Two links really stand out for me today. One is a Macleans article on social conservatism in Canada, and their under the radar efforts to transform Canadian society into what I see as a narrow-minded, mean-spirited theocracy, basically a clone of the U.S.

The second link is to an editorial in the New York Times, highlighting the budgetary struggles in American state after American state, and how they are affecting the population, especially the young.

I would love to set up a trade – Canada could take the young from the U.S. who see no hope our future there, and in return send down the Canadian social conservatives who would feel much more comfortable in a society where Fox News is the most popular news channel, and reality is seen as a leftist plot.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Today I went downtown to pick up my new passport. I had last been in the passport office on the 29th of January to submit my application. Although I had to pay extra for expedited processing (needed for a trip to New Jersey tomorrow) the passport was done in about 10 days. This was my third passport, and each time the process has been faster and more streamlined. Everyone passport office employee I’ve dealt with has been very pleasant and helpful.

During the current spat of TTC (Toronto Transit Commission) incidents and complaints, a number of people have said “What else would you expect from unionized government employees but laziness and a sense of entitlement?” as if any other kind of behaviour would be impossible.

Well, the Passport office proves that being staffed by unionized government employees doesn’t mean that “Service with a Snarl” is inevitable., so i don’t buy the concept that the TTC cannot improve as long as a government and a union are involved.

Instead of treating the hapless TTC rider as their common enemy, both management and employees of this troubled organization need to stop pointing fingers.

Unless they’re in front of a mirror.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

For the last little while, even on nights when I get sleep, I have not been feeling very awake for much of the day, and my energy level is pretty low. Also, my wife tells me that I am snoring loudly at night, in a pattern that sounds like sleep apnea to her. At her gentle and loving prodding, I agreed to call my doctor for an appointment.

I called my doctor two weeks ago, to arrange an appointment; I could have been seen in less than a week, but since I was out of the country last week, I had to wait until this week to get an appointment; I certainly didn’t have to wait for months on end. After asking me about the symptoms, he said he would need to arrange a sleep study (basically you go to a special clinic where they wire you like a Christmas tree, in a strange bed, then tell you to go to sleep, ha!). He sent in his referral form, and arrangements are being made.

No copies, no credit check, nothing. For laughs, I looked up what it could cost me in the U.S., and I was filled with relief to be in Canada.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

It’s Monday morning in Montreal, and shortly I’ll be getting on a train and heading home to Toronto, after having attended Podcamp Montreal 2009 (an amazing event!!).

This in itself is sort of an ironic statement, as technically Montreal is my home town, and I only moved to Toronto (via Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Waterloo, Ontario) when I was in University. I haven’t actually lived in Montreal since 1968 when I was 6 years old.

Almost all the relatives I had in Montreal have either passed on, or moved away. I don’t know my way around the city, (how many six year-olds are allowed to wander around large cities?), there is nothing that ties me here except a birth certificate. I love the city, its atmosphere, its history and culture, its energy, but it is not home. I love coming here, but I always feel a bit sad, or at least wistful when I do.

What really strikes home though is that it is not just a chronological separation; the Montreal of my childhood no longer exists (and this is a good thing). As a Montreal Anglophone,  I was a child of the “Deux Solitudes” era, where the English language assumed a predominance disproportionate to the number of native speakers; one just assumed that wherever you went, you didn’t have to speak French to function. There was certainly no shortage of arrogance in that regard. For the most part, my parents had English friends, as did I. We lived in a linguistic enclave.

Fast forward to 2009. I was struck by the Montreal Anglophones attending the conference: to a person it seemed, they were able to flip over into French at the drop of a hat. The Francophones as well of course were able to go back and forth with ease. I took French in high school, and first year university, but that was a long time ago, and it is hard to blow the dust off of it every couple of years.

I tried fumbling through in my halting French, and felt a sense of shame that as a Canadian I didn’t have a better command of both official languages. To see a group of perfectly bilingual people, brought together by a common interest, able to share discourse is either language is for me a Canadian ideal.

And now I turn my gaze to Toronto, where a numerical majority of its residents were not born in Canada. One hears so many languages on her streets, and while I know a few words in Greek, Italian and Russian, I certainly cannot converse in these languages, and I feel poorer for it.

If social media is all about communication, then to assume that as an English speaker I can sit back and let others translate their thoughts into English is to merely repeat the mistakes of my generation, and previous generations, and we will all be the lesser for it.

I will try to do better.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

I had a conversation with a customer at work today; a first generation immigrant from Romania; she mentioned that she would frequently shop at a Russian store. I mentioned that I thought that was interesting, given that people of Romanian origin would not have fond memories of Soviet era domination and repression. She replied that she, and others like her, were able to leave that behind when coming to live in Canada.

She then went on to mention that she and her husband, of Pakistani origin, had friends of Indian origin. When they had these friends over for a visit recently, their friends remarked that this kind of socializing would be difficult, and perhaps dangerous, in India or Pakistan. She then remarked that they also had Jewish and Muslim friends who were also able to maintain a friendship, despite the most recent troubles in the Middle East.

After the conversation, I sat and reflected on how incredibly lucky I am to live in this country, and in this city. We’re certainly nowhere near perfect when it comes to cross-cultural relations, but this kind of story fills me with optimism. Canada may not be a “nation-state” in the traditional sense, and we often worry about what Canadian culture is, or if it even exists. But maybe, our culture (or what it could be ideally) is not defined in an ethnic sense, but rather an attitudinal sense, about celebrating diversity in a positive sense, and transcending bloody conflicts, long-held bitternesses, and lingering resentment.

