motivations and character and, indeed, alienating them in the process.

He ultimately does manage to avoid the skirmish with the Nausicaans and, true to his word, Q returns him to the present day where he finds himself no longer deceased, but back aboard the Enterprise ... but also no longer her captain.  Suddenly he is a lowly assistant astrophysics officer reporting to the Klingon, Lt. Worf.  Through ensuing conversations with the Enterprise's senior officers and also Q, he learns that his cautious, risk-averse approach to the Naussican confrontation set in motion a pattern of similar behavior in all things, causing others to see him as competent, but unimpressive and leaving him a dreary functionary with a tedious job and no prospects for self-improvement.

Naturally, this new development is not at all to Picard's liking and (spoiler alert) he persuades Q to allow him to re-live his youth yet a third time and once again fights the Nausicaans, gets impaled, and is returned to his normal timeline and rank ... still alive.  It seems that Q simply felt that Picard needed a lesson about being true to himself.  The episode title comes from Picard's comment, in the end, that, although he isn't proud of some of the things he has done in his past, he has found that pulling on one of these "loose threads" caused the entire tapestry of his life to unravel.

Canada is, in my opinion, one of the finest countries in the world.  Its people are known to be diverse and accepting of other cultures.  We enjoy a high standard of living, a government that respects individual rights and freedoms, a high calibre of education, a health care system that ensures access to high-quality care for all and a reputation that makes Canadians respected and welcomed by virtually every other nation.  

We also have things in our past that could have been done better and of which we are not proud.  We weren't always as accepting of other cultures as we are today, and there was a time when we segregated indigenous children from their families and tried to assimilate them into the British colonial culture.  There are some who would eradicate anything that reminds them of those unenlightened times.  This ranges from tearing down statues of those who are perceived as the instigators of the segregation to renaming buildings, streets, parks, towns and even entire provinces whose current names seem to glorify the British colonialism that lead our ancestors to act as they did.  

In doing this, we may be making the same mistake as Jean-Luc Picard did, failing to understand that our faults and our virtues both make us what we are, and to alter any one aspect of our identity or our history changes our very essence.  Edmund Burke famously said "Those who don't know history are condemned to repeat it".  If we truly succeed in eradicating all traces of our colonial past, we risk forgetting our past mistakes and, ultimately, repeating them rather than acknowledging them and learning from them.

We must also remember that those whom some would vilify for being the architects of the residential school system which separated indigenous  children from their families were not entirely villainous and, indeed, brought about positive changes as well as negative ones.  For example, Sir John A. Macdonald, who has become the target of scorn for many as the chief architect of the residential school system, was also known to be a drunkard and was embroiled in a scandal for accepting election funds in exchange for awarding a contract to build the Canadian Pacific railway which forced him to resign as Prime Minister.  Yet he was one of the prime architects of Confederation which turned British North America into the nation of Canada.  Canada owes its very existence to this man.  And the Canadian Pacific railway remains an invaluable part of Canada's infrastructure to this very day.  

 If we were to go back in time and erase Sir John A. Macdonald from history, we would very likely return to the present to find that all the provinces and territories north of the 49th parallel are suddenly nothing more than America's 51st to 63rd states. 

Canadian Values

Conservative MP Kellie Leitch drew wide-spread criticism from political circles, including her own party, when she suggested recently that potential Canadian immigrants should be screened for "anti-Canadian" values before being accepted.  However, as recently reported in The Record, about two-thirds of Canadians seem to share Ms. Leitch's views, according to an even more recent Forum Research poll.


This begs the question, exactly what are "anti-Canadian" values?  For that matter, what are Canadian values?  Who gets to decide?  The Halmanator, that's who!  Having lived in this country since the tender age of three and having grown up here, I think I have a pretty good handle on what it means to be Canadian.  Since such a majority of people appear to favour some sort of screening, and being a patriotic and civic-minded citizen, I have taken it upon myself to get the ball rolling, so to speak, and design the following questionnaire, intended to weed out those of an un-Canadian mindset.  For each of the following questions, respond with a number between 1 and 5, 1 meaning that you strongly disagree and 5 meaning that you strongly agree:

---

1. I enjoy watching hockey.
   
   
2. I enjoy watching the Toronto Maple Leafs lose at play hockey.
   
   
3. I pledge my undying fealty to Tim Horton Donuts, regardless of how mediocre and over-priced their food may be.
   
   
4. I buy my breakfast at Tim Horton's because I am incapable of toasting and buttering a bagel at home.
   
   
5. Curling is a riveting spectator sport.
   
   
6. I like to garnish my French fries with
   a) Hummus
   b) Ketchup
   c) Vinegar
   d) Gravy
   e) Gravy with cheese curds
   
   
7. I don't know whether to "strongly agree" or "strongly disagree" with the previous question, as it was more of a multiple choice.
   
   
8. I am sorry for pointing out that Question 6 doesn't fit the format of this questionnaire.
   
   
9. I seek affirmation at the end of every statement that I make, eh?
   
   
10. I am polite.  Always.  To everyone.  Even Americans.
    
    
11. The most important attribute for a national leader is good hair.
    (Note: This question also appeared in the anti-American values screening test ... until recently)
    
    
12. I own every album ever released by:
    a) Neil Young
    b) "Stompin' Tom" Connors
    c) Joni Mitchell
    d) Gordon Lightfoot
    e) All Of The Above
    
    
13. I do not own any records or CDs having left them behind in Syria after they were blown up, along with my house, but, should I be accepted into Canada,  I promise to acquire every album ever released by 12e (above) at the earliest possible opportunity.
    
    
14. I know the entire lyrics to "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by heart.
    
    
15. "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" is an appropriate song to play as the father-daughter dance at weddings.
    
    
16. Logs are useful for:
    a) Making telephone poles
    b) Sitting on when there are no benches available
    c) Making fires
    d) Making paper
    e) Transportation along rivers
    
    
17. This questionnaire is flawed because it doesn't include both English and French text.
    Ce questionnaire est viciée parce qu'elle ne comprend pas l'anglais et le texte français.
    
    
18. The term "American beer" is an oxymoron.
    
    
19. A sixteen-hour wait is not unreasonable in a hospital emergency ward.
    
    
20. Plaid goes with everything.

Scoring: For every question, the number of points you get is the number with which you responded.  For the multiple choice questions, score 1 to 5 for answers a through e respectively.  Add up your points:

20 -   50: Take off you Daesh terrorist swine!  We don't like your kind, eh?  Just sayin'.
51 -   79: Have you considered immigrating to the U.S.?
80 - 100: Welcome aboard eh?  Have a cold one!

The Tax Man's Salami

Recently, I picked up a few grocery items at my local supermarket.  Now that I have your rapt attention thanks to that riveting opening, I'll proceed to explain that most grocery products aren't taxable in the province of Ontario, where I live, the significance of which will become clear momentarily.

