Up in Ontario

Stephen Fry on the matter of history

I love speeches from great orators. I can read them over again and get new meaning from them. To follow along and imagine the pacing, inflection and manner of delivery and to join in company with a fine mind is a joy. Speeches are read slower, with a different cadence, than prose, and I love to tease out the fine details that the words on the page or the screen hint at.

Cleaning out some old bookmarks today I came across a speech delivered by historian Stephen Fry entitled The future's in the past. The speech was delivered last summer to promote the launch of a British campaign to make history relevant to its population.

But ... isn't history now just point of view, tribal assertion, cultural propaganda? After all, the days of Burke, Macaulay, Gibbon, Trevelyan and Froude are over. Historians are no longer grandees at the centre of a fixed civilisation; they are simply journalists writing about celebrities who haven't got the grace to be alive any more. Certainly, some people sense in our world, even if they can't prove it, a new and bewildering contempt for the past. In the high street of life, as it were, no one seems to look above the shop-line. Today's plastic signage at street level is the focus; yesterday's pilasters, corbels and pediments above are neither noticed nor considered, save by what some would call cranks and conservationists.

Fly fishing photos, knots and magic

Yesterday I played a little hooky in the morning and went fishing with Darren up to Squamish. Here are some photos he took of the salmon we landed.

I wait all year for the salmon to run and weekdays mean far fewer fishers on the river than weekends. So I was grateful to get some time on the river without a gang of folks. Besides, if you're working for yourself and you can't get your boss to give you some time off for good behaviour, you might need a new boss.

Just like every fisher out there with any sense of their place in the world, Darren is still learning about fishing. He asked me how to tie the various knots I used in the connections of lines, leaders and hooks or flies. I told him I'd show him.

Then this morning I discovered, thanks to Cool Tools, this incredible website of Grog's animated knot lessons. It's a fantastic resource for knot tying. I know that may sound like Hot Scrapbooking Action! but when you hook up with a fish you want your line to hold.

Want to know the story behind the photos? Check out my write up on Think Salmon: Squamish River Conjures Flies and Salmon.

An omnivores double hit

Just a quick note this evening to point to two Michael Pollan articles. Pollan is the author of a book I'm looking forward to reading called The Omnivore's Dilemma: a natural history of four meals, and already, in anticipation, I've become quite a fan of his thinking and writing.

Article one is from the NY Times and is called The Vegetable Industrial Complex, a clear-headed look at how spinach became contaminated with e.coli bacteria and scared the hell out of people across a continent.

Soon after the news broke last month that nearly 200 Americans in 26 states had been sickened by eating packaged spinach contaminated with E. coli, I received a rather coldblooded e-mail message from a friend in the food business. “I have instructed my broker to purchase a million shares of RadSafe,” he wrote, explaining that RadSafe is a leading manufacturer of food-irradiation technology. It turned out my friend was joking, but even so, his reasoning was impeccable. If bagged salad greens are vulnerable to bacterial contamination on such a scale, industry and government would very soon come looking for a technological fix; any day now, calls to irradiate the entire food supply will be on a great many official lips. That’s exactly what happened a few years ago when we learned that E. coli from cattle feces was winding up in American hamburgers.

Article two is from Truthdig and is called Micheal Pollan: the Truthdig interview. It's an interview with the author about the aforementioned book, among other tidbits.

Just reading the coverage of mad cow disease was an incredible educational experience. For example, we read that you’ve got to stop feeding cows to cows. It’s like, “What? We’ve been feeding cows to cows?” And we’ve got to tighten up those rules about feeding chicken litter to cows. “We’ve been feeding chicken crap to cows?” If you read those stories, it made me realize that the system by which we’re producing our food is not one I feel very good about participating in.

So I began looking into the food chain and alternatives to the main industrial food chain—doing what I think of as a series of food detective stories, and much of what I learned in these detective stories was astonishing to me, and forced me to re-approach the way I shop for food and go about eating it.

Food: you put it in you. It becomes part of you. You're made of it.

Win books in the bool scavenger hunt

Never mind what a bool is, it will all grow clear in time. What you need to do right now is head over to So Misguided to enter the online scavenger hunt to win a collection of Stephen King books.

I just did the hunt and loved it. You have until the end of the day tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 21 to finish the hunt and enter to win.

Get cracking at the bool!

