Up in Ontario

Vacationing Up in Ontario

For the next week or so the Duck and I will be on vacation in Kenora, Ontario, at the cabin, on the shore of Lake of the Woods. So postings to the Up in Ontario blog will be light to non-existant.

Turn off your computer and get yourself outside. Go fishing. Take a swim. Enjoy the weather.

Election Day in Canada

If you're a Canadian citizen, today is the day to cast your vote. For last minute political shoppers, you can find out which candidates are running in your riding and read a profile of each of them at the Globe and Mail election site or Elections.ca.

One of the firsts for this campaign is that west coasters will be able to follow the vote counting as it sweeps across the country and the polls close and results are tabulated. This may lead to more strategic voting as western citizens see how the seats in Quebec and Ontario shake out.

The Duck and I discussed our voting this past weekend and we each decided independently who we planned on voting for. She cast her ballot this morning. I plan on waiting until later in the day and taking advantage of our time zone to see how the trends progress. The polls close at 7 pm local time.

In my random anecdotal sampling at the water cooler today the general consensus was that folks were voting for "anyone but the conservatives." Stephen Harper scares people. And for good reason. It will be interesting to see whether the general population has only flirted with the idea of voting Conservative or whether they are actually conservative in nature and end up sticking with the tried and true Liberals.

If you're looking for something only slightly different to horrify you, then I suggest this article on the Bush Administration's plans to Medicate the General US Population.

If you're looking for something lighter, though still interesting, I suggest this article on The Realism of Spiderman's Superpowers.

Take Me to Your Leader

See this as a call to arms for two things: voting and voting green (small "g" that is). I was born in 1975 and my first understanding of ecology was in 1986, the Exxon Valdez Disaster. The images of dead marine life devasted me. Six years later in grade 12, I created a mock business plan for an environmental disaster clean up organization. I suppose even then I suspected we wouldn't learn the lessons of that earlier spill. Now 10 years later, I'm participating in the Greenpeace boycott of Esso gas, if I buy a new car I want it to be a hybrid, I recycle, I don't use aerosol cans, I'm politically engaged in the sense that I'm interested in the news, and I'm horrified about the prospects of off shore drilling and another four-year plague (source: President Bush).

I'm also three quarters of the way through reading an advance copy of Greenpeace (available September, Raincoast) by Rex Weyler. Rex's book is about the crap that was going on politically, which forced a small group of Vancouver protesters to band together to fight governments around the world. These are the people who got in a fishing boat and sailed to Amchitka (Aleutian Islands: 4,000 miles from Vancouver) to confront US nuclear bomb testing, they followed Russian whaling ships and blocked the shot of the harpoons with zodiacs, they threw themselves infront of baby seals being slaughtered on the ice floes that are their nurseries, and although I think I'm environmentally friendly, it would apparently take 4 planets worth of resources if everyone followed my lifestyle.

In 1969 Greenpeace sparked a mind-shift that literally changed how we think about the world around us. I think we need another mind bomb.

So who are you voting for?
Reasons why women in particular should not vote for Stephen Harper's Conservatives (I doubt they'll conserve anything).

What does David Suzuki say? Well his foundation has to remain non-partisan, but you should check out the Foundation's survey and see what the NDP, Liberals and Greens have to say about the environment. I think my choice is between the NDP and the Liberals.

So how are you voting? Take me to your leader.

Why Young People Don't Vote

In preparation for the coming Canadian national election, much hullabaloo has been made about dropping voter turnout, in particular among young Canadians. Panels have been convened, expert opinions solicited, and no one seems to have a very satisfactory answer. Nothing, at least, that presents a way to turn the tide and re-engage young voters with the political process. Boomers nostalgically recall their own days of political activism with fondness borne of mysticism and romance. But no one seems able to offer much more than speculation about why young people don't vote. It must just be the youth of today.

But is it? I have compiled below some reasons I can imagine for dropping voter turnout. Consider it my own speculation on why young people don’t vote.

Generational Succession

Birth rates tend to be highest among populations with the lowest voter participation. Basically, the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote; the poorer you are, the less likely you are to vote. People at lower income levels have more children. Those children grow up and follow the example of their parents. And don't vote. Wealthier parents vote, register their children to vote and take their children with them to vote for the first time. It's like an inheritance of franchise (or disenfranchisement) through habit.

Chosen Obsolesence

Over the past 20 years governments have worked hard to limit, and in many cases retract from, their role in society. The mantra of the public sector getting out of the way of the private sector has been adopted by numerous governments at all levels of responsibility. Government incompetence is such a common phrase in public discourse that no one seems to challenge its validity or its origins. This essentially amounts to self-loathing on two levels when you really think about it: the elected officials hating themselves and their roles and citizens hating their common representative elected bodies and power structures.

One of the truisms of democracy is that an electorate tends to get the government it demands. Canadians haven't demanded much for the past few decades except that the government castrate its powers and limits its scope, and so that is what we have gotten. Should it surprise us that now we hear young people say that government doesn't really matter to them?

Diminishing Possibilities

Electoral politics is a big money, high stakes game. Exhaustive research goes into messages and targetting. At the outset of any election the majority of the riding races fall into a two categories: known outcomes and unknown outcomes. Without sounding like a Rumsfeld briefing, the ridings where outcomes are known receive very little attention while the ridings where outcomes are in question received almost all the attention.

