Oscar Night
February 28, 2011
Faced with the equally depressing topics of Stephen Harper and the emerald ash borer, instead of writing this column on Sunday night I sat down and watched the 83rd Academy Awards show, commercials and all.
I had seen quite a few of the films this year, and Anne Hathaway is great fun to watch, so it was worth a try.
What follows is a set of notes from the evening:
I’m glad to see The Social Network up for the screenplay award. The strongest impression I have after a year of movie-watching has to be the first scene of this film. Two characters rip through pages and pages of dialogue in an argument in a pub. The blistering pace of the delivery and the sheer intelligence of the scene warn the reader that this film will be something special.
Inception’s main appeal to me was Ellen Page. I was curious to see what she would do in the sci-fi genre. It turned out to be quite the film, though the awards went to the technicians who set up the fantastic urban bombing scenes. As one of my students once commented in a newspaper article, there is a beatific quality to destruction which Hollywood film-makers have mastered.
Unstoppable was a pretty exciting action flick with its runaway train through Southern Pennsylvania, but Inception deserved its awards.
The King’s Speech did very well, causing a goodly amount of self-congratulation on the podium for the success of a non-commercial, historical film. I regretted not yet having seen the film, so I don’t know how much of its success this night was belated colonialism and how much actual quality.
Anne Hathaway is just so much fun on a T.V. screen. I discovered this while watching Love and Other Drugs and YouTube interviews with Jake Gyllenhaal promoting the film. There seems to be a lot going on behind those spaniel eyes and over-sized teeth. If she were a puppy she’d be the pick of the litter.
Of course on an evening like this unique television mixes with the same tired old commercials, so we’re seeing Ram trucks, Stephen Harper, Gwen Stephani, and Beyonce’s glittering eyeshadow mixed at random with the best the North American culture can offer.
Helen Mirren has the knack of making every actor around her a good deal better. Put her behind a machine gun and a ho-hum action flick takes on an edge. Even a drip like Russell Brand gains some class when onstage with Mirren.
And then along comes Chuck, Zack Levi, singing a duet with Mandy Moore. By comparison Gwyneth Paltrow is Celine Dion – who incidentally performed a fine understated number while obituary photos flashed on the screen. Celine certainly can sing.
Now here’s a pungent attack ad directed at Michael Ignatieff. I can tolerate selling Stephen Harper with an ad put together with the same glitz and sincerity as a L’Oréal facial cream commercial, but this dark-toned frontal attack on a man’s character is just plain low. It’s not Canadian.
The maker of the documentary Inside Job about the recent financial crisis just got off a great quote: “It’s been three years since a horrific crisis caused by massive fraud, but not a single financial executive has gone to jail.”
The Economic Action Plan commercials are extremely well made in comparison with other film segments run this evening. I wonder where they were made, by whom, and at what cost?
So far the Kia Sportage ad has had the best sound mixing and editing of the evening.
The unequal talents of Franco and Hathaway are carrying the evening along. Franco tries to be stern – Hathaway giggles. Her best aside has to be when she seems to notice the current gown has a lot of long things hanging from it, so she shakes like a wet spaniel, then quips, “Personal moment!”
The commercials go together to create a set of images, which as viewers we absorb uncritically into our subconscious. So Red Bull gives you wings. Stephen Harper is doing a good job, and you’re richer than you think.
A series of commercials from the Ontario lobby group Working Families shows dramatically why it would be folly to run a federal election campaign during a provincial election cycle. The “Because they’re worth fighting for” message was deeply confusing in the context of the earlier federal government ads. The federal Conservatives and the provincial Liberals both seem to be trying to harness the knee-jerk resistance to change of the T.V. viewer. This will be tricky if the numbed voter can’t tell one from the other.
Natalie Portman had to win best actress for Black Swan. Otherwise I would have sat through the agonizing chick-flick to no purpose. She delivered a very classy acceptance speech, though.
Colin Firth got off a good line as he accepted the best actor award for The King’s Speech: “Got a feeling my career just peaked.”
Then at the end, they brought on a New York City grade 6 class to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” while the Oscar winners assembled at the rear of the stage. The spectacle worked, giving some truth to the notion that millions of You-Tube viewers can’t be wrong.
“25-year-old Jihadis”
February 24, 2011
Bob Rae dropped the term in a press conference today in reference to the current occupants of the Prime Minister’s Office, and he couldn’t have been more apt in his terminology. I kinda wondered at his choice of metaphor even while applauding it, but when I looked up definitions of “jihad” I realized that he had not used it entirely as a metaphor. By many definitions available for the word, Rae’s characterization of members of the PMO staff is correct.
