Death or Canada

Death or Canada. That's what they called it. P-Doug invited me to come with him to see it, and I remarked to him at the time, half in jest, that had the destination been the US, they probably would have come up with a less gloomy title; one that made the choice sound more palatable, even flattering. Death... or Canada. Well...

Of course, that's being flippant. The documentary, and the book that accompanies it, are actually about the arrival of about 38,000 Famine Irish in Toronto in the summer of 1847. Toronto, at the time, had a population of about 20,000. The documentary makes the point that an equivalent emergency in our own times would imply the introduction of nine or ten million people to this city in one season. And that of those, about a quarter of a million would die of typhus, or the like, in our midst.

It was showing last night at the Bloor Cinema around 7 p.m. There were brief presentations, before and afterward, by some of the people responsible for the film or getting the word about it out. The film itself was the story of the people who chose to flee Ireland for North America, and in particular, the tragic story of the Willis family, who departed as a family of seven, and whose story ended with only the mother surviving. Suddenly the title "Death or Canada" didn't seem like such a strange one to me anymore. Thousands died on the way over, and thousands more in isolation once they arrived. Conditions on the ships were such that one of the presenters said it's less surprising that so many died, as it is that so many actually survived.

It's also the story of colonial reactions to the influx. Some people fled the city for the safety of lodging with rural relatives. But others, doctors, nurses, public officials, and even Toronto's first Catholic bishop, an Irish Nova Scotian named Michael Power, died in the service of the sick and dying, while scores of others risked their lives.

Today, at the foot of Bathurst Street, is Ireland Park, where statues by the Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie greet the new city with the emotions of the long-ago people they represent. Here, in stone quarried in County Kerry, Ireland, they are engraving the (known) names of the 1,100 or so Irish who died on the shores of Lake Ontario... currently about 675, but growing as research brings them to light.

On the way out, I bought the book, and we were all given a free copy of the inaugural issue of Irish Connections Canada (a re-inauguration of The Toronto Irish News, now going nation-wide). The documentary, in all its power and sobering impact, will be shown on The History Network on March 16th, on the eve of St. Patrick's Day.

The presenters included Eamonn O'Loghlin, the editor of Irish Connections Canada; Professor Mark McCowan, who wrote the book the started the project; Robert G. Kearns, Chairman of the Ireland Park Foundation; and two others whose names for the moment escape me, but who I will fill in as soon as I'm able.

N.B. (March 9) Much to my embarrassment, the producer himself has reminded me of the names of the two others on stage that evening. They were Dr. Donald Low of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the film's executive producer, Craig Thompson. I searched for the Doctor's name but most of my searches brought up the name of a SARS doctor here in Toronto who died in the effort to defeat the disease, rightly garnering him much mention (that unfortunately obscured the search for Dr. Low's name). I'd like to thank Mr. Thompson for reminding me of the names I overlooked, and doing so with good grace. :)

Red, white, and natural blue

Red, white, and natural blue, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

I was at the mall the other day to buy a picture frame, and as I came out, I was greeted by the sight of the wind catching the 18' flag flying over the parking lot, trailing out into an absolutely clear blue sky. On a whim, I pulled out the G9, put it on continuous shooting, and shot about three dozen stills of the flag as it did its thing. I think this was the best of the lot. It took nearly no work in Photoshop to get it looking like this; this is nearly how it looked right out of the camera. I added the artsy border in PhotoScape, and posted it.

Best of all, I printed the shot, as treated here, with my new Canon inkjet printer, and the print I got was so beautiful it gave me pause. I couldn't believe I'd gotten such beautiful work out of an off-the-cuff shot and a $99 printer. Though I say it myself, I was struck by just how professional the final effect was.

I've always liked seeing our flag with strong blue. Originally, the flag was supposed to feature blue bars at either end, rather than red, as well as a sprig of three maple leaves (as in the bottom of the shield of the coat of arms)... the design was ridiculed by Red Ensign-favouring traditionalists as "the Pearson Penant", but it led directly to the design that was adopted at the end of 1964, that first flew officially on Feb. 15, 1965... which you see at the top of this post. That said, it wouldn't be my flag now if they changed it (and there are such proposals). It is what it is; I grew up with it the way it is and I wouldn't change a thing. But I wouldn't mind much, either, if we had adopted a flag with blue on one bar, or both, I guess.

Things change

Impressive changes, and weird ones...

Yesterday, I bought a one tetrabyte external hard drive. It cost $129. A little over ten years ago, I remember buying my first gigabyte drive. It was a 1.3G, and it cost me over $300, but it was three times the capacity of my first hard drive from late 1994. This new one has has a volume somewhere between 2000-2500 times that of my first hard drive, and I have a $16 USB pen memory in my wallet with a 1G capacity. It really is astounding to reflect on all that.

That's the impressive change.

I have disks of the Britcom Are You Being Served?, and I like to let them roll sometimes while I'm doing things. Last Friday I had one running while I got ready for work. When I got to work, the paper announced the passing of Wendy Richard, who played Miss Brahms on the show, the young junior working under Mrs. Slocombe. She was 65, and died of breast cancer. Surprisingly, Mollie Sudgen, who played Mrs. Slocombe, survived her, and quite touchingly referred to her as "the daughter I never had" and expressed how much she would miss her.

