A few footprints on Passmore Avenue

I was at loose ends this weekend, and at one point decided just to drive out to Rouge Park at the far upper east end of Scarborough to see what I could see. I hadn't done anything with my infrared camera for several weeks, so I decided to bring it with me, along with my standard S80.

At one point, I passed a little stump of a street I remembered from the map. It was called Passmore Avenue. I decided to drive down it and see it if emptied onto one of the little streams. The ironic thing was, I didn't realize I was actually fulfilling an old goal of mine from pouring over my old maps, which show, at very stages of completion, Passmore Avenue's course. At one time, it ran almost completely across the entirety of Scarborough, about a half a kilometre south of Steeles Avenue, parallel to it. In fact, a map book produced by Metro Toronto in about 1970 shows Passmore as complete across the city, except for one gap where it does not cross the concession cut by the Little Rouge River. Otherwise, it spanned Scarborough... at least according to that map. It's my intention to check that with the aerial photos at the City Archives... stay tuned, if you care.

Today, Passmore Avenue is largely erased, from the maps, from the land. It still exists as a few discontinuous segments, and as part of other streets that have assumed parts of its course. Large stretches where it once was, at least on the map, are now empty. As I took these photos, I hadn't made the mental connection yet. It wasn't till I was on my way home, coming down Pharmacy Avenue and passing Gordon Baker Road and Glendinning Avenue, and a noticed a store with the name "Passmore Variety" (or some such) on the Glendinning side. That's when it struck me... Gordon Baker and Glendinning were once part of Passmore Avenue... the same street you'll see below, but at the other extreme of Scarborough.

But as I began my trip, still ignorant of what I was actually exploring, I parked just past a few rural homes, and stepped out onto a part of the road that is no longer really amenable to traffic...

City In the Cedar Trees

And so it has come to this. Israel, in its arrogance, has blindly cast a punitive net so wide, so inhumanely indiscriminate, as to murder a family of visiting Canadians who could not possibly have had the slightest connection to the struggle with Palestinian guerrillas. This is not to forget the attack on thousands and thousands of ordinary people in Lebanon who, whether there may or may not be love lost between them and Israel, have never themselves lifted a finger to do it harm. And yet, Israel takes a page from history, reads it backwards, and creates of Beirut its own Lidice and Ležáky, effectively elevating their own captured soldiers to the role of spiritual heirs of Nazi overlord Reinhard Heydrich, for whose death those two Czech villages were slaughtered. But isn’t this the sort of vicious, callous, arbitrary murder which reputedly characterizes “the terrorists” and marks them as “different” from “civilized” nations (24 Canadians died on 9/11, after all...)? If so, then why are seven innocent Canadian tourists (not to mention hundreds of Lebanese civilians) dead at the hands of a supposedly civilized nation, which they never did harm, and who had no control whatsoever over those who did?

Congratulations, Israel. Your transformation is complete. You have become what you beheld, and you are despicable.

Some (Dis)Enchanted Evening

Let me start off by saying: it's 2006, folks. Debit card payment has been facilitated in Canada for ten years now. If you're not on Interac yet, get on. If you take credit cards, you have no excuse not to take direct payments.

Every so often I end up in a bar or a restaurant that doesn't have Interac. It's not that common anymore, but it's still common enough to be a pain in the ass. I'm not in the habit of carrying cash around. Cash gets lost. Cash gets stolen. But if I lose my bank card, the odds that anyone's going to guess my pin number and clean me out before I can call my bank are slim to nil. I've lost $20 bills any number of times in my life, but I've never lost my bank card. It's how I pay for things.

This weekend, a buddy and I went to a great-looking bar in the east end. It's one he's wanted to go to for a while, and pointed out to me recently. I suggested going downtown to see The Road to Guantanamo and then patronizing the place afterwards. It's a five-storey building with roof access, and we were keen to hoist a brew or two in the sunset... a rare enough privilege in a country with this climate.

First of all, we couldn't get to the roof. It was full. But we were told there'd be a short wait. In the meantime, we sat on the patio and placed our order: a pitcher, and I decided to eat while I was there... they offered an inexpensive plate of curried chicken, so I opted for that. Before we'd finished half a pint, the seater came and told us something had opened up on the roof. But we'd have to pay our bill first. Okay, here's an aside. Folks, again, it's 2006. Moving people from a waiting area to a dining area is hardly the new style. If your table managing software is so DOS-era that it can't transfer a running tab from table A7 to table C23, then wiggle it on down to Radio Shack and spend $200 to get some that goddamn can.