At the checkout, I asked for a plastic bag, as there was too much stuff to carry free-hand.  In Ontario, most grocery stores; in fact, most stores of any kind (though not all) add a small charge for plastic bags.  They pass this off as a "green" initiative, intended to save the environment by encouraging customers to bring along their own re-usable bags rather than accumulating disposable plastic bags which only wind up in landfills, as opposed to calling it an additional cash grab, which is what it is in actuality.  This post, however, is not a rant against stores that charge for plastic bags.  There's been a sufficient number of other writers who have ranted about this practice at least as eloquently as I could hope to.

Looking over my grocery receipt later, I saw the charges for the various grocery items, a five cent charge for the plastic bag, and a one cent charge for H.S.T.; Ontario's harmonized sales tax.  Recall that most grocery items aren't taxable in Ontario, so the item that was being taxed was the five-cent plastic bag.  But there's a problem with this.  You see, Ontario's H.S.T. rate is thirteen percent (which includes 5% G.S.T. plus 8% P.S.T.).  Thirteen percent of a nickel is .0065 cents.  So the tax amount was rounded up to a penny.


"But of course," you may be thinking, "that seems reasonable since, in North America, a  penny is the smallest possible monetary unit.  Unlike Olde England, we don't have halfpennies.  In fact, technically, we don't even have pennies anymore!  So the amount has to be rounded up.  Still, one cent added to a five-cent charge amounts, in fact, to a 20% tax, not a 13% tax.  I had been over-taxed by 7%.


"Come off it," I hear you chide, "it's only a penny man!"  Maybe so, but how many other people conduct similar transactions during the course of a day, a week, a month and a year?  How much extra money are the Ontario and Canadian governments raking in thanks to this kind of over-taxation?


Many of my readers will have heard the story of a rogue Programmer who apparently worked for a bank, and altered the program which posted bank transactions to divert any rounding differences to his personal bank account.  The story goes that, after initially accumulating a healthy sum, he was eventually found out and jailed for fraud.  While the story itself has become something of an urban legend, given that the specific Programmer and bank in question are either not named or, if they are, there is disagreement about their identities, the common consensus is that the story probably does have some basis in fact.  Even if it doesn't, most authorities agree that this type of activity would definitely be fraudulent and illegal if it did occur.  The practice has even been given a name; "salami slicing".


But if taking the fractions of cents that result from rounding, which don't actually belong to anyone and which no-one is going to miss, is fraudulent, how then can the government justify rounding up a fractional tax amount to a full cent and keeping the difference?  Isn't that the same thing?


As is often the case, it appears that different rules apply to government as opposed to the citizenry.  Ironically, salami, being a grocery item, is not taxable, at least not in Ontario.

You Are So Loved

I wasn't going to blog about the shooting of corporal Nathan Cirillo, who was gunned down as he guarded the cenotaph at the National War Memorial, not far from the Parliament Hill, on October 22, because I don't see the point in writing about something that everybody else is already writing about, unless I feel that I have something unique to contribute.  But I was especially touched by a story that I read about an Ottawa lawyer who stopped to help the dying soldier, particularly by the words that she spoke to him.

As originally reported by the Canadian Press, Ottawa Lawyer Barbara Winters was on her way to a meeting when she heard the gunshots and she ran to help. A small group of people were already gathered around the dying soldier when she got there.

Winters could see that Cirillo was still alive, though badly wounded, and she began to talk to him, telling him "You're a good man, you're a brave man."  As Winters continued working with the group of people trying to save Cirillo, she continued talking to him, saying "You are loved.  You're family loves you.  You're a good man ... Your family loves you.  Your parents are so proud of you.  All the people here, we're working so hard for you.  Everybody loves you ... We're all trying to help you."

As I thought about these words, I realized that they had a two-fold purpose.  For one thing, they gave the dying soldier a reason to hold on and try to resist death.  It is commonly believed that those who want to live have a much better chance of surviving critical injury or illness than those who give up and resign themselves to the inevitability of death.  Winters' words reassured Cirillo that he was loved and cared for, and they reminded him that there were people who needed him and depended on him.

Sadly, neither Winters' words of encouragement nor the medical assistance provided by those who tried to save Cirillo prevailed, and he ultimately succumbed to death.  And yet, the words were not spoken in vain.  If I must die (as we all eventually must, some day) the end of my life would certainly be made immeasurably easier to bear, if the last words I hear could be such as these; "You are a good man.  We all want to help you.  You are loved."

Canada: Land of the Rolling Rims

It's mid February in Canada, and that means that we Canadians are at the start of that special time of year that transcends the boundaries of race, creed and colour and unites us all by virtue of that one unbreakable bond that all Canadians share.  Yes, tomorrow marks the dawn of Canada's annual Roll Up the Rim season.

For any non-Canadians who may stumble upon this post and scratch their heads, wondering just what exactly a "Roll Up the Rim" season is, allow me to explain.  Roll Up the Rim is a contest, of sorts, held by Tim Horton's, a Canadian donut franchise, which begins every year around mid February (the contest, not the franchise).  It's affectionately known as "Rrrroll Up the Rrrrim", owing to a long-running advertising campaign in which some guy with a really bad fake Scottish accent makes a point of really rrrolling those "Rrrrr's" every time he says the contest name, although neither the contest, Tim Horton's nor Canada itself (excepting the province of Nova Scotia) are in any way Scot-related.

Roll Up the Rim gets its name from the paper cups in which Tim Horton's coffee is served.  Their rims are rolled up into a rounded lip.  During Roll Up the Rim, Tim Horton's patrons are given special cups which may or may not have a prize hidden under that rolled-up paper lip.  Roll Up the Rim cups are marked with a brightly-coloured arrow that indicates roughly what part of the paper lip the alleged prize may or may not be hiding under although, in my experience, the arrow is a wide approximation at best.  The contest runs until the end of April, or until the prize cups run out; whichever comes first.  In fact, around mid April, Canadians are known to drive hundreds of miles out of their way, looking for those last few Tim Horton's restaurants that still have Roll Up the Rim cups.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of eager Canadians, having finished their coffees or teas, eagerly roll up the paper rim of their cups in the place indicated by the arrow, hoping to find one of several fabulous prizes which could include an SUV, a gas grille, a laptop computer, money, Tim Horton's gift cards or, more likely, maybe a free coffee or donut or, the most prolific of the prizes, the ubiquitous "Please Play Again" (or, for those who didn't quite interpret the yellow arrow correctly, "...ay Again").  Just how Tim Horton's manages to hide an entire SUV inside a rolled-up paper rim is a carefully-guarded technology secret, right up there with how Cadbury gets the caramel inside their Caramilk bars.

Non-Canadians may understandably wonder why all the fuss over a silly contest.  To tell you the truth, I've often wondered myself.  I personally have never known anyone, even indirectly, who has won a prize of any significance and the paper rims aren't exactly easy to roll up with your thumbs.  A lot of people use their teeth and it's for this reason that Tim Horton's employees aren't even allowed to handle the prize-winning rims when customers redeems them.  Instead, they present a plastic container for the customer to drop (or possibly spit) the paper fragment into.