But what gets me is to have seen her, just that morning, as a woman of about 30, to find her gone a few hours later in her mid-60s. When I was a kid, you knew something was old because it looked old. Photos and TV shows from a few years before my birth on back were all black and white. "Modern" things were in colour. That's what was so weird about it. If you watch Are You Being Served?, the suits people wear don't look different from what's appropriate now. The hair styles go in and out but they're not that different either. They talk about the European Common Market, joke about the Germans, talk about jetting to vacations... the clearest token of the march of time is how many of them talk about World War II in the first person. But otherwise, it does not have a strong air of anachronism. It still feels contemporary, if the cell phones and desktop computers are somehow absent. So it was unsettling to realize that a life had been largely lived in the years since I was a kid till now. I suppose every generation goes through this, but it's an unpleasant realization for each, I expect.

Toothless ideas

I had a car accident once, many years ago, where I ended up upside down in a ditch. The roof of the car was dented in about six inches, and the rear axle was broken. A guy in a utility vehicle came along and stopped to make sure I was alright. Looking the car over, he told me it wasn't so bad; a run through a car wash and no one would know the difference. For years, I held those two ideas in my head side by side. Rear axle broken... ah, but if I could only have rolled it back onto the road and washed the mud off... It was years, literally, before those ideas met in my head, and the illogic of holding them both finally dawned on me. Strange, but true.

The front page of today's Globe and Mail quotes Mishelle Brown, wife of a Canadian warrant officer slain in Afghanistan:

“We may not be able to beat the Taliban. There's lots of things in our life we can't beat. … But do you give up? Do you stop? Absolutely not. One person can't make a difference. But if we band together, we can.”

I feel for her, having lost her husband. But statements like this make no sense. It's like saying "Maybe I can't chew through a brick wall, but will I give up? Heck, no, they're only teeth! If I use all 32, well..." Admitting something's impossible and then turning around and suggesting it's possible anyway is the same kind of thinking I maintained all those years after the car accident. "If we all band together"? What does she think the CAF and the allies have been doing for the past seven and a half years?

I'm sorry, but when facing a wall we can't chew through, or an enemy our own prime minister has admitted we can't defeat, I can think of better uses for our teeth and our country's soldiers than continuing to grind them down till there's blood. Frankly, I thought we were evolving beyond this sort of thinking. How many Vietnams does it take?

Lost ears

Kind of a sad moment of passing. Last Friday, the cleaning crew at work ruined my Koss TD/65 headphones. Somehow, they managed to yank the wire to the left side nearly out, breaking the connection to the speaker inside. I guess it's no big deal, but as I recall, I paid about $90 for them when I bought them, and that was back in the mid-90s. I guess that's the real issue here. I've had them since I was in my 20s, and now they're done. I've brought them with me from job to job to job over the years; the left side had no more retainer and could fall right off the headset; the soft black material that covered the foam has been flaking off and sticking to the sides of my face for years now. But they always worked... till now. So, yesterday when I found that out, I went down to Factory Direct and picked up a couple of pairs of $17 headphones (home and away), and they seem alright. Still, these were good headphones, and I'm going to miss them and the parts of my life they represent.

Canon Pixma MP510

Yesterday, kind of on a whim, I picked up a nice little piece of equipment for not too much money. Business Depot was selling off, at clearance, a nice Canon printer, the Pixma MP510. There are better ones, fancier ones, but this one does most of what I'm after. Two years ago they were selling for around $250 hereabouts, but they were unloading this one for a hundred.

My main motivation was to be able to print photos, since photography's one of my main hobbies. It's never been a big deal to me to be able to print my own shots, and when I wanted to I'd just trot off to Shopper's Drugmart, but something about being able to do it myself really appealed to me. I had to line up there last weekend just to print seven shots, and then stand around for 15 minutes to wait for them... what is this, 1975? So I decided to look around, see what was available.

I have an HP laser printer from about five years ago. It's utterly out of toner, and hard to find the refill for, and when I do (online), it's about a hundred bucks. Couldn't use it to print my photos anyway, but sometimes it's nice to be able to print out things like directions and emails and things, and I've missed that. So it's nice to have the option again.

The printer is also a scanner, which enabled me to retire my old scanner. Combined with that, it came bundled with OCR software that's better than what I had, which is just the ticket.

It's an inkjet printer, not surprisingly since its main job is printing photos. Before I bought it I checked the price of the ink cartridges, and they were reasonably priced at about $22 for the colour ones and about $35 for the black (which is rather larger). Also, it's that more sensible system where you replace the inks separately as they run out, instead of having to replace a whole cartridge because you're out of magenta, while you still have lots of cyan and yellow.

I've printed four photos (one twice, because I printed it on the flat side of the paper rather than the glossy), and I'm pleased with the results. I'd say they're as good as the stuff I was getting out of the machines at Shopper's. All things consided, I don't know if I'm saving money, but I'm not having to go out and stand around and I can work with the photos on the fly to get what I want.

