Category: Environment

Oh, dear, what should the title be

I wasn’t sure what exactly I should write about so I just started writing and ended up covering a lot of different ground…

Heated Rivalry is coming to theatres. Seems an interesting idea, seeing all or some of these episodes in a group setting (not to mention on a big screen), but as always the actualities of it are proving problematic. First, there’s no way I’m going for the marathon showing of all episodes at once—that’s too long to sit in a theatre. Second, episodes 5 and 6, the cream of the crop, are playing at 10:30 pm. That’s too late! It’s way past my bedtime!

I’m having similar challenges with You Can See Everything. I’m sort of desperate to participate in the experience without encountering too many spoilers first, but the darn thing is quite long. I believe people who say it moves along quickly and doesn’t feel like the length it is, but it is over 2 hours, so you still have to fit into your day somehow. But unlike with streaming, you can’t pick the ideal time for you to watch; you have to take what the theatres have on offer. I don’t want to miss meals for it, or stay up late.

Possibly I’m inflexible curmudgeon.

Jean and I did get out to a 3-hour thingie this week: the live musical Into the Woods. We both thought it was good— excellent performers and a fun premise (fairy tale characters encounter one another in the woods, and have to deal with the aftermath of “happily ever after”), but just too long. Apologies to Sondheim fans, but some of those songs could have been cut down once we got the point of them. Chop, chop. Move it along.

(This is not disproving the inflexible curmudgeon thing.) Now we would like to see the movie. Which is only 2.5 hours long, I would note! (Still not.)

I’m also slogging through the novel What We Can Know by Ian McEwen, which is interesting enough that I don’t want to give up on it, but I am frustrated by its reading pace. Such long paragraphs! The characters are intellectuals, with so many thoughts! I miss the snap, snap reading pace of romance novels, or popular fiction by Frederik Bachmann. But what’s my hurry, though? Aren’t I retired? I am!

I can tell because I’m rewatching stuff, something I had largely given up on when still working. Pulling out the DVDs and Blu-rays and revisiting Before Sunset and Bohemian Rhapsody and Music and Lyrics and so on. And even taking a second pass through far more recent programs, like Heated Rivalry, yes, but also Off Campus, the straight hockey romance series based on a Canadian novel. I’m not even going to claim you should watch it, but I am going to say that I quite enjoyed it. Both times. It’s on Prime TV.

I also read one in the series of the books it was based on, and that took no time at all. Which is good, because the book just wasn’t that great. Frankly, the series was much better! Without getting particularly spoilery, the object of the crush, the reason for the breakup, the nature of the reconciliation… All of it was far more complex and better motivated in the series than in the book. Kind of the opposite of what you’d expect.

(With Heated Rivalry, I would say both books and series are worthwhile, just with different focuses.)

I then turned to watching Prime TV’s Sterling Point, which doesn’t have hockey, but is another Canadian story (though not Canadian production, I don’t think). It’s really a family drama at its core, with romance on the side. It takes place in Muskoka, and the locale is center point of the piece, as contrasted to New York (which barely appears). Not saying it’s perfect, but it’s fairly compelling and I got pretty caught up in it, as did a lot of people.

I then went looking for the book, and was surprised to find out there isn’t one. This is an original series! How original.

Another original we recently experienced was the live Cirque du So Gay, a circus troop with a bit of a drag / queer flair. We saw them at sold out show at Centre in the Square’s smaller Studio Theatre. We found out only at the end that this was the group’s debut performance. I wouldn’t have guessed, because it was a pretty polished mix of acrobatics, trapeze, and clowning. Quite a physically attractive group as well!

They very much encouraged us to take pictures and video, but while tempted, I ultimately declined in favor of staying in the moment. (Just a 90-minute show. Nice!)

Various circus performers on a poster labeled Cirque Du So Gay, October 17, 2026, Centre in the Square, Kitchener, Ontario.

Also rather nice has been this Fall weather. While temperatures really plunge at night, it has been a whole long series of sunny days that reach into the high teens (Celsius). One day we decided to take advantage and bike to Sole for one more round of lunch on their lovely patio. They had their heaters running, such that we didn’t even need our jackets. Very enjoyable to be dining al fresco at this time of year, especially given that the food and wine were very good.

Black and white photo of a plate of pasta with two glasses of wine, and woman in the background.
Jean got arty with his photo.

The weather also means that cat Mac has been getting near daily walks on a leash, which he really enjoys (except when they end). I play podcasts as I hold on to my end of his tether as he visits our yard and, occasionally, walks down the sidewalk. (He’d love the visit the neighbours’ yards also, but I don’t allow that). So many walks, I’ve never gotten through podcast episodes so quickly. I keep having to scramble to add more to the queue.

White cat with black markings in a teal harness, on a leash.
Actually a photo from two years ago, but it’s the same idea now.

A new addition to the podcast queue that I’d recommend for people who enjoy films that deal with romantic relationships: Love Factually, in which two scientists discuss how well or poorly certain films represent what’s known scientifically about love and romance. I’ve also been enjoying Big in Canada, which looks at musicians who are very popular in Canada (often due to CanCon laws) but not so much elsewhere. It’s far less polished, though! (At least these earlier episodes that I’m listening to now.)

Both of these shows are also adding to my list of movies to rewatch and albums to listen to again, as well. (Did I mention I have a new CD players? Very happy with it. And also with the IBroadcast app for listening to your own music. It connects right to Sonos speakers, just like Spotify does.)

But back to the cats. Gus and Shawnee are not ones for leashing it up outside. Gus loves his daily pets and combs, and hanging out in the catio, but doesn’t do well get a collar put on him, let alone a harness. Shawnee’s OK in a collar but she does not want to explore the outdoors, even in catio form.

Two cats at an open window, a black fluffy one, and a small tabby looking at the camera.
This is as close as Shawnee wants to get to the outdoors. Gus is the big black floofer beside her.

Since August, the three cats now roam the entire house, with no more gating required. It’s mostly going well, though Shawnee is a much more touchy-feely cat than Mac and Gus, so they’re negotiating that. Shawnee has also recently been featured as a Pet Patrol adoption Success Story, and is also one of their fundraising calendar cats. But I don’t think her fame is making Gus and Mac particularly jealous.