Mr. Rae has added significantly to the dialogue on Parliament Hill with an apt characterization of the blind devotion of young adherents to Stephen Harper’s cause whom Harper has given influence far in excess of their capabilities.
I chose not to collect the various definitions of the broad term “jihad” and display them here. Look them up yourself. It will be an education.
Bob Rae has risen considerably in my estimation with this comment. He sent me running to the dictionary, he broadened and deepened my understanding of my world, and he did it with proper historical perspective and a sense of fun. This is what I look for in a leader.
Sunday afternoon in the woodlot
February 21, 2011
Martin’s parents were visiting from Halifax and so he and Anne-Claire brought them to the farm. Bet and I were quite curious to see what combination of personalities would produce a character like Martin, so we looked forward to the visit.
André and Simonne Mallet came across as very nice people. We drifted into the garage, a year-long project where Martin had gained the early part of his building experience.
Turns out André has quite an interest in woodworking, so we talked tools until the house visit came up. Then came the woodlot tour. André pulled a hard-sided suitcase out of the trunk and opened it to reveal two sets of snowshoes. Immediately I saw where Martin gets the equipment fetish. His parents had packed two suitcases for the flight to Ontario, and one of them was for snowshoes. Turns out they hadn’t had a chance to use the new webs in two years of trying. Even an owl-spotting expedition on Wolfe Island the day before had been conducted on bare ground.
I assured them that a lack of snow would not be a problem in the woodlot today.
The clear, calm day proved perfect for tree hugging. The crust retained tracks from previous days, as well as the fresh marks in powder of recent passers-by. We had fun speculating as to whether one set of tracks was from a massive squirrel, a short-toed raccoon, or some mystery animal beyond our experience.
The turkeys seem to have taken over the woodlot for the winter. On one southern slope in the soft snow they literally tore the hill apart, digging into the leaf litter for whatever it is turkeys eat. Martin commented that it looked as if a herd of feral hogs had been loose in this area. The snow was soft and they were hungry, I guess. Turkeys are strong birds.
Turns out the wind that tore the shingles off the new garage last week also ripped into one of the trees in the woods. Scarred from the ice storm, this 24” black walnut seems to have had one dead root, for that section pulled out of the ground, spitting the trunk into two sections over about nine feet, leaving quite a mess. There’s still potential lumber in the wreckage, so it’s time to get the winch and saw out before the ground gets too muddy for skidding.
Martin and Charlie showed everyone the trees they tapped last winter, and while they were looking around Simonne pointed to an old nesting box left over from the plowing match: “Is that an owl in that box?”
Surely enough, there was a small owl standing in the duck-sized entrance to the box screwed twelve feet up the trunk of a maple tree. Martin sneaked in with a camera, then blew up the shot to show us. “It’s a screech owl, and it seems to be asleep. I want to get the binoculars and take a better picture through them.”
So off they dashed to the parking lot, father and son, sprinting across the butternut field on snowshoes. Fleet-footed Roz couldn’t resist the chase and took off after them, showing every sign of overtaking when Martin tripped head-over-heels and skidded to a halt. Up they were and off again. The rest of us walked back toward the house until Simonne spotted a pileated woodpecker placidly feeding at the top of a clump of basswoods.
They’re cheerful birds, and not very shy, so we stood and watched while Anne-Claire provided fun facts like, “Did you know a pileated woodpecker’s tongue is very long, and circles around its brain?”
I showed Simonne one of the resident red mulberry trees. She countered with a tale about the yellow raspberry bushes they have in New Brunswick, called gooseberries. The crew returned with the binoculars, Martin collected my camera again, and away they went for a photo-shoot with the dozing owl. Simonne joined the bird watch. Turns out the expedition on Wolfe Island had produced only two owl sightings, and the screech owl was the essential third tick to qualify the weekend as a success, in birding terms.
Somewhat later they returned to the shop and Martin handed me back my camera. On display was a remarkably large image of the small owl. Apparently, if you are determined, you can take a usable digital photograph through one lens of a pair of binoculars.
Over chili André and I compared fish from the Maritimes and Eastern Ontario, and talked about professional bass tournaments. The largemouth bass is an invasive species in much of the world, introduced by avid fishermen. In New Brunswick it threatens the brook trout, and so it isn’t looked upon with the favour it finds in Leeds County.