We don’t always achieve this goal, but what a wonderful goal by which to define our country.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

As everyone in Canada knows (and perhaps a few outside the country might know), Canada is in the middle of a huge political crisis. It is quite likely that the Conservative government, just elected a few weeks ago, will be defeated next Monday, by a coalition of opposition parties. The war of words is intense, and feelings are running hot.

However, here’s the good news:

• the army hasn’t been called out.
• people haven’t been arrested for exercising free speech
• no one is shooting any weapons, and no buildings are getting blown up as a result of this crisis
• no foreign troops have come in to “liberate” us

Let’s keep in mind how incredibly lucky we still are. I hope the people in power, whoever they end up being, remember that as well.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Canada

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

In September of 2008, Oxford Canada, producer of the very successful Canadian Oxford Dictionary, closed its Canadian Dictionary division. Among the people put out of work as a result were a couple of very talented people I know. Apparently, the reason for closing the division is that Oxford is seeing the writing on the wall for printed dictionaries, in the face of free online alternatives. Printed reference materials are being seen as less and less relevant in today’s digital-everything culture, and Oxford sees no future in this business.

If I compare this situation to the auto industry, the only difference I see is that of scale, and the number of people directly affected. Apart from that, the auto sector is just another industry trying to hang on in the face of a changing economic, technological and environmental realities. Except this industry, mired in a crisis of its own making, is still showing its sense of exceptionalism and entitlement as it goes to the taxpayer, asking for still more money. The dictionary makers didn’t ask for a blank cheque.

There are those who say the auto industry is too large to be “allowed to fail.” Or is it too large to be held accountable, and be forced to adapt and innovate to changing conditions? 99% of all the species that have ever lived on this planet are extinct, and similarly, there are many, many businesses and occupations that have either become extinct, or transformed themselves into something almost unrecognizable in order to survive. In either case, it happened without government handouts.

Like it or not, the age of the automobile is drawing to a close. It might not happen tomorrow, but I believe it is inevitable. Whether by a growing consciousness of what the car does to the environment,  or the practical reality of dwindling affordability, the car will become less and less mainstream. It began as the “rich man’s plaything” and I suspect it will end that way as well. An yet, we are being asked to finance a continued delusion that this industry can cantinue under an essentially unchanged business model.

In the Second World War, whole industries were able to retool and convert seemingly overnight into producing new and different items required for the war effort. Is it not time for the auto industry to do the same? Public transit, enhanced rail transport, green energy…. there is no shortage of potential industries where success could await. There will of course be pain and sacrifice required, but bailing out the auto industry now will only forstall (and in the long run compound and prolong) the pain and sacrifice.

If we could do it sixty or more years ago, why can’t we do it today? Instead of producing the weaponry of war, we could be producing the foundation of our future on this planet.

If we only have the courage.

Technorati Tags: Automobile, Industry, Bailout

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Although I’m only 46 (OK, I will be 47 on Nov. 16th), Remembrance Day is one of those times where I feel my age. When I started Grade One in 1968, there were plenty of First World War veterans alive; in fact the youngest of them were not much older than retirement age. At the Ottawa cenotaph ceremony, the Silver Cross Mother (the mother of a fallen soldier) was typically the mother of a Second World War soldier. World War II veterans were numerous, and still in the prime of life.

Now, forty years later, World War I combat experience has passed from living memory. The absolute youngest of our World War II combat veterans are in their 80’s, with most older. It won’t be that long before World War II passes from living memory as well. And while sadly the war in Afghanistan is responsible for a new number of dead Canadian soldiers, I fear what may happen as the years pass.

It is important for Canadians to know the history of these conflicts, for good or for ill, from a Canadian perspective. And by history I don’t mean reveling in the memory of victory, but rather thinking upon sacrifice, loss, suffering, and the horror of war. I do not believe that Canada is a warlike nation, but there are nations, industries and political groups who profit from war, see it as a natural, unavoidable reality of existence, and believe the glory and worth of nations is measured by their ability to inflict death on others.

This glorified view of war unfortunately permeates the main stream media, and I always thought that seeing veterans, and hearing their stories, served as a vital counterbalance. When there are no veterans left, when the last soldier is gone, when the history of war is morphed into romantic legend to serve the interests of a few, who will stand up and say “I was there — let me tell you what war is like”?

Technorati Tags: War, Canada, RemembranceDay

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

Thursday and Friday of this week I was at a training session on conducting business across borders with people of many cultures, countries and backgrounds. Before the class began on Thursday morning, the instructor handed out the manual, and a book he had written on the subject. I decided to flip through the book first.

To understand what I write next, you must remember that I am a Canadian living in Toronto: the book was written from a completely American point of view, based on what I saw in the table of contents. I then decided to check out the index at the back of the book to see where Canada had been mentioned; there were three entries, and I looked them up; in each case, the mention of Canada had just been in passing, in a single sentence.

We are the largest trading partner of the U.S. (a fact which comes as a surprise to many, if not most Americans), and yet the author, who presents himself as an expert on cultural sensitivity,  shows himself as yet another example of a U.S. resident who feels there is no difference between Americans and Canadians. Thus, his credibility was destroyed, even before he started the class.

Does one laugh, cry or scream?

 Tags: Canada, USA

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

A week ago at this time I was immersed in Podcasters Across Border (PAB) 2008. There have been a lot of thoughtful and positive discussion about the event, and my brain is still processing it, so I don’t have anything to add, except the following video, shot at the event with a Flip Video camera that I won

Here’s the video link – embedding is screwy today, sorry.

Tag: PAB2008

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post