I'll be interested to see how long the inks last, but for now, I think it's a pretty solid score for a c-note.

Blooper reel

Blooper reel
Originally uploaded by Lone Primate

A string of extremely short videos that resulted from me trying to take still pictures while forgetting that the camera was on the video record setting. Enjoy. :)

My new masthead

Do you like it? I made it myself. :) I put it together yesterday out of three other photographs. Two of them were taken at a bend in the East Don River a couple of summers ago and Autostitched together. The other was a carving, on someone's lawn in Orangeville, of a shack built out of a tree stump. I composited them in Photoshop, did some work to blend the saturation and soft focus, faked reflections in the water, etc., etc., and posted it on Flickr. Today it struck me that it's exactly suited to the name of the blog, so I came home and adapted the image for use here.

Well, I think it's cool, anyway. :)

Caesar and Cleopatra

A couple of weeks ago, P-Doug asked me if I'd care to join him in taking in Caesar and Cleopatra at one of the Cineplex theatres in town. Cineplex was showing the play on select screens across Canada on Jan. 31st. I'd never seen a play by George Bernard Shaw, and I'm a fan of most things Roman, so I told him to count me in.

The performance was recorded, before a live audience, at the Stratford Festival last fall (a bit ironic because there's also a Shaw Festival here in Ontario as well). In the central roles were famed thespian Christopher Plummer, and newcomer Nikki M. James. She was playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the same time, sometimes on the same day, which blows my mind.

The theatre we sat in was packed. There couldn't have been an empty seat. It was only the performance's due, of course. I tend to be kind of cynical about our society but I felt proud while I sat there and took in what's really fine and enduring about Western civilization. We should be remembered for works like this, not for things like Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Ah, there I go again... :)

It was thoroughly enjoyable. It took about two and a half hours to show, including a 20-minute intermission, but it didn't feel anything like that long. It was wonderful to see Plummer as Caesar. I'm used to seeing him portrayed as haughty, aristocratic, and asking for what happened to him on the Ides. Shaw's Caesar is more a good-natured man who has come to accept he has this strange, great destiny, and sort of goes with the flow. It's a new way of seeing the man, though I imagine it's overly generous to the true nature of the man. A guy's friends don't tend to inflict two dozen-plus stab wounds to him on the floor of the Senate if he's a regular chuckle-buckets. :) But it was a Caesar I liked.

It was a Caesar Cleopatra liked, too, though historically she apparently liked the real fellow pretty much as well (they had a son together, a fact overlooked in the play — along with the nature of a relationship as gives rise to progeny). But in this telling, Caesar is an old man, and Cleopatra little more than a girl, and a rather foolish and credulous one at that; initially fearful of being eaten by Romans whom she pictures as something akin to one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters. After some initial teasing, Caesar takes her under his wing and prepares her to be a queen indeed. Cleopatra takes to Caesar, but she makes no bones about her real love: the Roman called Mark Antony. The rest is history.

I was impressed with the production, and especially the performances. P-Doug remarked that it's rare for someone as young as James to be able to share a stage with someone like Plummer, but she really was an apt choice to play opposite him. In fact, all the principals were striking and engaging. I'm looking forward to seeing it again when BRAVO! shows it this spring on television... though seeing it on TV won't hold a candle to the larger-than-life aspect of the silver screen.

I think I'll go out by saying the thing I got the biggest kick out of was the figure of Britannus, a Romanized Celt from Britain who serves as one of Caesar's aides-de-camp. For much of the play, his part consists of finding fault with, or taking offense at, the ways of other nations. Caesar repeatedly teases him for it, or apologizes to others for Britannus's remarks. He is frequently referred to as being "from the Islands", the end of the world, and being subject to the conceit that his ways are the only proper and civilized ways. This was clearly Shaw, who was an Irishman by birth, poking gentle fun at the mores and opinions of the British at the end of the Victorian Age. Today one might be tempted to script a similar stuffed tunic and style him Americus... ;)

The original desktop interface

Something I read about at Down the Road today made me think of something I haven't thought about in a long time... years, really.

When I was seventeen, I'd just changed cities and schools. I didn't have any friends handy, and I've never been the outgoing sort who rounds up new ones by the score or something.

It was just the daily drudge of getting up and getting out there. It’s funny how it feels. I’m an adult now and I have to work just to live. Back then I didn’t, but oddly enough, I felt more trapped. Today, I can at least conceivably resign and find another job. But back then, that was the school I was mandated to go to. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t just stay with my friends in another town.

I took French all through high school, right up to grade thirteen. I’m no good at it now but I was stumblingly conversational back then. Anyway, my French class was in one of the portables behind the school. At some point that fall, I noticed someone had scrawled something funny on my desk... someone from another class. I don’t remember what it was now, but it was intriguing enough that I scribbled some comment in reply. Later, there was a reply to mine. And a conversation was struck up.

