How we came to inhabit 260 Glenridge. In the summer of 1971 a couple of friends fro the rowing team decided to move from an apartment about 5 km from Brock to 260 Glenridge. Ed and Cory were 2 friends from Brantford who had come to Brock together. Ed and I rowed together in 1970 in the novice boat. we won our championship that year. The next year ed started rowing in the lightweight boat while I moved to JV and cory started rowing in the novice boat. When the time came for them to make the move they asked for help from some of their friends. It happens all the time and in this case they ended with a group of about a dozen young fit happy go lucky guys to provide the muscle.

The day of the move we all assembled at their old apartment and the project for the day was laid out. Ed had managed to wheedle a deal with the truck rental company. I can’t remember the price but what it amounted to was that though the company usually rented the truck by the day only ed had struck a deal that if he used the truck for only 2 hours he could get a considerably reduced rate.

The problem with the deal was that if he didn’t get the truck back within the 2 hour window they were going to get billed for the whole day.

With that in mind we gathered at the apartment early and started carrying all the heavy bulky stuff down the 3 floors and piling it up on the lawn. The building was an older walk up apartment with relatively narrow stairs which involved walking out the door down to the end of the hall down the stairs back to the middle of the building and out the front door.

To get the job running smoother we all used the stairs at the other end of the building to go back up for the next trip. When all the really big stuff was down, and remember we’re talking 1970’s university student furniture, ed went to get the truck while we continued at the apartment.

The minute the truck pulled up one group stayed down below loading all the stuff already there, several continued bringing down boxes of books etc, kitchen ware, all the fiddly little stuff that takes so much time in a move. Meanwhile a few of us took stuff llike the bedding and clothing, really anything that wouldn’t break or hurt too much and threw it out the 3rd floor window.

The truck was loaded in about 1/2 hour, we all drove across town to the new place and started unloading everything working at breakneck speed. Again lots of stuff was dropped on the lawn, It’s a good thing the day was nice, a heavy rain would have really messed up the timing. Other stuff was run up the stairs to the apartment and some of the big stuff, a couch, a chair and a couple of beds were hoisted overhead on the tailgate of the truck and then grabbed from the balcony and pulled into the apartment through the patio door.

The truck was emptied even faster than we had filled it and then they were off to return it to the rental company.
Mission accomplished. They got the truck back in time to avoid the extra charges. we all settled in to helping unpack which of course ended up with a beer party and so the new apartment was christened as our go to party place on the first day that oarsmen lived in it.

That particular apartment housed oarsmen for about 5 years from that day. As one or 2 graduated and moved on others such as myself moved in and in turn left it to others.

Ed went on to teach and Cory eventually went into social work. Over the years we have lost touch but today I managed to track Cory down so now he too knows about the hall of fame induction and plans to attend in June. At present we have contact info for 8 of the 9 men in the lightweight crew and only 3 of the nine in my JV crew. Luckily we still have lots of time to hunt  down the others. Heck with the internet how hard could it be.

if you read the last post then you know our university is going to honour our 1972 crew for winning the rowing championship that year. In his letter the current coach said he hoped we could find everyone involved and have a party to celebrate. Pete wasn’t alive the last time we did that.

There are a series of quadruplexes on Glenridge ave that used to be Brock’s first residence and in 1972 were rented out mostly to students after having been sold off by the university a few years earlier.

260 Glenridge had been an unofficial jock house for a few years. 3 oarsmen in the upper left, 3 Basketball players upper right, 3 women Basketball players lower right and two volleyball players and a hippie boyfriend lower left.

I and my buddies were going to host the year ending party there after the final regatta. The others, who we all knew had been invited and accepted. The rowing final party over the last few years had become legendary around Brock. In previous years we had witnessed attempts to fly, marriage breakups, dwarf tossing, etc. Hey it was an era of sex drugs and rock and roll. Mass quantities of recreational substances were consumed, mostly booze and pot but there was some more potent trace elements available and no one looked too closely at it.

As rowers we really did very little partying the first 2 months of school. The training started right at the beginning and there were races every weekend through October. We had parties usually on Saturdays but at away regattas we didn’t get home till late in the evening after leaving as early a 4 in the morning. We had practice again on Sunday so the parties were pretty subdued till the final.

With no practice the next day and a regatta at home the stage was set for a blow out and we willingly obliged.