The business of electing a government has largely been reduced to the outcomes of a few swing ridings. These riding get the action. If you're outside these ridings then you're out of luck for handouts and attention.

Pitching for the Middle

Since the majority of the population of every riding comprises baby boomers, those between the ages of 40 and 55, and the older we are the more likely we are to vote, messages are tailored to this fat group that votes. If young people don't historically vote in as large numbers, and there aren't as many of them around in comparative numbers, why should politicians tailor their message to a smaller segment of the population that is less likely to vote? Young people and young people's issues get no play so young people tune out.

Now, just imagine what the political scene will be like 20 years from now when baby boomers are between 60 and 75 and exercising their grey power. Seniors vote like hell. They have all the time in the world and they can make or break political campaigns. Will politicians be forced into running advertisements based on Matlock plots to capture the attention of their constituents? Will the votes and opinions of any other age groups matter?

Specialization and Lobbying

One of the largest industries in every capital city is the industry known euphemistically as lobbying. Interest groups, with corporations, which operate as legal persons, leading the way, hire advocates to influence governments on their behalf. This is an ancient and well-acknowledged profession whose origins go back as far as organized society itself and include the courtiers and jesters of royal courts, the consultants and pollsters of today and the shamans and elders of tribal societies. Different criteria have been used by different societies to select their influencers - wisdow and age, money and power, military prowess - and these influencers are as much a part of the process as the electorate. They have masters they are beholden to, interests they serve and goals they seek to achieve.

But one of the most prevalent changes in our political systems of the past 30 years has been the growth of lobbying and the interoperation of government and industry. Many of the same individuals frequently play on both side of the equation, depending on whether their favoured party is in power or in opposition. The result has been that interest groups have cultivated and nurtured resources (time, people and money) dedicated solely to advancing their causes and interests. The electorate of citizens do not have resources dedicated to advancing their causes and interests. They have politicians who are supposed to be accountable to them. But the politicians are constantly bombarded by the influence peddlers. Should we be surprised to find that on some occasions our politicians have ended up in bed with the influence peddlers after a night on the town (on the tab of the company)?

Living a Local Inheritance

One of the largest societal trends in Canada over the past three decades has been migration: the movement of people from the country to the city and from smaller cities to larger cities largely characterizes the early 21st century Canadian experience. I know, I no longer live where I grew up. Within the close half-dozen friends who I grew up with only one of us still lives in the same city. We are a country of dislocated citizens. As a results, we are not invested in local, community issues.

For instance: what are the issues that affect your new community? Who are the people who represent your community best? Who has represented your community best over the past hundred years? Do you know your neighbours? Politics and culture are intertwined. They belong to a place and the people who live there and they evolve over time. If we remain in one place then the issues of that place, its politics, its culture, are as much a part of ourselves as the stories we have heard and created, the way we know our way around the back streets, the way we remember how a patch of land looked when we were young. If we move, who do we inherit the issues of a place from? The Better Business Bureau welcome wagon?

Of course, all this politics is a hard and messy business without clear answers or, what everyone is looking for but no one is offering, solutions. Maybe it's easier just to give up, to just let a computer decide on the ideal candidate for you and not have to go through the bother of being a responsible citizen. But then, as Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker in the original Spiderman comic series, "With great power comes great responsibility." Do you deserve your vote if you do not honour its responsibility?

Gmail Anyone?

For a few weeks now I have been a user of Google's new hosted email service, Gmail. I now have the opportunity to invite friends to set up their own Gmail accounts. Are you interested?

If so, contact James Sherrett and give me a reason why you want a Gmail account. Provide me with your first name, last name and email address and I'll hook you up.

See if you're eligible by checking out the Gmail technical specs. (Ah-hum: not for Mac users yet.)

Eaten, Shot and Left

One of the more surprising recent sales phenomena in publishing has been Lynn Truss' book on grammer and punctuation, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Truss describes the book as "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," and readers have taken up her call to arms in droves.

But a backlash was inevitable. Today I came across a link to an article by Louis Menand in the New Yorker that soundly thrashes Truss in the most delightful manner. The article begins life as a review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves and evolves into an essay on writers and how they strive to capture, or fail to capture, the elusive quality known as 'voice.'

That précis may sound unfocused, and if evaluated as an argument the article would come across as distracted, but it makes for great reading. Menand proves to be a writer of the highest quality. His review describes a mind at wander, engaged with the world, and for his reader great pleasure comes from following his digressions and musing as they lead away from where he started and into the interesting territory of investigation. Read it, I recommend it.

Elect Your Local Hypocrite

Doug Saunders wrote a great article for this past Saturday's Globe and Mail entitled, Elect your local hypocrite. The article makes the point succinctly that electing someone based on their specific promises ($39 billion in tax cuts, $9 billion in health care funding) makes for short sighted, rigid and destructive government. That in fact, flexible politicians who live in touch with reality and adapt their principals to the conditions they are presented with provide the best government.

Elect your local hypocrite

By DOUG SAUNDERS

This being a political season, I ought to focus your minds by saying a few words in defence of hypocrisy.