Now this was in the 80s... a long time before the internet or even BBSes, cellphones and texting. People communicated face-to-face, or at home on dedicated phone lines, or through letters, and that was pretty much it. So this kind of thing, a two-way blind conversation, was rare. Nearly impossible. But this other person and I, united by geography (a common desk) but separated by time (different days sitting in it) managed the kind of thing that’s now so very common in email and chat rooms and forum boards. We forged a conversation, and a kind of friendship, without ever meeting.

After a couple of weeks I wanted to say more than just five or ten words written in pencil on the top of the desk. So I wrote out some stuff on a piece of lined paper, hid it in some of the joinery of the desk, and left instructions on where to find it. The other person did, and did the same. Suddenly we had actual artifacts of one another’s: letters.

Her name was Cheryl. She was a foster child, living in a home with people she didn’t like much (my guess is, she was probably afraid to get close to anyone for fear of the sense of loss when she would inevitably move on). She slowly revealed to me that she was troubled, but I never really did find out about what. We would tell each other of our friends (in my case, the ones I'd left behind) and interests, our hopes for our eventual careers, make fun of the teachers we had in common, and things like that. I can remember how excited I’d be, heading into that class, and what a crushing disappointment it was whenever there wasn’t a reply from her, and how fantastic it was whenever there was. I guess it went on for a couple of months, into the winter. I started talking about meeting up, and then the notes from her kind of tapered off. I got the impression she figured out I was one of the chubby nerds most girls wouldn’t be caught dead with, and that was that. For myself, I held onto those letters for years. I had them till four or five years ago, I think. They were just so magical. Not in what they said; they were kind of boring and shallow (I imagine my own were no better). But for what they represented. An impossible friendship, a happy secret, just a whiff of romance. Eventually, I just got tired of moving them from drawer to drawer... I knew I’d always have the memory of them inside me, so I really didn’t need the plain, sophomoric scribbling themselves anymore, and out they went.

I remember looking her up at the end of the year when the yearbook came out. That, I still have. She was a pretty girl, even tiny in black and white, and easily out of my “league”, as they say. She must have moved on that summer because I don’t remember seeing her in person or in the yearbooks subsequently. God knows where, or who, she is now. I wonder if she thinks back to her own excitement sitting in that desk, reaching under the ordinary wood for those impossible pieces of paper...

Everything old is new again

I had to look it up, but here’s what I know. I bought a second-hand PowerShot G9 early in January last year. Shortly afterwards, in fact, just a week short of a year ago, I sold my PowerShot S80, which I’d carried around for 20 months, to my friend P-Doug for, if memory serves me, $200. That spring, I threw in a spare battery, since he only had the one.

Ever since then, I’ve taken just shy of 10,000 still and moving images with the G9. I’ve dropped it at a basketball game, lost it at a dusky roadside (where it was apparently hit by a passing car) and then found it again after driving half way across the city, and taken it tubing down the Grand River, where its companion, an infrared-reconfigured PowerShot S70, was drenched and cost over $300 to repair. And for all that, I’ve found that I’ve missed the lightness, compactness, and ease of access and control the S80 furnished. And so every so often, I’d look around… eBay, Craigslist…

A couple of weeks ago, I found one being sold on eBay with a starting bid of $35 on it. It was broken – the lens had come open in the guy’s pocket and jammed, leading to the dreaded E18 error that plagues PowerShot cameras. I read up on it to find out what it would cost to repair it, and learned that in such cases, it’s often possible to gently work the lens assembly such that the gears pop back into alignment. So, I bid on it; $51, which raised the bid to $36. The day before the auction ended, someone bid $45, which boosted mine to $46. I decided to hedge my bets and raised my bid to $66. The day the auction ended, a Saturday around noon, I was sitting in the Bishop and the Belcher with P-Doug, keeping an eye on the auction using a wi-fi connection and my little Eee laptop (which I got free from my bank... remember when they used to give you toasters?), refreshing the page every few seconds. With seconds to go, some troll out there bid $52 – which ironically enough would have won it for him if I hadn’t previously raised my limit. In the last six seconds, he gambled I’d bid sixty bucks, and bid $61.05. That raised my bid to $62.05, and he didn’t have time to respond. Screw you, asshole. >:)P

So, for sixty-two bucks US, plus postage, I wrangled… a broken S80. It was a gamble. I hoped I’d be able to overcome the E18 error myself, but if not, I knew a place where I could get the work done. The question was, would it be worth doing? I’d already blown $300 on a camera in the summer I would never have bothered to fix if it weren’t reconditioned to shoot infrared. But, the fellow at the camera shop reckoned it could be fixed for “about $92”… weird number, but that’s what he said. So I felt like one way or the other, it would pay off.

Well, the S80 arrived today, and I started to gently work on the lens assembly. Within a couple of minutes, I heard the “click” while working on the innermost element. I put the battery from my G9 into it, and the S80 sucked the lens assembly back in and then extended it again, and I had a working S80 again. Oh, it sounds rough opening and closing, and I might want to see if there’s something cost-effective they can do about that, but the point is, I got a real bargain. So, after a year, I’m back in the saddle again with an S80.