On top of our own crew an the other jocks around Brock there was always a group of rowers from St Catharines who might be rowing for the other universities. AS small as Brock was virtually all the varsity athletes knew each other so there was always a lot of cross pollination at any of the team parties.

With that in mind the crowd started growing about 7 pm and continued for the next 6 hours. The apartments were pretty standard sized 3 bedroom units. Maybe 1000 sq ft certainly no bigger. By the height of this particular party we had about 200 people who spilled onto the lawn out front and a bit more alarmingly onto the roof on top of the building.

Several had climbed up from the balcony railing and were sitting up on the roof watching the traffic on Glenridge and at times teasing the cops that were called a couple of times to quiet us down.

I can report now that there were no serious injuries although a little alcohol poisoning was suspected in the aftermath.

Our stereo system at the time happened to be my own underpowered little unit. Record player, radio, and 8 track,( ask your parents) with a couple of speakers. We had wired in 4 extra speakers and had them playing in the living room and 2 of the bedrooms. It was cranked to 10 on volume, bass, and treble for the entire night.

As one of the hosts and also one of the senior participants I stayed relatively sober for most of the party.  I noticed among other things before time was suspended that the group that lived right below us had not come to the party and thought that a bit odd because we were quite friendly and they had been to other parties with us.

I didn’t have too much time to think about it and rational thought was becoming a bit of a chore anyway so I continued to enjoy the night and though no more about it.

Next day we had the usual, hangovers, cleanup duty, discovery of overnight guests on the balcony and living room. As the day wore on Nancy one of the girls down stairs appeared to ask if we were ok.

I asked her why she hadn’t come to the party and was told they were afraid to come in. I asked why and she tok me down to their apartment. All around the corners between their ceiling and walls the plaster was cracked. Nancy said that as the party had got wound up the dancing upstairs, something I personally never contributed to, had started their chandelier swaying and bouncing and then they had noticed that the whole ceiling, our floor had been bouncing up and down and plaster dust started coming out at the edges. Nancy said she had come up and warned one of the other residents and then fearful that the whole house was going to collapse they had left and spent the night at her boyfriend’s place to avoid the catastrophe.

Of course there had been no final catastrophe and the building is actually still standing. Over the years the balcony has been removed from the upper floor and it has remained largely a student rental unit. The bunch of us have surprisingly all grown older so I expect any party this year won’t have the same energy or abandonment we had back then. Still I can’t help thinking we had a lot more fun in our university life than the kids today have.

I suppose they however probably think our times were pretty lame and they are having the time of their lives too.

Modern Brock Crew. Cameras weren't around when we rowed.

 

Last Saturday in October 1972. The OUAA rowing championships were going on at the Henley course in St Catharines. At that time Brock was a very new very small university and in competition with other more established universities we were used to getting whipped.

The university didn’t have a gym they could hold a basketball game in. The team went to a local high school to practice and play. Same for an arena, none on campus so down to the local city arena for practice and games.  In off seasons trying to get pemier athletes to come to Brock was more than difficult. There was no phys-ed dept. very little in training facilities and no reputation as winners to lure prospects to come here to follow their athletic dreams.

But rowing was different. St Catharines has been a hot bed of rowing for a century and the local high schools all have programmes. At that time there was some friction between the local rowing club and Brock but at least we had a great course and good boats to row in. There was also a sense around the city that if you were going to row you did it well or went home.

Western University was at that time the prime rowing school. Every year they had a lot of St Catharines guys attending that formed the core of a very powerful team. They were used to winning regularly and sometimes that was aided by a head coach who felt it was fine to cheat if he could in order to win.

In 1972 however things were different. Brock had an incredible lightweight crew. So good in fact that they were winning both light and heavy varsity races. They were backed up by a junior varsity crew that also won every race that year except our own invitational regatta.

The men’s programme was the same each year. All races were in eights and they went novice men         20 pts
light weight varsity    40 pts
junior varsity           30 pts
heavy varsity     40 pts

Western won the novice race and then our lightweight crew won their race
Score western 20 Brock 40.
As we went out for the JV race we knew hat if we won it would clinch the overall championship. Even if Western won the heavy varsity it would have made the score 70 to 60. With this in mind we did the only thing that made any sense. We took out a bottle of champaign with us in the boat. Carrying the extra weight in the bottom of the boat under the coxies legs.