I know that a lot of you think you are opposed to hypocrisy. You want to cast your vote for a straight arrow, a man who sticks rigidly to his word and never breaks promises, a leader of unwavering conviction. This may sound appealing at election time, but it is always a mistake.

A little bit of hypocrisy makes for good politics. If you examine history's most successful politicians, you will not find the leaders who invariably kept their word and stuck close to their goals. Quite the contrary: Take a turn through the biography shelf, and you will find creative, flexible people who reacted to their environment in novel, successful and varying ways, throwing consistency to the wind. During their time in office, they were often called hypocrites and turncoats.

That, not rigid consistency, is the mark of higher intelligence and great leadership. Search for the promise keepers and straight arrows, and you'll find both history's worst monsters and (more relevant to Canadians) its greatest mediocrities.

You don't have to trust history on this one any more: Hypocrisy now has the backing of science. Keith Stanovich, a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, has built a strong scientific case in defence of hypocrisy.

Mr. Stanovich, in his fascinating book The Robot's Rebellion, defines hypocrisy as the collision of first-order and second-order thought. First-order thought consists of the basic, animal desires promoted by our genes -- reproduction, self-preservation, mate-finding, nest-building, self-aggrandizement and personal defence.

People whose thoughts are mostly first-order are known as wantons: Their personal desires and aspirations are their only goals, and their principles consist of remaking the world to suit those goals. People who vote for right-wing parties entirely because they want to pay less tax are wantons. So are people who vote for left-wing parties just because they want their organizations to get more grants.

Second-order thought looks beyond personal needs into rational calculations of larger principles and goals: If I give up this desire right now, it says, we all could be better off. It is higher, more principled intelligence. It constantly battles with our first-order desires, tending to require an even higher order of thought to reconcile those collisions. In Mr. Stanovich's system, the people who engage in this kind of thinking are known as strong evaluators.

Hypocrisy is a product of strong evaluation. "You can recognize a strong evaluator as someone who seems to be constantly wrestling with the conflict between first-order and second-order thought," Mr. Stanovich told me.

To wantons, strong evaluators look not only hypocritical but irrational. This makes sense: Consistent rationality is the hallmark not of great thinkers, but of low-order thinkers: "Rats and pigeons and chimps are probably more rational," Mr. Stanovich writes, than more principled, more civilized humans, who can stand above mere rationality in defence of higher principles.

This applies not just to leaders but to voters. In my riding, where there's a close NDP-Liberal race, the wantons on the left will cast their ballot for the New Democrats: Their only goal is the personal status of party identification. The higher-order thinkers will vote Liberal to stave off a Conservative government, sacrificing immediate gratification for higher goals and long-term principles.

To understand this fully, watch this weekend's Ronald Reagan memorials. When I think of him, the words that come to mind are those of his best biographer, Lou Cannon: "What made Reagan different was the power of his ideas and his stubborn adherence to them."

That stubbornness did the world little good. At a moment when the world was changing in dramatic ways, Mr. Reagan stuck firmly to a script that had been written in the late 1950s. It sounded good, since it addressed the basic animal desires of pocketbook and physical security, but it became dangerously unmoored from practical reality.

Conservatives like to say Mr. Reagan ended the Cold War, because the Cold War drew toward an end while he was president. Actually, because he refused to see the Soviet Union as anything other than a changeless "evil empire," and because he was so singularly devoted to nuclear expansion, he ignored vast opportunities for change. He almost certainly made the Cold War last two or three years longer than it would have under a more flexible, thinking leader.

The closer you examine the period's history, the more this becomes apparent. American historian Frances FitzGerald, whose Way Out There in the Blue is the most detailed and impartial chronicle of the Washington 1980s yet written, points out the central paradox of the claim that Reagan ended the Cold War: "[S]ince it is the inveterate propensity of Americans to relate the fall of sparrows in distant lands to some fault or virtue of American policy, it went against the grain . . . to propose that the enormous military buildup of the Reagan years had no role at all in the demise of the Soviet Union."

A myth was created to link Mr. Reagan's tragic inflexibility to the heroic flexibility of Mikhail Gorbachev, in which "SDI [Star Wars] and the U.S. military buildup forced the Soviets to spend more than they could afford on their defences and/or convinced them of the inherent weaknesses of their system."

Summarizing her book's detailed research, she writes, "The evidence for this proposition is wanting." What actually did happen in the 1980s was that "the Soviet economy continued to deteriorate as it had during the 1970s. The economic decline, of course, resulted from the failures of the system created by Lenin and Stalin -- not from any effort on the part of the Reagan administration."

Ronald Reagan's first-order thinking, increasingly simplified by his senescence, created the illusion of high principle because it was so rigid and so simple.

In fact, it was wanton self-interest. A hypocrite, a high-minded promise-breaker, would have made a much better leader. They always do.

dsaunders@globeandmail.ca

© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Then today I finally had some time to check out the special event election coverage on the Globe and Mail website. One of the most interesting components of the site was the Find Your Candidate section that allows you to find your riding and list all the candidates running. Interesting enough, right? But the most interesting aspect was the information available for each riding: median household income, education levels, marital status and age. It provides some information for speculation. For instance, what education levels tend to vote for which parties? What income levels?