I’m undecided, just yet, how to handle the issue of the cameras. I don’t hate the G9. It shoots RAW, it does voice recordings, it does better videos than the S80 without the high-pitched whine… but it’s big. Half again as big as the S80. The controls aren’t all gathered to be worked easily with your right thumb. So I’m not sure. I suggested to P-Doug, once I’d won the auction, that I thought maybe the G9 would be my “winter” camera – since I’m not carrying the S70 to shoot infrared much in the winter – and the S80 would be paired with the S70 (as it was in the summer of 2007) to be my “summer” camera(s). I guess we’ll see. Right now, I’m just jazzed to have an S80 again. I honestly don’t know why Canon axed them so quickly; they were only out about eight or nine months – or why they killed off the S line with the S80. An S90, that could shoot RAW (which the S70 can but S80 can’t) and maybe had a bigger, Digimarc III sensor, would have been a big hit, I think.

Imaginary friends, squared

I’m kind of a fan of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, and I’m rewarding myself for a big clean-up this afternoon by indulging in a few episodes. Something’s just occurred to me for the first time as I watch the opening credits. Will we always need writers and animators? With the kind of computing power we have now, and are likely to have as it exponentiates into the future, will it be possible, sometime in a decade or two, to simply set up an artificial word and just watch it? If you can create anything at all, why not a world that behaves by certain set rules, seeded with a few central characters who behave in certain general ways, create a “camera” or first person character though which events are observed, and watch it go? The creators themselves would be as much in the dark as any of the other viewers. These could be cartoons, or quasi-realistic shows, things set in the past, or future, or worlds that never existed. No actors, writers, or directors to pay... pure product, and worlds full of beings who might, in their own way, be as real as you or me... What could be possible?

Kind of like Finnegans Wake

Here’s how it went. I was just coming up to work and I crossed into a snowier lane, and I thought, is this a mistake? It will take me longer to stop. Something in my mind brought up foot-pounds per second per second, which made me think of that scene in The Shining where Jack is raging about hurting Danny. My mind switched gears to metric, and I started thinking, what’s the equivalent? Newton-metres per second per second? And then I remembered Mars Polar Orbiter, which crashed on Mars because some of its instructions were in imperial instead of metric. Then I thought it was disappointing to find out that some people in NASA were still using imperial… it would be almost as startling as seeing someone wandering the halls of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lighting kerosene lamps. Then I looked it up and discovered that it was Lockheed-Martin who sent the instructions in imperial, not the JPL. What a relief. NASA’s rep is saved.

Say g'day, Bobby Rae

Ugh, Rae's baled on us. We now have a choice between a neo-con who has lived in Canada in my lifetime but who thinks budgets are for attacking the opposition, not preserving jobs; a neo-con who hasn't lived in Canada for most of my lifetime but who does believe the government ought to spend money creating jobs -- like boosting production by bombing foreign countries and handing out brass knuckles and rubber hoses to paratroopers and printing up Canadian flags to fold up and hand to wives and mothers in lieu of husbands and sons; and a guy who probably would do something sane to save jobs but is unelectable in most of the country because the people whose lips move while they follow their finger across the page of the various Sun newspapers are convinced he'll put a statue of Uncle Joe Stalin on every street corner if he gets elected (oh, hey, he has a mustache, too!!). We've gone from such hope to such NOTHING in only a week or two.

Pearls before cats

A couple of months ago I decided to surprise my two cats with a few cat toys. One was a catnip mouse, which seems to have disappeared, probably under some furniture. That was sort of an afterthought. The two stars of the show have switched top billing, though.

One is a little robot mouse. It was about fifteen bucks. It can "hear", it can sense when it's touched, and in either case, it launches into this elaborate spiel of wiggling, taunting the cat, flashing lights, and giggling. I thought it was pretty clever and felt sorry for cats in centuries past that such technology was unavailable to them. But my cats aren't impressed. They barely bother with it. I hear it go off every now and then, and I sometimes see them watch it, but they don't engage with it. This is not to say I think no cat would; I'm sure some cats go nuts for it... just not mine. It's silly, but I feel sorry for the little robot mouse, who only "wants" to do his job and entertain the cats. I'm reminded of the robot nanny in the Twilight Zone episode, "I Sing the Body Electric".

On the other hand, there's the feather boa on the stick — which was probably retro when Fred Flintstone was trying to entertain his sabretooth. This is a yard-long string of feathers with a big, birdlike blob of feathers at the end, all on a resin baton. It gives you surprising control over how the thing moves; it's like conducting an orchestra. Well, the cats absolutely love this thing. They'd chase it and clap the air at it and hug it to their bellies for half an hour at a shot if I had the stamina for that. They'll both play with it at the same time, with me waving it back and forth between them. I think the thing was seven dollars, and it's the belle of the ball. It's a bigger hit than the red dot from the pen laser. You just never know.

Like all those kids who ignore the hundred-dollar toy and make a fort out of the box it came in... it must be a mammal thing.

"THIS HOUSE TO LET" or "Democracy Takes a Holiday"

Well, looks like the Governor-General came back to Ottawa, saw her shadow, and predicted six more weeks of Harper. So merry Christmas, Tories... the bills come due at the end of January.