It was as always a tough trace but as usual that year we pulled away from Western and clinched the race and the overall championship for Brock. We pulled out the bottle, popped the cork and toasted the victory out on the water in front of the grandstand, a little celebration that got a bit of criticism from the purists but we had just won what at the time at Brock was a very rare provincial championship.

As we headed back to the dock the light weight crew was already racing in the heavy eight race which they won.

Final score for the day Brock 3 championships to Western 1 and overall winners for us.
The party that night as always at the end of the season was a total blow out.

Now 2012, This year marks the 40th anniversary of that victory and I was informed yesterday by the current Brock rowing coach that our crews are being inducted into the Brock sports hall of fame.  Now we are trying to find all the crew members that we have lost touch with over the decades to have a bit of a party in June at the induction ceremony. I know our coach has passed away as has one of the women’s coaches of the time. Many of the crew members have gone off my radar but between the alumni association and our own contacts we hope we can find everyone to let them know and I guess the party won’t be quite as riotous as we were used to but it will still be nice to touch base again.

The one advantage we will have after all this time is that there is virtually no one left to dispute our lies when we brag about how fast we were.

Not that we’d ever stoop to that sort of thing. We didn’t need to. We were/ are that good.

Lets face facts children. The Northern Gateway pipeline is most likely a done deal. The arguments are as old as the industrial revolution. On the one hand there is vast amounts of money to be made if we just risk or actually ravage our natural environment. On the other hand as our esteemed prime minister said the other day we can keep Canada as a wonderful natural park for the northern half of the continent.

This sort of thinking has been  going on for a few hundred years. THe fact is that people pollute. The act of living mean other things and or people must die. Habitat fit for a home is no longer fit for a bear or moose. Water, needed for consumption and hygiene has to be pumped back into the ecosystem after we use it, and land given over to agriculture, even if we all became vegans is no longer as productive for other organisms as it would be if left alone. The fact of my existence demands that other beings perish just as the existence of those other beings means that sometime in the future I must perish to put nutrients back into the system.

SInce about the turn of the last century though we have become more and more aware not of the possibility of pristine existence but of the fact that we can do much to mitigate our damage to the environment. In my home town of St Catharines all the local sewer systems, industrial, runoff, and human waste water were led across the city and dumped completely untreated into the local river, canal, or directly into Lake Ontario.
Meanwhile we took our drinking water out of an upstream source so that we didn’t have to drink our own sewage. Don’t ask where Welland and Thorold dumped their sewage it would just upset you.

The result of this policy, which was used by virtually every city in the world was that the Henley course, where I spent many idyllic hours rowing was a stinking cesspool.  On any given morning depending on what the local industries had been doing the water was anywhere from a dirty dishwater gay to a quite nice mocha colour. There was often a lovely froth on the water and a nice scent of vanilla form the pulp mills up stream and in the fall we were treated to the heady aroma of fermenting grapes when the local industrial sized winery dumped the lees from their vats into the water about a kilometer upstream from the rowing course. On Mondays we were regularly regaled with schools of ,“Port Dalhousie whitefish”, used condoms flushed down the toilet after mom and dad celebrated another leafs game after hockey night in Canada went off the air.

Now all the sewers are tied in to a treatment facility. The result is that 40 years after I was rowing on it the water once again sustains waterfowl, fish and amphibians. It is hardly pristine, it was estimated that it will take about 100 years of clean water flow to flush all the detritus out of the waterway but at least it no longer actually stinks.

The same sort of progress ha been made in large and small increments in controlling air pollution from factories down to individual smokers who can no longer blow smoke in your face in the middle of your history seminar at the local university.

None of this ha come about cheaply and at every step along the way we have been faced with the same old tired arguments. The owners of business or other enterprises state that the cost of cleaning up their messes will make the projects to costly and the environmentalists insist that if you are to be allowed to take profits out of the community you must restore the environment as much as possible.

THis leads me at last back to the pipeline. The project pushers, particularly Enbridge tell us that they will do everything possible to protect the environment. No they won’t they will do everything that is demanded of them by we the people and not a penny more will be spent than is absolutely demanded. They will have to be watched and monitored constantly because they will fail to do what they should if they have a chance. SO will all the other enterprises involved in the project. From the construction companies building the pipeline through BC wilderness to the shipping companies carrying the crude to China each and every one of them will want to limit the costs of their operations and maximize their profits. It is up to us, through our government to demand good stewardship of them because they will not provide it on their own.

