Up in Ontario

Understanding Politics in Canada

It may be that the single option left for serious writers is to avoid irony and the big questions altogether and concentrate instead on re-evaluating in a sober and modest manner the simple words we use every day. —John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion, 1994

Right Wing

• Political (chickenhawk): popularly known as a 'conservative,' though currently not in the traditional Lockian sense, closer to the tradition of Hobbes.

  Rhetorical keywords: values (family, traditional, big box), strong (military, decisions, property rights), tough (decisions, conditions, punishment), freedom (to choose, to transfer inheritances, to create monopolies, to collude, of capital).

  Golden calves: the level playing field, the individual, tax cuts, tariff-free trade, inheritance, hiring the darkies to do the work in the back.

  Nemises: the welfare state, (un)employment insurance, universal healthcare.

  Boogymen: Loony left, pinkos, reds, commies, Pierre Trudeau.

• Sports (hockey): A big strong kid, not afraid to go into the corners, not afraid to drop the gloves when he has to, with some scoring upside and good puck sense.

  Example: Cam Neely.

• Political (socialist): popularly known as a 'liberal,' though currently not in a classical sense Rousseau would recognize, closer to northern and western European social democracy.

  Rhetorical keywords: rights (human, civil, my, to negotiate), equality (of sexes, of orientations), tolerance (race, creed, religion, origin, of diversity).

  Golden Calves: universal healthcare, freedom to organize, public education.

  Nemises: privatization, social darwinism, political correctness.

  Boogymen: capitalist pigs, economic fascists, flintskins, robber barons, the Fraser Institute.
  
  

• Sports (hockey): A good skater who you can trust to be accountable in his own end, hits the net with his shot and gets it away fast, strong on the boards and in the neutral zone.

  Example: Brendan Shanahan.

• Political: member of a political party who embarrasses the party by mentioning what others have been thinking but never said for reasons of sensitivity, politeness, fear, etc.; old war horse.

  Examples: Andy Scott (the return of), Francoise Ducros, Jason Kenney.

Wing span

• Political: intellectual and political commitment of the Liberal party; varies in elasticity according to timing, temperment, temerity, timber, etc.

• Nature: (bird) distance from wing tip to wing tip when wings extended to maximum spread.

Writing History into Fiction

In the writing of Up in Ontario I wanted to include aspects and stories from the places where the story was set. I wanted the story to be a part of the place where it occured. One of the stories I wanted to include was the story of the occupation of Anicinabe Park in 1974. What follows are two versions of ways I tried to include the story.

The first, Getting Back to Normal, mimics a newspaper article that would have appeared at the time of the incident in the Kenora Daily Miner & News. The second, Occupation of Anicinabe Park, tries to incorporate the history of a place with the main character of the story, Wade Dubois.

In the end, my editor Wayne Tefs and I decided that too much shoehorning was involved with trying to make either of these sections fit into the story and both were cut. In short, they didn't really work no matter how much massaging they received. But I wanted to include them here to offer a wider view of Up in Ontario and to suggest that alternatives always exist for the stories we hear, even if we think of those stories as fiction.

From Kenora Daily Miner & News

Getting Back to Normal
Inquiry called, questions linger after armed standoff ends in arrests

Crime Reporter, Jay McClennan
August 12, 1974

On July 20, four members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) crossed from Minnesota into Ontario at International Falls to attend a conference at Anicinabe Park, just outside the town of Kenora.

Two days later, the conference turned ugly and led to an armed standoff that lasted 17 days. Masked natives seized control of the park, brandishing shotguns and sticks of dynamite and calling themselves the Ojibway Warriors Society. The conference, which had been organized to protest the treatment of Ojibway people by the Department of Indian Affairs, degenerated as anger boiled over into violence. 14 Indians were arrested, including the four members of AIM who are awaiting extradition to the U.S.

Constable Brian Laughton of the Kenora OPP was one of the first officers on the scene at Anicinabe Park.

“We knew there could be some trouble with people coming in from out of town. We’d been keeping an eye on the event since it started,” Laughton said, dismissing rumours that the OPP had jeopardized the security of the town. “But we never thought it would come to this.”