A snapshot of my riding:

Vancouver Centre - Vancouver-Centre

POPULATION
Total population 106015
Male 53115
Female 52900

LEGAL MARITAL STATUS (15 and older)
Never legally married (single) 54630
Legally married (and not separated) 26880
Separated, but still legally married 3400
Divorced 11265
Widowed 4175

HOUSEHOLDS
Number of persons in private 104215
Average number of persons in private 1.6
Median household income ($) 40677
Average dwelling value ($) 248648

LANGUAGE, MOTHER TONGUE
English 68740
French 3400
Non-official languages 31060

LABOUR FORCE
In the labour force 72775
Unemployment rate 7.3

EDUCATION (20 and older)
Less than grade 9 1965
Grades 9 to 13 14185
College 24385
University 49425

Source: Statistics Canada, 2001 Census

Links Compendium

Herein listed are some sites worth visiting.

• The religious origins of the game of rugby
  
• The American Dialect Society select their word of the year
  
• Daily reasons to dispatch Bush
  
• The use of vulgar terminology
  
• Gregory Rabassa has a novel coming out

If I have missed anything, or you have a fine piece online worth reading, a subjective point, a dangerous value judgement of worth, please send it along.

Big Green Egg

This past weekend, the Globe and Mail ran an article on compact barbecues suitable for the urban patio or mobile barbecue assignment. The article caught my eye because it was worth reading in the dubious Style section (for some reason I feel compelled to give each page of the paper in each section a chance to impress me with an article) and because I am in the market for a balcony barbecue.

Our current model, variously known by such affectionate names as 'The Little Unit' and 'The Char Beauty', has a lot of miles on her. I've replaced the burner once and cleaned her up more times than I remember, but some warping has set in and the hot spots don't seem so strategic anymore. Having read the Velveteen Rabbit many times at a young age, I am loath to throw anything away that has served me well. And that little grill has certainly served the Duck and I well. Year round we fire her up and she churns out sweet, meaty delights (see: Maple-Nut Barbecue Chicken). But it seems she's on her last legs.

So there in the Globe article I spy the Big Green Egg, not a gas grill, like we currently employ, but a barbecue smoker. Now, I have some experience with the difference between barbecuing and grilling, having stumbled on the Canadian Barbecue Championships a few years back in Whistler, and having been soundly educated on the clear superiority of slow cooking by means of employing a barbecue smoker. Beyond the lessons, the food spoke for itself to the merits of the slow barbecuing approach. The whole scene was like a trekky convention for carnivors. This was serious business. Suffice to say, I was into it like the proverbial dog on the wayward meat truck. Throw me a bone, indeed.

But back to the Big Green Egg, I have visited the website and seen the photos and made a polite enquiry of the Canadian sales representation on how a marooned Canuck can set his eyeballs on an example. For anyone interested, I will report back with my findings.

The Usual Osborne

This morning I followed a link to a Toronto Star story about Geist editor, Stephen Osborne, winning the National Magazine Awards Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement.

The award is a super testament to the dedication of Osborne and the rest of the Geist staff. Congratulations!

Honours pouring in for Geist and its editor

Literary mag lives on a shoestring
NMA award is 3rd so far this year

JUDY STOFFMAN
ENTERTAINMENT REPORTER

Stephen Osborne can't get over it. For the founder of Vancouver's Pulp Press and editor of Geist magazine, 2004 is already an annus mirabilis — and it's only June.

In February, he won a CBC Literary Award for his travel story "Girl Afraid Of Haystacks," in March he won a Vancouver Arts Award for writing and publishing, and tonight at the National Magazine Awards gala being held at the Carlu, he will receive this year's outstanding achievement award for his contributions to cultural journalism.

"It came as a real surprise because I had spent my whole life on the literary fringes. And there I am in Ottawa, shaking hands with the husband of the Governor General, accepting the CBC prize," said Osborne, 56, yesterday. "You are suddenly aware of people looking at you. I can't think properly."

Tonight's award (a certificate and framed portrait), says Terry Sellwood, president of the National Magazine Awards Foundation, "recognizes Stephen's talent, his passion, his building of the largest literary magazine in Canada."

Geist has a paid circulation of about 5,000 and a readership of about 15,000. Each issue is an off-beat mix of stories, memoirs, photographs, comics, reviews, little-known facts, extracts of work in progress, bits of poetry, a crossword puzzle, a thematic map of Canada by Melissa Edwards (for example: the Menstrual Map of Canada, the Fairy Tale Map of Canada) and witty letters from readers. It adds up to a snapshot of "the imaginary country we all inhabit," as Geist's Web site puts it.

Geist is the descendent of 3 Cent Pulp, a free magazine Osborne started while he headed Pulp Press (now Arsenal Pulp Press).

"We started Geist in 1990 with $7,600, as a kind of Canadian Harper's. We bought the Harper's Canadian subscription list," he says. "But unlike Harper's, we avoid politics. We are all about culture and ideas."

The name means "spirit" in German.

"It's a very big word, part of the vocabulary of German philosophy," explains Osborne, who writes and contributes photographs to the magazine under the pseudonym Mandelbrot, after Benoit Mandelbrot, a Polish-born mathematician who developed fractal geometry.