But I don't exaggerate when I say that Roll Up the Rim has become a cultural phenomenon.  Sure, lots of franchises have lots of different contests, offering lots of different prizes, but Roll Up the Rim is the only one I've seen that has people comparing their winnings around the office water cooler on a daily basis, and even has radio DJ's publicly keeping score on the air of who among them has won the most free coffees so far. The elated reactions I've seen coming from people who have managed to win a free coffee or donut are hardly justified by the prize.  The only comparable phenomenon that I can think of is the jubilation of lottery ticket purchasers who win nothing more than a free ticket; in other words, second opportunity not to win anything.

The Roll Up the Rim phenomenon seems to me an extension of that of the Tim Horton's franchise, which is a Canadian cultural icon in itself.  As a franchise, "Timmy's" enjoys a love affair with Canadians that simply can't be explained logically.  They make a good cup of coffee, although some of their competitors are offering serious contenders in the java department.  Their prices are more or less the same as those of their competitors, except for maybe Starbuck's which appears to cater to those who just don't feel right if they pay less than five bucks for a cup of coffee (Williams is the Canadian answer to that particular franchise). Tim Hortons' flat, plastic coffee lids have been criticized as being loose-fitting and prone to spills, yet they (Tim Horton's) steadfastly refuse to adopt a more spill-proof design.  Although the franchise has tried to expand into the United States, they've never been able to attract the kind of customer loyalty that they see in Canada even though the American franchises offer exactly the same product that the Canadian ones do, all of which reinforces my opinion that Canadians' loyalty to Tim Horton's is culturally driven.

Some years back, when the American donut franchise, Dunkin' Donuts, expanded into Canada, Tim Horton's actually worried enough about the new competition to adopt their box format. The low, wide Dunkin' Donuts box plagiarism that serves as the standard Tim Horton's twelve-donut container today was preceded by a shorter, deeper, shoe-box shaped compartment in which the donuts were lined up on their sides in two rows of six.  They needn't have worried.  The astoundingly apathetic Canadian reaction to the Dunkin' Donuts "invasion" resulted in most of the franchises being torn down as quickly as they were erected. I haven't seen that kind of American butt-kicking by Canadians since we went down there and set the White House on fire back in 1814.  It would be enough to bring a patriotic tear to my eye, if it weren't for the fact that, like most "Canadian" icons, the Tim Horton's franchise is owned by Americans anyway.  But let's not split hairs, eh?

Just Canada

On June 10, 1968, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau gave a speech in which he made the following declaration:

"No one in the society should be entitled to superfluous or luxury goods until the essentials of life are made available to everyone ... Thanks to (Canada's) abundant natural wealth and to the techniques of the industrial era, it no longer seems necessary to trample on one another in the scramble for riches."

Then he went on to expound upon how he felt that a "Just Society", which shares its wealth and its opportunities equally, should operate.

"The Just Society will be one in which all of our people will have the means and the motivation to participate. The Just Society will be one in which personal and political freedom will be more securely ensured than it has ever been in the past. The Just Society will be one in which the rights of
minorities will be safe from the whims of intolerant majorities. The Just Society will one in which those regions and groups which have not fully shared in the country’s affluence will be given a better opportunity. The Just Society will be one where such urban problems as housing and pollution will be attacked through the application of new knowledge and new techniques. The Just Society will be one in which our Indian and Inuit population will be encouraged to assume the full rights of citizenship through policies which will give them both greater responsibility for their own future and more meaningful equality of opportunity. The Just Society will be a united Canada, united because all of its citizens will be actively involved in the development of a country where equality of opportunity is ensured and individuals are permitted to fulfill themselves in the fashion they judge best…

…On the never-ending road to perfect justice we will, in other words, succeed in creating the most humane and compassionate society possible."

I hate to be a Negative Nellie but on this, Canada`s 146th birthday, I fear that, if Mr. Trudeau could see what the country that he lead for 15 years has become today, a mere 13 years after his death, he would turn in his grave.   The present Conservative government has arguably done much to regress Canada, and move it farther away from being the Just Society that Trudeau envisioned.  Let's compare some of the highlights from Mr. Trudeau's vision to today's realities.

"No one in the society should be entitled to superfluous or luxury goods until the essentials of life are made available to everyone."  Proponents of free market capitalism, like the Stephen Harper government, propose that, if they cater to the interest of big business, the wealth generated by that business will "trickle down" to the citizenry in the form of jobs, wages and benefits.  Sadly, this has not been proven in practice.  For over 3 decades, Canada's wealthiest families have been getting wealthier, while the quality of life for the middle class and the poverty-stricken has stagnated or even deteriorated.  And the problem has only worsened since the 2008/2009 financial crisis which was itself triggered by the greed of corporate America.  Thousands are homeless and have to rely on food bank hampers to survive, while the richest among us enjoy extravagant luxuries undreamed of by most.  According to a UNICEF report, Canada ranked only 17th out of 29 of the world's wealthiest nations in combating child poverty and promoting general well-being for children.

"The Just Society will be one in which all of our people will have the means and the motivation to participate."  Voting is, arguably, the most basic and fundamental means of participating for the average citizen.  It is now a matter of record that thousands of would-be voters, most of whom had expressed their intention not to support the Conservative party during pre-election interviews and polls, were misdirected by automated "robocalls" which falsely told them that their polling stations had been changed.  As a result, these people went to the wrong locations to vote and, in many cases, missed their chance to cast their ballots as a result.

One would think that a responsible government, upon learning that this sort of election fraud had been perpetrated, would do everything within its power to find out who had perpetrated the fraud, bring them to justice and put in place measures to ensure that such a thing could not happen again.  Not the Harper government, however.  At first, they attempted to casually dismiss the entire issue, suggesting that the calls were isolated and affected only one or two communities.  When it became evident, upon further investigation, that the problem was much larger and more wide-spread than the Conservatives would have the population believe and six individuals who had received misleading calls went to court asking that the election results in their ridings be overturned as a result, the Harper government and its lawyers employed every tactic at their disposal to block the proceedings and discredit the complainants.

Thanks to funding and support from a non-profit citizens advocacy group known as the Council of Canadians, the case was finally heard in court.  Although the judge who heard the case found no conclusive evidence that any member of the Conservative party was involved in the robocall scandal, he did state the entire affair "strikes at the integrity of the electoral process" and noted that whoever did orchestrate the calls must have "had access to a database of voter information maintained by a political party", the Conservative party of Canada.  So thousands of voters who had indicated that they would not vote Conservative were duped out of casting their ballots by someone who had access to the Conservative party`s voter information database.  Draw your own conclusions.

Incredibly, the Conservative party see these findings as some sort of vindication and, as a result seven Conservative MPs are now seeking $355,000 from the complainants who brought the case to court to cover their legal costs.  Far from encouraging and assisting these citizens in exercising their right to participate in the democratic process, the Harper government has done everything in its power to impede and to undermine them at every turn.