January page of a cat calendar, show Shawnee along with Kachine (black and white kitten), Quiggley (orange tabby), and Sly (black and white cat). Quote: The only thing a cat worries about it what's happening right now. After all, you can only wash one paw at a time. Lloyd Alexander,

Monday are the municipal elections, and I’ve finally decided who to vote for. The local ones are a lot more labour-intensive, with no political parties, and Waterloo has a more complicated region / city structure that adds to the complexity. Nice of Doug Ford to make it easier by now appointing the Regional Chair, i.e. the most powerful local political, instead of letting us vote for who we want! Why would should we get a say in that, eh? Democracy is clearly over-rated.

I’m still going to exercise it, though, if only to be contrary. Will say that the official Waterloo Region Votes website is really excellent, deftly gathering all the information you need on who’s running for mayor, city councillor, regional councillor, and school board trustee, and continually updating with candidate sites, news articles, Redditt threads, video debates, anything and everything you can use for research.

CBC said that climate change was a major issue for people who responded to their poll about the municipal election. That’s a self-selected group, but it’s still interesting. Can’t remember what I picked when I did the poll, but climate change was probably in there. I find myself much more willing to read about that topic now. It’s clearly happening; seems better to try to understand it than live in denial.

Bill McKibben’s Substack The Crucial Years gives a clear-eyed view of what’s going on, and it ain’t pretty, folks! But he still notes good news when he can find it. Max Fawcett of the National Observer gives frequently optimistic takes on climate policy, which can annoy people (including his own wife, he admits). But he at least does bring the facts in his arguments. For example, he will point out that for all of Mark Carney oil pipeline boosting and carbon tax cancelling, he also removed duties on Chinese solar modules; restored the EV tax credit; allowed in some Chinese EVs; created the heat pump incentive; and wants to build a national electrical grid.

Then there’s the Doomers, who focus largely on their own survival. Not in the sense of wandering off to a country cabin with a bunch of guns, but by staying in your home a city and growing your own food. And running your own solar panels, with battery backup. And purifying your own water. And putting in a composting toilet. And stocking up on canned goods. I don’t think it’s crazy; more power outages, supply shortages, and water quality issues likely are going to be more frequent problems, and it is good to prepare for them.

But I just can’t quite become a full-on “prepper”, even though I will follow the occasional small tip here and there. There’s a full book (soon to be updated), free for the downloading: Survival Illustrated

Survival book cover, of woman in a mask and combat gear jumping over a dumpster fire.

The What We Can Know novel I mentioned earlier is mostly set in the future, looking back on our time. Future historians are just amazed at how people in our society go on with our lives, burning our fossil fuels, even though all of us know perfectly well how bad the situation is going to get. In the book, AI systems eventually start some nuclear war (as per their calculations, it’s the most logical approach). Humans fairly quickly put a stop to them, not until after a fair number of lives have been lost, but before the whole world becomes a nuclear wasteland. (Yay, us?)

A side effect of these wars is that particles are released into the atmosphere (part of the “nuclear winter” thing), which actually protects the earth from some the heating. The world thereby gains some time against the otherwise unfolding climate disaster, and manages to rebuild some cities with much less travel, far fewer types of food and animal life, and all renewable energy… But not a terrible life, all in all. (Yay, us?)

All of the above isn’t all that spoilery, by the way. It’s not really the point of the book. It’s just the backstory.

Just like You Can See Everything isn’t really about Elizabeth Holmes’ time at Theranos. Or so they say.

I think we’re going Wednesday. We’re going to spring for the comfy seats.

Don’t have a cow, man

Giving up eating beef and drinking glasses of milk was pretty easy. Could I go further?

Instances of Avian flu keep turning up in mammals. Most concerning of late to us human mammals are cases in cows in America. Cats drinking raw cow milk haven’t fared well. Not to worry, they say, because pasteurization kills the virus. Or does it? Well, nothing’s been found so far in commercial pasteurized milk. Especially in Canada. But how hard are we looking?

Overall, I don’t know if the potential risk of HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) is itself reason enough to cut back on consuming beef and dairy.

I do know that there are plenty of other reasons to consider doing that:

  • For your tummy! A lot of people are lactose intolerant. Not everyone who is knows it.
  • For the climate! Cows are the most emissions-intensive animals to raise.
  • For the cows! The life quality of dairy or beef cattle on factory farms… isn’t great.
  • For the humans! Migrant farm workers, in particular, are often exploited.

It’s all got me thinking… Maybe I could at least cut back?

Where’s the beef?

The meat part is done and dusted. I gave up eating beef years ago.

To be honest, I didn’t do it for any of the fine reasons I listed above. Since being a teenager, I’d been a little suspicious of ground beef. I wondered, what was really in that burger? But I didn’t entirely stop eating them until I read Fast Food Nation, which provided an answer:

There is shit in the meat.

Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation

(Here I feel compelled to point out that Fast Food Nation was published way back in 2001. Maybe the sanitary conditions have improved since then. Maybe there isn’t so much shit in the meat now. I dunno. I haven’t looked into it.)

Steak, though less shitty, was excised from my diet some time after that, more as a health measure. To follow that general “try to eat less red meat” advice.

Got milk?

Drinking milk all by itself, in a glass, is also something I gave up decades ago. And again, not for any particularly high-minded reasons. At some point, as a teenager, I just decided I preferred drinking other beverages.

Silk unsweetened almond milk.
Silk unsweetened is generally my favourite almond milk

But I continued to use milk as an ingredient. Continue. It’s not a past tense thing. But, I have reduced it, without much pain.

Almond milk, for some time now, has become my go-to for smoothies and hot cereals, because I enjoy the almond flavor with those foods. And while almond milk is not the most environmental choice of milk alternative, it’s still more environmental than dairy milk.

It’s also lower in carbs than dairy milk, if you care about that sort of thing.

And while I haven’t tried this yet—because I don’t bake that much—I’ve read that barista-style oat milk is the best substitute for dairy milk in many recipes. Speaking of which…

You’re the cream in my coffee

Elmhurst Oat Creamer, unsweetened.

Finding an alternative to cream for my coffee was initially a challenge, because many non-dairy creamers contain sugar. I don’t like my coffee to be sweetened, and I don’t need any extra sugar in my diet in general.

