Blasted tractor’s wrecking my body!
August 7, 2010
This latest tractor keeps finding new ways to wreck my back. Take Friday’s misadventure for example: Bet and I had to run up to Kingston to pick up some new pulleys for the mower which runs on the back of the little Bolens tractor. Trouble is, the thing eats belts. Inside a month I have gone through four. They are scarce and expensive, though I have found a Belarus Tractor dealer in Wisconsin with a sideline in v-belts who sends them to me from an outlet near Stratford.
A talk with Peter Myers narrowed the problem down to the sheaves (what I would call pulleys) which were severely pitted from corrosion. V-belts are tough, but they must have a smooth surface on which to run. He suggested the sheaves are a stock item and that I should simply replace them.
And so I did. Then I dropped Bet at a supermarket and had an hour to kill. The other trouble with the Bolens is that its seat doesn’t have any springs, so I have to pad my spine with two pillows if I want to stay on the tractor for any length of time. The big Canadian Tire next door to the food store should have parts for lawn tractor seats. I’d find a way to adapt them.
CTC didn’t have any compression springs for the purpose, but I ran into something else which made me forget all about the tractor project. It also let loose the latent Walter Mitty in me: next to the sports department they have set up what looks like a narrow plexiglass squash court, but at the end is a hockey net. Monitors across the ceiling display information about the moving pucks. A rack with several dozen carbon fibre hockey sticks stands outside.
I wanted to try it. It matters not a bit that I am no hockey player – nor that I haven’t had skates on since a field trip to the Rideau Canal Skating Rink during my rookie year as a teacher. Nor that my two elderly colleagues, Ralph Greenhorn and Ernie Hogan, had to tow me against a stiff headwind the 4.8 miles back to Dow’s Lake from the Chateau Laurier. The muscles in my back had seized up and I simply couldn’t move. So much for skating.
Nonetheless, I wanted to try to fire a slapshot through a radar gun, just to see.
I paid my money and a bemused hockey jock from the sports department set me up with the softest, shortest, right-handed stick he could find. He joined me in the shooting court to control the flow of pucks from the pitching machine and offer advice.
He warned me to shoot, not to hesitate, or I would “get buried under pucks.” The first white disk squirted along the “ice” from the machine at a steady 22 mph. I stopped it and took aim at the net, noticing a little light had illuminated the lower right hand corner of the net. I shot at it and hit the net, along the ice, dead centre. It must have been that blinking light throwing me off, because I discovered my chances of hitting the target at a range of twenty feet were about as good as those of hitting the areas to either side or above the net, or even the face of the pitching machine. This was the most inaccurate hockey stick I have ever handled.
What’s more, it was one of the slowest. Like anyone else’s, my memory is full of cannonading blasts past goaltenders on the ponds and rinks of youth, even though most of the time I played goal because I had a good glove hand and couldn’t skate.
But in the cruel glare of the radar gun, my best slapshot — the one that caught the upper left corner of the net at the same time the light blinked in the lower right — clocked in at 35.1 miles per hour. Thirty-five? But Zdeno Chara fires a slapshot over a hundred!
The attendant told me my shots were about average for a fourteen year-old hockey player. “Lots of junior-level players fire wrist shots over 80 mph.” The store doesn’t let them try slapshots in the confined area, but my coach didn’t seem too worried about my flailing attempts. In fact he loaded the machine up again, twice more. The pucks off my rented stick didn’t get any faster, though once I stopped staring at the flashing lights in the corners of the net my response time became much better. I even hit the correct corner of the net the odd time.
Eventually my spine had taken on an interesting new shape, my arms felt like lead, my head pounded, and I decided to call it a day. I thanked my coach and reeled out of the store thinking, “That hockey booth is a really cool thing to try. Now whom could I lure into it for a puck-blasting session?”
By the following morning I could hardly get out of bed. I moaned around the house for the rest of the weekend, all the while blaming that blasted tractor for wrecking my body yet again.