"The Just Society will be one in which personal and political freedom will be more securely ensured than it has ever been in the past."  Although the Harper government seems unwilling to spend any time or money investigating attacks on its citizens' democratic right to vote, it was happy to commit an extra two billion dollars over five years to build and expand prisons so that more people could be thrown in jail, even as statistics showed that the crime rate across the country is falling.  Further, they have imposed draconian minimum sentences for relatively minor offenses such as possession of marijuana and they have proposed legislation to keep those found not criminally responsible for violent crimes due to reasons of mental defect locked up in prisons as opposed to detaining them in institutions where their mental health problems can be more effectively addressed, despite objections from psychiatrists and other mental health experts.  As for citizens abroad, the Conservatives have shown a consistent indifference to the pleas of Canadians who have been imprisoned in foreign countries, the Omar Khadr case being the most high-profile example of this.

"The Just Society will be one in which the rights of minorities will be safe from the whims of intolerant majorities."    The Harper government introduced Bill C-31 which targets refugee claimants, giving the Immigration Minister the power to imprison them, deny them the ability to reunite with family members and strip them of secure legal status.  Refugees have also been made ineligible for receiving basic health care benefits.  Harper's Conservatives also scrapped the Court Challenges Program, which granted legal and financial assistance to minority groups who wanted to challenge government actions that violated their constitutional rights.  Canadian minorities have found the Conservative government to be completely unsympathetic to their needs and concerns.

"The Just Society will be one in which our Indian and Inuit population will be encouraged to assume the full rights of citizenship through policies which will give them both greater responsibility for their own future and more meaningful equality of opportunity".  The Harper government abandoned the 2006 Kelowna Accord which included programs to address aboriginal issues including health, addiction, and youth suicide, among others.  Their C-45 omnibus bill circumvented the Indian Act which was created to protect aboriginal rights, as well as weakening environmental controls, especially with regard to industrial access to waterways.  This lead to the creation of the Idle No More movement.

Under Stephen Harper, Canada has abandoned any pretence at environmental stewardship.  She has focused on punishing, rather than rehabilitating those convicted of breaking the law.  She has closed her doors to refugees seeking asylum and respite from other, less prosperous and/or democratic  countries, and denied basic health care to those who have already taken refuge inside of her borders.  Her government, contrary to its original promise of increased  openness and transparency, has become the most secretive, clandestine government in Canada`s history, hiding policy changes that affect every single Canadian inside of massive "omnibus" budgets, making deals and passing bills with minimal consultation with either Canadian citizens or even Parliament, and gutting institutions like Statistics Canada, so that Canadians find it harder than ever to understand what kind of quality of life they enjoy and how that quality of life compares with those of other nations.  When uncomfortable questions were asked, they prorogued Parliament, shutting down any further discussion.  When Canadians' democratic right to vote was undermined, they first dismissed the issue, then tried to obstruct those who would investigate what happened and, finally, punished ordinary citizens who came forward in defence of their rights.

Canadians spent 141 years building a society that was world renowned for its tolerance, fairness, compassion, generosity, environmental responsibility and commitment to peace.  In just six years, Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have eroded many of the rights and freedoms that Canadians hold dear and soiled Canada`s reputation and status on the international stage.  I can only cling to my belief that Stephen Harper and his Conservatives do not, in fact, represent the majority of Canadians and to the hope that, come the next federal election, my fellow citizens will take back their country and set her back on the path to once again becoming a Just Society.

The Boot Falls Silent

"Stompin' Tom" Connors, a bona fide Canadian icon, has passed away.  This will likely mean very little to most people outside of Canada.  However millions of Canadians who grew up hearing his folksy, uniquely Canadian songs have lost one of their favorite ambassadors.

Connors was an unlikely legend; a foster child who ventured out onto Canada's highways and byways on his own at the tender age of 14.  Legend has it that he found himself in a bar one evening, just a nickel short of the price of a beer.  As he had his guitar with him, the bartender offered to give him a beer in exchange for playing a song for the patrons.  Connors agreed, and that one song grew into a 13-month contract to entertain at the establishment.

First and foremost, Connors was a staunch Canadian patriot who loved his country as much as he did his music and who sang about the everyman and the things that make Canada, Canada; from Bud the spud from the bright red mud (Prince Edward Island potatoes) to Lester the Lobster (again from P.E.I.) to nickel miners letting their hair down on a Sudbury Saturday Night and, of course, the Good Old Hockey Game.

I recently attended a local OHL game between the Kitchener Rangers and the Owen Sound Attack.  Near the end of the third period, the arena speakers blasted Stompin' Tom's "Hockey Song".  As they did so, I heard a young girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, directly behind me, happily singing along at the top of her voice:

OH!  The good old hockey GAAAAME!
It's the BEST game you can NAAAAME!
And the best game you can NAAAAME!
Is the good old hockey GAME!  OH!.....

I can offer no better evidence of Stompin' Tom's wide appeal to everyday Canadians from all walks of life than the sound of that girl, young enough to be his great-granddaughter, belting out his seminal song with a huge smile, revelling in all that's best about being Canadian.

There Will Never Be An Arrow

The Canadian Conservative government's decision to choose Grumman Northrop's F-35 joint strike fighter as the (recently reinstated as "Royal") Canadian Air Force's next-generation combat aircraft has been controversial, to say the least.  Many have criticized the aircraft as being too costly and, more importantly, unsuited to the Canadian air force's needs.  Combine that with the the ongoing technical problems that Northrop is having with the aircraft, it's apparent failure to meet projected performance specifications thus far and the fact that production and delivery are well behind schedule and there is arguably cause for concern.  So it didn't come as much of a surprise when I read in the news this past week that a Canadian group has suggested that an alternative aircraft should be considered.  What did come as a surprise is that the proposed alternative was the CF-105 Avro Arrow.

In case you're one of the approximately three people on the planet who have never heard of the Avro Arrow, I'll recap very briefly here by explaining that the Arrow was a next-generation long-range interceptor designed and built for the Royal Canadian Air Force by the now-defunct Avro Aircraft Company back in the nineteen-fifties.  It was generations ahead of its time and boasted performance not thought possible during that era so, after pouring millions of dollars into R&D and successfully building five viable, flying prototypes, the Conservative government of the day took the next logical step (in their minds, at least) and canceled the program entirely, masterfully decimating an industry, writing off all the money spent on the program to that date, to say nothing of the potential revenue from sales to foreign interests, destroying Avro Aircraft along with the jobs of all of its employees and opening the sluice gates for Canada's best and brightest engineers and technicians to be flushed southward across the Canadian/American border where they were immediately scooped up by American organizations such as Rockwell, Boeing and NASA.

All that notwithstanding, and as big an aviation buff and admirer of the Avro Arrow as I am, my initial reaction was still to chuckle when I first read the headline announcing the suggestion to reinstate it.  I mean, seriously?  Return to 1959 aviation technology?  Sure it was advanced for its time, but the electronics ran on vacuum tubes for crying out loud!  Surely this was the pipe dream of some Arrow fan-boy club.

As I read the article, I learned that my so-called "fan-boy club" included a company called Bourdeau Industries and the likes of retired Major General Lewis MacKenzie, one of Canada's top soldiers, and the group wasn't by any means suggesting that Canada rebuild the Arrow as it was (we couldn't anyway, since all plans, blueprints, drawings and technical documentation were destroyed along with the five aircraft that were built).  No, they were suggesting a new, modern aircraft, based on the Arrow design; a 21st-century Arrow, if you will.  As I read on, my chuckling stopped and gradually morphed into an unbroken chant of "DO-IT-DO-IT-DO-IT-DO-IT-DO-IT...." 