That this improvised publication has managed to survive through almost 14 years and 52 issues on a shoestring is due to Osborne's optimism and ingenuity, and to the volunteer efforts of his many friends in the writing world willing to pull all-nighters.

His staff and contributors are fiercely loyal, despite being ridiculously underpaid.

Only recently has Geist managed to pay editorial fees comparable to what newspapers pay freelancers — about 40 cents a word, a third of what a mainstream magazine offers.

His contributors subsidize the magazine, Osborne told a forum of editors and publishers at the Old Mill this week, along with government granting agencies. Since 2003, he has also received support from the Tula Foundation in Stratford, the creation of Eric Peterson, who made his fortune in medical software.

"Geist has enabled me to stretch myself," says columnist Stephen Henighan, who recently wrote a fascinating column about the spelling chaos in Canadian-published books that he observed while acting as a judge for the Governor-General's Award.

"Geist expresses a kind of post-nationalist Canadian nationalism, which is unheard of in a magazine coming out of the West. That peculiar vision that is Steve Osborne's ... He encourages his writers to be cosmopolitan and write about other places but he wants to know what it means for Canada."

You won't find Henighan, the Guelph-based author of three novels, two books of short stories, and two of criticism, appearing regularly in any other Canadian periodical. Annabel Lyon, whose novel The Best Thing For You was recently published by McClelland & Stewart, essayist Alberto Manguel (Stevenson Under The Palm Trees), and historian Daniel Francis have also found a home at Geist.

Francis is the author of the provocative The Imaginary Indian: The Image Of The Indian In Canadian Culture (edited by Osborne for Arsenal Pulp Press in 1992), the book that appears to be the unacknowledged source for Thomas King's recent Massey Lectures titled The Truth About Stories.

"We are an established magazine now and my hair has turned grey in the meantime," Osborne says ruefully. The magazine's current issue is a healthy 84 pages, yet Osborne feels keenly the fragility of both Geist and the culture it documents.

"The forces at work to destabilize local culture are enormous, from the political clout of U.S. magazines on our newsstands to Hollywood movies. If the blockbuster becomes the preferred method of selling books and movies, what happens to young writers, to 'zines, to small publishers?" he wonders. "The rug could be pulled out from under us at any time."

Drugs in Sports Report

CBC has posted on its website a great in-depth report on performance-enhancing drugs in sports. The site includes a timeline of steroid cases through history to the present. Largely they focus in on drugs at the Olympic Games but major professional leagues - the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA - aren't forgotten in the coverage.

Of particular note is a lengthy interview with Dick Pound, the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), about his ongoing campaign to clean up sports and to establish an universal code of standards across amateur and professional sports organizations. Some excerpts:

I don't want my grandchildren to have to become chemical stockpiles in order to be good at sports and to have fun at it. Baseball, take your kid out to the ballpark some day and you say, 'Son, some day if you ingest enough of this shit, you might be a player on that field, too.' It's a completely antithetical view to what sport should have been in the first place. It's essentially a humanistic endeavour to see how far you can go on your own talent.

...I think one of the answers is that there is an inordinate influence on the public and young people coming from professional sports. These are the farm teams for all of these professional undertakings. Basically, if you're saying to some kid in grade 10, 'If you don't weigh 265 pounds by the time you're a freshman in college, don't bother.' That's wrong. I mean, what kind of message is that?

...What I would say to [current NFLPA executive director, Gene] Upshaw is, "Have you seen these lions now in football?" Have you seen this? They're averaging 285 [lbs] and they have superhuman strength. I don't think they got that way simply by eating ma's porridge.

The report has a Canadian skew to it and focuses on the recent THG positive tests more than I might have liked, but the picture painted is bleak for athletes wanting to achieve without drugs at the highest levels. The THG scandal seems to have elevated the alarm in the anti-doping community because it points to large sums of money devoted to a systematic approach to beating the rules. If this one situation exists, then surely others must as well.

I still remember a friend who I played football with coming back from playing with the Iowa State Cyclones (a respectable Division I NCAA football program, but by no means a big-money program like Miami, Nebraska, USC, Florida, Notre Dame or Michigan) and telling us about his first day with the strength coach. The coach held up a vial of clear liquid and told all the offensive linemen that this was what they would be using for supplements. No one asked what was in the vial but my friend came back to see us that summer after his first season and he had gained 30 pounds of muscle.

No one wants to know what's happening but the evidence is right there for all of us to see, every night on the highlight reels.

Championing Taxes

Heather Mallick has something to say about the boogyman of elections: taxes.

O Canada, I pay my tax for thee.

Mallick cuts through some of the rhetoric and gets at the fact that taxes do good work, that taxes make the place you live a good place to live. Her article is worth reading if only to provide some context around the discussion of taxes.

I've always felt that calls for tax cuts amounted to thinly veiled greed and whining from the priviledged. Nobody making thirty thousand dollars a year can realistically think of themselves as tax burdened. Basically, by calling for tax cuts people are saying they want more money for themselves and less money contributed to common causes.