When OPP officers arrived to restore peace they were shot at and two patrol cars were damaged.

In the first hours of the occupation, the Ojibway Warriors Society threatened setting fire to the pulp mill and bombing the hydroelectric power station. Police had to close down both sites and send workers home while they searched the buildings. Planes that passed overhead to take photos were shot at with high-powered rifles.

Over the next 48 hours the standoff called national attention to the racial tensions of a northern town, and threatened to destroy the region’s reputation to tourists as ‘Sunset Country’. National news media arrived to report on the armed standoff and pacifist Quakers set up a camp between police roadblocks and the Ojibway Warriors Society.

Federal Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien, arrived in Kenora on July 27 to reinforce the government’s firm position. “The proper way for grievances to be settled is to follow the normal channels and negotiate. We can’t give in to armed demands. The first step towards action is to put down the guns and come to the table in good faith.”

Lyle Ironside, who has been charged with weapons possession, called the conference at Anicinabe Park “a sort of Ojibway unity conference, where they wanted the opinions of the old people.”

Ironside would not say if he was a member of the Ojibway Warriors Society, though he did admit to traveling to South Dakota in 1973 to join Crowdog’s support camp for Wounded Knee.

Ironside is known to police since his arrest in connection with the occupation of the Kenora branch office of the Department of Indian Affairs on April 23rd, 1974.

Constable Laughton summed up the mood when he said, “I’m just glad no one got hurt. We can get over this and go back to normal.”

Occupation of Anicinabe Park

In the summer of 1974, four members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) crossed from Minnesota into Ontario at International Falls to attend a conference at Anicinabe Park organized to protest the treatment of the Ojibway people by the Department of Indian Affairs. From July 22 to August 8, armed natives, frustrated with a lack of action on their health, dental and housing concerns, took control of Anicinabe Park.

When OPP officers arrived on the scene they were greeted with threats of retaliation – setting fire to the pulp mill and bombing the hydroelectric power station – if they made good on their promise to storm the park. Planes that passed overhead were shot at with high-powered rifles. Within days news media arrived to report on the armed standoff. Pacifist Quakers set up a camp between police roadblocks and the Ojibway Warriors Society. The federal Minister of Indian Affairs, Jean Chrétien, flew to Kenora to reinforce the government’s position that the proper way for Indian grievances to be settled was to follow the normal channels and negotiate, and that the first step towards action was for natives to lay down their arms.

The Occupation of Anicinabe Park exists in history as part of the social movements of the 1970s. American and Canadian natives banded together to protest living conditions on reserves and to try to retake control of their communities. By the summer of 1974, Indian Affairs offices had already been occupied by local natives in Ottawa and Kenora. At Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1975, a gun battle killed 3 men and punctuated months of tension between native of the Pine Ridge reserve and law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. Years later, a version of the gun battle was dramatized to provide a critical scene in the movie Thunderheart.

Lyle Ironside of the Ojibway nation travelled to South Dakota in the summer of 1973 to join Crowdog’s support camp for Wounded Knee. In the years that followed, Ironside remained at the centre of actions for native rights. He participated in the office occupations in Kenora and Ottawa and the armed occupation of Anicinabe Park. He remembers Anicinabe Park as “a sort of Ojibway unity conference, where they wanted the opinions of the old people.”

Ironside was acquitted of weapons charges arising from the occupation of Anicinabe Park. When asked about the effect of Anicinabe Park on the people with power, he said, “They didn’t give a shit. They were elected people but they didn’t give a shit about what was happening with the people in Kenora because they never even showed their damn ass in the park except for the pow-wow. Like they didn’t give a fuck at all because they figured here was only reservation people all getting together and they don’t really have no say with the Department of Indian Affairs and the provincial government of Ontario and the federal government. It’s just one of those big get-togethers of something that’s not going to prove fuck-all.”

On September 30, 1974, 800 to 900 natives arrived on Parliament Hill in Ottawa at the end of the Native People’s Caravan which had begun in Vancouver on September 14. The Caravan marched on Parliament and were met by barricades, armoured RCMP and a wall of national guard with bayonets on the end of their rifles. A clash followed with riot police tear gassing the crowd. 9 police officers and dozens of protesters had to be hospitalized and the Caravan retreated to what they called the Native People’s Embassy.