On the other hand of course it is pretty much a given that the oil from Alberta tar sands is going to be exploited and used by a world still hungry for fossil fuel. Not very many of us are ready to give up our personal transportation in cars, I know I’m not, and none of us can live in Canada without heating our homes and finding a source of heat to cook our food.

Can we do a better job of limiting our environmental impact? Absolutely. Will we? not very much thank you and we will grumble about the cost in time, money and enjoyment of every improvement along the way. It’s human nature to resist change and try to continue life as usual.

Will the pipeline spoil the natural environment? Certainly. The only question is how much and how soon. There will be damage from the original construction and there will be damage from maintenance and the leaks that will occur over time. There will be a shipping catastrophe i the future. These are the inevitable results of using fossil fuels. All we can do is demand that those who stand to profit from it do the best they can to limit the damage now and in the future.

It is on that point that it is scary to watch the governmental flacks lining up to paint all the environmentalists as radicals and lauding the wonders of the project. THey are doing the bidding of Enbridge not just because they will get massive donations but because they still believe that the resources must be exploited and the economy of the dollar is more important than the economy of the environment. They want to promote the sale of our resources to the highest bidder and resent anything that degrades that profit picture.

If you want the best deal possible for all Canadians then you must make the government partners with ordinary citizens and not with the profit centres of big business. None of that will leave the Tar sands or this particular pipeline pristine. It will just get us the best deal possible from the degradation that is inevitable if we are to continue to exist as we do now.
In the long term we can look to alternative fuels to lessen out impact but as for me I’m not willing to give up my car yet. I have a grand daughter growing up 300 kilometers away and I have to go visit her every month. I’m as much a part of this problem as anyone.

I find myself now in my old age out of step with the rest of my nation. I should clarify that a bit. I’m not really out of step with the majority of Canadians but with our antiquated electoral system of first past the post I am out of step with enough of them that the conservatives have been able to elect a majority of the members of parliament. I consider the policies proposed and advanced by them to be ruinous for the nation and for forward thinking people everywhere.

Because our system was designed with 2 parties in mind first past the post, which may have worked in the past to reflect fairly well the feelings of the population is swamped now, with elections that often have half a dozen candidates. The Conservatives however whether I like it or not have been elected in the last 3 elections and achieved a majority this last time.

Today I came across what I think is one of the reasons why this happens. I got a copy of the Toronto Sun. This is as much an organ of the right wing as any paper anywhere which even hints at being objective about their news coverage. This is not to smear the Sun in particular because what I found is common in newspapers today.  Be they right left or centre biased the fac is that there is precious little news left in our papers

A quick and dirty scan through the Sun showed this, II 1/2 pages of news or opinion, 5 pages of classified ads, and 35 1/2 pages of sports and entertainment. The rest of the paper, some 80 pages total is made up of ads.

This means that if you are relying on the Sun, or most other papers for your understanding of the world you are getting 3 time as much entertainment as you are news. The claim of traditional media is of course that they have the experience and know how to filter the noise and provide rational well researched information. The fact is however that the traditional media  are providing not news and reasoned opinion, they are providing clients to advertisers and they do so by giving us the lowest common denominator.

Pages and pages about professional sports with a huge emphasis today on american football and NHL hockey. Pages of info about movies and TV, personalities, projects and foibles. And wedged in some news about the city budget, the navy spy charge, some court proceedings etc.

In fact the first 2 pages are about the size of Tim Hortons coffee cups and whether or not swinger clubs should be controlled the same as strip clubs. Not much of this is going to hep a concerned citizen make up their mind about whether or not they like the Northern Gateway Pipeline project.

Again I want to say this is not a particular slam against the Sun. They may not be the best paper regarding reportage versus entertainment but I doubt that they are the worst. They do reflect however a long standing and growing fact of news gathering today.

A democracy works bet when the population is well informed about the issues faced by the nation and their politicians. When the population loses interest in these matters of public policy the life of the nation is threatened. It was so for all the great empires of the past and it is so today. As we have moved through a half century of affluence and relative peace since the end of WW2 we as a population have allowed ourselves to be seduced by our pleasures rather than our duties. No on e wants to sit through nomination and policy meetings when the latest episode of House or Glee is on TV.