On the Newboro Waterfront
August 2, 2010
Saturday evening I set out in my little aluminum boat without a fishing rod. It was time to take a look at the boat’s new home, the Newboro waterfront. We made our way over to the lock where the Land Trust Festival was in full swing. The sizable crowd seated on chairs for the classic rock concert seemed older and more orderly than the revelers of earlier years at the Chaffey’s Locks Corn Roast. The spacious Newboro Lockstation seems well suited to hosting an event of this sort.
The green enamel security fence around the grounds was an impressive touch. I guess there must be miles of the stuff left over from the G20 Summit in Toronto and Huntsville, so it might as well be put to use.
Two young men in a triangular craft laboured through the water below the lock. They struggled to a gap between the cruisers on the 48-hour dock and were helped ashore before they sank. Out came the unpainted plywood dinghy. One of the instant boats had obviously survived the afternoon competition for another voyage.
I drifted over by trolling motor to inquire. Neil McGuire and Thomas Jordan crew The Unsinkable Rideau Ferry. Michael McGuire and my former S.F.D.C.I. student John Jordan rounded out the build team. Their creation placed second in the afternoon competition, but as John’s sister Helen explained, the winners were experienced boat builders, so The Philosophers had an unfair advantage in their use of the three sheets of plywood, a few 2X4’s, some trim and a few tubes of caulk provided for the competition. John added, “They also gave us a pound and a half of assorted nails. No screws were allowed.”
The Unsinkable Rideau Ferry seemed to have a lot of support from the group of boaters on the 48-hour dock for the weekend.
Finger docks have produced many more spaces for cruisers below the lock at Newboro. This is good for special events and day-to-day use because the steady breeze makes this a pleasant summer destination.
Quite a few runabouts had come in off the lake to drift in the bay and enjoy the music on the calm evening. Over next to the resorts, though, the docks were still alive with fishing boats running in and out.
I made a mental note to get over to The Poplars for lunch. As a transient guest you eat whatever they are serving that day, it’s always fun in the informal atmosphere of the fishing camp, and where else are you helped into a slip by dock attendants when you arrive for a meal?
On Water Street the new owner of the cottages on the point has done a very classy renovation of the small dwellings, definitely raising the tone of the Newboro waterfront with unified architecture, landscaping and docks.
Over at the foot of Bay Street her neighbours are delighted with the return home of longtime resident Mrs. Rose Pritchard after a long and difficult recovery from a fall.
Several times I have talked to a fellow from Ottawa who fishes the same area Tony and I do. He mentioned building a house on Swallows Lane over the winter. I finally worked my way down that way to have a look. That’s a lot of house. I think the guy builds better than he fishes.
I’d spent a half-hour earlier in the day on Tony’s new deck under a huge oak tree at the end of Bay Street. It’s always a surprise how comfortable the air along this Newboro shoreline feels with the breeze pushing down the lake from Bedford Mills.
Of course weeds and debris pile in with the wind, but at least the boats are sheltered by the hill from a northerly gale. Speaking of debris, Thursday evening something really gross drifted in. I knew Tony and Anne had a family event planned for the next day, so the dead thing had to go, but I didn’t even want to look at it, let alone touch it. So I started up the outboard and strained the mooring lines as I pushed the unidentifiable thing with a sizable mat of weeds out of our little harbour and around the stern of The Big Chill, Tony and Anne’s cruiser.
But then the weed patch responded to a gust again and headed in towards the launch ramp. Oh well, it was out of my space and no longer my problem.
Turns out it then landed next to the boat of local volunteer firefighter Bob French. Bob apparently thinks differently than most, because instead of passing the dead raccoon on down the line as many had no doubt already done over the previous week, he pulled the thing in, bagged it up (wow!), loaded it into his van, hauled it away and buried it.
I guess Bob looked at the carcass, thought of the trouble it would bring to the people down the shore, and took action. That’s what firefighters do. They think of everybody. You’re a better man than I am, Robert French.