When Wade Dubois visited Anicinabe Park on the outskirts of Kenora for his first time, he knew nothing of its history. His first job out of university was with the Bank of Commerce and the bank needed the first stage of a financial analysis on a refinancing deal for the Ojibway completed, which required Wade to perform a site inspection and land-use evaluation. On the road leading off the TransCanada Highway, he saw a billboard for the Golden Eagle Casino that reminded him to shop Duty Free at the border. Families without waterfront property sat on blankets and ate picnics on the grass that ran down to the shore beside the boat launch. Beyond the families, a rock, painted white with a devil’s face in black and red, leered at boaters passing through the Devils’s Gap narrows. No one Wade asked remembered when the rock had been painted.

To the west of Devils’s Gap, the main channel from Lake of the Woods passed through Golf Course Bay and into the harbour of Kenora. Wade remembered many times riding through Devil’s Gap and seeing the lines of current in the black water, the Devil’s face on the rock and the signs warning boaters not to anchor in the area where underwater cables ran power to the islands. Jean Chrétien had long since departed and been elected Prime Minister and the Ojibway Warriors Society had fallen silent. Wrappers from the snacks in the vending machines collected on the shore, washed up on the rocks by the wakes of the passing boats.

Two Vintage Clothing Observations

One:

This stuff is expensive for old clothes. Some of the shirts have stains from someone I don't even know. Nothing is returnable or refundable. Somebody in the supply chain is making a killing. $20 for an old t-shirt from the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope 1982? $14 for a pair of souvenir shorts from Fiji that would have cost less new?

Two:

Things that I consider excellent choices to wear to work have become vintage. I discovered a rack of golf shirts, various colours, brands, patterns. I looked through them in sincerity, since many of them are just like the ones I like to wear, and realized that my fashion sense is so far behind that it has come back as vintage. The preppie mystique of the Lacoste alligator and Ralph Lauren Polo pony haunt me to this day.

I remember hearing that all men at some point in their lives find a style of clothing that they are comfortable in, that they see as suiting them, and they stay with that style of clothing for the rest of their life, no matter what happens in fashion. I suppose it makes sense that we each have a period in our lives when we are open to fashion and then we move past that point, in the same way that it is easier to learn a language or pick up a musical instument at certain points of your life and much harder after.

In my grandfather, I can see a man who looks stylish in a classy, 1950s, wear-a-hat-for-a-drive way. Though he has added new shirts, pants and jackets to his wardrobe they really just echo the existing styles he had made his own. In a less-flattering way, I also see a fashion freeze in the men I play hockey against, their sensibility for dressing remains in striped sweat pants, foam-front-mesh-back baseball caps, undone white runners and black silkscreened t-shirts bought at metal concerts.

So today, I think I may have found the end of my own style. I'm sure the Duck will be thrilled. No more adapting, I have arrived.

Phototaxis, the Osborne Blog

Since it feels like the Stephen Osborne week around here I thought I would point out the blog he has started at Phototaxis.net. I only discovered the blog two days ago from a referral from a friend and Osborne has only been keeping to blog for a few weeks, so we're right on the breaking crest of the wave: the place we want to be to leap from wave to wave.

Be sure to check out the interview that Osborne did with Bill Richardson of Richardson's Roundup in celebration of having won the CBC Literary Award for his story, Girl Afraid of Haystacks. Listen to the interview. (Requires RealPlayer, 24 minutes)

Oh, and you want to know what phototaxis are? Well, you'll just have to check out Osborne's Phototaxis blog to find out.

In Prison with Jesus

The state of Florida has introduced the first faith-based penitentiary in the U.S. Doug Sanders, consistently the best reporter at the Globe and Mail, files this report, Florida Puts Felons in God's Big House.