Parliament shut down till Jan. 26
PM obtains Governor-General's consent to prorogue in face of bid to topple his minority government; opposition complains he's 'throwing the locks on' and 'running away'
STEVEN CHASE and BILL CURRY
Globe and Mail Update
December 4, 2008 at 1:36 PM EST

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has obtained Governor-General Michaëlle Jean's consent to temporarily shut down Parliament, a move that allows him to avoid a confidence vote next week that he was expected to lose.

It's a blow for the Liberal-NDP coalition, backed by the separatist Bloc Québécois, that was seeking to replace the minority Conservative government.

The development buys time for Mr. Harper to assemble an economic package that he hopes will discourage the multiparty alliance from taking him down at that time.

Emerging from Rideau Hall after more than two hours, Mr. Harper said Parliament will return on Jan. 26 and the first order of business will be the 2009 budget.

He grudgingly acknowledged he has to make peace with the opposition parties. "Obviously we have to do some trust-building here on both sides."

The Prime Minister said he will spend December and January hammering out the budget. "My work over the next few weeks will be focused almost exclusively on preparing the federal budget."

He added that he hoped the other parties would work with him. "Canadians expect us to get on with this."

Mr. Harper suggested that not all opposition MPs were happy with the coalition that sought to replace him. "I think there are many people in the opposition that were not entirely comfortable with a different path."

The Prime Minister also took time to admonish the Liberals and New Democrats for considering an alliance with the Bloc. In reference to the separatist party, he said: "My Canada includes Quebec, their Quebec does not include Canada."

Standing in the foyer of the House of Commons after Mr. Harper's announcement, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said: "We must realize the enormity of what has happened here today. For the first time in the history of Canada, the Prime Minister of Canada is running away from the Parliament of Canada."

All three opposition leaders said they still intend to bring down the government. Mr. Dion said only a "monumental change" on Mr. Harper's part would alter that.

NDP Leader Jack Layton said the coalition will not be abandoning its accord over the next seven weeks while the Commons is shuttered.

"I cannot have confidence in a Prime Minister who would throw the locks on the door of this place, knowing that he's about to lose a vote in the House of Commons," Mr. Layton said. "That's denying about as fundamental a right as one has in a democracy."

Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe reacted similarly. "We don't believe him and we don't have confidence in him."

The Prime Minister's bid to buy time, however, may work in his favour, with cracks in the coalition already emerging.

Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis wasted no time in calling Mr. Dion to be replaced before the House returns in January. "Who are we kidding? I think it's over," he said, heading into a closed door caucus meeting.

"To become Prime Minister at all costs? Where do we take the Liberal brand? ... The brand got hit. The brand is good. The CEO of the company screwed up."

The Scarborough MP emerged from caucus saying the party supports remaining in the coalition, but Mr. Dion must be replaced. "The party still wants the coalition to keep together. My constituents want Mr. Dion to go."

He said it's time to move the party's leadership race up - a conventon is slated for May - or find some way of making sure it has "a leader who can lead us" if there is an election in February or March.

Mr. Dion's botched video address was a clincher, he said: "We bombed."

Mr. Harper, who was forced to cancel an afternoon appearance in Woodstock, Ont., arrived in a motorcade after traveling literally across the street from his official residence, 24 Sussex Drive.

About 50 demonstrators greeted him as his black vehicle entered the gates of Rideau Hall, most of them cheering on the Prime Minister.

The vast majority appeared to be Tory staffers or Conservative Party members. They were chanting slogans such as "No secret deal!", a reference to the coalition-support agreement by the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Québécois that would oust Mr. Harper and install Mr. Dion in his place.

Demonstrator William McBeath, a staffer for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, said he was rallying in front of Rideau Hall because he believes Mr. Harper has a right to continue governing. He noted the Tory Leader was only elected seven weeks ago.

"The fact now ... a coalition rejected by the voters could take power by allying themselves with the separatists is terribly offensive and I wanted to come out and do something about it."

William Beddoe, an actor, was among the minority of demonstrators rallying in favour of the coalition. He said the Prime Minister in a minority Parliament must demonstrate a willingness to find common ground with rival party leaders.

"I think it's time for Mr. Harper to step aside. I think the Conservatives would do well to find another leader who could engage with the other parties in Parliament and work cooperatively."

Mr. Dion and NDP Leader Jack Layton had hoped to meet Ms. Jean later today to make their case for refusing the Tory bid to prorogue Parliament.

Last night, an unapologetic Prime Minister used a rare televised address to justify his bid to have Ms. Jean temporarily shut down Parliament, railing against separatists whom he says have no legitimate right to backstop a Liberal-NDP coalition.

Mr. Harper's harsh attack risks angering Quebec voters, many of whom have voted for the Bloc Québécois in the past and may resent the suggestion that BQ support is illegitimate.

In the five-minute speech where he referred to "separatists" on four different occasions, Mr. Harper vowed he would use all tools at his disposal to prevent the Conservatives' replacement. He did not, however, use the word "separatist" in the French version of his speech, preferring the less-inflammatory term, "souverainistes."