I asked if I could catch cod off a dock in Nova Scotia. Martin responded that very few docks adjoin 100’ of water, and the shallowest a cod will get is about 65’. Mackerel are available, though, and very fast on a light line, and his dad added that the rainbow trout fishing is excellent. It sounds as though we need to explore the Maritimes in the near future.
A response to fellow blogger, Sandy Crux
February 18, 2011
Rodcros here. First, a bit of background. Yes, I am or was a fifth generation Progressive Conservative until Mike Harris made a reluctant Liberal out of me. I deeply admired John Robarts, Bill Davis, John Crosbie, Joe Clark, and my personal favourite, Flora McDonald. John Matheson was the one Liberal in my early years who won and held my admiration. Frankly, I never thought much of the others, but there was nowhere else to turn when Harris and his acolytes took over in Ontario, and then remnants of his crew formed up around Harper in Ottawa. After Harris left to grow fat on Bay Street.
Why am I so angry at Stephen Harper? He’s a plagiarist, for starters. I learned early on in my career as an educator that a plagiarist must be stopped early and firmly, or he or she will come to no good. The culture of the Harper Government in fact has come to no good. The fundamental decencies which make up Western-style democracy don’t seem to mean anything to these guys. The PMO rules the country. Harper prorogues and leaves Dimitri Soudas in charge?
A prime minister should bring a people together, not split them into warring factions, but Harper has made a practice of this. I see the current neo-con government as a barbarian invasion, and all I want is for them to be gone, so that we can find our way back to some sort of balance in a civil parliamentary democracy. With a census. With signatures that mean something. With respect for one’s colleagues and one’s department, not contempt for underlings. Where blind loyalty is not the only admirable trait.
The Bev Oda situation was the last straw for me because it was so inelegant, so classless. This group of legislators write laws, but they lack the ability to follow them. This should not be. Where is the discussion of policy? In the last five years it’s all been political games and omnibus legislation rammed through without discussion.
This summer I interviewed Michael Ignatieff and he stuck me as a man I could live with as a leader. He’s not overly cunning. He shows a good reverence for Canadian democratic tradition. I wrote in my newspaper column at the time that he is a better conservative than Stephen Harper, and I’ll stand by that.
Thank your for your attention and consideration. Parliamentary democracy evolved at the same time as the watch: both depended upon the opposing spring principle. Balance and a certain delicacy are essential to the maintenance of both, and we need to work hard through vigorous and well-intended dialogue, to allow our Canadian democracy to flourish, rather than to dwindle and wilt under oppression.
Rod Croskery, M.Ed.
Dump Bev Oda petition link
February 17, 2011
Enough is enough! It’s one thing to sit back and make occasional sarcastic comments about the totalitarian nature of the Harper regime; it’s another matter to have one’s face rubbed in this muck. Truth is no longer an absolute in Harperland — Hell, truth isn’t even a value, apparently. Harper’s performance in Question Period Wednesday was as obscene as Bill Clinton’s when faced with the Monica Lewinsky accusation.
These guys are not my grandmother’s Conservatives, and the sooner they’re out of Ottawa, the better for Canada.
http://petition.liberal.ca/bevodamustresign
http://stuffoccurs.wordpress.com/2011/02/19/minister-oda-and-not-why-i-agree-with-the-minister/
Marjory Loveys worked in the PMO for ten years before becoming the Leeds-Grenville Liberal Candidate. I suggested that the comment above passes my personal sniff test, and asked her for further comment on it.
There’s stuck and there’s stuck.
February 13, 2011
A few years ago Tom and Kate came up for a mid-February expedition to their beloved cottage, ostensibly to see if the roof was all right after the heavy snowfalls, but really because they were homesick for Scott Island.
We unloaded the snowmobiles near the Isthmus, drove them down the road to the ferry landing, then ducked out onto Clear Lake over a snowmobile trail which avoided the questionable ice near the current. All went well until we hit the deep snow of the Island. On eBay Tom had bought a new drive pulley for his pristine 1970 Skeeter, but he had expressed some worry about the rust on the polished steel where it met the belt. I had assured him it would soon wear smooth with use. What did I know, eh?
The first deep snowdrift left Tom and Kate straddling a smoking, roaring snowmobile which clearly wasn’t going anywhere. A look under the hood showed a lot of fragments of belt, and big holes worn in the sides from the rusty drive pulley. O.K., I guess they don’t polish themselves.