The political pros know this and use it to their advantage. They spend fortunes on crafting 30 second sound bites and photo ops as opposed to real consultation and discussion. They ignore the weaknesses in our electoral process because the party in power, whoever they are would be weakened rather than strengthened by crafting modifications that would better reflect the actual percentage of support they have in the population.

It is we as citizens that need to bite the bullet and do the dirty work of being properly informed and aware and making our views known and taken seriously. I live in the hope that if that started to happen then the parliaments in my country would more closely reflect my own feelings about what it is important for government to pursue.

But maybe I’m wrong and I’m just an old man out of step with the present and future mood of Canada.

According to the Vancouver Sun the premiers are unanimous in rejecting the conservative agenda for the health care system. What a huge surprise, Harper is given his majority and within a year he is starting to attack the things that most Canadians hold dear in order to do the bidding of the corporations waiting, salivating in the wing to sell you your health care ala the American model.

As one who after a relatively healthy life for 60 years has just rung up several thousand dollars of healthcare trying to get clear of cancer I have to say that if I had been in the states I would be dead by now.

I had on commando surgery in November 2010. That entailed an operating room and one of the best surgeons in Canada working on me for 15 hours. That’s right nearly 2 working days on the table. I got an infection and had to have the surgery repeated in January 2011, that was precipitated by my bleeding out 2 litres from an eroded carotid artery and since I have no money to speak of if I had been in the States the second surgery would not have been performed, the artery would have inevitably started bleeding again probably within hours but certainly within days and I wouldn’t be boring you with this tale.

Now Harper, like other right wingers came in on the promise to cut taxes, balance the budget, all the things Canadians seem to think they want. Of course if you really want those things then the absolutely certain result is that services have to be cut. For those of you with lots of money I can see why you might feel it’s a good deal. I have a nephew who’s doing very well for himself and his family and he loves this sort of talk. He can possibly afford to take care of his family but I rely on a robust well funded health care system and so do the vast majority of Canadians.

The promise held out by the right is that if they are allowed to cut the taxes we will all be better off. This is a lie and the proof of that lie can be seen all over Europe and anywhere else in the world. In the US where medicine for profit is the norm the wealthy can afford to buy whatever services they require and the ret of the population has to make do with inferior or absolutely unavailable service.

There is no offsetting increase in wealth for the population as a whole. Any  savings gained through this sort of short term thinking are always going to the elite in society, while they promise that things will get better for the masses in a little while.

It is the same sort of thing the churches offer, summed up by an old work buddy of mine as “pie in the sky once you die.”
Anyone who still believes, after watching the financial meltdown of the last decade, that unfettered American style cost cutting and tax breaks for the rich are going to help you get ahead is living in a fools paradise. That is exactly what Harper is counting on. While wages and standard of living for the bulk of the population have stagnated or regressed the Cons keep yelling that things are going to get better soon.

They are lying to you in order to help their friends and donors in private industry. They are perfectly willing to sacrifice your health, education, food inspection, safety and anything else in order to make their benefactors richer and get enough donations to be sure to advertise their way to another majority in the next election.

The only cure for this is an informed populace. Try to find out what is really happening to your government services rather than just listening to the 30 second sound bites informing you that everything will be OK in a little while.

 

Today is January 14th. Because of the horrendous snow storm yesterday, we probbly have a couple of inches accumulated all outdoor training sessions have been halted.

As we look out with fear and trepidation at the white jungle the news is lamenting the hundreds of fender benders caused yesterday by drivers unable to remember a year back when the exact same thing happened. It never ceases to amaze me that with the first serious snow every year we are treated to this carnage. I realize that in any given year there are a number of new drivers who have never dealt with snowy icy conditions and I realize there will also be a number of drivers new to Canada from more tropical climes that may be experienced drivers but have never seen how slippery winter conditions can be, but I also know that in any year the bulk of these accidents are with good old Timmies drinking, Hockey playing, Ice fishing, Canadians who have been through this many times. I guess the Alzheimer’s problem is much worse than we hink if all these people forget form one year to the next.

 

 
On a much nicer note the ice wine harvest is now going ahead. If you have never tried it I highly recommend trying some Ontario Ice wine. It is expensive but everyone should treat themselves once in a while and sipping some of this stuff is a treat to be sure. There is even a festival running in Jordan right now to celebrate the harvest and it’s well worth a trip.