This line of reasoning is not very elastic - 30 percent more taxes does not create a 30 percent better place to live - but an appropriate level of taxation is necessary to maintain the society we live in, the services we enjoy and the conveniences we take for granted. And to talk about government waste and spending as if sums of money have disappeared is simply dishonest. Money doesn't disappear, it just flows, is spent again and continues to flow. Advertising contracts, tax breaks, industry incentives and farm subsidies are just some ways that public money re-enters the economy and continues to flow. Like any allocation of funds, some choices provide better value than others.

Would you have it any other way?

They Deserved a Better Fate

Last night the Stanley Cup playoffs came to an end with the Tampa Bay Lightning beating the Calgary Flames 2-1 in the seventh game of their best-of-seven series. The Lightning paraded around the ice in victory with the Stanley Cup overhead. Hulk Hogan stood out on the ice to celebrate with them while the Flames disappeared to their dressing room out of sight of the TV cameras.

I watched the game at a friend's house and cheered for the Flames, not because they were a Canadian-based team, but because I couldn't help not cheering for them. The Lightning were the better team but the Flames deserved a better fate.

Why? Because the Flames represented everything that is wonderful in sports and in hockey in particular. The Flames were the underdog, overmatched in every series they played in but never outworked. They simply wanted to win more than the teams they played. Their courage, audacity, energy, perseverance, focus and just their goddam heart made anything seem possible when they played.

Mikka Kiprosoff stood on his head game after game. Every time he played less than outstanding he came back the next game with a dominant effort, often resulting in a shutout.

Jarome Iginla emerged as the new, dominant captain in hockey, heir to the leadership shoes of players like Mark Messier and Scott Stevens. His fearlessness and tenacity overwhelmed opponents. At times he seemed to will the Flames to victory with the force of his desire. He scored, he hit, he forechecked, he fought. He led by example and his fire drove the Flames.

Robin Regehr came into his own as a top tier NHL defenceman, playing huge minutes in all situations. Regehr provided the muscle and durability on the blueline. His selection as a member of the national team for the upcoming World Cup of Hockey bodes well for Canada's chances and the chances of the future.

Brad Ference may have been the smallest Flames defenceman but he never game up anything to anyone in the corners, in front of the net or on the rush. His skating and strength, from that deep, knee-bend position, steered the Flames out of trouble on many occasions.

The remaining Flames defencemen tooks turns shining, scoring goals when no one expected them to, providing steady puck clearance and effective neutral-zone passes to forwards in full flight. Leopold, Montador, Warrener, Commodore and Lydman all excelled in turn, as if they passed to each other a magic totem that let them elevate their game beyond their previous play.

Chris Simon seized an opportunity to again be a top-line forward, away from the marginalized tough-guy role he had been reduced to playing. His goals, passing and presence on the ice made him the best deadline acquisition in the NHL.

Martin Gelinas proved again - as he did with Edmonton, Vancouver and Carolina before - why he is such a valued playoff performer. His skating and timely goals proved the difference in many games. Was there anything he wasn't willing to do to win? Did anyone else see his intensity?

Craig Conroy shook off a mediocre regular season to spark the Flames offence. Chris Clark chased down more potential icings than I saw all regular season long. Stephane Yelle won faceoffs, forechecked, backchecked and hit harder pound-for-pound than anyone in the playoffs.

When Shean Donovan carried the puck it felt as if he could beat anyone 1-on-1 and his loss in game 5 of the finals was a huge blow to Calgary's chances to win. Donovan was one of their best puck carriers all playoffs. Respect for his speed forced opposing defencemen to back out of the offensive zone, preventing the downward pressure of pinching defencemen that bottled up the Flames in their own zone.

The rest of the Flames forwards - Oleg Saprykin, Chuck Kobasew, Dave Lowry, Ville Nieminen, Marcus Nilson, Krzysztof Oliwa - all played their hearts out too. Saprykin showed the speed, skill and talent that have made him a top prospect as well as some grit, determination and physical play that I never had seen before. Kobasew seemed constantly on the verge of scoring. Everyone knew when Oliwa was on the ice.

Over four series the Flames seemed able to transcend talent and odds with belief in themselves. Clichés so thoroughly dominate sport that it is hard to come up with honest statements, but the Flames proved over and over that the best team prevailed in every series they played, not the best players or system, the best team. So it's not clichéd to me to say that their effort was heroic. Sure they're playing hockey and not saving lives, but they inspired people in a way that very few individuals or groups in our society can. People who had never watched hockey in their lives except at gatherings where the game played behind their conversations found themselves buying Flames flags and jerseys and watching the games with rapt intensity. People who lamented the dulling down of the game were enamoured again. Flames hockey was fun to watch and it brought people together in a way that very little else can. Even Leafs fans I know caught Flames fever.

And so I feel that, as a fan of hockey and an enthusiastic spectator of the game, I owe the Flames a thank you for their contribution to the NHL playoffs and the spirit of hockey in Canada. And I'll leave the last word to the man who put together the Flames and groomed them for success, their greyed seagull of a coach, Darryl Sutter.

"When there is nothing left, there is nothing left," Sutter said. "The only thing left to do is cry...They literally emptied it out for their teammates."