Trout Lake's Philosophising Tomato Men

I'm not shy about being a fan of the Trout Lake Farmer's Market. It's the best place I've found to score the good fruits and veggies throughout the summer and fall here in Vancouver. It simply rocks my socks.

The last farmer's market was on Thanksgiving weekend. So we're done for the year now, and I have to find a new way to scratch that produce itch. But that's my problem.

Here's the highlight for you.

My friend Riggs took some great photos with his swish camera phone. The subject? Those crazy tomato guys, the ones that restrict the volume of tomatoes you can buy, the ones that first sold the sungold tomatoes and still sell the best sungolds. I remember visiting their stand in turns so they wouldn't catch on to the fact that the Duck and I were together - they restricted sales of their tomatoes per household.

Here's how they explained their position.

The one day we arrived later in the season and this sign was posted. Sales were unrestricted.

As if just to prove they're not one-hit wonders, those crazy tomoto guys also have incredible grapes that make the world a better place as soon as you bite into one.

More hot tomato pics? You bet.

RIP Lister Sinclair

I read yesterday morning the sad news that Lister Sinclair had died over the weekend: CBC broadcaster Lister Sinclair dies.

Tod Maffin has a nice tribute, Farewell, Mr. Sinclair, where he shares some of his recollections of working with the man so closely identified with the CBC Radio program Ideas.

My own memory of Lister Sinclair is coincidental with my own discovery of ideas and Ideas. As the lightly accented host, Mr. Sinclair introduced and presented some of the most memorable radio I've ever heard from 9 to 10 o'clock on weeknights.

When I discovered Ideas I was a university student living in Winnipeg, discovering at the same time all the great undergraduate ideas of the liberal arts and Renaissance. Ideas seemed the perfect compliment to my academic strivings - a show that presented in hour-long increments the big ideas of our time.

Barring a hot date, some social event or some athletics, in my brain I had a standing appointment to check out what they were playing on Ideas every weeknight. Lister Sinclair was the reliable, trustworthy voice introducing the ideas, making them accessible, bracketing the heavier, deeper moments of the broadcasts with his short, clear-headed linking pieces.

When Paul Kennedy took over as host of Ideas as few years ago I felt like I'd lost a friend. Would Ideas be the same? Would it carry on its high standards? Thankfully it has been a great transition, but that moment demonstrated for me how affecting Lister Sinclair had been on my little auto-didactic experiment.

So thank you to Lister Sinclair for his many years of hard working sharing ideas.

Turkey Saver Caserole

Wondering what to do with all that turkey you have left over from Thanksgiving? Here's a simple idea that gives Thanksgiving leftovers a new chance to be loved. I'm calling it Turkey Saver Caserole, but you can call it what you like. Here's how it works.

The needs:

• Turkey, carved off the carcass. (You should have done this within a few hours of taking the beast out of the oven.)


• Stuffing, either left over or made new.


• Smashed potatoes, once again, either left over or made new.


• Fine breadcrumbs.


• Good cheese, preferably parmesan, grated or sliced or crumbled so it will melt.


• Black pepper (coarse).


• Cranberries, or cranberry sauce. (optional)


• A roasting pan and oven.

The method:

1. Preheat oven to 350.


2. Haul all your ingredients out of the fridge and get them ready to throw into the roasting pan. This may mean you have to make smaller, bite-sized pieces out of your turkey.


3. Start with the smashed potatoes. Put them in the roasting pan. If you can spread them with a utensil, do so. If not, use your hands to press them out over the bottom on the pan. I use my hands. You want to have a layer of smashed potatoes about a 1/3 of the height of the roasting pan.


4. Lay out the stuffing over the smashed potatoes. Here there's not much chance of using a utensil, so just go ahead and get your hands dirty. It's faster and the way real cooks do it.


5. If you're into cranberries, now's the time to add them. Spread them out over the stuffing.


6. Turkey. By now you know what to do. Spread it out over the top. If you have some skin left over or fatty pieces, make sure to spread them out to share the love. Bonus: If you have gravy left over, throw some of that over top too. I certainly can't hurt.


7. Crack some black pepper over the turkey, to taste.


8. Spread the cheese over the turkey and pepper.


9. Spread a layer of breadcrumbs over the tippy top.

Into the middle rack of the oven she goes for about 40 minutes. Your place will fill with great smells.