The Backwoods Rebellion
July 25, 2010
“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before.”
With the concluding words of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Samuel Clemmons gives voice to a rebellion against the American culture which plays out in extreme form today in the far right of the Republican Party and the current machinations of the Harper Government and Sun Media. The conflict is between the City with its central government and careful record keeping, and the Backwoods, with its romantic individualist, accountable to no one but himself and his small tribe, driven by memories and myths. It’s a revolt of the right brain against the left, the irrational romantic against the rational pragmatist, and it seems as if the Backwoods is on the offensive in Canada at the moment.
Clemmons uses Huck Finn’s willful stupidity to satiric effect throughout the novel. For example there’s the time he sells his fortune in pirate gold to Judge Thatcher for one dollar. The Judge can’t fathom what Huck intends by this, but he does what his client asks. Turns out Huck uses this dodge to get his money out from under the control of his abusive father, Pap. Huck has no real conception of numbers, but he understands Pap’s power to hurt.
If we can assume that Stephen Harper has a copy of Huckleberry Finn on his bedside table, then what can we expect from his government’s Backwoods attitude?
1. Huck sees nothing morally wrong with the fibs and deceptions he uses to pull off his cons. In fact he delights in living by his wits and respects only those whom he cannot deceive or who deceive him.
2. Huck rattles around driven by strong emotions, but he’s not very aware of himself. For example he blames himself for “stealing” Miss Watson’s Jim, and when he does not turn his friend in to the slavers, he decides, “I’ll just have to go to Hell, then.”
3. Huck’s is a world steeped in racism, where a suppressed and poorly-documented underclass does the work.
4. “Life is mighty free and easy on a raft.” Huck and Jim have a great time drifting along the lawless Mississippi, surviving on salvaged items and outright theft.
5. Opponents can be panicked into line through fear. Huck works a smallpox epidemic into immunity from questions to cover their passage on the river.
6. When off the raft Huck defers to his friend Tom Sawyer far too much. Tom’s half-understood schemes lead to grandiose and useless decorations, needless hardship for others, great expense, abused and confused citizens and policemen, and most seriously, the utter objectivization of Jim.
But why am I rambling on about Huck, you ask?
I’m concerned about a couple of things you might have missed this week: the purge at Sun Media and the resignation of Dr. Munir Sheikh.
Sun Media has not only hired Tory Teneycke, Stephen Harper’s former director of communications, but this week they fired six moderate columnists from the newspaper chain. Eric Margolis, Greg Weston, Elizabeth Thompson, Christina Spencer, Peter Zimonjic and Michael Harris have been dumped.
I didn’t often agree with Greg Weston’s views, but they did show some balance. Now he and his colleagues are gone, casualties of a Backwoods rebellion against rational thought.
The Harper Government’s attack on the census has all the marks of a Tom Sawyer scheme gone bad. It fell to Canada’s chief statistician, Dr. Munir Sheikh, to show the world what an honourable man does in the face of this mess of illogic and deceit. His letter of resignation was a resounding “No, it cannot” from the rational part of our society to those who would pervert the census into another organ of Conservative government propaganda.
For the census seems rather like Huck’s dollar. It’s the next step which I fear. If aboriginal peoples, ethnic minorities, immigrants and the poor are well-represented on the census, then government is obliged to provide services for them. If the census becomes less exacting and its data less trustworthy, then it becomes much easier to ignore those at the corners of society.
And Treasury Board President Stockwell Day is looming in the wings with a planned re-examination of affirmative action. That’s like conducting seismic tests in the Arctic to see if the seabed is a good place for a whale sanctuary. There won’t be any whales left by the time they’re done, so they might as well drill for oil as long as they’re there.
Arctic oil exploration is much easier if no one knows or cares about the Inuit. The Backwoods man says, “If they aren’t Conservative supporters, why count them? Let the other parties pay for their own research.” This narrow, tribal attitude seems to pervade Sun newspapers lately, and we are the less for it.