Now, as much as I would love to see the Arrow rise out of its own ashes, like the proverbial Phoenix, I know that it will never, ever happen in a million, billion years.  Why not?  One word; politics.  If Stephen Harper's Conservative government were to actually entertain the idea, it would be tantamount to simultaneously admitting that:

a) Their 1950's Conservative forefathers made a huge mistake in canceling the Arrow program, and...
b) Their support of the F-35 program has been so misguided that a cold war era design is a better fit.

Of course, they might have an interesting "out" if they were to point out that John Diefenbacher's Progressive Conservative party has no direct relationship to Canada's modern Conservative party (which is apparently no longer "progressive").  They could declare that that they, the "New Conservatives" are much more forward-thinking than the "Old Conservatives" and, as such, are bold enough to correct the mistakes of their misguided ancestors, but the Harper government has never been known for that kind of lateral thinking.  So it didn't surprise me at all that their response was that the proposal was "not a viable option" because, apparently, the Arrow wouldn't meet the technical specifications required by the RCAF.

Well, let's look at that claim a little more closely.  I was completely unable to find what the RCAF's technical specifications are (I suppose that the government could credibly offer national security concerns as a reason for not making such information public) so let's go with the next best thing and compare the known performance specs of the two aircraft, side-by-side. 

	Avro Arrow (Source: Arrow Digital Archives)	Grumman Northrop F-35 (Source: GlobalSecurity)
Wingspan	50 ft.	35 ft.
Length	85.5 ft.	50.5 - 51 ft.
Weight (Empty)	43,960 lbs	22,500 - 26,500 lbs.
Weight (Max. Take-off)	62,430 lbs.	50,000 - 60,000 lbs.
Engine(s)	Flown: 2 Pratt & Whitney J-75 turbofans rated at 23,450 lbs. thrust each Planned: 2 Orenda Iroquois PS.13 turbojets rated at 26,000 lbs. each	1 F135 Pratt & Whitney turbofan  or 1 F136 GE turbofan Both rated at 35,000 - 40,000 lbs thrust
Cruising Speed	701 mph (mach 1.06)	Unknown
Max. Speed	1,312 mph (mach 1.98)	1,200 mph (mach 1.5 - 1.8)
Climbing Speed (0 - 50,000 ft)	4 min., 24 sec.	Unknown
Operational Ceiling	58,500	Unknown

Those are the basics.  I could give a lot more technical details but I won't bore you with them.  The above comparison doesn't tell us much, especially since several of the F-35's specs are either classified or just undetermined.  The F-35 is a smaller and lighter aircraft than the Arrow, making it a smaller target for enemies, but then the Arrow wasn't designed to be a dogfighter; it was meant to intercept bombers.  Also, the Arrow's large size and weight can probably be mostly attributed to the lack of solid-state electronics in its time.  I'm sure a redesigned, modern Arrow could be significantly smaller and lighter.

Individually, the Arrow's engines put out less thrust than the F-35's, even if you compare the never-tried Orenda Iroquois engine.  However, the Arrow featured two engines whose combined thrust would exceed that of the F-35's single power plant, and that manifests itself in the Arrow's superior maximum speed, even using the inferior J-75 engines which were installed in the prototypes.  Also, it has long been argued that Canadian military aircraft need the security of a second engine in case one fails, due to the extreme conditions in the northern latitudes in which they are often required to operate.

In fairness, it should be noted that the F-35 is designed to be a stealth aircraft whereas the Arrow was decidedly not.  However, stealth properties are much more useful for attack aircraft which need to cross enemy borders without being detected and Canada has traditionally played the role of defender, not aggressor.  Again, the Arrow wasn't designed to go and bomb other nations; it was designed to keep them from bombing us.

None of the above addresses the additional prestige, jobs, talent and economic stimulus that would come from reviving a home-grown aircraft industry as opposed to buying something built outside of Canadian borders.

The Arrow program was canceled, ostensibly due to cost overruns, according to the federal government of the day, although there has been much speculation that this wasn't the true reason.  However, if we accept that at face value, our present-day Conservatives should be hard-pressed to support the F-35 purchase, given that both Canada's auditor general and parliamentary budget officer have projected the cost of that aircraft to be almost twice the original figure reported by the federal government.

In 1979, the CBC released a documentary film about the Avro Arrow and its eventual cancellation entitled, "There Never Was An Arrow".  Based on the Harper government's off-hand dismissal of the interesting proposal to revive the program, it's clear that there will never be an Arrow; not as long as Conservative politicians have any say in the matter, anyway.

Penniless

While all the world has been wringing its hands over the dire financial straits of Greece, Spain and Italy, no-one foresaw Canada's recent shocking announcement that the country would soon be penniless. 

Ha-ha-ha!  I refer, of course, to the Canadian government's recent decision to stop minting pennies.  This is a subject that has been under discussion for several years now.  The hard fact is that Canadian pennies now cost more to mint than they're actually worth.  From that point of view, it makes perfect sense to stop minting them.

But it causes problems, doesn't it?  How do sellers of anything justify charging $24.99 for an item when it will soon be theoretically impossible to pay ninety-nine cents?  Do we start rounding all of our prices to the nearest nickel?  But wait; what happens when we apply the 13% tax (if you combine the 5% GST with the 8% Ontario provincial sales tax)?  Suddenly a $10.00 item costs $10.13.  D'oh!

Of course, the difficulty only arises if we try to pay with real, hard currency.  If we use our credit cards or pay by debit or write a cheque we can still pay any dollar fraction that we like, which once again underscores an observation made by myself in an earlier post that money is, after all, only conceptual.  My employer doesn't hand me a wad of bills every two weeks; they just hand me a pay stub and the balance in my bank account increases.  Then I write cheques or pay by debit or via on-line transactions and the balance in my bank account decreases.  Why stop at the penny?  Why not just do away with cash entirely?

I can suggest a two-fold answer to my own question.  First of all, because not everyone has embraced the digital age just yet.  Some people still like to pay with cash now and again, and I even know of some retailers that still don't accept debit.  The second reason is because, if we really did do away with cash, it wouldn't be a great leap for people to start realizing that our entire system of trade, one of the foundations of human society, is built on a fantasy.  It's all just numbers in the computers, with nothing of substance behind it.  And that realization would destroy the foundation upon which the whole system is built and bring it crashing down around our ears, all because Canada decided that pennies weren't worth minting any longer.

How To Save Money Harper Style

Someone once said that a consultant is someone who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch and bills you.  Whoever said that must have had experience with consulting firms like the one recently hired by the Canadian government.

Global News reported this past week that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's conservative government is paying consulting firm Deloitte Inc. the sum of $90,000 per day to ... are you ready for this? ... advise them about how to save money.

Okay, let's get the obvious sarcastic retort out of the way.  "You want to save money?  Here's an idea; stop paying consulting firms $90,000 per day!"  Whew!  I feel better now.