But anyway, this is where the fun began. First of all, it took our waitress about 20 minutes and three requests by the seater to finally show up with the bill we shouldn't have had to pay yet in the first place, leaving us hostage and unable to move upstairs [note to the waitress: did the tip seem a little light? Yeah, now you know why]. Then when we did get it, since my friend wasn't planning on eating yet, but we were likely to order another pitcher, I said I'd take care of the bill. Brought it to the waitress. I said, "I'd like to use Interac to pay this."

"Oh, I don't have Interac."

"You don't?"

"No, but I do have an ATM just over there..."

"...Uh huh. And what does it charge for withdrawals?"

"Two dollars, I think."

"Uh huh. Two bucks, huh?"

Okay. This sticks in my craw. Big time. First of all, it's two bucks just to get your own fucking money. Secondly, my own bank looks at this and goes, "Ah ha, this is warrants a service charge! $1.50!" So in the end, I'm out $3.50 just to settle up. THAT'S FUCKING BULLSHIT. Folks, I'm doing YOU the favour when I walk into your bar (as opposed to his bar, her bar, that guy's bar). And you're going to charge me a fee for the privilege of paying my bill and giving your staff a tip?? Don't shit me; you and the ATM company split that $2, and then my bank bends me over the ATM and gets sloppy seconds on top of it. I don't know what it costs a bar per customer to have Interac on site, but I'm sure it's not three dollars and fifty cents! If it's more than a quarter, I'd be surprised. Fine, you want to add a quarter to my bill, I can live with that. Two bucks? Kiss my Royal Canadian ass. Besides, with Interac, you've got the money. Now. Instantly. You're earning interest on it before the door hits me in the fanny on the way out. You don't have to roll it, you don't have to count it, you don't have to pay Brinks to swing by and put it on a big truck. So what's the big problem with you luddites who won't install Interac?

Nice bar. Poor service. Insulting customer relations. Don't expect to see me back.

Pearl Harbor II: stupid ideas from clever people

The buzz is that Japan is considering a pre-emptive strike on North Korea. Pardon me, but isn't that what they did in 1941? At least this time they've had the courtesy to float the idea in public.

Kim Il-Jung is a whack job by just about anyone's estimation. But let's put things in perspective here. All North Korea's done is test the military capacity of some of its boosters. Yeah, they have a point to make, sure. But isn't that the idea whenever a country tests a new weapons system? It seems to me the idea is, universally, to tell everyone else "this is what I can do, don't mess with me". North Korea didn't attack Japan, didn't kill a single Japanese soldier or civilian. The response of the Japanese to do just that to Koreans is utterly indefensible — particularly considering their recent history (more on this in a moment). If demonstrating offensive military capacity is all the excuse you need to actually attack someone, then perhaps the Chinese ought to simply nuke the US carrier groups currently (or at least recently) on maneuvers just outside their territorial limits, and we can get the whole silly era of human stewardship of this planet over with and let the rats have their turn.

Facetious commentary aside, for Japan to attack North Korea would be a vastly stupid undertaking. South Korea is currently seeking reconciliation with the North — if not actual reunification, then at least the normalization of relations and the ability to move goods and maybe even people back and forth without too much trouble. This has already strained South Korea's relations with the United States. Moreover, South Koreans take an increasingly dim view of the ever-tightening relationship between the US and Japan. Given the suffering Koreans enduring under the Japanese within living memory, anything that smacks of the return of a militaristic Japan must be greeted with the most extreme froideur imaginable. And not just by Koreans. The Chinese, too, have horror stories of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Lest we forget (and clearly, the Chinese and Koreans never have), Japan has never apologized for those attrocities, or offered compensation, or even publically acknowledged they took place... to the point of ignoring them in the histories they teach their children. Little wonder young Japanese, with a clean, guilt-free past, can envision a militarily forward Japan in a way young Germans cannot of their own country. And so for Japan to attack North Korea would be the height of short-sighted stupidity, transferring at a stroke the role of Asia's pariah nation from North Korea to Japan. The military ramifications for a China and Korean peninsula given bloody demonstration of Japan's recidivism are frightening to contemplate.

One wonders if there will be "comfort women" this time.

Toronto Lesbian Pride and Gay Pride parades, June 2006