If you believe census data (back to that) we’ll soon face a labour shortage in Canada. Americans make extensive use of migrant laborers. Maybe the plan is to look outside the country for an underclass to do the work. An exacting census would make this kind of two-tier citizenship difficult.
The latest scoop on Emily-the-coyote
July 24, 2010
I have written elsewhere on this board and in my newspaper column about Emily-the-ugly-coyote. She lives around the farm, does no harm, and provides us with considerable amusement when we watch her eat apples in the orchard.
This evening I cut the patch of hay below the garden. Emily oozed out of a stand of ragweed, then decided to ignore the tractor and continue her hunt for the very large mice (I can’t call them rats) that I often see on the ground there while mowing. More power to her.
But I got a very good look at this almost hairless coyote over a period of time as I made repeated trips past her. The more I looked at her head, the more I kept thinking of a Jack Russell terrier. Finally it hit me. Emily is not a spectacularly ugly coyote. She’s a coyote-coloured dog with a skinny tail. Jack Russell tails are docked for good reason, likely. When regarded as a terrier Emily suddenly looks like a large, robust, very well-fed specimen with a tight coat. I didn’t see any evidence of mange, just short hair.
This might account for her casual attitude toward us when we happen upon her. Terriers aren’t afraid of much. There’s a family of coyotes about, but the pair I saw two nights ago in the young walnuts were patterned more after a German Shepherd than a Jack Russell. They’re not exactly terrified of me either, but they keep their distance.
Emily obviously gets along with the coyotes because they share a territory, but I don’t know if she belongs in their singing group or not.
So I googled images of terriers. No, even though Emily is much shorter than most coyotes, she is way too big to be a Jack Russell. And her skull is too straight and triangular. It’s more like a bull terrier’s. Come to think of it, The rest of her is very like a bull terrier, as well, though she is somewhat lighter in build. Her Coyote’s ears are a poor fit for that skull. Face-on, peeking up out of the hay, she shows a distinct resemblance to Yoda, the Star Wars character. Anyway, as Dr. Bill Barrett commented the first time he saw Emily, “There’s a lot of dog in her.”
Michael and me
July 15, 2010
As a guest on the Liberal Express I got first interview of the day.
I was rather surprised when Leeds Liberal candidate Marjory Loveys invited me for a ride from Brockville to Kingston on the Liberal Express, Michael Ignatieff’s ambitious summer march through all of the provinces and territories of Canada.
Marjory Loveys is a terrific interview because she knows politics and has a nimble mind. I use her whenever I can for columns because they always turn out interesting. Whatever she told the crew, they treated me with considerable deference, and maybe a little fear.
While we were waiting through the media scrum for a chance to board the bus a pleasant blonde woman beside me started to chat. I explained that scrums were of no use to me: I’m too deaf, so I prefer a one-on-one interview, and that this was the first time I had left home to do one. “Normally they come to me.” She smiled, amused, and we talked about the freedom which comes when one reaches a certain age. The kids are grown up, and one can start off on a major endeavour.
I introduced myself. She shook my hand, “I’m Zsuzsanna.” Ulp! Embarrassed. She quickly put me at ease and bade me welcome aboard the bus. Good start: I hadn’t recognized Ignatieff’s wife! Sweet lady, though. If I were a puppy I’d curl up at her feet.
The first available seat was with a young man in red t-shirt, one of the crew of interns with the Liberal headquarters in Ottawa. He’s from a town near St. John’s, Newfoundland, majoring in economics at Western. When the guy in charge warned me I was first up for an interview, I left my seat-mate my camera and made sure he knew how to use it.
The bus is set up with a number of seats facing tables. All except the leader’s are loaded with cookie bags, stacks of newspapers, and surprisingly large young men in dress shirts typing steadily on laptops. The bus has Internet. Somebody told me the password so I logged on and dashed off emails until my time came up.
