Do every­thing pos­si­ble to make it cheap and easy for any­one under 25 to trav­el in Cana­da. Our present facil­i­ties for back­pack­ers and stu­dent trav­el­ers are woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate. Every young Kore­an, Eston­ian, or Peru­vian who back­packs across Cana­da at the age of 18, and has a good expe­ri­ence, is a future foun­tain­head of invest­ment, trade, pub­lic­i­ty and good­will for this coun­try. This is bread cast upon the waters that will come back five-fold after many days.

Equip a large num­ber of high schools across the coun­try to func­tion as youth trav­el hos­tels in the sum­mer hol­i­days. The tech­niques for oper­at­ing trav­el hos­tels are well estab­lished. It should be made pos­si­ble for any high school, uni­ver­si­ty, or com­mu­ni­ty col­lege stu­dent to stay overnight at a min­i­mal charge in any such hos­tel, any­where in the coun­try. Addi­tion­al trav­el hos­tels should be estab­lished in native reserves, nation­al parks, and in remote wilder­ness areas. Hope­ful­ly, the next gen­er­a­tion will actu­al­ly know our coun­try, and out­grow the pet­ty region­al squab­bling that embar­rass­es us before the rest of the world.

Make it extreme­ly easy for any stu­dent to spend a school term in any oth­er city in the coun­try. Read more »

Ear­li­er in the evening (Aug.2), the CBC Nation­al News cov­ered the very issues I dis­cussed in my last post­ing (Aug.1). I am very pleased, espe­cial­ly because the cam­era work from the ven­er­a­ble ice-break­er Louis Saint-Lau­rent was of fab­u­lous qual­i­ty. The polit­i­cal issues are com­plex. You can’t expect peo­ple to care about them unless they can visu­al­ize the vast, dan­ger­ous, and extra­or­di­nar­i­ly beau­ti­ful land that is at stake. 

Some­one has a poet­ic soul at the CBC. Nunavut is one of those places, like out­er space, that forces even the most phleg­mat­ic per­son to turn to poet­ry. Over a mag­nif­i­cent mon­tage of images from the Pas­sage, they played an old Cana­di­an folk by Stan Rogers:

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The North­west Pas­sage seen from space.

It’s like a piz­za oven out there. Extreme heat and humid­i­ty, which is thank­ful­ly expect­ed to break tomor­row. Hard to find any­one who doubts glob­al warming.

Wash­ing­ton, of course, still pre­tends it isn’t hap­pen­ing. But it has aggres­sive­ly renewed its asser­tions that the North­west Pas­sage is not Cana­di­an ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. Glob­al warm­ing means the ice-bound pas­sage is open­ing up, and will soon become eco­nom­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Canada’s claim to sov­er­eign­ty over the chan­nel through its arc­tic arch­i­pel­ago will even­tu­al­ly become the main source of con­flict between the Unit­ed States and Cana­da. [see my arti­cle from last year on the relat­ed Hans Island controversy].

So I’m pleased that the CBC Nation­al News is being broad­cast, this week, from an ice-break­er going through the Pas­sage. It will draw some pub­lic atten­tion to this issue. Read more »

We con­tin­ue to swel­ter in a long heat­wave, alter­nat­ing with fierce thun­der­storms and tornados.

The news is dom­i­nat­ed by Lebanon. There are, appar­ent­ly, fifty thou­sand Cana­di­an cit­i­zens in Lebanon, and the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment in Cana­da seems to be doing an incom­pe­tent, chaot­ic job of evac­u­at­ing them. It is not the least of the cracks that are start­ing to appear in Stephen Harper’s administration.

Harper’s elec­tion last Christ­mas was one of the worst turns of events in Cana­di­an his­to­ry. The changes that are tak­ing place in the world, cur­rent­ly, are pre­cise­ly those that Harp­er is the least com­pe­tent to deal with. Read more »

Toron­to has been sub­ject to a high­er lev­el of gun-crime this year, large­ly insti­gat­ed by Amer­i­can orga­nized crime mov­ing in. Youth street gangs are being pumped, armed and financed sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly. There was one dra­mat­ic inci­dent, where a teenage girl was killed by gang cross­fire at a major down­town inter­sec­tion, which par­tic­u­lar­ly upset peo­ple. Read more »

Vio­lent storms and tor­na­does (25 of them were count­ed) are cir­cling Toron­to, adding spice to the hot weath­er. I sit here, work­ing to pull out of a finan­cial mias­ma, but the desire to trav­el gnaws at me. . To be back on the move, again, that would be so good. I even find myself play­ing Ian Tyson’s “Four Strong Winds”, the Cana­di­an anthem of wanderlust.

Stampy the Rab­bit is my most fre­quent com­pan­ion. He’s a gor­geous slate-grey breed with fur as fine as a mink. He is noth­ing like the dull rab­bits kept in cages. I let him have free run of the apart­ment, and he lives a life of adven­ture. He is per­fect­ly house­trained, using either of two box­es of wood shav­ings. When I am read­ing on the couch, he will climb onto my chest and beg treats, and he goes into ecstasies when I mas­sage him… but that’s an effect I can cre­ate on many crea­tures, large and small. When on the alert, he will stand on his haunch­es like a gopher, ears alert. There is a mouse some­where in the apart­ment. It is too clever to be caught in any of the traps I’ve set. I think Stampy mon­i­tors his sub­son­ic squeaks. They are build­ing a 44-sto­ry con­do next door to my build­ing. Weird con­struc­tion nois­es and vibra­tions shake the apart­ment in mid-after­noon. I won­der how Stampy inter­prets them?

For many years, I had a cat who would hitch-hike with me. I got lots of rides mere­ly from the appeal of his pok­ing his head out of my back­pack. Think of the effect that a rab­bit would have in the same role! But I don’t think he would take to it. Actu­al­ly, I don’t think I could man­age to get him into a bag with­out a vio­lent strug­gle that would result in bro­ken limbs and fur­ni­ture. Stampy may be gen­tle when he sits on my chest, but he has the heart of six lions and the fierce­ness of a komo­do dragon.

Back to the blog! The last month has been rough, with an over­whelm­ing work­load. But things are eas­ing off.

Cana­da Day, today, and I rode my bike around down­town, aim­less­ly, to enjoy the per­fect weath­er and look at the crowds every­where, pic­nick­ing, lis­ten­ing to con­certs in parks, and gen­er­al­ly enjoy­ing the nation­al hol­i­day. Peo­ple seem to be hap­py. If they are sup­posed to be ter­ri­fied by the dis­cov­ery of a “ter­ror­ist cell” a few weeks ago, they show no sign of it. 

The “ter­ror­ist cell” busi­ness, was seized on by Amer­i­can politi­cians as proof that Cana­da is a “hotbed of ter­ror­ism” because of its “lib­er­al immi­gra­tion laws” (!). But it was tak­en with remark­able calm­ness by the Cana­di­an pub­lic. Most peo­ple could see at a glance that there had nev­er been any sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger. The “cell” con­sist­ed of a hand­ful of extreme­ly stu­pid sub­ur­ban teenagers who would have had dif­fi­cul­ty orga­niz­ing a sur­prise birth­day par­ty, let alone “behead­ing the prime min­is­ter” or blow­ing up sky­scrap­ers in the finan­cial district.

But one of the annoy­ing side-effects was the incred­i­bly stu­pid kind of “jour­nal­ism” that fol­lowed. Was “mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism” to blame? Did it bring Cana­di­an poli­cies of “mul­ti-cul­tur­al­ism” into ques­tion? What non­sense. Read more »