But Elmhurst makes an unsweetened oat coffee creamer that I like just fine. It also works for me in black tea. Not going to lie—it has a somewhat different taste than milk / cream, so it might not work for you. But could be worth a try. And oat is a really good environmental choice.

Continue reading “Don’t have a cow, man” →

Purple haze, purple rain

Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now

“That Would Be Enough” from Hamilton

A few days after my last post, about how bike helmets get the respect that masks deserve, Jean had a fairly serious bike accident—one that would have been far worse had he not been wearing his new, high-quality, full-face coverage, bike helmet. He was out mountain biking with friends when he lifted his front wheel to go over a small cliff, causing his back wheel to flip him up and over and onto his back—or something like that; I wasn’t there and he doesn’t quite remember.

I found out when I got a call from him that there had been an “incident” on the trail and that his friends were taking him to Emergency.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You need a good mask!”

On the drive over to the hospital with his best N95, it occurred to me that I should have asked which body part he had hurt.

Continue reading “Purple haze, purple rain” →

I want to ride my bicycle

Friday, one of Canada’s major Internet providers had a country-wide outage, which affected (as in, disabled) my home service. As a result, I went to the office to work. Although they use the same provider, so things weren’t entirely normal there either, even after they routed us connectivity through our European office.

But this post isn’t about that.

Last night (Internet still out), we went out for a patio dinner at S&V Uptown, and the food was just lovely.

Me in front of plate of pickerel
(Also, I have a new dress)

But this post isn’t about that, either.

It’s about the fact that I rode a bicycle to both of these locations. As I did to a friend’s house when we there for dinner last month. As I did to Shopper’s when I had to do some errands. And just out for the heck of it Friday night (when we had no Internet, and therefore no TV).

Now, I’ve hardly become a hardcore cyclist. None of these places are particularly far. None of these trips were undertaken in especially bad weather.

But, the fact that I happily opted for the bike when the car was right there… is a change. And not one brought about by high gas prices. The key factors?

It’s an e-bike

With any electric bike, you get assisted peddling: an electric battery motor that helps you move along at your set speed as you pedal. It’s way less work—Jean (who also has one) went biking with a very fit friend who was riding a conventional bike, and thereby realized just how much help one gets from the motor.

Being less work means you end up less sweaty and can wear kind of normal clothes, even if heading somewhere that showers aren’t readily available. (I managed the dress by wearing exercise pants underneath, that I removed once at the restaurant parking lot.)

But what with the pedalling, you are still getting some exercise. Definitely more than just sitting in a car. (Per the video at the end, more than I thought.)

The type of e-bike we got

And the particular type of electrical bike we got, the Rize all-terrain fat tire bike, is very sturdy and stable. This is important for me, as on a standard skinny tire bike, I’m rather wobbly.

It’s also good on gravel, can handle bumps, mud, grass, light snow (yes, I’ve even ridden it a bit in winter!), even ice (to a certain point, anyway). I personally don’t particularly enjoy bumpy or icy trails—it’s just jarring—but the bike can handle it. Jean loves taking it out on rough trails. I do not. But I do love not having to worry about cracks, bumps, or soft patches on the way.

Waterloo has pretty good bike infrastructure

Years ago, when we did make a little effort with standard bikes, I absolutely hated driving on busy city streets. The cars just felt too close, and fast, and it was just uncomfortable.

But over the years, the city, and the region, has done a lot of work on both bike lanes on city streets and walking / biking trails you can use to avoid the streets. And Jean is really good at finding those and mapping them out for me.

To get to the office (admittedly not far), I only have two very brief patches of bike trails on somewhat busy streets. The rest is all trail.

To get to downtown Waterloo, we have a lot of options while still staying mostly on trails and a few quieter streets. To downtown!

And although we haven’t tried this yet, the region’s Ion trains are built to accommodate bikes, given another option for travelling some distance with the bike when time is short, or weather turns, or some such. (Also not yet used but available: a hitch to attach the bikes to the back of the car.)

Bigger picture?

I got the idea for the e-bike after reading about someone who explained that their e-bike was a key component to them being able to give up their car. (Another was living in a city with decent transit.) While I wasn’t looking to give up my car, I did like the idea of having a bike for those trips where walking would take too long, but could be easily accessed by bike.

I mentioned it to Jean, who also got intrigued by the idea. After trying out a friend’s e-bike, he became genuinely enthusiastic about it. (And lucky for me, then did all the research on which one we should get.)

Since getting them, and finding that they do replace some car trips (along with just being another option for getting exercise outdoors for its own sake), I’ve been interested by articles pointing out these vehicles could be a key component to a greener future in general.

Like Forget About Electric Cars…Electric Bikes Are the Future of Urban Transportation (writing is a bit awkward, but it makes good points)

With due respect to the electric cars for what they have got to the table, electric bikes are the most interesting thing to happen concerning urban transportation. Electric cars help to reduce CO2 emissions and prevent global warming and so on but they don’t answer the question of un-ending traffic in the cities or the countless number of lost hours on the road. So, after all, the benefits of electric cars in cities have been somewhat shadowed due to those reasons.

Sithara Ariyarathna

And from CBC: E-bikes, not electric cars, may hold the key to greener transportation

Electric cars have long been viewed as the most effective way to decarbonize the transportation sector, but Macdonald believes people are waking up to the benefits of a smaller, stealthier ride. For one thing, they’re cheaper: Whereas the lowest-priced electric car is about $30,000, a new e-bike is in the $1,000-$5,000 range.

Macdonald said a typical adult rider can get a range of about 30-40 kilometres on a single charge, which makes e-bikes well-suited to the average daily commute (provided the weather is nice). If you get a slightly larger e-bike with a bit of storage, you can transport your groceries and even other people.

“It’s not that [e-bikes are] going to replace cars wholesale, but they’re going to replace trips made by cars,” said Macdonald. “A $3,500 [US] e-bike is going to allow many families to think about going from two cars to one car.”

CBC News

Waterloo Region’s various investments in active transportation have engendered a fair amount of whining from some drivers, who’ve felt it’s been a lot of money for a minority, and who don’t like their driving encumbered by reduced lane widths and such.

I never joined in the whining (at least not publicly!), but I also never thought that infrastructure was for me. I never figured I’d be strapping my laptop into a backpack, putting on a helmet, and riding to the office.