The bikers I suppose dropped in to Dover yesterday as they do every Friday the 13th but I’m sure the numbers must have been down considerably. IT was so quiet the local news didn’t even cover it this time. When a 13th falls during the summer it is not uncommon for the little town on Lake Erie to get 100,000 visitors over the weekend, up from about 6,000 year round residents. If you want to attend one of these plan ahead. Hotels are filled months ahead for a summer runs and on the day of the event cars can’t drive into town, you must take shuttles to get in and out. When you get there you’ll see this is a good thing. The streets are so crowded you can barely walk on them and even the bikes are stuck in stop and go traffic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on a personal note today is the second anniversary of my starting my Cancer treatment.  So far it’s working and I have been declared cancer free for the lst year and a half or so. Today in 2010 I was sitting with my sister in Juravinski hospital while they hooked up an IV and started pumping in the first Chemo drip. Then we finished the day off with a trip through the first of many radiation treatment and after went to Licks for Hamburgers fries and a coke. I sure wish I could get that same meal now but instead Deb and I are going to celebrate with some nice chinese soup and a fine Starbuckian coffee today. For all of my friends, family and medical staff that have helped me so much through these last 2 years I say thank you. It is no exaggeration to say I couldn’t have done it without you.

 

And Now for some songs of great social and political import.

1/

http://www.awitness.org/journal/gay_divorce.html

Lesbian couple seeking country’s first same-sex divorce
TORONTO – A lesbian couple in Ontario may face problems getting what is believed to be Canada’s first same-sex divorce because the law limits divorce to male-female couples. The Divorce Act, which is federal legislation, defines spouses as “either of a man or a woman who are married to each other.”Toronto lawyer Martha McCarthy and her client, M.M. have asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to issue an order that the federal definition of spouse under the Divorce Act is unconstitutional. She said the federal government is due to respond next week.”It’s unconstitutional to give straight people the freedom to divorce, and not gays and lesbians,” said McCarthy.She said she has written to the federal government asking it not to fight their court challenge.

Well it seems that the laws in Canada still need a little tweaking around the same sex marriage area.

I’m going to take the high road here and assume this is just an oversight and that in the last few years as we got to the point of actually legally allowing people who love each other to wed, we just haven’t got around to clearing up any of the old language. Something like getting the honorific Ms, put into forms etc where earlier it was always Mrs or Miss, it will just take a while till everyone finds all these old anachronisms and deals with them in the spirit of inclusiveness that was intended when same sex marriage was legalized.

Certainly gay couples deserve the same rights to the pains of divorce and you can be pretty certain the legal profession will be front and centre in ensuring the right to bill a whole new class of clients.

If on the other hand this is another case of the conservatives trying to screw with other peoples ethics and values then fuck em.

2/

Facebook the media giant that can’t seem to put anything up that doesn’t involve knowing everything about you and your friends lives from conception to burial is censoring images of breast feeding because they might be pornographic.

Have we not passed this already. North America is the last place on earth that still refuses to understand that adult females feed infants directly from their breasts. I know Hef has another obsession about them, and in his dotage as his vision has failed he needs them to be big and preferably plastic but surely the rest of us can get over it and stop worrying about whether or not a breast is visible.  It’s been a decade or so since Ontario ruled that women could go topless in public and the world still hasn’t ended. Although to listen to some it is about to at the end of the year because some Mayan ran out of printer toner while doing his calendar a little while back.

Come on Facebook, grow up and stop rating everything you see as if you are still that nerdy grade niner springing a boner when Monica passed by in the hall.

3/

Newt Gingrich has announced that he is willing to go to the NAACP convention and speak to them about why and how a paycheck is better than food stamps.
Now I’m not too sure about an organization that still uses the term “colored People to identify its clientele but we all know that over the years they have been fighting on the side of the angels in trying to eradicate the racism still so prevalent in much of society. I am however pretty certain that ole Newt is about as insensitive to the plight of anyone on Food stamps as anyone can possibly be. I’m also pretty certain he’s as much a closet racist as anyone. and I’m also pretty certain that he would be shocked to find out that half the people receiving food stamps in the states are white, and a great many of them have paychecks coming in, just ones that are insufficient to put food on the table for their families. The reasons why working poor exist can be found in most of the policies Newt and his buddies have been promoting for the last thirty years. Still he is astonished that his offer of help to the NAACP has raised such a firestorm of indignation. How is it possible for a grown man to be so self satisfied he can’t understand his own idiocy.