With pen and pad in hand I moved up to join the trio at the table. Marjory beamed from the other side and Ottawa-Orleans candidate David Bertschi looked pleasant, if a bit detached. Mr. Ignatieff shook my hand and introduced himself as “Michael.”
“I’d like to begin with a question from political science, if you will.” Michael nodded. “It concerns the political spectrum. In the early sixties the Liberal Party could be comfortably described as slightly left-of-centre, but does the left-right distinction apply any more when people vote their wealth, their ethnicity, their religion, even their xenophobia? Is there a better way to distinguish between points of view?”
Silence. The Ottawa guy’s jaw dropped. Marjory grinned knowingly. She’s faced my questions before. Michael collected his thoughts for several agonizing seconds, then began:
“Since the time of Mike Pearson, Liberals have been a centrist party, a party of fiscal responsibility, strong defense, pensions, Medicare, and federalism with attention to the rights of Quebec. That was the centre. Some suggest we should move to the left or the right. We have many ideas in common with the NDP, but we are not the NDP. We can get it done.
“Stephen Harper pretends to be centrist, but he wants to move the political centre ten degrees to the right, and the people of Canada can’t let that happen.”
O.K., he’s just affirmed the basic assumption of Canadian politics. Nothing radical there. Time for the follow-up:
“I once wrote in a column that Michael Ignatieff is a better conservative than Stephen Harper. What do you have to offer to the Progressive Conservative who feels queasy these days?”
He’d fouled the first one back, but Michael watched this pitch drift across the plate, then knocked it out of the park.
“My uncle was George Grant, an ardent Red Tory and Canadian nationalist. He wrote Lament for a Nation. I grew up in a family where Red Tories and Liberals mixed freely. Moderate conservatives and Liberals are part of the same family.
“I don’t think Stephen Harper is a Red Tory. The Conservative campaign playbook is lifted from the playbook of the American Republican Party. Red Tories have always been ardent Canadian nationalists. While his tactics come from the United States, Harper’s ideas come from those of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance. They are no mystery.
“And there is definitely room in the Big Red Tent for Progressive Conservatives.”
I had my interview and time was running, so I closed with a general question about Leeds-Grenville Liberal candidate Marjory Loveys.
“What I like about Marjory Loveys is that she has put down roots here. She knows Ottawa and is unimpressed and unintimidated by it. She can get things done there.
“Marjory cares about ideas. I have talked with her in detail about economic development in Leeds-Grenville. We need for our young people to stay in the community. They shouldn’t have to leave for schooling, or for jobs. People shouldn’t have to travel away from their community for medical care. Marjory should make an excellent MP.”
From what I could see on the bus and in the interview, Michael Ignatieff takes a traditional approach to politics. He’s going about this tour the methodical way, stop by stop, talking with Canadians and picking up ideas and believers as he goes. For example, Michael commented with a smile at the end of our interview: “In four years in this business nobody has ever asked me an initial question like that.” But have you noticed how he slips “Progressive Conservative” into every speech now?
Mowing
July 12, 2010
Engines fascinate me. I love the way they run, their sound, the sweet spots on the throttle where they don’t shake, even their distinct aromas. How they’re built is largely beyond my ken, but old engines can run a long time with proper care. I still remember their smell from my early years as I carefully followed my father into the otherwise-forbidden garages and barns of his associates.
Our cruiser WYBMADIITY II had a sweet old Chrysler Crown six. In a marina full of V8’s it sounded like a mourning dove among crows. WYB would announce her presence with this gentle, burbling purr wherever she went. Maybe that’s why people liked the boat. It’s certainly one reason why we kept her for a generation.
My current fishing boat has a Mercury outboard. It’s very reliable and uses little fuel for what it does, but the vibrations turn the whole aluminum hull into a drum whenever I slow down and at certain unpredictable speeds, so cruising with the Merc involves searching the throttle for a spot where the thing doesn’t shake the fillings out of my teeth.
This is all by way of explaining why these days I don’t fish as much as I used to. Seems most of my free time this summer is spent on one tractor or another, mowing.