"At a time like this, a coalition with the separatists cannot help Canada," Mr. Harper said. "And the opposition does not have the democratic right to impose a coalition with the separatists they promised voters would never happen."

Mr. Harper referred only peripherally to his government's role in contributing to the parliamentary crisis that currently engulfs the nation, saying the government has made some changes after criticism raised by the opposition in the wake of last week's fall economic update. He did not, however, apologize for portions of the update that would have eliminated millions in subsidies from political parties and removed the right to strike for civil servants. The government has since pulled both of those items off the table.

"The opposition is attempting to impose this deal without your say, without your consent and without your vote," the Prime Minister said. "This is no time for backroom deals with the separatists."

Political experts have argued, however, that Mr. Harper's attack on the Bloc Québécois may well offend a good number of Quebeckers, many of whom vote BQ.

In his response to the speech, Mr. Dion — who would become prime minister if the government is defeated — did not budge from his party's position that the Conservatives must go, adding that he wrote to Ms. Jean today asking her to refuse Mr. Harper's request to prorogue. He also defended the coalition, saying it will foster collaboration rather than "blind partisan feuding."

He also underlined the fact that he will only be in the prime minister's chair for the short time he is slated to remain Liberal leader. The party will elect a new leader this spring.

Mr. Harper is stepping up efforts to improve his image as a man of action on the economy in tough times, trying to beat back the Liberal-NDP coalition's central accusation that he's taken a stand-pat approach as a recession looms.

Yesterday he announced another round of meetings with premiers and territorial leaders on the economy — Jan. 16 in Ottawa — as well as a federal and provincial finance ministers meeting for Dec. 16 and 17 in Saskatoon.

The Tories maintained their vigorous attack on the coalition's decision to seek formal backing from the Bloc Québécois for its survival in the House. One MP went so far as to accuse the Liberals of treason.

"They've actually written a deal giving the separatists a veto over every decision of the Canadian government," Bob Dechert said. "That is as close to treason and sedition as I can imagine."

However, this line of attack was somewhat blunted by the disclosure of efforts by members of Stockwell Day's Canadian Alliance in 2000 to ink a deal with the Bloc to form a minority coalition. Mr. Day denied knowledge of the proposal, which was made by Gerry Chipeur, a well-known lawyer with Conservative links.

Commenting on documents first released on globeandmail.com, Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe said he was asked to participate at the time in a scheme to propel Mr. Day to power in the event of a minority government.

"This proves that they are now being hypocritical. They pretend that they are outraged, when a good number of them have tried the same thing," Mr. Duceppe told reporters.

Indeed, the Liberals themselves were ready to pounce on the Conservatives in the spring of 2005 after Mr. Harper's party voted unsuccessfully with the Bloc Québécois to try to bring down the Liberals then led by Paul Martin. The Liberals found in focus group testing at the time that BQ participation in government to be abhorrent.

"Most people would actually believe that the Bloc shouldn't be allowed to have seats in Parliament," said David Herle, a former top aide to Mr. Martin.

In his response to the speech, Mr. Layton castigated Mr. Harper for refusing to offer any more details on a stimulus package and said it's time for him to step aside.

"He seems to be more interested in his job than protecting your job," Mr. Layton said.

He appealed to Ms. Jean to take note of the multiparty coalition's readiness to defeat the Tories and take power.

Mr. Duceppe, speaking last night, defended the alliance he signed with the Liberals and the NDP, saying it will reap many benefits for Quebec and urged Mr. Harper to give up avoiding a confidence vote that will surely defeat his government.

"I ask Mr. Harper to let the House of Commons vote, and let us finish off his government. And then, we will be able to focus all our energies against the economic crisis that has fallen upon us."

In Quebec, Premier Jean Charest said after hearing Mr. Harper's televised address that Quebec doesn't need anti-sovereigntist rhetoric from the federal government while it copes with the global economic crisis.

"We must respect the choice that was made democratically by all citizens and all Quebecers," Mr. Charest said as he left a rally in Ste-Marie. "And there are, economically, things to settle. We should focus on that. It is the No. 1 priority. Quebec does not need political instability and rhetoric that divides people."

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell said he was happy to hear a "calmer" tone from the federal political leaders last night, but insisted it is in the best interests of Canadians to let Stephen Harper's government bring in a budget next month.

"There are some serious problems we need to deal with," he told reporters in Victoria. "It is not helpful for us to see this kind of instability in the economic world we live in."

But even if the fall of the government can be avoided, the relationship between the two sides in Parliament appears to have been deeply poisoned.

In the Commons yesterday, Liberal MP Ken Dryden said the Prime Minister broke faith with Parliament in the economic update.

"How do we repair the irreparable?" Mr. Dryden asked. "To the Prime Minister to help him with his answer: Sorry, it is over; we cannot trust him any more. We need a new prime minister."

Meanwhile, the Liberals continued to insist publicly yesterday that they will remain together in support of the coalition although some admitted a few of their MPs are feeling heat from some of their constituents. Still, they believe it would be dangerous to retreat now.

"I don't believe a word the Prime Minister says any more," said Toronto Liberal MP Bob Rae.