The opening paragraph of the news story reads "The Harper government defended paying almost $90,000 a day to a big consulting firm for advice on how to save money, saying it can't do the job properly by itself."  Apparently not.  That has to be the most self-validating statement of all time!

All sarcasm aside, let's grant that there may be some validity to the concept of spending money in order to save money.  Ninety thousand dollars a day is an awful lot of money to spend.  That's $450,000 a week, $1.8 million a month.  What value will the Harper government be getting for this money?  What will Deloitte be doing that's worth $90,000 a day?  Writing reports?  It had better be some report!  What are the odds that Deloitte would have accepted the contract had they been offered $45,000 per day, or even $10,000 per day?  That's still pretty good revenue by most business standards.  How did the Harper government and Deloitte arrive at $90,000 per day?  Did the conservatives approach any other consulting firms?  Was there any sort of tender or competition?

Until recently, the Harper government had a knowledgeable, experienced consultant who provided many sensible suggestions for cutting waste and saving money.  Her name was Sheila Fraser.  She was Canada's Auditor General up until her recent retirement and, while she was no doubt well-paid, I suspect she didn't make anywhere near $90,000 a day.  Unfortunately, the Harper government chose to ignore pretty much everything she ever suggested.

I wonder what will happen should the ultimate irony unfold and Deloitte advises the Harper government not to throw away $30 billion for stealth fighter jets that aren't even suited to the Canadian Forces' requirements, or that there's no need to spend $4.4 billion on expanding prisons when stats show that the crime rate is diminishing, and there is no evidence that longer incarcerations are any sort of deterrent to the criminals that are out there.  Both of these projects are near and dear to the conservatives' hearts, and they've clung to them stubbornly despite strong public opposition and hard data showing both to be questionable initiatives at best.  What if their expensive new consultants agree that these are bad, financially wasteful ideas?

I started this post with a quote.  I'll end it with another from George Bernard Shaw who said "Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."  The Harper government has validated that observation as well.

O Canada

Today is Canada Day.

Although I was born in Austria, I grew up in Canada, having immigrated at the tender age of three, and I consider myself to be a Canadian, proudly and unashamedly so. And so, to honour my adopted homeland on her 144th birthday, I offer the following list of reasons why it's great to be Canadian.

1. Smarties, Crispy Crunch and Coffee Crisp are three of the finest chocolate bars (not "candy bars") in the world. All are easily found in Canada and none are available in the U.S.A. For that matter, Americans seem confused about their chocolate bars in general. Their Mars bar, which was also completely unavailable from 2002 until just last year, includes peanuts. Canadian Mars bars have been peanut-free since 2006. The U.S. Snickers bar is actually closer in its ingredients to the Canadian Mars bar, albeit not as sweet, but it is decidedly different from the Canadian Snickers bar, which is closer to the U.S. 3 Musketeers bar. And don't get me started about Kinder Surprise Eggs. Not only are they not available in the U.S.A., they're actively prohibited, having apparently been classified as weapons of mass nougat!


2. The Canadian football field is both longer and wider than its American counterpart (110 yards long by 65 yards wide) and yet Canadian teams have only three downs to cover ten yards rather than four, meaning that Canadian football players are probably generally more fit than their American cousins, since they have to cover more distance in less time. Our balls are bigger as well, as is the regulation pigskin.


3. Baseball, the "Great American Game" is actually Canadian. One of the earliest recorded games that bore a closer resemblance to modern baseball than to the U.K.'s Cricket or Rounders was played in Beachville, Ontario in 1838, a full seven years before Abner Doubleday supposedly invented the sport in 1845. Mind you, there were five bases (called "byes" at the time) as opposed to three (there's that Canadian penchant for doing everything bigger again) but the game was clearly an ancestor of modern baseball.


4. As long as we're appropriating long-standing icons of American culture, apple pie was originally an English dessert and, as Canada maintains closer cultural ties with the U.K. than does America, I maintain that apple pie is much more Canadian than it is American.


5. No matter what our cultural, political or philosophical differences, be we anglophone or francophone, Christian or Muslim, male or female, black or white, rich or poor, there is one thing about which all Canadians can agree, and that is Tim Horton's Donuts. "Timmy's" is the institution which bonds and unites all Canadians. It's not just a place to get our morning wake-up jolt of java. We meet there socially. We commune there. We discuss sports, politics, family and the economy there. In 2001, Krispy Kreme Donuts made an aggressive move into Canada. Speculation was rife as to whether Tim Horton's might actually be facing some serious competition. Even Tim Horton's itself showed early signs of nervousness as they switched their traditional "shoe box" container, which used to hold a dozen of their donuts, to a wider, shallower box designed to imitate Krispy Kreme's. Today, of the 18 Krispy Kreme stores that opened in Canada, out of 32 planned, 4 remain. Tim Horton's never even broke a sweat.


6. Music. Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Anne Murray, Bryan Adams, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Neil Young, Rush, Trooper, Celine Dion, Ian Thomas, Carol Pope, Shania Twain, the Rankins, Gino Vannelli, Bruce Cockburn ... the list goes on. Canadian musicians and singers rank right up there among the world's finest, and they have to work about ten times as hard as their American counterparts to get exposure. As Ian Thomas once quipped, being a Canadian performer means never quitting your day job.


7. While Americans were still whuppin' slaves, Canada was smuggling them out of the U.S. and welcoming them as citizens.


8. Canadian kids can play road hockey on ice skates.


9. Only a Canadian can take a pack of canines that are capable of killing and devouring a full-grown human being in under three minutes and get them to pull him and his belongings through the snow on a sled.


10. Canadian strip joints have no compulsory G-string law.


11. Canadian inventions include snowmobiles, jet-skis, velcro, zippers, insulin, penicillin, zambonis, the telephone and short wave radios.


12. Our currency, which some Americans ridicule as "Monopoly money", is a lot harder to counterfeit than American currency.


13. Our elections are always resolved within a day.


14. Canada boasts the only French-speaking soldiers who never surrendered to Germany, or anyone else for that matter.


15. Finally, those Americans who today look upon Canada as their "poor cousin" have obviously forgotten the war of 1812, when Canadians sacked Washington DC and burned down the White House, then left. We weren't really invading you see; we were just making a point. America had pissed us off by attacking Toronto (known as York at the time) so we went down there, gave them a good bitch-slapping, and went back home to finish the Eaton Center, which was still under construction at the time.

Canadians are a mild-mannered bunch. We don't toot our own horns. We just do what we do and let everyone else get on with their own lives. "Live and let live" is the Canadian way. We may have our quirks, but I can't think of any other country in which I'd rather live.

Happy 144th, Canada!

Paddle To The Sea

One of Canada's cultural treasures, in this Canadian's humble opinion, is the National Film Board (or, for those francophone Canadians out there, the Office National du Film). The NFB/ONF was first established in 1939, its goal being “….to make and distribute films across the country that were designed to help Canadians everywhere in Canada understand the problems and way of life of Canadians in other parts of the country.” Since that time, the NFB/ONF has made over 13,000 films, most of them short (running for 30 minutes or less) including documentaries, educational films, animated shorts and their famous "vignettes". NFB/ONF films tend to have a uniquely Canadian flavour and perspective.