When you think it's ready, check for doneness. Here you're really just crisping things up and getting the flavours to mix together. You want browned on the top and the bottom. If your Saver is looking a little pale, give it some 450 or Broil for a few minutes under careful watch.

When you serve it things will fall apart. I recommend pasta bowls for service. I also recommend experimenting with this recipe and adding vegetables if you're into it. Carrots or peas or both would be my first impulse.

I just don't get these things

Though they're popular, I just don't get these things.

• MySpace. The site simply sucks. I know how many friends I have. I talk to them. I don't care how many people have clicked a link on a page that loads playing some crap pop melodrama.
• Pet fetishism.
• Poker. One person wins, everyone else loses. Feels like self delusion to me.
• The phrase, 'I'm just saying.' It's empty and gutless. Say or don't say.
• Terror about terrorism. What really are the chances? Damned slim. Here's a better snapshot of what to worry about and what will kill you.
• Shoe shopping.
• Shoe collections.
• Cheap cheese.
• Cheap food, period. Food should be expensive: you put it in you.
• Why we lie to children and then instruct them to tell the truth. Examples: santa claus, the easter bunny, strangers as suspicious.
• Tattoos: what do I want on my body that I'll still want in 50 years when it's discoloured and stretched and wrinkled? A dolphin becomes an elephant.

What don't you get?

Ensuring sexual consent

Kids today! Who knew that they were so litigious? I mean I understand the role of the law and all, but this portrayal of sexual consent (video) is a little too much.

Alright, it's more than too much. It's very funny. They manage to stretch one joke into a three-minute skit. They also manage to create a great juxtaposition of mimesis and diagesis, as we talked about in our Bolloxed review, for the story geeks out there. Can I get a 'Whoa-oo?"

Just remember boys, when you tell a girl, 'I really dig the smell of your hair.' It's on.

Now what's article 20?

Think Salmon: the great update on what's been happening

I know, I know. You haven't heard from me much lately. I've been remiss. I've been busy. I can't promise it won't happen again but I can promise that I'll offer you something worthwhile when I return. Like this:

For the past few months I've been working with Pacific Salmon Foundation on a website project they're doing with the Fraser Basin Council called Think Salmon. Last weekend the Duck and I travelled to the Adams River as part of that work. And we saw an incredible natural phenomena: the return of the sockeye salmon.

I've written up our experience in 3 parts, titled collectively Chasing the Sockeye.

• Part 1: From Vancouver to Hope
• Part 2: From Hope to the Shuswap
• Part 3: Finding the Adams River Sockeye

But wait, there's more! We also took heaps of photos of our trip. The photos are available at the Think Salmon Flickr photostream or at herself's Flickr photostream.

So it's not like I haven't been doing things. I've been doing stuff. I just haven't been keeping my good friends at Up in Ontario abreast of those things.

And yes, I know. I know that she's been doing a much better job than me with her posts on the Adams River sockeye run, why salmon are interesting, and, most of all, with her damned awesome salmon run video. But it's not a competition!

And besides, we're into halfers on everything we do and own anyway.

How to kill wild salmon populations

Start a fish farm where the wild salmon pass. That's pretty much everywhere in coastal BC, thankfully.

Can there be absolutely any doubt that salmon farms kill wild salmon? Read the study for yourself: Infection and mortality of wild salmon by parasitic sea lice from fish farms.

Returning from a trip last night to the Adams River Sockeye Festival I heard the author of the study, Martin Krkosek, on CBC Radio's As It Happens (listen to part 1, real player only). The host tried to get him to soften his stance on salmon farms and he refused, saying that there was a clear pattern - wherever fish farms had appeared in Europe or South America or on the east coast of North America, wild fish stocks had rapidly declined.

Monique, quoted in the Vancouver Sun

Over the weekend Monique was quoted in the Vancouver Sun's column on books and technology, she reports on So Misguided:

Monique Trottier, Internet marketing manager for Raincoast Books, has a personal blog somisguided.com and has also launched a well-trafficked blog at Raincoast.com. She’s a strong advocate of the medium, saying it can connect readers more deeply with the books, stories and authors they love.

But many industry types are still figuring out how to work with blogs effectively. “It’s still kind of in its infancy,’’ says Trottier.

Proud? Sure am. She's all smarted up and such.