If you build it, at least some of us will come.

Ontario election dilemma

Ontario’s having an election in a few, and I’d rather Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives not win the most seats. The main reason is that climate change remains our biggest problem, and this party has been and will continue to be terrible on the environmental front. We can’t really afford that for another four years. Not only are they not trying to reduce emissions, they really seem to want to increase them. Their main campaign point is that they more people in more cars on more highways, producing more greenhouse gases on the paved-over wetlands.

But, the PCs also weren’t great on (just off the top of my head):

  • Healthcare—Freezing wages, cutting public health
  • Long-term care—Failing to protect seniors in care (like, seniors died of starvation and neglect, not Covid…)
  • Autism—Cancelling the Liberal autism program because the wait list was too long, and replacing it with nothing but an even longer wait list
  • Opioid addiction—Arbitrarily capping the number of needle exchange centres in the province while overdose deaths soared
  • Open government—Paying lawyers to keep secret information citizens have the right to know, such as ministerial mandate letters and taxpayer-funded reports on municipal amalgamation
  • Municipal government—Cancelling the ranked ballot option (why?), changing the number of Toronto city councillors mid-election (!)

So, clearly I would like people to… well…. do what exactly?

Vote for a member of another party, of course. But that’s the issue: which one? This ain’t a two-party system. And none of the other main alternatives—NDP, Liberal, or Green—are clearly the best choice. At least to me, anyway. But I think to a lot of other people, also.

Which is why we have this split. A chunk who will vote PC, because you always have a minimum 30% or so who will, with the remaining majority of voters dividing up support in such a way that the PCs are well on track to win more seats than anyone. Quite likely a majority of seats overall, which will allow them to govern and do whatever the heck they want.

PCs at 36% vs Liberal at 28%, NDP at 24%, and Green at 5%.

The other parties should combine and stop this from happening

I keep hearing this, even now, from people whom, I guess, don’t really know how our political system works?

The election has started. The ballots are printed. Heck, people have already voted! It’s too late for the Liberals and NDP to collaborate and agree to split the ridings and govern as a coalition—which is not really how our system works anyway…?

In the end, after the vote, if the non-PC parties have, combined, more seats than the PCs, they could look to eventually defeat that government and indeed, offer to govern in some sort of partnership as an alternative to making everyone go to the polls again. But not before the vote.

(Also, you know, you can’t just assume that people who like the Liberals like the NDP second best and vice versa. If those parties were to collaborate ahead of time, it could well annoy loyalists into voting for some other party entirely…)

Strategic voting

Is the other big idea, and is at least is in realm of possibility (unlike the fantasy of an NDP-Liberal coalition forming mid-election campaign). But it’s not as easy as it seems, even despite all the tools and movements to help, such as https://votewell.ca/ and (for Toronto) https://www.notoneseat.ca/

The idea is that you vote for whichever party your riding is most likely to defeat the PC candidate.

The problem is that it’s largely based on polling at the local riding level, which is simply not accurate, mainly because it isn’t done! At least not on any mass scale. Polling is mostly done provincially, and then they try to extrapolate to the local level to estimate how the seat count will work out (considering historical data for that riding, etc.). It gives you an idea, but that’s it. It’s not really solid data.

Squaring my own circle

All I can 100% control is my own vote, so what are the considerations?

Party leader

My favourite for sure is Mike Shreiner of the Green Party. He’s smart, he’s likeable, he’s been a constructive presence in the Legislature the last four years, and in my opinion, he was the best at the Northern Ontario leaders debate (one of the better debates I’ve seen a while, actually).

Steven Del Duca (Liberal) and Andrea Horwath (NDP) also seem smart and reasonably likeable, but do somewhat lack in charisma. Del Duca was somewhat better in the debate, in my opinion, for what that’s worth.

Platform

If you look at my Vote Compass:

Liberal 73%, Green Pasrty 64%, NDP 63%, PC 43%

The Liberals have it.

But, I feel like each of these parties has some promises I really like, some that I’m meh about, and a few I’m not quite on board with but, overall, any one would be an improvement over the PCs.

Local candidate

The only local candidates I know anything about are incumbent Catherine Fife of the NDP, and Shefaza Esmail of the Green Party, whom I talked to briefly on the phone. I’ll have to nerd out and watch a local debate to see how the others are, but Catherine has been a good MPP: smart, engaged, well-spoken. At this point, she certainly seems like the best local option.

In sum

I have my own three-way tie: Green, Liberal, NDP.

If the election were held today…

I’d likely vote NDP, to support Catherine Fife, and because, despite my serious doubts about strategic voting… She still seems like the smart choice if you’re going to consider it at all.

(For what it’s worth, VoteWell has Waterloo pegged as more of a Liberal / NDP battleground, and says you can therefore vote for “the candidate you prefer”. I dunno. Last time the PCs did come in second, but that was also the Great Liberal Collapse election, so… Who knows. Strategic voting is a mug’s game.)

Anyway. Making up my own mind isn’t really the problem.

The problem is how to you chip away at the soft part of the 37% currently planning to vote PC, and try to get them to vote some other way?

… When you can’t even quite tell them what that other way should be…?

I do still love this ad…

Democracy then and now

Saturday we went to a fundraiser for the Cambridge Fashion History Museum. They were holding a Tango Tea, and type of event popular in the 1910s. This was a high tea at which people would do the popular dances of the day—including, but hardly limited to, the tango. They encouraged us to dress in outfits reminiscent of that time. I didn’t have exactly that, but wore a tango dress with a fashion hat—I looked at pictures, and everyone wore hats then.

Me with a Givenchy that was part of the exhibits

Jean wore a fetching pinstripe suit and his Dad’s fedora; unfortunately, the person we got to take Jean’s picture didn’t press the camera button all the way down, so his outfit is lost to the mist.

Another friend took a picture!

They brought in a Stanford professor who specializes in dance history. He did a few classes in the morning that we didn’t attend, but during the tea also did some demos and shorter lessons on the basics of the one-step, the grizzly dance, and other popular dances of the time. Our ballroom dance instructor wouldn’t have approved of the techniques (or lack thereof), but it was fun learning and seeing these dances that did evolve into today’s waltz, tango, quickstep, foxtrot, and samba.

