Up in Ontario

Same-Sex Wedding Belles

A Look Ahead on Same-Sex Marriage

This morning, just as I do most mornings, I walked down to my favourite local coffee shop for a morning coffee before proceeding to a workout to get the day started. On the front page of the Globe and Mail, two stories caught my eye and reminded me why I like to live in this city of Vancouver and in this country of Canada.

The first story was the predictable headline: Same-sex bill finally passes. Bill C-38 became law across the country last night as a coalition of Liberal, NDP and Bloc Quebecois voted, 158-133 in favour of the bill, and Canada became the third nation of the world (along with Belgium and the Netherlands) to legalize marriages between two individuals, regardless of gender. As you might guess, I'm in favour of gay marriage, though I'm not really sure what there is to be against, so I'm in favour of not restricting marriage by gender or sexual preference.

On the same-sex marriage issue, two observations stand out for me. First of all, I think legalized same-sex marriage is such a touchy subject with people because it's an odd place for the government to be passing laws. Couples, regardless of gender, have for a long time received the same rights and paid the same taxes as married couples in what I've come to understand, through first-hand knowledge, is known as the common-law relationship. In the eyes of the law I can find no difference that exists between common-law couples and married couples.

So really, this same-sex legislation is a symbolic gesture aimed at a religious ceremony and distinction, which is, as I mentioned above, an odd place for governments to be passing laws. Similar debates and legislation have not arisen around christenings, bar mitzvahs or catechism. So why the push for marriage? Why is the government in the marriage debate at all? I think that this fuzziness drives much of the confusion and contention around same-sex marriage: it's a religious ceremony but it's also a legal arrangement, though the legal arrangement exists outside of the religious ceremony. Confused yet? Wouldn't it have been simpler for the government to split the legal and religious components of marriage, taken the legal components and left the religious ones to their respective religions?

My second observation about the same-sex legislation arises from the strident positions politicians have taken on the issue. It seems as if the usual wishy washyness of politicians has given way to specific, static positions. Name a politician and you know just how they stood on the issue and voted on the legislation. It took some of the suspense out of the proceedings but I think that people will remember. The issue will persist long after even our next election.

What do I mean? Well, as the Prime Martin has promised, we're going to have a national election at the latest about a year from now, after the findings of the Gomery Inquiry are in. For many people the same-sex debate has been a very personal discussion, raising all kinds of issues they'd have rather not discussed, and forcing them to consider same-sex sex. I think that voters will remember just how each party and each politician running in their riding voted or positioned themselves on the same-sex marriage issue. I believe the pollsters call it a *wedge issue* because it acts to distinguish the parties and the candidates. This one's not going away just yet.

Lastly on same-sex marriage, it seems like the Prime Martin has shaken off some of the rust and stigma of his Mr. Dithers persona. They're keeping the house sitting well into what would normally be the summer recess and they're passing legislation from a minority position - both difficult things to do.

The second story on the front page of the Globe this morning was how Vancouver refuses to buy into Wal-Mart. After the retail megalith spent millions trying to woo Vancouver city council with a cutting-edge green building, the council still shut them out. On the radio this morning a commentator in favour of allowing Wal-Mart to set up shop in Vancouver tried to make the point that the decision by city councillors had its basis in ideology - that multinational corporations were categorically bad no matter the specifics of this proposal. Ha! Of course it was about ideology! Partially. Just as the whole ethos of big-box stores, minimal, marginal pay, imported goods derived from offshore cheaper labour and retail layouts that require a car to access are built around an ideology. Even when we're talking about Wal-Mart, no one has a monopoly on blind generalizations and diminutive labels.

Lastly, I understand that the rest of Canada may hear this story and either cheer, if they agree with the it, or shake their head as those crazies out on the left coast make another cuckoo decision, if they don't agree with it. But either way, I see in Vancouver a diaspora of small, locally owned businesses, and I don't see that same variety anywhere where I see Wal-Mart and big-box stores. I return to Winnipeg and over 80 percent of all the new retail developments could just as easily be in Saskatoon or Mississauga. There's nothing but cheap sameness at the end of each parking lot. If that's the alternative, and I believe that a vision just like that is what the Wal-Mart proposal was all about, then I'll take higher prices and messy diversity in my local bazaar. But I'm the same guy who argues that you should value more than price and buy according to what you value.

Reimagining Sudbury's Inco Smelter

I once wrote a story set in Sudbury where the main character loses his job at the Inco smelter and has to deal with how that changed him - his identity being closely tied to his work, his time occupied largely by work, his world defined by his social status as a breadwinner. At one point I considered the story to be part of the manuscript for Up in Ontario, since the main character, William Dubois, also appears as Gill's brother in my novel, but my editor wisely talked me out of including it. In writing about Sudbury I felt like I knew something about the place, since I'd spent many hours imagining it and its characters.

So coming across a post on The Inco Mine in Sudbury, Ontario at the incredible Sprol.com felt like rediscovering a place I had been but couldn't remember. I knew the details but saw them from a new angle, in a new light, with a new perspective.

I also loved to see the Sprol posts on The Earth at Night and The Athabasca Tar Sands. Sprol bills itself as plantary sightseeing and the stories and images illustrate the effect we have on our home, this earth. I remember stories my parents' generation told about seeing the earth for the first time from space - that clean, blue and green sphere beamed back at us from the few astronauts walking on the moon - and how it supposedly spurred on the environmental movement of the day. Let's hope these more localized stories and images can do the same for our generation.