Now, it may just be my suspicious mind, but this initiative clearly signals another notch of degradation in the changing role of goverment: state social programs recede and religion replaces the state. Lawtey Correctional Institute is the name of the new prison and Florida intends to make it the first of many faith-based institutions. In fact, the government of Florida seems pretty content to get out of many of what used to be called its responsibilities and to let religious organizations take over. Every department is now required to have a "'faith-based co-ordinator' who is expected to reach out to churches, synagogues and missionary groups and encourage them to make bids to offer government services in exchange for grants from Washington." And why not? With $200 million in grants offered by the federal Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, what cash-starved state government wouldn't want to get in on the action?

American history and mythology have always closely interlinked church and state. Prisoners have frequently been the test subjects of various social experiments from medical procedures to current call centre practices. Why not do away with any sembalance of secularity and combine the two for good? Move the courts to churches, bring priests in to pray for the accused, post some commandments of varying severity, find an oracle to make decisions and crucify a couple of murderers on TV as examples.

Too bad if you're not a christian, but think of the synergies of a merger between church and state. It seems like the ultimate end to our simultaneous race to the bottom of service and the common good and race to the top of centralized power and accumulated assets.

Perhaps the last laugh of globalization is the emerging, unintended splashback. Powerful nations engineered agreements to put them at an advantage. They saw themselves as masters of their domain, imposing their will upon others. But in practice, exports do not occur in a vacuum. For every Hollywood movie sent to Indonesia, a Nike sneaker comes back; we understand this part of the equation. But what about the unforeseen imports: a servant class, decaying infrastructure, environmental degradation, an isolated, protected elite, a theocracy? It seems that from this vantage point, globalization has become more than economic integration. It has become integration.

If current trends continue a new word will have to be invented to describe the balance of power and rule in this new society. The new word could combine the traits of oligarchy (a small cabal), gerontocracy (the elderly), timocracy (the propertied class), plutocracy (the wealthy) and, of course, theocracy (religious law). Any suggestions?

Dooney's Dictionary

Trolling through some literary links today I came across the Dooney's Cafe website and some of the articles piqued my curiousity. In particular, this review of Primo Levy's The Search for Roots: A personal anthology. I also enjoyed the Dooney's Dictionary and I recommend it with one caveat:

Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.
— John Ralston Saul, The Doubter's Companion, 1994

A Tribute to Stephen Osborne

Lynn Coady's biweekly column examining the arts life on Canada's left coast appears in today's Globe and Mail: Feting a city's cultural Geist. In the article, Lynn celebrates the contribution of Stephen Osborne to writing and publishing in Vancouver and calls attention to the recent announcement that Osborne will be receiving the first ever Vancouver Arts Award for Writing and Publishing. The article is excellent, the celebration for Osborne is fully justified, and I am quoted.

As you may or may not know, Osborne mentored me for a year in a program called The Writer's Studio from Simon Fraser University. The time I spent with Osborne and our group - since the program aligns each mentor with a cohort of 6 developing writers - proved invaluable to me. When Lynn was preparing to write her column and asked me what I remembered about working with Osborne, here is what I said:

On Stephen Osborne as teacher and mentor

The first time I met Stephen Osborne was at the Word on the Street festival. He stood behind the tables of Geist/Arsenal Pulp Press and surveyed the crowd. Some folks called to him and he stooped forward and spoke to them in hushed tones over the cover of a book. A mutual friend introduced us and I bought a copy of his collection of stories, Ice & Fire: Dispatches from the new world. He offered to sign the book for me and I replied that, "No, I might want to sell it again." Jesus what a heel I was. That line seemed funny in the split second that it took to think it and say it and it has never seemed funny since.

By the time I started in his group in the SFU Writer's Studio program Stephen Osborne had either forgotten what I said or blocked it from his memory. In that group I was to learn that Osborne was generous with his time and spirit and thoughts. He was a superb mentor. Of course he was scatterbrained sometimes and he had an ongoing feud with my answering machine, but when our group of six met every week he listened to our work and considered our stories and offered suggestions. He was tough when writing was weak and he demanded that students try to realize the potential of their work. He provided a working example of what it was to be a serious writer engaged with the world around him. When he saw a woman in our group with her herbal tea he told us with delight that, "real writers drink coffee."