Scott's Birthday

Today is the 26th birthday of my brother Scott. When my mom brought him home from the hospital he was long and skinny. In photos, he looks like an alien. My aunt Dodie, my mom's sister who lived close to us at the time, used to cringe and say to my mom, "Oh, cover up his legs. He looks like a Biafran."

This past weekend the Duck and I travelled to Victoria to visit Scott and we acted like tourists in the city where he's lived for the past year and a half. We walked around the inner harbour and saw planes and helicopters fly overhead as part of the D-Day celebrations. About half a dozen tall ships sailed into the harbour and docked in front of the Empress Hotel and the BC Legislature, not the BC Parliament, as so many folks call it.

While we walked we often took shortcuts along paths that passed between buildings. One time we came upon a wedding, with a brass band playing in the back yard of what used to be St. Ann's School for Girls. A couple in their 60s stood on the back porch surveying the scene and Scott remarked that it felt like we'd dropped into a scene from The Great Gatsby. A day later we walked past a hotel called The Great Gatsby Mansion. We bought slurpees and watched a bi-plane circle in the sky above.

Looking back, the weekend slid by smooth and easy as a summer's day. We didn't have a big blowout bash, but we barbecued in Beacon Hill Park and had some friends over and then walked to The (Flying) Beagle pub to watch the third period of the Stanley Cup Finals. Some folks left and others arrived late and it was nice to meet the friends and get a glimpse of the life my brother has made for himself.

We ended the weekend eating Thai food on a patio. As we tucked into our meals my mom called to tell us she was selling the house that Scott and I had lived in with her for the last years we'd live in Winnipeg. The sign was going up on Monday (today). It seemed like things were changing right in front of our eyes. It seemed like just the right thing to add to complete the mood - happy and sad, optimistic and apprehensive all at the same time.

Happy Birthday Scott!

Vancouver's Best Fish and Chips

For five months during late 1996 and early 1997 I travelled around the east and south east of Australia. During that time I developed a considerable appreciation for that newspaper-wrapped delicacy, fish and chips.

In every Australian town I remember seeing and often visiting a shop that proudly proclaimed Fish and Chips, Fish 'n Chips or Fish and Chippery on their signage. Inside, you could be sure to find a few varieties of some fairly fresh fish and two choices of preparation: batter or crumb. As my tastes evolved I began to seriously lean towards crumbed at every instance. I also leaned toward what the Aussies called 'flake' for my fish choice, though snapper, when available, rocketed to the top of my hit list. So, you might say that I had a travelling relationship with fish and chips.

When I returned to Canada I tried to maintain my habit. Yet all the orders of fish and chips I tried were lousy. The fish tasted less than fresh, coated in bready, gooey batter, and the pieces arrived as limp as if they'd been steamed. Kitchy chain restaurants with prominent locations seemed to have cornered the market on fish and chips with a product so disheartening to me that I gave up ordering it and opted for a clubhouse sandwich or some other reliable alternative.

Then, about a year after moving to Vancouver, I discovered The Crab Shop. At that time I was looking for a job and new to the city. I applied for a position with an environmental organization called Greenways and Blueways, and a few days later they called and set up an appointment to interview me at their offices on the north shore, just off the Dollarton Highway. Where the hell was that? We didn't have a car at that time so I called around for directions and ended up on a route that took three hours and involved four buses. I arrived late for the interview and was ill-qualified for the position but the interviewer seemed bent on continuing the process.

By the time he asked me about my knowledge of environmental fundraising ("I raised $250 in pledges for the Terry Fox run in grade 6," I told him and he didn't crack a smile) we both knew we were just going through the motions. We wrapped up and I waited on the shoulder of the highway to catch the bus back downtown. I waited for 15 minutes and no bus came from either direction, so I started walking.

After 15 minutes the highway started to open up and a yellow, bunkerish building came into view. The Crab Shop the sign on the roof read; Fish 'n Chips a cheeseboard in front read. Two boats on trailers perched in a gravel parking lot behind the building. I considered this a good sign and pushed in past a storm door through the dark entrance. The menu, in white chalk on a 4' x 6' blackboard consisted of the following:

• 1 piece cod and chips
• 2 piece cod and chips
• 1 piece halibut and chips
• 2 piece halibut and chips

Through a cutaway below the menu, a stainless steel world of industrial tables and benches beckoned. Three men in yellow rubber aprons stood around the main table cracking the legs off crabs and banging the legs on the edge of buckets to jar the meat from them. Various photos of men with girls adorned the bulletin board below the blackboard. A refridgerated display case stretched out filled with thick salmon and halibut steaks, fresh prawns, indian candy, salmon jerky, crab cakes, digby scallops, all laid out on a bed of crushed ice.

I ordered the 2 piece halibut and chips and left payment on the counter. 10 minutes later I had my order. I added the right dose of salt and malt vinegar and sat outside at the lone picnic bench with my plastic fork poised. The smell of the hot fresh fish, the crisp chips of potato and the dark, sharp vinegar combined in a moment of sensory overload rich with memory and significance. I waited, not wanting to burn my tongue. The halibut fell apart in flakes as I pushed my fork in. Steam rose and I tasted the first flakes - soft but firm, moist and flavourful. I had found some damn fine fish and chips.