The Sufragettes were active in the 1910s, and through some educational (but fun!) games, we learned more about them. We were also invited to join the movement.

The two ladies in the centre made these dresses themselves

In Canada, most women earned the right to vote in federal and Ontario elections in 1917. Asian women were excluded until after the Second World War, and Native women earned the right only in 1960.

In 2018, Canada has a feminist Prime Minister who insists on a gender-balanced cabinet (though parliament remains far from balanced). In Ontario, we have a ridiculous, unqualified Premier who beat several far more qualified women on the way to power.

So, the fight’s not really over.

Premier Ford is currently pretty busy throwing Toronto’s municipal election into chaos for no reason while trying take away their right to free speech as quickly as possible, so when Greenpeace added to his pile of lawsuits for not doing the legally mandated consulting before cancelling cap and trade, he capitulated (to some degree) and opened a one-month opportunity to comment online. You can find it here: https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/013-3738. Just click Submit a comment.

Not sure what to say? Well, in case it helps, this is what I submitted. (And no, I don’t think it will make a difference, but at least I’ll be able to say I tried.)

Continue reading “Democracy then and now” →

My relationship with the Globe and Mail is dysfunctional

I do think that, in these times, it’s important to support the newspaper industry financially, if you can afford to. This might seem crazy, when so much news is available for free online—and there’s certainly an argument that news companies haven’t been that smart in making so much of it available free online. But, we need to support real journalists. Those who hold politicians to account. Who spend months on investigative stories. Who fact check. Who provide the background details on that “click-bait” headline. Someone needs to help pay for all that—or we’ll lose it.

coffee magazine
Photo by Kaboompics .com on Pexels.com

However, there is really no need to subscribe to as many newspapers as I do. Most of these subscriptions, I acquired at some great deal, but these deals gradually expire, I have to start rethinking some of these relationships.

Long-time companion: My local paper

If you’re looking to subscribe to one newspaper, your local paper is a good one to consider. For one thing, if you even have one, you’re lucky—just ask Guelph. And there have been studies that closures of local newspaper increase the cost of local government: no more watchdogs.

But you don’t have to think of your subscription as a charity donation; it is actually a source of useful information—who’s running for office in your town; local perspectives and comments on national and international stories (example: Greg Mercer’s great investigative work on Doug Ford’s shoddy treatment of former Kitchener MPP Michael Harris, later picked up by The Toronto Star); upcoming and ongoing constructions projects; festivals and other events; stores and restaurants opening, closing, moving, and expanding; and updates on when the heck those Ion trains are going to get here. The New York Times is great, but it ain’t going to cover any of that stuff.

Conestogo River at sunset!
Wondering where this lovely neighbourhood trail is? Your local paper might tell you.

Plus, an e-subscription to my local paper, the Waterloo Region Record, is pretty cheap. For just under $8 a month, you get unlimited access to the website and a full replica of the print edition in a handy Android or IOs app. It’s also a nice, I think, that The Record is not a Postmedia publication, meaning it doesn’t run obligatory corporate editorials (that just happen to have a right-wing slant). The Record is owned by the TorStar, who allow the local staff to set their own editorial direction.

Cheap date: The Washington Post

So, this is how they lured me in: They said subscribe to our newsletter, and we’ll give you full website and Washington Post app access for six month. And I said, OK. And it turned out their newsletter was kind of interesting, and I was reading a bunch of their articles (Trump era! You can’t look away!), and when the six months was up they said, how about you give us $20 (US) and then you can keep getting the newsletter and having full website / app access for a year. And I said, OK.

postThen the year was up, and I was like, oh my God, what is my price going to jump to now? But it didn’t jump at all (except to the extent that the Canadian dollar fell); it was still just $20 US for another year. Or about $2 Cnd. a month. Which, I can totally afford, so I’m keeping it, because—you can’t look away!

Weekly gentleman caller: The Toronto Star

Though this is soon to change, the Toronto Star doesn’t currently have a online paywall, so my subscription is an old-timey one, to the paper version, but on Sundays only. And at this point, I’m still getting it at half price.

It is kind of nice to get a paper copy (in limited quantities), and I do usually get it read (though not necessarily all on Sunday). I’m also wondering if this small subscription will provide some access once the paywall does go up. So I’ll hang on to this for now to see what happens.

Toronto Star special project: Daniel Dale keeps track of every false claim Donald Trump makes. (Maybe they should do Doug Ford also?)

Glamour boy: The New York Times

Yes, this is the prestige paper, but the thing that stands out to me about The New York Times is that its online experience is just head and shoulders above everybody else’s. Their long-form stories are interactive and gorgeous. For example, though it broke my heart:  Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.

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“Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario…”

You can seamlessly link to the responsive and attractive New York Times app from browsers and social media. As a subscriber, you can “set aside” any story for safe-keeping or later reading, something I’m now constantly expecting from all other papers! But alas, no one else has it. (Thanks goodness for Pocket.)

And if you like cooking? A vast collection of recipes is available, auto-organized, to which you can add external sources. And even get it all printed up (for a small extra fee). If you want the “full paper replica” experiences, that’s available, too. And though it’s not my thing, the crossword experience is apparently incredible as well.

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The lovely (and far less depressing) cooking section of the New York Times

I had this subscription for a year at 60% off, and the full monthly price ($22; they let you pay in Canadian) is now a bit of a shock. Cheaper subscription are available—and even freeloaders aren’t completely cut off. So I’ll have to do some research on how much glamour I really need in my life.

Dysfunctional relationship: The Globe and Mail

If you think The New York Times is a bit pricey… Meet the Globe and Mail. I have the cheapest possible subscription, but now that this 60% off discount has expired, we’re talking $27 a month. That’s just to read stuff on the website—no amazing app, no replica of the full paper, no home delivery, nothing much extra other than… Report on Business magazine.

So I keep breaking up with The Globe and Mail. Which is always painful—because it requires a phone call, of course, no handy Cancel button. And the cancellation request is never immediately accepted. No, they first try to lure or guilt you into staying, but if you succumb, you know you’re just putting off the pain to a later date.

But even when I succeed in ending the relationship, I often find myself lured back. Because for all the frustrations with this publication:

They do have some very good columnists, and they do invest in long-form investigative pieces more so than any other Canadian newspaper. A prime examples is the Unfounded series that Robin Doolittle worked on for 20 months, revealing that an incredible percentage of reported sexual assaults were being dismissed as “unfounded”, or without merit. It’s a rare case of a newspaper story leading to nation-wide changes in policing.