To my eyes it seemed as if Stephen Osborne had spent his whole life preparing and dedicating his mind to writing. He stayed up late into the night puzzling over the construction of a sentence. He walked the streets open to the possibilities of the world, waiting for the realism he passed to provide him with a sign of some meaning. Then, without preening or embarrassment, he shared with us these things that he had discovered about writing. He was committed to the wonder of the world, and so he was discovering how to write and be a better writer at the same time as we were.

It was Stephen Osborne's grasp of the craft of writing, of the simple words on the page, that provided me with the means to understand how to finish the novel I was working on. He taught me that to make your words speak and live on their own, the writer has to intimately understand the mechanics of sentence contruction, grammar, rhythm and meaning. He also taught me that in writing a first novel I was doing two things: writing the novel and learning to be a writer. His insights allowed me to cut through all the literary crap that I had learned in university English and provided me with access to the storyteller's voice to tell my story. He explained how stories had to live in the ear and the imagination to resonate with a reader. He broke me of the habit of trying to stage direct the characters of the story.

Since he has moved on to another group of students, and my novel, Up in Ontario, has been published, we have had less contact. Every now and then we exchange emails. I read his column in Geist as soon as it lands on my desk. His presence floats through a community of committed writers and editors in Vancouver like a character from one of his stories.

When I got to know Stephen Osborne, it took me some time to figure out what I would call him: Stephen, Mr. Osborne, Steve, Osborne. I started out calling him Steve since that's how he had been introduced to me at the book table at Word on the Street. The I found that he seemed to encourage 'Osborne,' since that was how he signed his emails, and that seemed to be what his friends called him. But his partner Mary called him Steve, or Mr. Steve, so, as I said, it took me some time to settle on what to call him. So far I call him Osborne.

Defend Your Favourite Canadian Novel

CBC is hosting The Canada Reads Studio One Challenge on Sunday, March 21, 2004, and they are looking for three British Columbians to take on this year's winner, The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe, and to present their own favourite novel to the panel.

Challenge! I have told the CBC that I am hugely passionate about a novel called Up in Ontario by James Sherrett, and although most showdowns are at high noon, I will hotly defend Up in Ontario any time of day. Below is my entry:

James Sherrett’s novel Up in Ontario is a fine accomplishment and as Lynn Coady says, “an assured, captivating debut.” I nominate Up in Ontario because this story has been part of my life as long as James has been. In 1996, we published Up in Ontario as a 32-page chapbook. That year, the chapbook won the Heaven Chapbook Prize, which also marked the year that a great independent bookstore fell, Heaven Art and Book Café. But that was a long time ago. Up in Ontario went from being one short story to a full-length novel. There are characters that went by the wayside, whole scenes that were cut out for pacing reasons; but the final story is still one that moves me to tears yet also makes me burst out laughing.

Right from the first sentence James is testing his reader and promising a family epic. Reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude, he begins with one character and then moves to the life and family that unfolds around them. Rather than 100 years of solitude, James has focused on 30 years of the Dubois family. Gill Dubois is the solitude, or rather he chooses the solitude of his cabin on the shores of Lake of the Woods. A lifelong fisherman and trapper, he can’t for love or money give up that life, not for his wife Christine nor for their son Wade.

The characters of Wade and Gill have always fascinated me. I’m drawn to their maleness, the blood on their hands from hunting, and the guts of the fish. But despite their manly pursuits there is a warmth and humanity to these characters, a tenderness and a wit that should not be underestimated. Up in Ontario is a story about men: their loves, alliances, compromises, dreams and deaths.

Enter CBC's Challenge with this entry form. You have until Sunday.

Press Gallery (O Canada)

I came across Press Gallery today and I recommend you check it out. (This is one of the uses of a blog after all, as a compendium of reference pointers to other sites that have passed muster with the arbiter of good ideas: me.) The site provides an overview of the Canadian journalism scene, focused mostly on newspapers and magazines. (Well, I suppose it has to be focused mostly on newspapers and magazines since it is text after all and writing takes so long and is hard for attention spans used to TV.) A fine collection of links and resources as well as some suitably pointed (!) remarks aimed (!) at the generous posterior of Lord Black of Tub round out (!) this site. If you want to know more about your news from an insider's point of view, check it out.

