Vimy Ridge

This weekend is the 90th anniversary of Vimy Ridge. It is a significant event in Canadian history because the entire Canadian army fought together for the first time in the War and won one of the few decisive battles in World War I.

I visited the Vimy Memorial when I was in France in 2004. It was quite an experience.

Canuck

As a follow up to my previous post, I also got perfect on the How Canadian Are You? quiz:

You are 100% Canuck!

 

You rock, you are an almighty Canadian through and through. You have proven your worthiness and have won the elite prize of living in a country as awesome as Canada. Yes I know other countries think they are better, but we let them have that cuz we know better than they do, eh?

Why Mississauga is a pluton

Why Mississauga is a pluton is a hilarious editorial about the new planet classification system using lots of analogies about TO.

Another Move From The Bush Playbook?

CTV: PM, press gallery draw battle lines on the Hill

"The Press Gallery at the leadership level has taken an anti-Conservative view," [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] said Wednesday in an interview on A-Channel TV in London, Ont.

He added: "I have trouble believing a Liberal prime minister would have this problem.

The article goes on into great detail about the current squabble between Prime Minister Harper and the Press Gallery who cover him as well as covering a lot of history (all the way back to the 1950s).

Assorted Interesting Articles

• I finished reading The World Is Flat this weekend. I thought it was good book. So I found BBC's brief comparison of China and India (as well as the US), which shows things like GDP, population, literacy, etc. with projections out to 2050, interesting.


• The Chess Olympiad started this weekend in Turin. I can't find any results on the "offical" website, but an Austrian site has a good level of detail - Team Canada Results shows them at 1-1 after 2 rounds and the individual results are given for each round.


• New York Times: Slim Margin Seems to Signal Montenegro's Independence. The EU and Serbia & Montenegro decided to use 55% as their threshold for separation. This reminded me about the whole debate surrounding 50% + 1 during Quebec's last referendum.


• Slashdot has an article Bloggers are the New Plagiarism complaining about bloggers who quote large blocks of text and don't add value. Sometimes I do that [1], but most of the time I do not [2 and 3]. My thinking is that I only quote blocks from the original article, when I think it's an valuable article, but it's from a news article that is likely to disappear (i.e. Checkout all the broken links to the LA Times in [1]). Without a copy of the pertinent parts of the article the post has no context or value. Is that a reasonable rationale?

Information czar blasts Harper's accountability bill

I'd like to think it's a bad sign for Harper when the National Post is calling him out:

Information czar blasts Harper's accountability bill

Canada's information czar unleashed on Friday a scathing attack on proposed access to information reforms, calling them dangerous and disappointing.

"No previous government, since the Access to Information Act came into force in 1983, has put forward a more retrograde and dangerous set of proposals," Information Commissioner John Reid told Parliament Friday.

The bill would make it easier for the government to cover up wrongdoing, he wrote in an emergency report.

...

[I]t also suggests 10 new exemptions to block the release of information.

Eight of them contain no requirement for bureaucrats to demonstrate why records shouldn't be disclosed and contain no public interest overrides.

Reid pointed out there is currently only one such exemption (pertaining to cabinet documents) and "it has been consistently abused."

Draft internal reports and audits would also be shielded from scrutiny for 15 years and records relating to investigations of wrongdoing in government would be sealed forever.

...

In addition, recommendations Reid put forth in a draft bill last year to boost transparency weren't included in the accountability act. He had called for more oversight powers, better record-keeping by bureaucrats and a clamp-down on departments that don't fulfil their obligations, among other suggestions.

The Conservatives promised during the last election campaign to implement them all. Instead, the suggestions were shuffled off to a committee for more discussion.

...

That last bit really is the kicker.

War and Politics

When I lived in Ottawa in 2002, I remember Parliament and the other government buildings lowering their flags to half-mast when Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Stephen Harper, the new Prime Minister, reversed government policy to not lower the flag. Moreover, the media was been banned from covering the repatriation ceremony at CFB Trenton today.

"It is not about photo-ops and media coverage," Harper told the House of Commons.

"It is about what is in the best interests of the families."

The unprecedented shutdown of a military airfield Tuesday for the arrival of four dead soldiers has drawn fire from all sides - including some military families touched by tragedy in Afghanistan.

The father of the late Sgt. Marcel Leger said the public participation in his son's homecoming in 2002 was something he will cherish forever.

"It was a Canadian thing. It was something we wanted to show all Canadians - what the cost of their liberty is," Richard Leger said.

"It's still heartwarming to (remember) the people's faces. People were lined up on the 401, in 2002, all the way from Trenton to Toronto.

"They wanted to be there. They had to be there. I was told that often. . . and those are the things I carry with me all my life."

The father of one of the fallen soldiers being repatriated Tuesday is criticizing the government over another controversial decision - to stop lowering the flags on Parliament Hill to half mast when a soldier is killed in combat.

On April 7, Lincoln Dinning wrote a letter to Harper asking him to reconsider the flag decision. The matter took a tragically personal turn two weeks later when Dinning's son, Cpl. Matthew Dinning, was killed in the line of duty.

The grandmother of Pte. Richard Green, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan four year ago, also wants to see flags lowered.
[Canada.com: MPs, soldiers' families criticize Tory media ban on return of dead ]

Both decisions are drawing lots of criticism. Moreover, they draw parallels to Bush.

In the United States, the Bush administration has been criticized for banning images of the arrival of flag-draped coffins containing the remains of soldiers killed in Iraq.