I recently discovered that the NFB/ONF hosts its own web site, where one can view (for free) and download or purchase (relatively cheaply) most of the titles in the prodigious NFB/ONF collection. Among my personal favorites are "The Sweater", Sheldon Cohen's animated version of Roche Carrier's classic short story about his boyhood idolization of the Montreal Canadiens and Maurice "The Rocket" Richard in particular (charmingly narrated by Carrier himself in his heavy francophone accent) and "Paddle To The Sea".

I first saw "Paddle To The Sea" in elementary school, when my teacher played it for the class as an educational film intended to teach us about the great lakes and the St. Lawrence seaway. Paddle To The Sea is the name given to a wooden carving of an aboriginal Canadian in a traditional birch canoe. He is hand-whittled by a young boy who lives in the Nipigon country on the northern shore of Lake Superior. This talented young boy wants to see the ocean, but can't, so he carves "Paddle" to make the journey in his stead. Paddle does eventually reach the ocean, but not before evading or overcoming a number of obstacles, as one might imagine, including being beached, beset by seagulls, a snake and all manner of aquatic wildlife including a young child who fancies him an excellent toy, getting frozen in an ice-covered lake and almost being puréed by the propeller screws of several very large ships.

This film appealed to my boyhood self on several levels and therefore made an indelible impression and sparked a lasting fondness that finally resulted in my happily paying to download it and add it to my personal video collection these many years later. For one thing, I was filled with admiration at the craftsmanship with which Paddle was carved and painted, since making miniatures (albeit plastic model kits in my case) was a favorite hobby of my own in those days. Oh how I would have loved to add something like Paddle to my collection of display pieces! And herein lay the second source of my fascination with the story. Had I actually the talent to create such a carving myself, I'm sure that I could never have parted with it, consigning my long hours of painstaking work to the whims of the currents and the tides, never to know for certain whatever became of it or, indeed, whether it actually reached its destination.

The whole concept of tossing a canoe into the water and then simply following its progress to see what becomes of it without actually intervening in any manner was equally intriguing to me. I've noted before in this blog that I seem to have this unusual fascination with just sitting and watching things unfold of their own accord.

A small creek ran parallel to the street where I lived during my pre-adolescent years and, after watching "Paddle To The Sea", I'd often go there and toss all manner of items into the water, wondering how far or to where they would drift. I'd often see them snag on a tree branch or clump of grass or stone before travelling even ten yards. Oh well. "A thousand mile journey begins with a single step" someone once said. A pity they didn't mention that it often ends there as well.

This leads me to the one thing about this film that really sparked my incredulity. When I tossed things into the creek, I would at least watch the start of their journeys, wanting some idea as to whether they got anywhere at all. However, the young boy who made Paddle To The Sea doesn't do that. He doesn't even put him in the water! He simply perches him at the top of a snow bank, and leaves him to sit there until the spring thaw sends him into the river. In other words, he can't even be sure whether Paddle's journey ever began! Oh, certainly he could return in the springtime to find Paddle gone, but this doesn't necessarily mean that he made it to the river. Some other person or animal might have come upon him and simply carried him away. To summarize, then, this young boy spent countless hours, painstakingly carving and painting this beautiful miniature brave in a birch canoe, then took it to the river bank, set it in the snow and walked away, hoping that it might somehow find its way to the ocean.

And I thought that I was an optimist!

U.S. Customs Confiscates Bird's Egg

I'm surprised that not one newspaper thought of that headline. I'm referring, of course, to the recent confrontation between the U.S. Customs service and Canadian Lind Bird, after a random search of her car, as she attempted to cross the border into the United States, uncovered dangerous contraband.

Was it weapons? No.

A bio hazard? No.

Terrorist propaganda? No.

The Yusuf Islam record collection? No.

It was (insert strident orchestral chords here) a Kinder Surprise Egg.

For those who don't know (and who haven't yet clicked on the above link), Kinder Surprise Eggs are chocolate eggs which contain a two-piece plastic container that opens to reveal a tiny toy. A television ad produced by the treat's Italian manufacturer, Ferrero, sums it up nicely. Kinder Surprise Eggs combine three of a child's favorite things; candy (chocolate), a surprise and a toy. Some of the toys are quite imaginative and many require assembly. I've often been fascinated by some of the engaging novelty items that Ferrero has managed to cram into their diminutive treats. In fact, they've become collectors' items in their own right.


What fascinates me most about the chocolate eggs is that their outer shell is regular, brown milk chocolate, but the inside of the candy shell, once you crack it open, is white chocolate. How do they do that? It's the grandest mystery since Cadbury's Caramilk bar!

Unfortunately, the U.S. Customs service does not share my admiration of Ferrero's creativity. They seized the candy as illegal contraband, and advised its would-be "smuggler" that she could have been fined up to $300 for trying to take it across the border. Apparently, Kinder Surprise Eggs have been banned in the U.S. because they've been deemed to present a choking hazard to small children.


Now, let me begin by acknowledging my agreement that the tiny toys that come out of these chocolate eggs can, indeed, pose a choking hazard to small children. So can lots of other things. Gum balls, pens, coins, flash memory sticks, paper clips, bottle caps, key fobs, laser pointers, nail clippers... I could go on, but you get the idea. Is U.S. Customs going to start fining people hundreds of dollars for taking any of the above across the border?


Okay, so let's grant that Kinder Surprise Eggs are specifically targeted toward children whereas most of those other items are not and, as such, they may have a higher probability of winding up in the hands (or mouth) of an unsuspecting youngster. But nobody said that Bird had any plans to give the offending treat to a minor. Maybe she was planning to eat it herself. Some grown-ups like them too you know. (I know I do!) In any case, she was clearly unaware that the seemingly harmless eggs were banned in the States and therefore had no knowledge or intent of any wrong-doing. Given that, a $300 fine seems just a bit of an overreaction.


Seems the U.S. Customs service is pretty serious about keeping these malevolent threats out of the U.S. of A. though. This isn't the first time they've stopped one at the border. Officials boast that they've seized over 25,000 of the treats in over 2,000 separate seizures. Well anyway, now we know what they're so busy doing while boxcutter-wielding maniacs stroll unimpeded across their borders.


In a fine display of bureaucratic flare, the United States government has since sent Bird a seven-page letter formally asking her permission to destroy the seized Kinder Surprise Egg. Now, I admit that I have a predilection toward verbosity, but even I would be hard-pressed to fill seven pages asking for permission to destroy a chocolate egg. Maybe they listed all of the possible means of destruction that they would not use; you know, just to reassure the egg's former owner that its final destruction would be humane, painless and quick.


I wonder what the black market price for Kinder Surprise Eggs is in the U.S.? It probably dwarfs even that of other Canadian confections that you can't get south of the border, such as Crispy Crunch, Coffee Crisp and Smarties (which, incidentally, might also present a choking hazard).