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There’s also the simple fact that a lot of Globe and Mail stories are “subscriber-only”, period. While there are ways around this (you can get the Globe digital replica free from the library, for example), they are not  as convenient as just clicking and reading the story. But what price convenience? That’s what I have to decide.

Finding time to listen

I have found a new (to me) podcasting app Pocket Casts and it’s very good. It has solved all my podcasting problems: It gathers all podcasts in one app, whereas before I was bouncing between iTunes, Google, SoundCloud, and a browser. It keeps my spot in each podcast I’ve started, even when switching devices or playing through Sonos or Chromecasting. It can even cut silences out of each episode, making it each one slightly shorter.

Wait, did I say it solved all my podcasting problems? There’s one it’s likely only exacerbated, even with the seconds or minutes saved by cutting out silences: finding time to listen to all the ones I’d like to.

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Some people do this by listening on what they call chipmunk speed, playing it at a faster speed than recorded. I tried that, but I just don’t like the weird sound that results, even at only 1.5x faster.

I can’t attend to a podcast while reading, or having a conversation, or working (because fortunately my job’s not that boring), or writing, or anything else in which I have to attend to my thoughts. My commute is extremely short, which is wonderful in most ways, but means that it’s really not enough time to make much of a dent in a podcast episode.

And I just don’t want to give up my daily habit of listening to music while making dinner. I also don’t think they would be as good as soundtrack to my Monday night cleaning routine as my “high-energy songs” playlists.

“Know what would make my life better? Listening to music less often.”

— No one, ever.

So I found myself seeking out extra chores I can do, for which a podcast would be a useful adequate. Now, anything that can motivate me to do some tidying up is beneficial. But I still prefer cooking to tidying, so I also find that I’m now trying out more dessert recipes. The value of that is debatable.

(On the other hand, you can definitely overdo this podcast thing, as revealed in this article: I Listen to 35 Hours of Podcasts Every Week. Is That … Bad? Answer: yeah, kind of… And towhich I say… 35 hours a week! Jesus. When do you do… anything else?)

There seems to be podcasts about every topic under the sun, and I’m not always sure how I stumbled upon the ones I try to listen to semi-regularly. But here’s a sampling of them and what I like about them.

Psychology

These are nice because, being less attuned to current events, you can more cherry-pick through them and feel less pressure to listen to them soon after their posting date.

Under the Influence

Good old CBC Radio—the original podcaster! This particular series is by Terry O’Reilly and is on the subject of advertising, or “the art of persuasion”. Recent episodes have covered jingles (with a WKRP reference), use of celebrities (early Ellen Degeneres!), brand myths (no, little Mikey from the Life cereal commercial didn’t die of pop rocks + coke. In fact, he’s alive and works in advertising). I’ve always loved this show, but rarely catch it on the radio. Podcasts to the rescue.

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain is by NPR: the CBC of the US! This is how it describes itself:

Hidden Brain helps curious people understand the world – and themselves. Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.

One three-part series that actually changed my own behavior a little was on the subject of sleep: The “Swiss Army Knife” Of Health. It makes a pretty compelling case that while sleep feels like a waste of time, it’s really important. And that while those who routinely get only 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night might think they’re managing just fine, they actually aren’t. They just no longer notice how tired they are all the time. But they are chronically under-performing, both mentally and physically. To be at your best, you need an “uncompromising 8 hours of sleep.” Every day.

Pop culture

Pop culture stuff is timely, but not that timely, especially since I almost never see movies on opening weekends, read books when they first come out, or watch TV live (love my PVR). So I can go back a few weeks on the pop culture ones without them feeling irrelevant.

Backtalk by Bitch Media

This one, hosted by two young women, looks at all aspects of pop culture—music, TV, movies, podcasts, books, magazines—from a feminist perspective. I’ve gotten some really good recommendations from it, along with some great insights; for example, their episode about the movie Get Out pointed out a whole lot of racial metaphors and symbols that I had missed, and made me admire the movie even more.

The only issue? And I don’t know how to say this without coming across as a disapproving granny, but wow, they sure swear a lot. I know, there’s a lot for American women to be angry about right now, and you gotta speak your truth. I just feel the arguments might be a bit more effective if the colorful language was applied more judiciously.

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The Americans Podcast

Where Backtalk is very broad; The Americans Podcast is super-specific. It’s not about all the people living in the country to the South, but about the FX TV series by that title that tells the story of Russian spies in 1980s who pose as an all-American couple, complete with all-American children. As previously reported, Jean and I love it.

It’s currently in its sixth and final season, and I have just discovered this podcast, which contains interviews with the cast, crew, and creators of the show, and thus is strictly a post-episode listen, as it’s rife with spoilers. This season is setting up to be epic.

Politics

Political stuff, especially American, is just moving with break-neck speed these days. These are the ones I don’t like to wait too long after post date before listening.

Lovett or Leave It

Crooked Media was a response to the election of Trump. Most of its members used to work for President Obama in some capacity. So they’re not unbiased, but the aim is to have “better conversations about politics.” They have a ton of podcasts, and I’ve sampled various ones. But my favorite is Lovett or Leave It.

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Some sincerely cool Crooked Media merch

Lovett or Leave It is taped live Friday nights in front of an audience, who participates in some segments. It’s a humorous, improvised look at the week’s stories in US politics. To add to the many other sources of humorous looks at US politics. What’s different here, I guess, is that it’s a lot of super well-informed people cathartically doing things like playing a clip from Fox news, saying “OK, stop”, and responding to the stupidity. Or turning the ridiculousness into a game. Or spinning a wheel to decide which topic to rant about.

It’s partly informative, it’s partly therapy.

Oppo – Canadaland

This is a relatively new one, and it’s about Canadian politics! I was drawn to it because they seem to be especially covering wonky issues I get somewhat obsessed with, like carbon pricing, why doesn’t the NDP seem more viable in Ontario, and what’s up with Sikh politics.

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It features journalists Justin Ling and Jen Gerson, who are supposed to in “opposition” from left and right positions, but it took me two episodes to realize that was the idea, because neither of them is really that extreme or partisan. Which I think is good (and also kind of Canadian).