And don't miss the book reviews, particularly the one on Kenneth Bradshear's High and Mighty: "I love it, it makes me feel powerful," says the 16-year-old driver of a jacked-up Suburban. "If someone disses me I can tailgate the crap out of them."

(A post in tribute to the hopelessly parenthetical.)

Learning to Kiss

This story starts a long time ago, in the scope of one life, when a man named Trudeau led our country and we first started to learn to name our places for our people. It was in those days that Shane Penner kissed his first girl in the muddy track between the portable classrooms of Vimy Elementary School. He knew her from church. Her name was Mandy Roberts and she kissed him back just as soon as he pulled back from kissing her. From then on he wanted to have girls kiss him.

When Shane arrived home after school he kissed his mother and kissed her again until she pushed him away. Only some girls wanted to keep kissing. Shane showed his friend Travis how to kiss the next day using his forearm as an example. When Mr. Carpenter saw the two of them between the portables he pulled them apart and hit them both across the face with the back of his hand. “Don’t ever do that again.” And so Shane received his second lesson in kissing: only boys and girls kissed.

That night when his father tucked him into bed and kissed him on the forehead, Shane started to pull back the covers to hit him with the back of his hand. His father saw what Shane was up to and held him down. “Okay, you’re too old for that,” he said and stood and then said goodnight and left the bedroom. In the dark left when his father closed the door Shane felt tears burn in his eyes and slide down his cheeks.

By his thirteenth birthday Shane had kissed eleven girls in his own grade. He also kissed Claire McNabb who was a year ahead of him in school and Jill Parker and Sylvie Fichaud who were a year behind him. In a book beside his bed he keep a log of the girls he kissed with the date and a few notes: “Jenna Bryant stuck her tongue into my mouth when we kissed. Then I stuck my tongue into her mouth. She drooled on my chin but my lips felt nice and smooth after.”

Shane started going around with Jenna the following week, and they held hands when they walked down the hallway, and she wrote him notes on the clean pages she tore from her scribblers. Her bubbly handwriting filled the ruled blue lines with questions about his family and with statements about her own. She didn’t like her younger brother much, her mother tried to get her to try out for the cross-country team but she hated running.

In the evenings Jenna called Shane and told him more about what she thought and felt and how her family drove her crazy. She listed off her favourite television shows and her favourite cassette tapes and why she had hated going to Disneyland with her family. This incredible inventory of items bewildered Shane and frightened him since he felt the heavy expectation that he should remember all of it, and he really just wanted to kiss like she had kissed him that first time.

Lake of the Woods Museum

On the shore of Lake of Woods, in the town of Kenora, across the street from the Canadian Tire in a red brick building behind the drooping branches of the trees, sits the Lake of the Woods Museum. The museum holds a number of interesting collections from the history of the region and some excellent photos. I visited it a number of times to research the contents of Up in Ontario.

I point this out today because I came across the Lake of the Woods Museum website this morning and the contents of the website are fascinating to anyone who has visited the region. And even if you have not visited the region, you may have encountered it in Up in Ontario, and the museum can offer you a wider perspective on the setting. The photos in the photo gallery section depict early life in Kenora and the region, and include a photo (see below) of the Kenora Thistles with the Stanley Cup that they won in 1907.

One of the stories I have never found in the Lake of the Woods Museum is a story heard only through rumours. In the late 19th century and early 20th century Kenora became well known as a great whore town. After Manitoba and Ontario resolved their border dispute in 1989, the trans-Canada Railroad started to roll through Kenora. Floods of immigrants arrived in two main waves, interrupted only in the years of 1914-1918 by the first world war.

Some immigrants were arriving in Canada to meet their wives to be for the first time. Others, along with the survivors of world war one, were returning to reunite with wives or to return to families. Winnipeg served as the hub to the west and as a major centre for commerce, culture and transportation, so families often spent a few days in the city waiting for their loved ones to arrive from the east. Then, in the elegant rail station at the corner of Main Street and Broadway, a great gang of greeters pounced on the men when they arrived. For anyone wanting to blow off a little steam, the last major whistle stop on the line before Winnipeg was in Kenora. That, combined with the flurry of gold mining activity in the area and the attendant miners needed to work the mines, led to a thriving red-light district. Of course, that's all gone now.