Determined to carry on, we left Bet and Kate with the crippled Skeeter and pressed on with the Alpine. The biggest Skidoo is a brutal machine to control, but its one saving grace is that it can plough through deep snow. It picked its way through the island snowdrifts without difficulty. Trouble only came when we got off the thing and tried to snowshoe down the hill to the cottage. In the deep, wet snow it was a cursory check of the property before exhaustion drove us back to the Alpine.
Out the trail we went to where we had left Bet and Kate. Tom reversed the Skeeter out of the snowdrift, looked ruefully at his frayed drive belt, and gingerly set off in the lead on the return course. Halfway across the Clear Lake stretch, the Skeeter abruptly disappeared into a cloud of gray smoke and came to a halt in front of me. The eyes of Tom and Kate grew wide as they gazed at the water oozing up around their stalled machine. I wasn’t going to stop the Alpine in a pool of slush, so I moved it and Bet to shore before I let off the throttle.
Then we walked back to the Skeeter. Yep, the slush had gotten it all right. The Alpine had had enough power to blast through, but the Skeeter’s wonky pulley had torn up the weakened drive belt when stressed. Now the machine sat up to its running boards in slush. The footing was too questionable to work around, so we retreated to Smiths Falls to recover and plan.
Sunday morning rose clear and very cold. No problem with the footing on the ice this day, so Tom and I headed out with ropes, axes, and an ice spud, not to mention an auger and a ratchet winch. On a whim I threw in a couple of 5” walnut boards I found in the shop, as well.
What followed was a four-hour session of chopping a heavy snowmobile out of six inches of ice. Tom and I emphatically do not recommend this activity.
We discovered that a large snowmobile encased in a block of ice is very heavy, too heavy to move even after we had chopped the ice free around it.
I drilled a hole, stuck the two walnut boards down it, then anchored the come-along to them to stretch the Skeeter enough to pry it forward when we lifted up with the axes and the ice spud. This actually worked, though it was brutally hard work. With two hundred yards to go to shore, we’d be worn out long before we got there.
So I took a hundred-foot 3/4″ yellow tow rope out of the Alpine and tied it to the front of the Skeeter, did a bowline around the trailer hitch on the Alpine, and headed for shore.
There’s quite a bit of spring in nylon rope, so it brought the straining Alpine to a halt with the Skeeter unmoved. Next time I backed up beside the Skeeter and took a running start at the rope. That worked. I heard the loud “SPROING!” even over the roar of the engine, but the ice block and its snowmobile were ten feet closer to shore. Now if we could get it moving again before it froze down…
I tried again, full throttle. Another ten feet. It became a matter of momentum: the Alpine with me on it weighed about nine hundred pounds; the Skeeter with a full load of ice around it weighed anywhere from 1000 pounds to a ton. How can you tell? The rope did not snap and decapitate anybody and Tom kept it from tangling, but it was a long, rough tow as we bungee-corded the Skeeter to safety.
It took a month for all of the ice to melt out of the flooded running gear. Then one sunny day in March I started the derelict up and loaded it onto its trailer.
Tom and Kate got their vintage Evinrude back, but somehow they had lost the urge to cross onto Scott Island with it. Last I heard the Skeeter’s for sale.
Beware the departing politician
February 6, 2011
While researching this column I ran across something which doesn’t make any sense at all: Ontario provincial members of parliament have no pension plan. Mike Harris eliminated it in 1996. Since then there has been the problem of MPPs hanging onto their seats because they have nowhere to go. This is not right.
When elected Conservative leader, John Tory couldn’t get anyone to resign to let him run in a by-election, not out of spite, but because no one could afford to give up his livelihood without any real hope of finding a comparable job (Hokan 2009). “MPP Norm Sterling has a vivid recollection of the tragic suicide of a Liberal member who lost his seat and experienced a deep depression that was partially due to his inability to re-integrate into the workforce despite holding a PhD in theology. At the time former Premier Bob Rae observed that this tragedy ‘causes all of us to really reflect on some of the challenges and difficulties of public life as well as the difficult transitions that are involved in coming in and coming out of politics.’ Former Speaker of the Assembly, David Warner, recalls that a colleague of his, who served for fourteen years, was unable to find work for years and narrowly avoided destitution because of the pension he received”(Hokan 2009).
Over the last nine years we have managed to undo some of the damage Mike Harris and his cronies inflicted upon Ontario’s social safety net with eight years of slash-and-burn neo-conservatism. But the plight of our MPPs remains a problem there will likely be no political will to solve.
