Who’s Next at Massey Hall

So, let’s talk about Massey Hall.

It’s a historic, downtown Toronto performing arts theatre, seating about 3000, beloved by many Canadian artists, such as Gordon Lightfoot and Lowest of the Low. I’ve seen some fine performances there, by Ray Davies, Jon Stewart, and Classic Albums Live performing Queen’s A Night at the Opera.

Massey Hall exterior

But I’ve always found it amusing that the cheaper seats—the ones higher and further back from the stage—are literally worse seats: they don’t have any cushions. That is, in the orchestra area, the chairs themselves are actually better, as though improved sightlines were not sufficient motivation for charging more for tickets. One also gains added comfort.

I could find that an amusing quirk, because I’d personally always managed to get seats in the center orchestra area.

Until this weekend.

Though I didn’t dawdle in getting tickets for Classic Albums Live: Who’s Next, I had to wait until after the subscribers and members were done until I could get my own. At that point, only Left and not Centre Orchestra was offered up as Best Available.

Now, left orchestra seats do have cushions. What they lack, however, is width. Seriously. They are super-narrow seats. You might think economy airline seats are bad, but these are worse.

This was a bit of a problem for my broad-shouldered husband, who had to spend the whole show sitting awkwardly askew, yet still spilling over into my seat and feeling he had to apologize to the woman on his other side.

But he was still better off than men in some other rows, where several large guys were seated next to each other. I’m not even sure how they managed.

So if ever wondering why the people in side orchestra seats at Massey Hall are so quick and frequent in providing standing ovations: It’s not they are particularly appreciative of the performance. It’s because they need to stretch!

Now hey, on with the show…

Who's Next album cover

I was very excited that the Classic Albums Live group was tacking Who’s Next, my favorite Who album, even if it required a trip to Toronto. Only 10 songs long, Who’s Next contains no filler. It starts with “Baba O’Riley” (Teenage Wasteland) and contains both the song erroneously considered to be their best, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again”, and the one that actually is, “Behind Blue Eyes”.

Live, “Baba” was a stunning opener (just as it is for The Who), with the insane ending rendered amazingly by a cellist and the Moon-like drummer. This cellist was to demonstrate her musical chops all evening, as she moved between trumpet, keyboards, and vocals. That’s range, folks!

On “Bargain”, I was especially struck by the three guys who came out to do a clapping sequence, because:

a) I’d never noticed the clapping sequence in the original

b) I thought it was cool you could get a job in music just clapping

On point b), however, I was soon disavowed of that notion, as the three guys joined the cellist on horns for “My Wife”.

Clearly, the band size varied based on needs, but were always larger in number than the four members of The Who. Apart from the musicians already mentioned, we had another keyboardist (who just stuck to that instrument, covering all the synthesizer bits), an acoustic guitarist, an electric guitarist, a bass player, another background vocalist, and a lead singer. He was the same person who did The Queen show, and while he doesn’t sound like Freddie Mercury or Roger Daltrey, he has the range and power to do both justice, and that’s what matters—even though he does tend to mess up the lyrics at times.

And, we got one more special guest on “Won’t Get Fooled Again”: A second lead vocalist—the guy who sings at their Led Zeppelin shows—was brought out to make The Scream as epic as it needed to be.

A compilation of Roger Daltrey screams for YGFA

(And that is the sort of special extra thing you get in the Toronto performances of Classic Albums Live that you usually don’t in the touring productions.)

So overall, it was a superlative job by the band. The only problem had nothing to do with them, but with the guy beside me (not Jean), who insisted on singing along—really badly—with a number of the songs. This completely ruined for me what should have been the highlight of the whole show, the lovely vocal harmonies at the beginning of “Behind Blue Eyes”.

Honestly. I now kind of understand why The Who themselves played so loud!

The second half featured a variety of other Who songs—including 5:15, The Real Me, The Seeker, Pinball Wizard, You Better You Bet, Love Reign O’er Me (and thank God, with no overdubbed vocals from my tone-deaf seat-mate) and Who Are You.