Some Liberals, like Senator David Smith, a veteran adviser and election campaign strategist for three Liberal leaders, publicly indicated there is a slim possibility they would back off if Mr. Harper changes course.

GUTLESS

Crazy Canucks

I summed up my feelings on the current political events and last night's speeches in an email in response to a friend this morning...

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I know it's overt cynicism but a pox on all of them.

It's in the best Mercutionan vein, but remember, he died right after he said that. :)

I was, myself, a bit put-off when the proposed coalition became formal on Monday. But there's a good reason for it. Several, really, even without taking into account my personal dislike for the Tories. To condemn MPs for wanting power makes about as much sense as condemning firemen for being wicked, because they only live for fires. In this case, it makes even less sense, because we have one fire company that's sitting on its ass while something important burns down, and a bunch of others are saying, "for God's sake, then, give us the hose!" That's what they're there for. That's their job. That's why we send them to Ottawa. I too enjoy lending my voice to the Choir Cynical — but this is important. This is about what happens to this country in the next couple of years, and may have ramifications for a generation.

I don't dispute it's ugly. But then, that's the point. It should never have gotten to this in the first place. The government has allowed — even forced — things to move in this direction, and I sincerely question Harper's judgment as a result. Someone else — even another Tory — needs to be in that seat now. That's established.


However, to amass a coalition, we are faced with a chimera worthy of Douglas Adam's comic imagination.

That's the nature of coalition governments. We've been spared that realization thanks to the "blessings" of a first-past-the-post electoral system that gives the representatives of roughly 40% of the people on average 100% of the power. In most parliamentary democracies, what we're facing now is not a "constitutional crisis" that has everyone plastering the papers with their dire predictions of doom and woe... it's par for the course every couple of years. We sit back and pat ourselves on the back for our stable, five-year-long benign dictatorships. Well, the only blessing is that they HAVE been so benign. Someone said to me that she hoped this would be the chance for Parliament to put in some sort of proportional representation system, and I'm ready to agree. I'm tired of the arrogance both the Tories and the Grits show when they've had a couple of back-to-back majorities, and I'd like to see a House of Commons where they always always always have to work together to get things done. The last couple of years weren't so bad, till Harper lost his mind last week. Who can ever trust him again?

It'll be interesting to see what happens today. Apparently, Ed Schreyer himself has advised the current GG not to allow the PM to prorogue Parliament, because there's no emergency that would warrant it, and the only reason he's doing it is to avoid submitting to the will of Parliament, which could have negative ramifications for the future if it sets a precedent. I strongly agree with him. I've asked myself would I be feeling this way if the Tories were doing this to the Grits... as they would have liked to have done just a few years ago. In all honesty, I know I'd be pretty sore about it, but I wouldn't be arguing it was damaging to democracy, or illegal, or extraordinary. I know it's none of those things in our system — only rare, in Canada. And to be honest, if it keeps future minority governments in line, if it sinks in for the next Harper, so much the better.

I watched the three speeches last night, and I honestly tried to be objective (you know, I didn't shout rebuttals at the TV like the old man I've been since I was 17). I noticed that Harper made his pitch to the West. He came close to lying about the nature of what was going on — he certainly put an "oh, shit, this is a coup!" spin on things in the first half of his speech. Then he threw a handful of pennies into the crowd about the economy — too little, too late — and then went out on a note SURE to piss off Quebec. Blah blah blah separatists, blah blah blah separatism, blah horns, pitchforks, and fire in Chibougamau, with naked moonlight dances and blood... And I thought, ohh, boy, are you cutting off votre nez to spite your face, Prime Minister. Apparently he used "separatists" in English and softened it to "sovereigntists" in French... but if he thinks Quebec's not going to hear about that this morning, and won't take offense at the idea he's bad-mouthing them to les anglais behind their backs, well, then he's just made another stupid mistake. If he HAD to lie about the Bloc being party to the coalition, instead of agreeing to support it on confidence motions only, he might at least have had the good sense to settle on "sovereigntists" in both languages. Or maybe he's decided to cut Quebec loose and appeal strictly to Cowboy Hat Land from now on.

I'm biased, I know, but I thought Dion made a sensible, unemotional plea for what has to be done. He kept hitting those two notes that resonate right now... jobs, jobs, economy, jobs, economy, economy, jobs... the reasons for action (that, yes, and Harper trying to drown the other parties in the bag of the next election). I thought it was REALLY smart of him to emphasize, a couple of times, that he's on his way out — but that he'll do his best while he's here.

Of the three, I thought Layton was the least polished and slick, and the most sincere. Short of sprinkling his speech with a few "shits" and "fucks", language doesn't get much plainer. The PM screwed up, refused to move on the economy, and used his first mini-budget to attack his opponents. Plain and simple. I have to hand it to him; of all three, I found him the most persuasive, and in his plainness, the most eloquent. He didn't speak TO me, he spoke FOR me.

Canadians for a Progressive Coalition

Sopranos Toronto

"sappletown" on YouTube has put up a Toronto version of the opening from the Sopranos. It's fun to watch, especially if you're familiar with the geography of the city. :)