I googled articles on men and mowing and came up with a trunkload of material on the subject. Robert Fulford ran “The Lawn: North America’s magnificent obsession” in Azure magazine in July of 1998. Fulford rather playfully suggested that the suburban lawn is the public moral statement of the male of the household. But that’s not it. My neighbours are too far away to care about dandelions (though my mother obsesses about them, in season), and I needn’t worry about vicious telephone conversations among Forfar residents about my lax mowing habits if I slacken off and let the sumacs sprout on the margins of the orchard.
Daniel Wood in Air Canada magazine suggested that lawn care is a pagan religion in much of North America. Enormous quantities of water, fertilizer, fuel and time are sacrificed to the small patch of turf in an effort to restore it to the virginal green blankness which we idealize as the perfect lawn.
“I mean, how is it that North Americans spend more on grass than the entire world spends on foreign aid? How is it that during the continent’s increasingly dry summers, over 60 percent of drinking water goes to quenching the thirst of fundamentally decorative turf? How is it that the typical North American homeowner spends 150 hours on lawn care annually and 35 hours on sex?”
Wood further comments: “North Americans spend an estimated $100- billion annually on lawns. In value, grass is, by far, the most important agricultural crop on the continent.” I wonder where Wood gets his statistics?
In his blog The Discerning Brute, Joshua Katcher offers the following historical background to the lawn:
“In the sixteenth century and continuing through the eighteenth, the “launde”, an open space or glade maintained by laborers wielding scythes, began to appear throughout the residences of British aristocrats. Obviously, it soon came to represent the leisure of class privilege, wealth, and power, and the culmination of lawn culture, according to Jenkins (The Lawn, a History of an American Obsession), was the establishment of twentieth century golf courses and country clubs. But as Steinburg (American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn) argues, it never became the moral crusade it has become in America quite possibly because grass grows so effortlessly in Britain, and turfgrass is not at all native to North America – not even Kentucky Bluegrass. The early colonizers’ cattle quickly destroyed the native grasses, not used to grazing, and in came bluegrass seeds from Europe to fill that niche.
“On a deeper level, the lawn represents a desire to control unpredictable, wild nature. Some anthropologists argue that the lawn comes from self-defense. When nomadic gatherer-hunters began settling into sedentary and semi-sedentary homes, they cleared the vegetation surrounding their dwellings in order to foresee potential danger coming – a predator, a snake, an enemy. The lawn is a bastion between the fearful individual and a dangerous wilderness. Even more so, it is the manifestation of the deepest-seeded principles of our culture and civilization: man’s control over nature. Therefore, those who let their lawns go wild are threats to the foundation of civilization itself.”
Naw. I like the sound of a diesel as it powers the mower through a row of grass. It sends the message that it will run tirelessly for as long as I want it to, and for just a little fuel.
I like the feel of the tractor at work, the way it moves over uneven turf. The TAFE has foot pegs like a motorcycle, and that seating position with pegs-seat-steering wheel works better for me for a long drive than the cushy seats of a Lexus. I can also stand up and stretch under the canopy on long rows, a welcome relief to tired muscles and joints. And the expensive new rotary mower works great.
But the Bolens has no foot pegs. There’s no room to stand up either. The ride is so harsh I have to add a pillow, yet the little tractor lures me onto its seat more than the larger TAFE with its fancy shield against the sun. So it has to be the engine.
The Focus Group
July 5, 2010
Scott Davis sent me an email a couple of months ago asking me to a meeting in Almonte which had potential to be interesting. Scott’s with the Eastern Ontario Model Forest, a non-governmental organization which works as a go-between among industry, government, and woodlot owners.
Elizabeth Holmes is a PhD candidate at the University of Guelph as well as a member of the Model Forest staff. Her research concerns woodlot owners and what motivates them. This meeting of the first focus group for Elizabeth’s project involved a dozen individuals Scott rounded up. We would meet for a day while Elizabeth and Melanie took copious notes on the issues we raised in response to general questions about the provision of ecological goods and services through woodlot ownership.