Experienced Eve Sets the Rules

Over at the Yankee Pot Roast, a super little site with tendencies toward a comic tone, Kathryn Koromilas writes the rules of engagement to Adam, from Eve's point of view. The twist in the story is that the original couple are not a couple, they are just two lonely singles looking for love in a sea of duds, using an agency to meet.

That ought to put all the hullaballo about Passion to rest.

Calvin and Hobbes Collection

We used to have many collections of Calvin and Hobbes comics around the house. My brother had a certain afinity for Calvin and held his opinions in high esteem. "Any time I've built character I've regretted it," he still repeats to me to this day. The artwork of the collections was excellent, the storylines were exceptional. Calvin and Hobbes became living characters for me in a way that no other comic character has ever come alive. The Duck and I still quote bits from strips we read years ago, as when Hobbes tells Calvin about the incredible girl he met that day, "She was perfect. She had red hair, with green eyes, and whiskers."

So to find Martijn Reemst's Calvin and Hobbes Collection website was like rediscovering that same joy. The simple stories of Calvin and Hobbes hinted at more complex meanings without ever being heavy handed or overt in their findings. Just one other thing: WARNING! You may spend a lot of time reading about Calvin and Hobbes and their creator Bill Watterson and why he no longer writes the strip. There, you've been warned. Now go on and play.

Toni Onley, In Memory

Toni Onley died Sunday, February 29th on the Fraser River.

I make no claim to have been familiar with his story or with his work before yesterday, but I just visited his website at www.tonyonley.com and it is touching. To listen to him in videoclips describe his flying boat, how he came to fly it, why he bought it, is to hear his commitment to an idea of the way a life should be lived. To read his description of his paintings delivered to me a profound reverence for his work. It feels slight to say that we have lost a great talent, since I knew nothing of the man until yesterday, but we have.

Movable Styles

I came across a site today called Movable Style that offers stylesheets for download to completely change the presentation of your MovableType blog. That is how the blog you see now, today, looks so different than the blog you are familiar with. If you check out Movable Style and have any opinions on the presentations, please let me know and I may consider what you think.

Snowball Fight World Championships

The Wall Street Journals report that in Japan they take their snowball fighting pretty seriously.

In Japanese Hands, Snowball Fighting Has Really Grown Up Some 2,000 Teams Compete To Be in Championships; Tax Officials Toughen Up

By SEBASTIAN MOFFETT

SOBETSUCHO, Japan -- On winter evenings, men gather outside a hotel in Japan's frozen north to heat snow with an oil stove in a vinyl tent. When the powdery stuff becomes malleable, they shovel it into a mold resembling a giant cupcake tray, and stamp out 1,000 perfectly round snowballs of regulation size: no less than 2.56 inches in diameter and no more than 2.76 inches.

For the next three hours, they throw these snowballs at one another, hoping to recapture the title their team, now called Skyward, won in 2001: the Showa Shinzan International Yukigassen, the de facto world snowball-fight championship.

For three years in a row, Skyward and its predecessor team won the regional snow battles that act as qualifiers for Showa Shinzan, named after a nearby mountain formed by a volcanic eruption in 1943. But they struggled this year, placing second and third. "The current team lineup is our strongest so far," says captain Hirokuni Miyashita, 31 years old, a muscular flower-shop employee. "But the overall standard of the sport has risen dramatically."

Formal snowball fighting began in the late 1980s when Sobetsucho decided it needed a winter attraction to increase tourism. Townsfolk hit on the idea of creating a snowball fight tournament. Taking it seriously, a committee spent a year drawing up rules.

Two teams of seven players each start with 90 snowballs and face off on a field as wide as a tennis court and 1½ times as long. The field features "shelters" -- 3-foot walls of snow that the players hide behind -- and a flag for each team, planted deep inside its half of the court. Players wearing protective helmets take opponents out of the game by hitting them with a ball. A team wins a three-minute set either by having the most players standing at the end, or by grabbing the other's flag. Matches are decided over three sets.