Money Matters: Part 3

I recently speculated that we may someday witness the end of money, as electronic commerce seems to be increasingly replacing the exchange of physical cash. Within a week of that post, I read this news article announcing that Passport Canada has stopped accepting cash. The article, which features a photograph of Santa Claus trying to purchase a Canadian passport with a $50 bill, reports that Passport Canada has decided to stop accepting Canadian currency as payment for the passports which it issues. The agency apparently wants to reduce the risk of theft by preventing its employees from handling cash. Apparently, screening potential employees so that only honest ones are hired is too much trouble.

If I may digress for a moment, I would also like to point out here that this issue pretty much settles the on-going dispute over Arctic sovereignty between Canada, Russia and sundry less important nations. Everyone knows that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. If he wants to purchase a Canadian passport, he clearly considers himself a Canadian citizen, which makes the North Pole and surrounding territory Canadian soil (or ice, as it were).

Moving toward the other extreme, I came across an editorial article, still more recently, written by a young woman who prefers paying with cash over plastic (credit or debit) cards because it helps her to budget by making her more conscious of her dwindling savings. The author further notes that an increasing number of restaurants are apparently no longer accepting plastic cards because of the built-in transaction fees. It seems even the legendary Bob Dylan refused to allow promoters of a recent show that he gave in California to sell tickets, insisting that all tickets be purchased at the door and that "E-e-e-verybody must pay cash" (to paraphrase one of his better-known lyrical phrases). Of course, this policy does generate a slight risk of a repeat of the tragedy at the infamous 1979 Who concert during which several fans were trampled in the mad rush for seats but, hey, far be it from me to ask Bob Dylan to compromise his principles. Better men than I have tried and failed, I can assure you.

Finally, if that still wasn't "out there" enough, there's the curious story of Mark Boyle, "The Moneyless Man". As incredible as it may seem, Boyle has managed to live without earning or spending a red cent since 2008. He lives in a trailer that was given to him for free, he grows or barters for his food, he uses a solar shower and even makes his own paper. He's written a book about the experience and how he managed it, entitled "The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living" (a title with a delicious double-entendre - er, was that "Freakonomic" living, Mark?) According to Mark, he's never been happier and has no plans to return to a dependency on money. Now, I don't like to question another's motivations but Mark's surname, and his accent in the accompanying YouTube video, suggest that he's of Scottish descent, and we all know about the Scotts' notorious reputation for frugality!


But seriously, I feel nothing but admiration and awe for Boyle, a man who has proven that my idealistic fantasy of a moneyless world could be a reality if only there were more people like him.

Turn The Page

On this Remembrance Day (Veteran's Day if you're in the U.S.) I'm going to do something uncharacteristic and surrender the spotlight to those much more eloquent than I. First, I offer this excellent article by Dr. Gwynne Dyer. This and many other insightful articles are available on Dr. Dyer's web site, but I have re-posted the text here on my blog with his kind permission.

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Turn The Page

By Gwynne Dyer

Two years ago this month (July, 2007), there were twenty-four left. Now they are all gone, and there is nobody alive who fought in the First World War. Well, there is still Jack Babcock, who joined the Royal Canadian Regiment in 1917 but got no closer to the fighting than England, and American veteran Frank Buckles, who drove an ambulance in France as a 17-year-old in 1918. But the last real combatant, Harry Patch, who was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, died on Saturday (July 25).

They’ve been going fast. Erich Kaestner, the last German veteran, died in January, 2008. Tony Pierro, who fought with the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1918, died in February. Lazare Ponticelli, the last of the generation of French men who fought in the trenches, died a month later. (One-third of French males who were between 13 and 30 in 1914 did not survive the war.)

Yakup Satar, who joined the Turkish army in 1915 and fought in Iraq, died in April, 2008. Delfino Borroni, the last Italian veteran, died in October. Australia’s last veteran, Jack Ross, died last month (June, 2009), and Henry Allingham, the grandest old man of all, died a week ago (July, 2009).

Henry Allingham was almost twenty in 1916 when he took part in the Battle of Jutland, the last and greatest clash of armoured steel battleships. (He saw the giant shells “skipping off the water.”) As a mechanic in the Royal Naval Air Service, he flew missions over the freezing North Sea in 1917 in seaplanes that he described as “motorised kites.” And he spent 1918 in France trying to recover British planes that came down in No Man’s Land.

"We were moving forward at night,” he recalled about the Western Front. “It was dark... I fell into a shell hole. It was full of arms, legs, ears, dead rats - a lot of dead, rotten flesh... I lay there in the dark, not daring to move, cold and with my uniform stinking. I was frightened." Sixty million men had the same memories, but they are no longer with us.

Harry Patch was an apprentice plumber when he was conscripted in 1916, and nineteen years old when he arrived at the Western Front in 1917. He lasted four months before a German shell burst overhead, killing three close friends and wounding him in the groin. He was evacuated to England, and never saw the war again.

He married in 1918, had children, followed his trade of plumbing, and served as a volunteer fireman during the bombing raids on Bristol during the Second World War. He died on Saturday (July 25), at the age of 111. So what have Harry Patch of Somerset and his sixty million comrades (for it no longer matters which side they were on) left behind for us?

One thing they would have been quite clear about: we can’t do this any more. In the First World War we crossed a threshold. All the advances in science and technology came together and created a kind of industrialised warfare that is simply unsustainable in human terms. It consumes soldiers, civilians, whole cities at a rate that endangers civilisation itself.

All the technological innovations that have been added since the First World War – armoured divisions, bomber fleets, nuclear weapons – only deepen the lesson, they don’t change it. Human beings have fought wars since we were all hunter-gatherers, and those who were good at it tended to prosper. Now, if you are really good at war, you will be destroyed.

Europe is just where industrialised total war first appeared. You can send expeditionary forces into the weaker parts of what we used to call the Third World and bash them to your heart’s content, but if you get into a serious fight with another fully industrialised country, you will be both be destroyed. (This is a lesson that emerging industrial countries like India, China and Brazil can learn cheaply from history, or very expensively from experience.)

What else did the sixty million leave us? Inscribed on the wall of the chapel at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where I taught “war studies” as a much younger man, is the first line of Horace’s poem, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:” How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country. But we don’t believe that lie any more.

Wilfred Owen was killed crossing the Sambre canal a week before the war ended. He never got any older than 25, but he put the wisdom that the millions bought with their lives into his poem “Dulce et decorum est.” It’s about a poison gas attack, and the last lines run: If you could hear..the blood come gargling from the froth- corrupted lungs....My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

It’s almost a century now since anybody but fascists and fools saw war as glorious. The government may tell us that our “glorious dead” have “fallen”, but we know that they were only teenagers, and that they died in agony and lost all the rest of their lives. Sometimes we even worry about the fact that we have sent them to kill people for us.

In 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres, Harry Patch was manning his machine-gun when a German got close enough that he looked like a real person – and suddenly Harry realised that he didn’t want to kill him. Shouldn’t kill him, in fact. He shot the German in the shoulder, which made him drop his rifle, but he kept coming.

So Harry shot him again, first above the knee and then in the ankle. God knows if the German survived all this, but at least Harry was trying. So are the rest of us. Most of the time.

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I have nothing more profound to add to that, so I'll leave you with this beautiful Remembrance Day video by Terry Kelly.