4/
The federal government has once again shown that it is incapable of unbiased governing. At the outset of an inquiry into the pipeline across BC to Kitimat the minister started the ball rolling by essentially saying anyone who opposes the project is a radical and went so far as to declare that some of them were billionaire socialists. I don’t know an awful lot of billionaire socialists but wouldn’t mind joining their party if they are accepting new members. I have to believe the potluck meals after meetings have got to have a better menu than the regular socialist meetings. Meanwhile of course the very idea that this process is designed to get the feelings and thoughts of interested citizens about a project that can have a huge impact on a huge number of people is already cast by the government as a fight. It is supposed to be a fact finding, opinion finding, exercise. Of course facts have always been a bit of a difficulty for Stevie and his minions.

5/ Update to the first bit it seems that the Cons are in fact going to clean up the laws about same sex marriage and get them all neat and orderly so no one is confused anymore. Rob Nicholson the justice minister took time out from extolling the get tough and lock them up agenda to say that the government is going to move to clarify the situation and ensure that everyone knows these marriages are considered legal and binding like all the other marriages in this country. It is so seldom I get to ay anything nice about the cons I relish taking this moment to say well done.
6/ Of course in typical Con fashion Nicholson pointed out that the problems were not of their making but were caused by the Liberals not doing a thorough job when the law was changed way back in the last millennium. For more on this you can read the Globe article fond here.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/justice-minister-declares-all-same-sex-marriages-legal-and-valid/article2301691/

My bicycle. Speed and comfort in one place.

 

I have been a regular cyclist now since I turned 18. Like every other kid I rode during childhood but also like every other boy I knew I drooled over the thought of getting my drivers licence and getting out on the road.

As I pretty much gave up riding in high school preferring to hitch hike anywhere I couldn’t get a ride or if the family car was not available.  Then on more day of waiting in the rain for a pick up and I though I could get a bike and be on my way. I had enough guts by then to not be too worried about how uncool it was and got my first 10 speed bike. A sears dark red one, everyone knows red vehicles are faster, that cost the princely sum of $65.

On one hand that actually was a fair amount of money, about 1 weeks worth at the time and the value was inherent in that here was enough steel in the thing to get back a considerable amount just as scrap metal.

Any way over the years i rode, sometimes more sometimes less but way above average. In 1985 I made my longest ever bike ride flying to Vancouver and cycling back home to Ontario. By then I had a nice Cannondale touring bike made of aluminum which cost $750, the equivalent of about 2 weeks pay at the time.

ABout a decade later I realized I had a bit of a problem. Over the years I had managed to dislocate my right shoulder a couple of times and as I got older it developed a nice case of arthritis. It was never debilitating but I found that although I could go out for a nice lng ride anytime I wished if I rode a few days in a row like you need to to go on tour the pain just kept getting worse. The only thing that worked for real relief was rest and so I found myself reading up on and finally buying a recumbent bike.

That was in about 1998 and I got a Rans Stratus. hat cost $1700 dollars which represented about 3 weeks pay at the time.

The beauty of the recumbent bike was that it took all the wight off my arms. This allowed me once again to ride as much as I wanted with no residual aches growing from one day to the next. I never did do any really long tours on the bike as I had planned but rode it an average of about 3000 miles a year for 4 years. I was just about ready to trade it in on another when someone did me the honour of steeling it out of my back yard and I found myself down a bike to a little uncomplicated mountain bike I played around on and a nice Hybrid by Giant that i used for running errands and local transportation around the city.

I always intended on getting another recumbent but one thing led to another and I never got around to it till August 2010. At that time I found a local guy on Craigs list selling a Rans Velocity squared. This is the faster sportier brother to the stratus and as the price was quite reasonable $700 i got it intending to finish the summer riding a bit while I got it set up with lights, bags fenders etc to get into some touring again in 2011.

I was planning on riding down to Baltimore to visit my sister as the major tour for 2011 but as Robbie said once “ the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley” translated into english that means. I was fucked.

Now however as I find myself recovering I also find myself thinking about maybe making that ride after all. I’m not sure about this year but sometime in the next little while. I also expect I’ll rejoin the cycling club I used to belong to and rack up a few more mile this year than I have for the past 10.