And for the true Who geeks in the audience, they also did the extended, 10-minute version of “My Generation” from Live at Leeds, (which segues into various bits of Tommy, etc.), performing it very honestly, with only the same number of musicians as the original: Just four. It was really very cool, the faithful reproduction of something originally completely improvised. I have to wonder how many in the audience knew what that was?

Regardless. We in the side aisles were all happy to give it a standing ovation! 🙂

Swing in concert: Tout le monde debout, c’est le temps de danser!

Le Groupe Swing is a franco-Ontarian band that we first discovered at a Canada Day concert in the Ottawa region about seven years ago. As soon as they came on and started playing, the whole crowd was on their feet, and pretty much stayed there. (Whereas they sat for the headliner.) And I became an instant fan of their music, a fusion of traditional folk with elements of hip-hop and techno: Technotrad, they call it.

A taste of Swing: Bouge, bouge

I’d been wanting to see them in concert again ever since, but what the singing mostly in French, Southern Ontario is not a regular destination for them. So I was very excited to see, up on the ad screen at the Princess Cinema, that Swing would be performing at Victoria Pavillon on November 14, courtesy of L’association francophone de Kitchener-Waterloo.

I was wondering how the KW crowd would respond to them compared with the Gatineau one. I’ve found KW audiences to be rather staid and quite reluctant to get up and dance—to a frustrating degree, at times. So I wasn’t too optimistic on that front.

I did predict that part of the crowd might be drawn from Swing’s occasional appearances at local French high schools, and that age group was represented, along with older association members (one assumes). I wasn’t expecting quite so many little kids as there were, however. (Let’s hope those kids aren’t too, too familiar with French Canadian slang, as some of their lyrics are a bit—edgy.)

And did the crowd all jump to their feet at the first note Swing played? No! Absolutely not.

But to be fair, they started with cover—all in English—of “Born to Be Wild”. It was a serviceable version, and I like the song, but I didn’t want watered-down, anglicized Swing.

I needn’t have worried. The rest of the set was almost entirely their music, and when singer Michel Bénac pointed out the big dance space in front of the stage, a stalwart four headed right up there to dance, and stayed pretty much the whole evening.

Furthermore, to my surprise, they were joined by more and more people as the evening went on. I was up there by about song 4, Jean resisted until about song 10, and the other couple we went with finally made their way up there as well, for the final set of songs. The band’s music is just irresistible, the singer determined that we are all going to have a good time!

“C’est un party avec Swing!” And it was.

They definitely included most of my favorite songs of theirs—La tête me tourne encore (“You make my head spin—in a good way”), Au nom du père et du fils et du set carré (“In the name of the father, the son, and the square dance”), Belle débousollée (“Beautiful distraught woman”), La vie comme ca (“Life as it is”), and “One Day” (the song wherein they rib anglophones).

Hey, everything’s OK, because one day soon, we’ll all be just…

The crowd’s favorites (which I also like) were La Goutte (“The Drip”)—“You know this one!” commented Bénac appreciatively (in French)—and the encore, “CB Buddy”.

La Goutte (y’a pas d’high speed, y’a pas d’download, y’a pas d’Livefeed…)

But we were also treated to some of their very latest songs, such as the single released just last week, “C’Okay” (it got to number 6 on iTunes, by the way), and songs from their recent EP, such as “One Thought”, and even a song that won’t be released for a few months yet. So at least at two live premieres of their music.

And, when we all needed a rest from dancing and hopping—including Michel Bénac (who appears to me to be in amazing shape)—we partook of a camp sing-a-long of eighties classics such as “Billy Jean”, “Every Breath You Take“, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun“ (for the girls), and for the guys—“Baby” by Bieber! Psych!

The between-song patter fun and friendly and all in franglais, except for one shout-out to the anglos in the audience, who were thanked for coming and “being the minority for once. Feels weird, eh?”

Apart from Bénac, the band has a DJ who also does some hip-hop dancing, a violinist, a guitarist, a bass player, and a drummer. Unfortunately, the acoustics (or the sound system?) in that room were not very good. Nevertheless, we could tell they had a high degree of musicianship.