Please save us, NDP, you’re our only hope

Given its persistence in my thoughts, apparently I need to write something about the strange goings-on in Ontario politics.

Setting the stage

To catch up people living elsewhere:

The Ontario Liberal Party is currently in power. It has formed the government since 2003—15 years. The official opposition is the Progressive Conservative (PC) party.

There is a provincial election in June.

With the Liberals, and leader Katherine Wynne, having persistently low approval ratings, the PCs appeared poised to win that election.

It was all kind of routine and dull. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

But then the PCs decided to make it interesting

About four weeks ago, PC leader Patrick Brown was accused of sexual misconduct; specifically, of initiating intimate activity with women who were much younger (though of legal age), while they were inebriated. One of them worked for him.

Brown denied the accusations and vowed to stay on as PC leader. He was convinced to step aside by his staff, who resigned en massed, and by the rest of the PC caucus, who went on to elect Vic Fedeli as interim leader.

Fedeli then discovered serious problems within the PC party itself, including a sexual assault allegation against the president of the party and bogus membership numbers. There were more resignations.

The new PC party officers decided to have a quickie leadership convention, with a winner to be declared on March 10. Four candidates entered the race, include Doug Ford, brother of former Toronto mayor Rob Ford (gah!), and a woman (Tanya Granic Allen) who thinks children shouldn’t be learning anything about sex in school. (She was just endorsed by a white nationalist organization. That’s nice.)

Satirical take on Doug Ford’s leadership announcement. But he really did announce it in his mother’s basement, and he did used to be a drug dealer

And then last week, Patrick Brown came out swinging. He defended himself against the sexual misconduct allegations (including, in part, through statements from his girlfriend, 17 years his junior, whom he started dating when she was his intern. Umm…). He launched a defamation suit.

Oh, and he applied to be PC leader again, and has been allowed to run.

And then they blew up their platform

That Patrick Brown won the PC leadership in the first place was a surprise. He had been undistinguished backbench MP in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. But he won by getting a lot people to sign up as new members of the party to vote for him.

He ran for the leadership as being at least sympathetic to social conservative views, but as the election, he and his team gauged that to win Ontario, you had to be a bit more centrist. They came out with a platform to mostly… Keep doing what the Liberals had been doing. The only “radical” element was getting rid of the Liberal’s cap and trade system for carbon pricing, and instead adopt the federal Liberal’s carbon tax plan. They would use the greater revenues from that to reduce income taxes.

But one by one, all the PC leadership candidates have declared they will not support carbon taxes. And they are going to get rid of cap and trade, too. in Maclean’s, Mike Moffat outlines how Scrapping carbon taxes leaves a gaping hole in the Ontario PC platform. To not run a deficit, they’d have to cut spending by $16 billion instead of the originally planned $6 billion. And they simply won’t have any way to cut greenhouse emissions. Ontario just won’t.

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So much for that….

Except, as National Post’s Andrew Coyne has pointed out, A carbon tax is coming, no matter what the PC candidates say. Because if they do cancel cap and trade, then the Federal Liberal government says they are going to impose a carbon tax on Ontario (and give the revenues back to the province). While it’s always possible the Federal government will backtrack on that plan, none of the PC candidates can personally make that happen. Whining alone will not do it.

And that’s one of the reasons Patrick Brown stepped back into the race, he says: To defend his platform. For the record, I do not believe his motivations are noble; I think he’s just very ambitious and really wants to be Premier. But he’s not wrong in saying that the policy void of the rest of the candidates is irresponsible.

Problem is, responsible policies will not win you the PC party leadership. Compared with the general population, the PC membership has a much higher percentage of people who hate carbon taxes in a deep, passionate, and irrational way, and cannot be convinced to accept them as policy, no matter (for example) how big an income tax cut you offer in return. Saying what you need to say to get past the members in March, then pivoting to become mainstream enough to win in June, is going to be a challenge for whoever wins this.

Which proves that having a tiny minority of the population with special interests select party leaders is ridiculous. Elected members of the party caucus should be the one to decide who leads them. Member vote has been the practice long time in Canada; there’s no real momentum to change that now. But if that time ever comes, this will be a textbook case as to why it’s needed.

So do the Liberals win again?

I’m not going to make that prediction. If nothing else, the PCs are gaining a ton more attention than they managed with Patrick Brown as uncharismatic leader, and the Liberals remain stubbornly unpopular. (That people say they actually dislike Katherine Wynne as a person is a puzzle to me, by the way. To me, she comes across very well, as knowledgeable, compassionate, and well-spoken. But maybe people are just tarring her with whatever Liberal policies they’re angry about.)

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Which seems to be mostly increased hydro rates? Although those date back to some bad contracts that previous Liberal premier Dalton McGuinty got us into, and that no party can get us out of. But the Wynne government has made some of their own bad decisions (along with some good ones, it has to be said): I’m not convinced that selling Hydro One was such a great idea. I’m not a fan of their LCBO-style plan for selling marijuana. Back-tracking on their promise to Toronto mayor John Tory in implementing tolls on the DVP and Gardiner was unconscionable. As is the amount of money they spend trying to get us to gamble more, online.

Overall, I think they could use a little time out here.

But I can’t see voting for that gong show of a PC party, either.

Our last hope? No, there is another

Ontario actually has a third party with seats in the legislature: The NDP.

Even before all this, I was leaning toward voting NDP. My MPP, Catherine Fife, is from that party and is a very good representative. She deserves to be returned to Queen’s Park.

But the party as a whole still seems to having trouble setting themselves up as a government in waiting. Even though they have the most popular leader. Even though the PCs are in a bit of a mess and people are tired of the Liberals. The NDP still seems to have trouble getting any attention, and keeping showing up third in “Who would you vote for” polls.

Could be a few reason for that, including having less money than the other parties, but they also seem notably light on the policy front. (Though what they have, on pharmacare and Hydro, seems sensible.) Maybe they should take a page from the Liberals, who have been known to crib from the NDP, and borrow some from other parties.

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Horwath, Wynne, and Brown (this is an older cartoon….)

Like, the Ontario Green Party has some excellent policies, such as having small business dispensaries sell marijuana instead a government monopoly.  (Also, Ontarians should consider voting Green, at least anywhere they stand some chance, like in Guelph.)