Turns out the meeting was at the Union Hall in Tatlock. Many years ago two townships combined their efforts to build the hall: hence the name. It was a pleasant drive up through a well-treed landscape.
By the time the introductions were complete I realized that this would be a very informative discussion. The people in the room had unique perspectives and lots to say. The only thing they held in common (apart from availability on a week day) was a deep attachment the land they tend.
A few inherited their land. Some bought a hunting preserve and discovered its year-long appeal. Families discovered that the woodlot met their needs better than a cottage or golf course. Fleeing city concrete figured prominently in the introductions. Everyone plants trees. Maple syrup, of course, was mentioned often. Most were eager to recount their stewardship activities over the last few years or generations.
The first common concern to emerge had to do with passing our life’s work on to the next generation. Government recognizes the value of privately-held forest tracts by reducing the property taxes on managed properties. Tax breaks are also available to tree farms, though the same issue comes up: at some point the woodlot must begin to pay for itself. Otherwise the landowner or the family members who follow will be unable to keep it.
Elizabeth leaped in with the purpose of this first focus group, to define the terms of the dialogue which will emerge in the next few years between the public, government, and the land owner.
She explained that in Costa Rica, Bolivia, England, the United States and Australia, government or charitable organizations have launched programs to pay landholders for ecological goods and services. At least three similar programs are in early days in Canada.
These ecological benefits (I’m reluctant to use the acronym) are much easier to understand in a county like Bolivia where burning the forest for livestock grazing is a major environmental problem. A beehive (cost: $3.00) can protect ten hectares for a year. In-kind payments are more acceptable to landholders than cash, because with cash comes the perception of lost control of one’s land.
New York City discovered it was cheaper and easier to pay the farmers upsteam to improve the quality of the rivers than to build a new water treatment plant.
The Australian government has little trouble politically with the funding of water improvement programs, but how about in Canada? With so much of it around us, it’s hard to imagine paying for water (unless it’s in a ½ litre bottle). In Canada most ecological spending is based on guilt and goes to organizations. None of it currently gets to the provider of many of the goods and services, the farmer or woodlot owner.
Elizabeth’s study is to identify the issues and begin the dialogue for the move to recognizing and rewarding landowners and farmers for the critical role they play as environmental stewards.
Elizabeth Holmes:
The Eastern Ontario Model Forest is exploring ways to recognize the contributions that farmers and landowners make in providing ecological goods and services. Over the next year we will host a series of focus group sessions with you to identify how best to develop a workable EG&S program framework for eastern Ontario.
Here are a few questions we’ll explore with you in focus groups:
1. How might the responsibilities and costs for providing and safeguarding EG&S be shared among institutions, taxpayers, consumers and landowners?
2. What constitutes going “the extra step” towards providing EG&S, and how can that be translated into payment?
3. What types of incentive or forms of recognition are most valued by landowners?
4. What best EG&S practices and stewardship programs might we use as a base?
5. How do we generate and sustain funding in support of incentives?
6. Given the sheer complexity of ecosystems, how do we measure or verify that environmental goods and services have been provided or safeguarded?
We are very interested in the views of woodlot owners and farmers in eastern Ontario. If you’d like to participate in a focus group session, please contact Elizabeth Holmes at eholmes@eomf.on.ca or (613) 258-8415.
He shoulda spent the money on a dentist.
July 3, 2010
Canadian Press, July 3, 2010
WARWICK, ONT.—A man trying to pull his tooth out while driving has been charged.
Provincial police say around 11:30 a.m. on June 30, an officer responded to a complaint of a tractor trailer allegedly driving “all over the road” on Highway 402 in Warwick, Ont.
The officer pulled the vehicle over and discovered the man was trying to yank out his tooth while driving.
Police say the driver allegedly rigged a string around the affected tooth, mounted the string to a fixed point on the roof of the cab and waited for a bump to yank it out.