Swing is really one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen.

“So good they can even get Kitchener-ites and Waterloo-vians to their feet.”

Gilt-y dining

Cork is a restaurant in Elora, Ontario that we enjoy going to. Elora is a bit of a hike, though, so we were happy to hear that the owners were opening a second restaurant in Kitchener: Gilt.

Gilt opened in late September, and we tried it out on November 1. It’s relatively small and has a contemporary look, with a bar area along with its tables. It was a little loud but not to the point of not being able to hear each other. Service was good–attentive and wel- informed about the menu items.

And that menu is all tasting plates; that is, tapas-style, appetizer-size dishes. The regular menu items are supplemented by three varying specials: from the sea, from land, and raw feature. The waiter recommended that we order two to four items per person.

So we got a variety. We liked that their oyster menu detailed exactly which were available, and let you select as many of each type as you want. (They do similarly with their cheese plate, though we didn’t try that.) We went three East Coast options, six oysters in total. Still on the seafood theme, we tried their raw ceviche tun special, and some cooked scallops.

To that we added brie and pear flatbreads (an item we’d enjoyed at Cork), duck confit steam buns, BC wild mushrooms, and peanut butter & jam foie gras! Except for the mushrooms, which seemed a bit underseasoned, we were happy with all items. Jean was impressed with their take on foie gras, the only issue being perhaps a bit too much salt topping.

They have a pretty good wine list, offering many by the large or small glass, 1/2 half liter, or full bottle. Given the variety of food, we got 1/2 liter of Sauvignon and a glass of Malbec to share.

We were reasonably full after that, and ready to skip dessert, until they described the house specialty, nitro ice cream. For this, you get to go back to the kitchen and watch them make the ice cream with liquid nitrogen. It’s kind of fun. And the results are very delicious!

We took no photos during dinner, but afterward we went to check out the Kitchener Nightshift, a sort of nuit blanche event with outdoor installations and many stores and restaurants open until 2:00 AM. It was unfortunately a somewhat chilly night for it, though many participants had hot beverages on offer. We found this Gloss installation interesting, though feared the models might be chilly:

Gloss installation at Kitchener Nightshift

We later went into the Gloss store for the first time, and I emerged with a nifty new lace top.

Travel tips: Six ways to save

I clearly enjoy a certain amount of luxury when I travel, so can hardly be called a budget traveler, but I can be an incredible cheapskate about certain things. Like bank charges. And roaming fees.

So here are some ways I found to save on these things. Along with some ways to save your sanity, and maybe do less damage to the planet.

Tip 1: Use a credit card that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees

We do tend to use the plastic a lot when traveling, but it only dawned on us recently that we were being charged an extra 2.5% per transaction for the privilege. That’s a lot!

Some web research revealed that there are cards that don’t charge such fees. This motivated me to accepted Amazon.ca’s persistent offers to get their Visa credit card.

Now, I don’t know if it’s the only credit card that offers this perk, but we’ve been happy with it so far. It charges no annual fee, and you earn 1 point per dollar spent in general, 2 points per dollar spent at Amazon. Once you’ve earned enough points, you automatically get a cash back credit of 1% on your credit card.

As with most points credit cards, the interest rate is terrible, so we must always pay it off in full. But by using that on our Seattle trip, I estimate that we saved a good 2.5% in total! And we earned $20 back in points.

Tip 2: Get some foreign currency before you leave

Haven’t yet found a way to avoid out-of-country ATM fees, so we always try to get some foreign currency before we go. Our supplier of choice is Currency Converters, who charge no fees and carry a wide range of currencies, and can order anything not right in stock.

Tip 3: Use a US SIM card in an unlocked phone

My Canadian cell provider offered one week of US service for $40 with unlimited texting and calling, but capped at 250 MB of data.

Or, I found I could buy a Roam Mobility SIM card and pay $4 a day for unlimited texting calling, and 350 MB of data every day! Sold!

In fact, there are a lot of options for US SIM cards, and I don’t know if this one is the best. I did like that I could buy and set it up in advance, (right from my local gas station), and that it could be activated for the exact amount of time needed, down the hour. And unlike some cards, it included calls to Canada, not just the US.