I mention this story now because I returned to The Crap Shop today for lunch, and their fish and chips remain the best I have found in Vancouver. I hesitate to say this because I like to keep my secrets, but if you're interested in this sort of thing, you should go. And apparently, I'm not the only one to have found The Crap Shop.

Get in the Gardiner

The Adrienne and Nantz Birthday Report, part one

We arrived to the Toronto airport an hour late. At the security gate in Vancouver someone decided that leaving their carry-on case behind was a good idea in order to make their plane. Seconds later the entire airport was shut down and the passenger with the missing carry-on had been taken into custody.

So we arrived in Toronto an hour late and met Adrienne just outside the gates. Her friend Jeff pulled up in the car and we set off at a brisk pace, through the jungle of concrete ramps suspended above us to both sides, swooping and arcing like great traffic slides. Four, five, six lanes awaited us when we cleared the ramps. The air felt warm and moist and the word muggy made sense to me for the first time in a long time.

"Get in the Gardiner, Jeff," Adrienne said and we whizzed along empty, elevated freeways towards the lights of downtown T.O. Flashing amber ahead signalled construction and we exit down a curving ramp to the shoreline, our journey skimming along above the city interrupted for a more pedestrian pace and a tour past the wind turbine, the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, the CN Tower and SkyDome. I caught a view of the Royal York hotel in the distance, where my grandparents had gone of their first date ever, to the 1941 Jeweler's Ball, on a cold, slushy night in February, when they couldn't find a cab anywhere in the city and my grandmother had introduced herself to my grandfather as Francie, though her name was Joan. They had had a great night and he called on her regularly after that until he went overseas on his first tour as a tail gunner in an RAF and then RCAF Lancaster bomber.

We passed the base of the CN Tower and massive blocks of condos rose up in clusters all around us with more in the process of being completed. High-density housing was happening to T.O. in a big way. We followed the lake shore east out of downtown, past the distillery and through an industrial area filled with warehouses converted to movie studios, and it struck me how removed the lake seemed from the city. If the land hadn't been so flat and a few boats popped up at the occasional inlet I would never have known that one of the great lakes lay just over the tops of the buildings.

More industrial buildings passed between our route and the lake then the tall smokestack of a sewage treatment plant loomed high above. Now this matched my recollections of the east: red brick buildings butted against each other, rail tracks intersecting and dividing the road, fences and walls lining the roadway, industry and its monuments imposing and ageing across the landscape. An empty walkway ran along beside the curbside for cyclists and runners and then we were beyond the treatment plant. The lake opened up to our right, flat and vast and calm, the lights of a few boats in the distance.

We passed huge angular t-shaped concrete pylons meant to hold up an extension of the Gardiner Expressway that never was built. Three outlets of the ubiquitous orange signs for Pizza Pizza came and went and we turned onto a road rutted with streetcar rails - Queen Street East. We had entered The Beaches, or The Beach, as you called the neighbourhood if you had lived in Toronto long enough.

Taxis sat askew on the street waiting for passenger spilling out of the pubs that lined the street and the young beautiful people of the big city walked the sidewalks between drinks. It was almost closing time and some of the young beautiful people of the big city called out to others across the street as we passed, late night stabs at securing hookups after the ploys and feints of previous subtle stabs, before drink and lateness affected the mind and made the bad-idea filter porous, had failed.

We turned back down toward the lake, down a residential street lined with trees and large, wood-frame, two-storey houses with small lawns in the front. Ahead of us the street ended and the darkness of the water lay beyond. Two houses from the end we parked and Adrienne led us up the steps, over the porch and into her and Craig's apartment. Our futon was laid out on the floor for us and Craig was sound asleep, just his slim back visible in the glow from the bathroom light. Jeff bunked in at the foot of Craig and Adrienne's bed and the Duck and I bedded down on the futon and the five of us slept as Arlo the cat creaked across the hardwood floors, seeking out plastic bags to bite on. We had arrived.

Ladies Looking for a Drink

Two ladies were out for a Saturday stroll. One lady had a Doberman pinscher and the other had a Chihuahua.

As they sauntered down the street, the lady with the Doberman said to her friend, "Let's go over to that bar and get something to drink."

The lady with the Chihuahua said, "We can't go in there. We've got the dogs with us."

The lady with the Doberman said, "Just follow my lead."

They walked over to the bar and the lady with the Doberman put on a pair of dark glasses and started to walk in.

The bouncer at the door said, "Sorry, Lady, no pets allowed."

The lady with the Doberman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "A Doberman pinscher?"

The lady with the Doberman said, "Yes, they're using them now. They're very good."

The bouncer said, "OK, come on in."

The lady with the Chihuahua figured convincing the bouncer that a Chihuahua was a seeing-eye dog may be a bit too far fetched, but thought "what the hell", so she put on her dark glasses and started to walk in.

Once again the bouncer said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The lady with the Chihuahua said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "A Chihuahua?"

The lady with the Chihuahua said, "A Chihuahua? They gave me a fucking Chihuahua?”

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The above joke is courtesy of the incomparable Anne Ross, born in Winnipeg and now of Toronto.

Isn't it funny that people use the Internet largely to send jokes to each other?