And / or, how about if the NPD gets rid of cap and trade, happily accepts the Federal government carbon tax, and gives everyone an income tax cut?

For one thing, it would be hilarious to see them debate the PC leader on that. And the NDP isn’t going to get any of the “I hate carbon taxes” vote, anyway. They could even put an NDP spin on it, and make sure all low-income people got a carbon tax credit.

An NDP government in 2018?

Look, it’s a long shot, it definitely is. But the past four weeks have shown that nothing in Ontario politics is as predictable as we’d thought.

 

 

Bright spots in December (other than the obvious one)

The Christmas vacation post is coming, but Jean hasn’t had a chance to select and process the Christmas photos yet. So in the meantime, here’s a list of items that brightened the per-Christmas period for me this year.

Gel eyeliner

I’m a makeup girl. (Woman. Whatever.) I never wear perfume, I rarely bother with nail polish, and I don’t like spending much time styling my hair. But makeup, I find fun. It seems worth than 10 or so minutes lalmost every day.

But eyeliner has always been tricky. Liquid eyeliner is too dramatic for day use. And hard to apply corectly for night use. Pencil eyeliners are easy to apply but often result in a rather pale line that usually smudges during the day, producing that terrific raccoon eyes effect.

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Fortunately it rarely got this bad, but still… (photo from the Huffington Post)

I don’t know why I’m only learning this now, but makeup artists prefer gel or cream eyeliners—the kind that comes in a little pot. Having a good brush is vital, but with that, these eyeliners are pretty easy to apply. And they don’t set immediately, so if you don’t get it quite right, it’s easy to fix. And best of all, once you are happy with the results, it will set and stay with no smudging for the whole day. The line is distinct, but not as harsh as with liquid eyeliners. I love this stuff.

The brand I got was Estée Lauder Double Wear Stay-in-Place Gel Eyeliner in Stay Coffee colour. From The Bay. The brush that comes with it is fairly useless, but with a better one (that I already owned), the product itself is excellent.

 

T-shirt bra

The ThirdLove bra company advertised fairly heavily in the Washington Post this year, til I finally got intrigued. “Discover your best-fitting bra in 60 seconds.” No tape measure required. You just had to answer a series of questions about your breast shape and current bra-fitting issues.

Maybe other people have better mental self-image, but for me this took more than 60 seconds because I kept having to run from PC to the bathroom mirror to see which little breast diagram best reflected my shape and whether my current bra rode up or gapped. But it’s true I didn’t have to use a tape measure.

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Nor, fortunately, were any of these sorts of calisthenics required

Having completed the questions, I tried to take ThirdLove up on their “try free for 30 days” offer, but it didn’t apply to Canada, so I abandoned the effort. Only to then be emailed me and offered a discount. I then went ahead with an order, that was promptly charged to my card.

Some days later I realized I had yet to receive a shipping notification, which seemed odd. Some days more after that, they did email again say there was some issue with my order, but that it would come eventually. And also here’s another discount for my next order. Then there was more radio silence, with the added small aggravation that every time I visited their website to try to figure out what was going on, they’d email trying to get me to buy another bra!

So I was a bit predisposed to be skeptical of their product when it finally did arrive, but damn if it isn’t the best-fitting, most comfortable bra I’ve ever had.

BBC Live Aid documentary

Lo these many years later, I retain fond memories of the 1985 Live Aid concert. It was organized by a singer I really liked (Bob Geldof); my favourite band, Queen, were the stars of the day; and it featured so many other artists I also like (The Who, U2, George Michael, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, The Boomtown Rats…). And all for a good cause!

So I was pretty excited when YouTube coughed up this recommendation:

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I also found this buried in a drawer!

Though produced in 2011 or so, I had never heard of this Live Aid: Against All Odds documentary—a hazard of not living in the UK, I suppose. Being 3 hours long (there’s a Part 2 as well), I had to wait a bit to start it—because once I did, I predictably didn’t want to stop.

I’ve watched other documentaries on Live Aid, I’ve read books and magazines, but still, I learned more from this one. Like just how demented and troublesome a figure Bill Graham was. And that the hosts on the BBC side had never done anything on this scale before and were petrified. There’s also considerable time spent on the degree to which Midge Ure (co-writer of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”) was overshadowed by Bob Geldof—though Midge refuses to go into an all-out rant about it. (“That’s just Bob.”)

Definitely recommended viewing to anyone else who looks back on that day fondly.

Yoga mat and blender parts

These things are so prosaic, but still…

mat_group_sweep-COLOURFixMy old yoga mat was basically disintegrating. I was looking to add an item to an online order to get free shipping. I saw they sold yoga mats at what seemed a reasonable price, so I threw that in.

I guess I hadn’t particularly realized that, like anything else, some yoga mats are better than others. This yoga mat is just better than any I’ve had before (though admittedly, the “before” are all cheapie Canadian Tire ones). It’s thicker. It’s “stickier”. It just feels better to stand on. It’s the Halfmoon Studio yoga mat.

(Also, did you know you can clean yoga mats in the washing machine? Cold water, delicate cycle, hang to dry. Works great, no manual scrubbing.)

brevilleAs for the blender parts, I was just glad those were so easy to buy. I used to have Cuisinart blenders. The units worked great, but eventually the bowl or the lid would break, crack, chip—somehow become unusable. And Cuisinart just made it really difficult to buy replacements (at least at the time). Hard to find, expensive… Once I bought a whole new unit just to be able to use the parts with my previous unit.

Now I have a Breville. For which I needed a new small bowl and lid before the cracks spread to the point of making them unusable. Remarkably, all I had to do was go to their website and order those two parts, which were then shipped to my house. Imagine!

Glow

This Netflix series has been out for a while, but it was December viewing for us. Set in the 1980s, it’s about a group of women cast as wrestlers for a television series. Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) is the main character we follow through, but all the women get some time in the spotlight. Marc Maron plays the failed B movie director Sam Silvia, hired by rich-boy wrestling fan Chris Lowell to direct the show. All the actors are really strong.

I’m no kind of wrestling fan, but I still enjoyed the pace, drama, and humour of this women-focused series (as did Jean). I even gained some appreciation of wrestling. And as a bonus, it also has a great 80s soundtrack.