The Saturday Summer Equinox Barbecue

It's on.

We're inviting you to a barbecue. Here are the details.

Who:
All of you, and anyone else you want to invite. It's carte blanche, which is French for 'it's a beach, we can't lock the doors.'

What:
A beachish barbecue to celebrate the mixed blessing of the longest Saturday day of the year / shortest Saturday night of the year

When:
Saturday, June 18 - from around 5 pm to whenever

Where:
On the grassy section above the beach at west end of Spanish Banks, nearish to the huge cement anchor that no one knows about. If you're in doubt about where this is, drive along Spanish Banks from east to west and park in the last parking lot, then walk west past the end of the parking lot and you've found it. If you start going up the hill, you've gone too damn far.

How:
With grace and style and some vigour. Someone else might say, 'panache,' but we would mock them and tweak their nose with pliers until they croaked out, 'sa suffit.'

Bring:
Whatever will please you to have at a barbecue on the beach grass.

I'll have a grill and some chairs and meats for said grill, perhaps hog ribs. I'll bring a cooler and some plates and utensils for hand protection. Any 'with' drinks will have to be suitably camouflaged - I suggest plastic cups and careful pouring and placement of empties.

Email me with any questions.

Updates: Zellers and The Walrus

Two updates for those of you who have passed from a casual acquaintance with the Up in Ontario blog to an intimate knowledge. Or, just tying up a few loose threads of the stories covered on this indulgence.

Paging Zellers, Anyone Home?

A few weeks ago I wrote about Stalking the Recycled Tissue at Zellers and left off the story by saying, "So to make a long story short, I filled out the card and asked to be contacted. That was Monday, I'm still waiting to hear from them." Now it's two weeks later and I'm still waiting to be contacted. We have an answering machine too. Is that the Jeopardy music I hear playing in the background?

The Walrus Appears

About a month ago I posted about receiving an email from The Walrus magazine (The Walrus Joins the Conversation) asking me to post a link back to their site in exchange for a year's subscription to their magazine. I had made some less-than-charitable remarks about their mag and they wanted a chance to change my mind.

So last night I posted their logo over there on the left of the page, under the Links section. Over the next few days the position and presentation of the logo and link may change a little, but I'm pretty comfortable with it being there. I don't feel like I've made some Faustian bargain for 12 issues of curiousity. So, if you're interested, give that link a clicky poo and see what's on the other side. Or don't, and stick around Up in Ontario to hear me read.

Consumer Reports' Green Choices

Consumer Reports, that bastion of reliable, honest product assessment, has turned its attention to evaluating products for the green consumer. After my first glance at the site I thought it seemed a little thin on content. Then I dug into the ratings and found a great wealth of product information, geared to someone looking to consider their environmental impact in their purchasing decisions. Hi!

I looked a little deeper into the Autos section and found that our car rated an 85 out of 100. Not bad, though I'm not entirely clear on how the ratings are compiled. An Audi S4, for instance, a sports car with a V8 engine, had the highest rating at 99 out of 100. Perhaps there's some measure of power generated per unit of fuel used?

(Sidenote: To see if I could suss out the S4 a little more I opened a new browser window and typed in audi.ca, figuring I'd find myself on an Audi homepage for Canada. No dice. What I found is a domain squatter homepage. Ah, www.audicanada.ca works. Nice cars, folks, but the web strategy needs some basic attention.)

Other great sections on the Consumer Reports Green Choices site include Appliances (air conditioners, dishwashers, garbage disposals, fridges, and washers/dryers), Home & Garden (compost bins, gas cans, water filters), Electronics (batteries, desktop computers) and Food (fish, meat).

The Food > Meat section is the most relevant to me since the information provided there affects purchase decisions I make every week. For the past few months I've moved away from supermarket meats towards meats from a small, local butcher shop that sells a wider selection of meats of higher quality. The grass-fed ribeye steak I barbecued last night was a gem.

800 Dead Torontonians Annually

The CBC reports that 800 people are killed annually in Toronto from air pollution. (CBC.ca also has a very good summary of smog.) Today's report arrives on the same day that Toronto received a smog alert, the 14th of this year, equaling the total for all of last year before we even hit summer. We're certainly no better out left here in Vancouver. Despite our conceits to the contrary, I can see the milky air between me and the vaunted mountains, the brown crust on the sky when I look out at the city from any elevation.

A few months ago I wrote a post entitled What We'll be Remembered For. A few points of reference had converged at once for me and made for an interesting common theme - that we were ruining our planet, hobbling the future of all our children and eventually killing ourselves off.

To echo the funny George Carlin point, environmentalism isn't about saving the environment, it's about saving humans. The environment, as we call our planet, will do just fine without us. More likely, everything else will be far better off. Humanity has been compared to a cancer on the planet, spoiling the elements all life rely upon and eventually destoying the host systems and ourselves.

In the comments of What We'll be Remembered For, The Duck wisely suggested taking the One Tonne Challenge currently on offer from the Canadian federal government. That's a start, does anyone else have any sound advice for minimizing our effects on nature?