But why should a capable young man with a family like our MPP Steve Clark have to take an insecure job with lousy re-employment prospects and no pension other than a small RRSP when if he held an equivalent position with a crown corporation like Ontario Power Generation or the Ontario Lottery Corporation, he would be in line for ridiculously high severance packages?
The lack of fair compensation and security for MPPs leaves the door open for corruption, for the legislators to find their own ways to feather their nests. Here we have to look again to the legacy of Mike Harris.
When I think of Mike Harris the image which comes to mind is of the gruff premier seated at a kitchen table with a typical family around him while he tries to stuff loonies into a pickle jar. This folksy style worked well for Harris, propelling him to two majority governments. What’s interesting about the man’s career, though, is how quickly he ditched the common touch upon leaving office. For Mike Harris the pickle-jar loonie saver became Mike Harris the Bay Street tycoon as soon as he had put in his time at Queen’s Park and began to collect his reward from grateful corporations on Bay Street.
Toronto Star reporter Tony Van Alphen wrote in 2010 that Harris now makes well over a $1 million a year from a string of corporate directorships. While Harris never earned a university degree, he is an advisor to a prominent Bay Street law firm, Cassels Brock and Blackwell. Magna Auto Parts pays Harris about $600,000 per year. Small wonder he supported Belinda Stronach’s candidacy for the Conservative leadership in 2004. Some of the other directorships are less demanding of Harris’s time and principle: Augen Capital, Charwell Seniors Housing Real Estate Investment Trust, EnGlobe Corp., Canaccord Capital, Routel Inc. and FirstService Corp. all help Harris supplement his meager Queen’s Park RRSP. Harris did away with his own pension, after all, so has to make a living some way.
Here’s the unedited press release: “We will end sweet deals politicians have created for themselves…M.P.P.s’ pensions will be abolished and replaced with an RRSP program similar to those used by professionals in Ontario. The tax-free benefits paid to politicians will also be abolished they will be paid a straight salary, just like ordinary Ontarians.” (Government Gets Rid Of Gold Plated Pensions, April 10, 1996) Well, Mike, I don’t know if most Ontarians without a degree can hold a job at a Bay Street law firm, or as a director of Magna. So the question is, how did you land those jobs?
Mike Harris’s prosperous life after his time at Queen’s Park is what causes me concern about the Harper government’s plan to cut corporate taxes in Canada. Harris earned his nest egg through two terms of gleefully hacking away at Ontario’s social safety net to the benefit of the business community.
What better way to provide a cozy retirement for Stephen Harper and his inner circle than to cut taxes for corporations on their way out the door and rake in the directorships later? Look how well it worked for Harris. Do you think Harris cronies Jim Flaherty, Tony Clemens and John Baird aren’t aware of that?
Last week the PMO spent $6.5 million on ads to promote corporate tax cuts. Before you buy what the ads offer, keep in mind that Harper and company won’t remain in Ottawa forever, and providing for their own retirement seems to be the first priority of neo-conservative minds.
References:
-Kimlan Hokan “The Compensation Conundrum: Does M.P.P. Compensation Determine the Composition of the Ontario Legislature?” http://www.olip.ontla.on.ca
-Tony Van Alphen “Director positions pay off for ex-Ontario premier” Toronto Star, April 6, 2010
Afterword: Elizabeth May may come up short in some areas of public life, but no one can say she can’t write. Check this one out:
http://www.straight.com/article-373665/vancouver/elizabeth-may-emperor-stephen-harper-wearing-no-clothes
Corporate Welfare Bum or Job Creator?
January 31, 2011
In Canada corporate CEOs average 155 times the income of average employees of their organizations. Yet Harper and the PMO want to give them more money. This is in keeping with the neo-cons’ fondness for cozy berths on boards of directors for themselves after retirement. See the example of Mike Harris in Ontario, an uneducated man attached to a top law firm with many lucrative directorships.
To facilitate this, the PMO has simply changed the label from the old “corporate welfare bums” to the new and improved “job creators” and the media and pollsters have obediently lined up to accept the new version of the truth.
So what’s the difference between a job creator and a corporate welfare bum? Well, when the latter phrase became popular in 1972 to ridicule corporate leaders becoming rich off government largesse, a CEO made forty times the average wage of his workers. That’s the difference: if you only make forty times an average salary, you’re a bum in Canadian politics. If you make 155 times the wage of the average Joe, you’re a neo-con god, and you have the right to demand further sacrifices.
the Walnut Diary 