Since the first tournament in 1989, the sport has progressed from child's play into a sophisticated battle of skill and tactics. Some 2,000 teams from all over Japan compete for 192 slots at the international snowball-fighting championship, including 36 women's teams. A team from Sobetsucho's Finnish twin city, Kemijarvi, often flies over to compete in Showa Shinzan. It couldn't afford the trip this year, after a local electronics manufacturer relocated production to China and hurt the region's economy.

Skyward evolved from a team formed seven years ago by Mr. Miyashita, who recruited talent from local baseball teams. They entered the competition as a lark but were soon hooked by the sport's tactical challenges. Sunday practices turned into daily training after work. A year ago, Mr. Miyashita's team merged with another, won sponsorship from Japan Airlines Co., and was renamed Skyward. JAL and Sapporo Breweries sponsor the championship.

All Skyward teammates, who range in age between 21 and 33, are single. "Everyone who gets married gives up snowball fighting" because of the big time commitment, says Mr. Miyashita. "Japanese wives won't put up with it."

Skyward, one of the world's top snowball-fight teams, competing last weekend in the Showa Shinzan International Yukigassen.

Skyward practices under floodlights on the grounds of a hotel, usually in temperatures several degrees below freezing. The players warm up by playing catch with baseballs and gloves. Then they split up into teams and crouch behind wooden shelters to hone their technique. Dodging a single snowball is easy. So they coordinate an attack on a single opponent, catching his attention with a high ball looping down behind his shelter and then zapping in a fastball from a different angle while he gazes at the sky.

Three nights before last weekend's tournament, the practice session continued after the floodlights were turned off at 10 p.m. Using the light from the hotel windows, the players aimed snowballs at a post as they dashed behind the shelters. "The balls aren't focused properly," growled Hiroshi Takahashi, the team's bulky coach, who sported a New York Yankees hat.

It rained the week before the 2004 championship on Feb. 21 and 22, so organizers brought 20 trucks of powder down from the mountains. The on-site snow was OK for constructing shelters, but rain makes for large crystals that won't form tight balls.

The beginner teams competed on the first day, often throwing balls willy-nilly in a manner the Skyward players dismissed as baka-nage, or wild chucking. Skyward spent the day studying up on rivals. Mr. Miyashita's girlfriend, Tomoko Watanabe, videotaped potential opponents. That night, team members relaxing in cotton robes and sitting on tatami mats analyzed the video -- and emerged worried.

"They used to do just wild chucking," observed Mr. Takahashi, the coach, about an opposing team. "But now, they're doing more lobs."

Skyward was off to a poor start the next day, throwing snowballs recklessly and abandoning its much-practiced strategy of focusing attacks on a single player. But soon, they regained their composure. At one point, they flung a low bullet that smashed an opponent on the head so hard that he could only crawl off the court. Despite the helmet, his eye was swollen shut.

After beating two teams, Skyward faced the Tetsuhide Taijiis, a group of local tax officials whom they had always beaten in the past. But the tax officials were much improved -- they stayed cool and defended solidly, unleashing attacks when they saw an opportunity. Skyward failed to get their throws on target, and they lost narrowly.

The eventual winners -- Dai N-kai Yusho Sapporo Team -- are a group of Sapporo city-hall employees from 40 miles away. Their secret: Unlike Skyward, they trained through the summer in a gymnasium, using polyethylene practice balls -- $20 for a pack of 10 -- sold by sporting goods maker Asics Corp.

"Skyward used to be the only team we couldn't beat," said coach Yoichi Higuchi. "But the amount we practiced made a difference this year."

After their team's loss, Skyward's Mr. Miyashita and Mr. Takahashi were numb with disappointment. One young teammate was in tears. Unlike the teams of public employees, Skyward's players work a variety of jobs -- from fireman to electrician -- which often require working late or on weekends. It's hard to find time to train, said Mr. Miyashita, and they likely wouldn't turn up to summer sessions using mere practice balls.

"We're going to have to think up some new tactics for next year," he said.

Copyright Wall Street Journal, 2004