The really good news is that just like that long ago Sears 10 speed this oe is a brilliant red. So if you happen to be in Niagara next summer and find yourself passed by a guy on a strange looking bicycle at nearly superhuman speeds it might well be me.

I also see that state of the art sporty bikes now cost anywhere from $2000 to many of the top end ones breaking the $10,000 dollar line.

I’m once again riding a bike that cost me about one weeks pay rather than 5 months pay and it is easily the most comfortable bike I have ever ridden.

Some of you might know that I was blessed twice last year. First up was Deb agreeing to marry me, something we rushed into on March 5th. We’ve only known each other since 1961, reconnected in 2001, and got married in 2011. Luckily for me her son Dan and his wife Kate gave birth in July to their daughter Claire.

I went from being single since 1980 and childless from forever to having a granddaughter. Avoiding all that middle childhood, adolescence, rebellion stuff makes for a very easy transition into grand-parentage.

It’s not like I don’t have a bit of training in this sort of thing. I have niece and nephew so I have some history of taking part in the fun part of children. Birthday parties where I only have to show up for the fun. Parades, trips to the pool, Pony rides at the fair, lots of sugar to get them all amped up and then give them back to the parents and go home to a nice quiet house for myself.

Avoiding all the pitfalls like doctor and dentist visits, measles, being bullied at school, toilet training etc. I have to say that this concept of taking on children for only the fun parts and giving them over to someone else for the messy complicated tiring stuff is great. Personally I don’t know why more people don’t do it.

As we went through the last half of the year getting to know Claire I continued to perfect this programme.

Deb and I were at the hospital when she was born and go tot see all 7 pounds of her before she was an hour old. We then spent a few days in Windsor helping the new parents as they brought her home and started into the night feedings,sleeplessness, and all the rest of the “fun of newborns.

Since the introduction we have managed to get to see Claire at least monthly and the changes apparent on every visit are of course staggering. She is now up to almost 20 pounds. Starting to move around on her own and responding with the most beautiful smiles and gurgles if you please her, or a 190 decibel high pitched screech that can peel paint and cause the dog to howl if you do wrong by her.

As the “disabled” grandfather even with this once removed process I get to pick and choose when I play with or feed her and when I surrender her to the others. All I have to do is say I’m a bit tired or sore and I’m immediately relieved of the burden.

Claire and I set the tone for our relation ship on the first visit we made to Windsor after her birth. At about a month old when the parents were at about their worst for tiredness we went to visit and help out.

When we arrived, Claire had just been fed. We got settled and I sat at one end of the couch. I was carefully handed the baby and watched by the others who weren’t sure about my baby wrangling skills. As I said I had a niece and nephew before and didn’t do anything stupid like picking her up by the head or sitting her beside me on the couch to watch TV. At that time for those who have forgotten she was barely able to focus her eyes on anything and motor skills are so lacking she couldn’t do much more than wriggle and stretch a bit. I held Claire for about ten minute as she dozed off, recently fed and warm and cozy there. One of the limits I have right now with her is that the PEG tube I have for feeding, emerging from the middle f my abdomen is right about where you would hope to hold and cuddle an infant. Because of this I can hold her in my left arm fine but in my right arm she rubs on the insertion whenever she moves around which can sometimes, if the tube is tugged on, can be uncomfortable. Now with much greater mobility and strength she has occasionally kicked it and stuff just to see me flinch. On that particular day however after about 10 minutes of quiet warm cuddling she started getting restive and my arm was getting a bit tired so Deb came and got her from me. The two of them settled into an arm chair and about 10 seconds later the little darling dropped a shit that squirted out the leg hole of her diaper and all over Deb’s dress. WHo knew month old children had little if any control of their bowels but an uncanny ability to go to her grandmother rather than me to let go.

Since then she has never let me down yet. As Dan mentions sometimes I break her if I pick her up wrong and she shrieks but she has never made a mess on me through several feedings and holdings etc. She has always waited till she’s with one of the others.

I can’t help think she realizes that our time together is for good times only. The other servants take care of any of the tedious stuff.

By the way she is of course the most beautiful, talented baby seen in decades. It’s not just me that thinks this. Our estimation of her has been confirmed by the other grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins etc. All of us unbiased and objective about the whole thing.