White House officials imposed the ban out of worry that such photographs would lower public support for the military campaign.
[CBC: Harper on defensive over media ban on return of dead soldiers]

You'd think that emulating Bush would be a bad idea, e.g. Bush's approval ratings slide to new low [CNN], The Generals Revolt [CBS], and The Worst President in History? [Rolling Stone].

Canada

Website aims to educate Americans about Canada [Globe & Mail]:

Oh sure, you hear about how everyone plays hockey in Canada, gets to the rink by dogsled and then goes home to an igloo.

But many myths about Canadians that circulate in the United States aren't nearly so silly or harmless.

...

For the record, I don't own a dogsled or igloo (and, in fact, have never used either). Similarly, I don't know Jimmy, Sally, or Suzy.

Hockey is practically a religion though.

Crossing the Aisle

Being an expatriate, I have a difficult time following the Canadian news. In theory, I could watch the CBC news (as the Vancouver feed is available), but I mostly just rely on finding news articles online.

The post-election defection of David Emerson from the Liberals to the Conservatives seems to be the most topical - just days after running as a Liberal and winning, Emerson abandoned the Liberal Party for a post in Harper's cabinet saying "I am pursuing the very agenda I got involved to pursue when I was in the Liberal party supporting Paul Martin...I thought that would bear more fruit for the people of the riding and the people of the province." [1] As he was expounding the Liberal agenda and slamming Harper and the Conservatives just a few days ago, I fail to see how he could be following his conscience. Similarly, in his riding the vote breakdown was 43% Liberal, 34% NDP, and 20% Conservative, so I don't see how he can claim to be doing this to better represent his constituents.

Another Conservative MP, Garth Turner is proposing legislation that would require MPs to win a by-election before switching parties. (However, they would still have the ability to decide sit an independent). "Anybody who switches parties should go back to the people. To do otherwise is to place politicians above the people when, actually, it’s the other way around." [2] This sounds quite reasonable and logical. (But, I doubt it will even happen, as it's not in the interest of the parties).

Vancouver

I went to Vancouver this weekend with Nabeel. I needed to get some paperwork done at the (US) border and it was a good opportunity to visit Ju-Lian.

The drive there and back was interesting. There is a "stagnant air" severe weather advisory in effect for the area. Consequently, there were many large patches of fog along the way and in (Seattle and) Vancouver. One minute you might have blue skies and, but a few minute's drive lands you in dense fog.

Ju-Lian is doing well. He's working at EA and has bought studio condo. (You know you are getting old when your friends own where they live!). We weren't in Vancouver long, but it was a nice diversion. We stopped by Simon Frasier University briefly, had dinner in downtown Vancouver, and went to see a comedy show on Granville Island.

And now a few random thoughts: (1) The blinking traffic lights in Vancouver are weird and freaky. (2) We found a Tim Horton's and bought some Tim Bits. (3) Su Doku is cool.

Hockey

Canada destroyed Russia 6-1, winning the World Junior Championship. :-)

Canada totally owned the tournament. In 6 games Canada outscored their opponents 41 to 7 (outshooting them 259 to 105).

Canada is now the reigning champion in all the major international hockey tournaments: Men's Olympic Champions (2002), World Cup Champions (2004), World Junior Champions (2005), Men's World Champions (2004), Women's Olympic Champions (2002), Women's World Champions (2004).

Random

Canada won 3-1. :-)

100 things we didn't know this time last year is an interesting article from the BBC. Some highlights:

2. Farmers plant their crops up to three weeks earlier than 15 years ago. In the 1960s, temperatures from January to March averaged 4.2C; it rose to 5.6C in the 1990s.

This is a little distrubing. Especially since some people (e.g. George Bush) are Global Warming deniers.

19. The collective noun for rhinos is "crash".

Better store that one away for future use during Trivial Pursuit.

62. The founder of the Natural History Museum, Sir Richard Owen, was the man we have to thank for the word "dinosaur", literally meaning "terrible lizard".

The Natural History Museum is cool. I was there in May.

68. Bill Clinton revealed in his autobiography that he didn't learn to ride a bike properly until he was 22.

That's just plain funny.

70. And reports of UFOs have dwindled since the late 1990s. In the UK, sightings have gone from about 30 a week to almost zero; it's a trend echoed in the US and Norway.

Whom do you report a UFO siting to, exactly?

No Hockey

The Canada - Russia game is not on TV here. :-( For reference, ESPN is showing billiards, ESPN2 is showing "classic" boxing (aka Mike Tyson from the 1980s), and Classic ESPN has a documentary on about the USS Cole bombing (I have no idea what this has to do with sports; and no I don't have the channel wrong, it has an ESPN in the corner). That's a pretty lame sport lineup.

TSN's website says the score is 1-0 Canada after the first period though. :-)

World Juniors

I'm back in Seattle. I was home for Christmas visiting my family and friends and watching the World Junior Hockey Championship. Canada is having a very good tournament, destroying every team they've meet so far. (7 - 3 over Slovakia, 8 - 1 over Sweden, 9 - 0 over Germany, and 8 - 1 over Finland). They play the Czech Republic tomorrow in the semi-finals.

Sadly, American TV is very lame and it doesn't look like the World Juniors be available on ESPN. It seems they only show occasional games where Team USA is playing. However, the American team is bad and unlikely to advance far enough to meet Canada. :-(

Hockey

Canada won the World Cup! :-)

I haven't really be updating this recently. Work is keeping me busy. I'm moving to a new apartment soon. (Thursday-ish). I need to buy a cellphone. And a bed.

But Canada won the World Cup so (almost) all is good in the World. :-)