Police say the bloody tooth and string lay next to the man when he was pulled over.
A 58-year-old man has been charged with careless driving.
Promethean acts at the G20 protest? I doubt it.
June 28, 2010
In the greatest T.V. commercial of all time a young woman enters a large auditorium dominated by a huge blue screen. She runs up to the front and smashes the IBM symbol with a sledge hammer, releasing the captive audience from its thrall. Ridley Scott directed this initial effort by Apple and the piece ran without comment during the Superbowl in 1984.
I wonder if the heavy-set woman in black hoodie and spandex was thinking of this commercial when she put a baseball bat through the window of the Starbucks on Yonge Street in Toronto on Saturday afternoon. She certainly took a heroic swing at that window, though I think it’s a little unclear just what she was trying to accomplish. Then there was the tall, very fit man, also attired in black, who allowed the camera a good look at his face as he tossed a headless mannequin into the gutter while stepping out of a shattered store window. He had the look of an intelligent workman, just going about his job.
The other members of the mob of vandals looked much less impressive, pretty much what you’d expect: a bunch of malcontents with nothing else to do with their Tai Kwan Do skills.
So there was a busload of these guys from central casting in Montreal, and from all reports there was a two-hour window in which they were able to run “amok” on a less-tony section of Yonge Street. There were no policemen in evidence, though lots of journalists were there to drink in the imagery.
After a morning of looking at the photos and film available on the Internet, I can only conclude that this “riot” was as fake as the loon calls at the media centre. Why else would the police cars which were set afire all be stopped in the middle of the street, far from combustibles? With 19,000 uniformed police officers within a half-mile of this site, how come none strayed onto the scene to stop the vandalism?
The thing reminded me of an A-Team episode from the seventies: lots of mayhem, but no blood. All violence was directed at cars and windows. If it is this directed, is it still violence? Or is it television fare?
Much more interesting were the occasional interviews with real protesters on Saturday. They were the usual array of moderates who had come out to speak for their causes. One very effective interview was with a middle-aged Filipino woman standing under an umbrella who spoke out against abuses in her native land and in Canada.
Members of my generation used to joke that we went to university to learn how to read and riot. We were told it was our duty to change the world. Understandably many Torontonians of my age were on the lines once again. They weren’t going to miss a parade in their own backyard. A lot of younger protesters dressed as though they had come to the demonstration to get a date, or at the very least to get their pictures taken with armed police in the background as a weird souvenir.
Apart from the imported “talent” it was a remarkably nice crowd for a rainy day.
As far as the police, it’s clear that a number of excesses occurred for which someone should be held accountable: first and foremost, I read that it cost up to $100,000 per officer (average cost? $49,000 per badge) to put the constabulary on the streets for that weekend. And there was that mysterious window of opportunity for the black bloc to give the media something to fuss about and take the heat off the obscene price of security for the weekend. I sincerely hope the cost of rebuilding the damaged storefronts on Yonge Street was factored into that $1.2 billion. And finally there is the issue of the arbitrary arrest of innocents. Nobody likes police-state tactics except those employing them to suit their own ends.
So for the weekend Torontonians were shut out of their own city and subjected to arbitrary search and seizure. Like the veterinarian who woke up at 4 am to the muzzle of a police pistol in his face and the sound of his child screaming in panic. Oops, sorry, wrong address. No warrant, forced, silent entry, and no consequences for the befuddled police officers. Think of the overtime pay, guys.
Monday’s Globe and Mail did its best to spin the summit press release into something of significance, but its efforts paled in comparison to the disdainful Star editorial which condemned Harper for the damage he did to their fair city.
And I watched a Fox news clip where some moron was giving Harper credit for announcing impending budget cuts and setting an example for the rest of the world. In the face of the profligate waste of this G20 Summit, it’s enough to make you sick.
Check out the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOjGdvju-po&feature=youtu.be
the Walnut Diary 