Setting it up couldn’t have been easier (beyond struggle to not lose the tiny SIM cards), and it worked a treat.I totally loved the novelty of not worrying about using data on my phone! The only times I had service issues were in the mountainous regions, which is understandable.

Climbing Mount Storm King
Your cell phone won’t work here.

At Lake Crescent, I had only “emergency service”, and was a bit stunned when my phone started shouting out Amber Alerts. At regular intervals. I finally had to just turn off the phone.

Then when home, I watched Sleepy Hollow, and Ichabob Crane encountered the same phenomenon! So I guess that’s a thing. (Do they not do that here, or would they if we ever had Amber Alerts, but we never do?)

Tip 4: Take the light rail to and from the airport

The train from Seattle airport to downtown, where our hotel was, was $2.75 each. A cab would have been about $55.

Furthermore, the train runs frequently, and traffic in Seattle is terrible, so I’m not sure you’d save much time in the cab, either.

So go LTR.

Tip 5: Consider flying out of Kitchener Airport

OK, this one is perhaps not a money-saving tip, as I’m sure it’s a lot cheaper to fly out of Buffalo.

But it’s much nicer flying out of a tiny airport, where yours is the only flight they have to deal with at that time. And yes, we had to transfer through Chicago, but honestly, I have never had so much assistance with an airport transfer in my life. All along were staff making sure we got in the right line, used the machines effectively, found the right gate.

It was even easier on the way home, when our luggage transferred through and we didn’t have to do double customs and security.

Parking—right at the airport, of course—was only $55. About half the off-airport cost at Pearson. So there’s that…

Tip 6: Rent a Prius!

Did we really save money? I don’t know. It was only $17 the one time we had to fill up, but the rental was slightly more than with a conventional car.

Did we help save the planet? Dubious, given that we also flew across the country.

But how often do you get to drive a Prius? Though I must say your odds are much better in Washington State, because they’re all over the place there. Must be the Prius capital of the continent.

Me and the rental Prisu
The rental Prius

(We also, by the way, stopped and looked at Tesla which was being exhibited in Seattle. Very nice! Of course, they didn’t let us drive it. But they did mention that Washing state was also the Tesla capital of the continent. Bit of a granola state, I guess.)

Most notable difference on the Prius vs. a gas guzzler? Lack of zoom zoom. Although there is a Power button you can push if you really do need some acceleration in a hurry. And it is a pretty quiet car. It also has these neat displays showing you when you’re drawing on battery power vs. engine power, so that was some built-in entertainment.

Sleeping in Seattle

Near Mount Rainier, we stayed at the Copper Creek Inn, which provides an unusual “do it yourself” experience in hospitality. You pay the cost upfront—not unknown in online booking online—but then they send you an access code and directions for getting into your room. That is, you never check in: You get there and let yourself into the building, then into the room. The all-important wifi password is posted on the wall, and any other documentation you might need is also in the room.

No one makes your bed or gives you fresh towels for the second day, either (though apparently, if we had stayed a third day, that would have happened). And when you’re ready to leave—you guessed it—you don’t check out; you just leave.

Continue reading “Sleeping in Seattle” →

Waterloo municipal election: A reblog of sorts

WordPress has a “reblog” feature that lets you repost other people’s blogs in your own space, but it only works with WordPress-hosted sites. I therefore cannot do that with Darcy Casselman’s 2014 Municipal Elections post, at http://flyingsquirrel.ca/index.php/2014/10/26/endorsements/

His views largely reflect my own, though, and saves me a lot of time to just point you there.

Or even copy / paste some of his words, below.

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With minimal ado, this blog [flyingsquirrel.ca] endorses the following candidates in the municipal races I [Darcy Casselman] get a say in:

Regional Chair: Ken Seiling

Ken’s had this job for a long time. That’s largely because he’s good at it. If he has any faults, it’s that he’s kind of bland and innocuous. You could be easily forgiven for never having heard of the guy despite holding what’s more or less the region’s top job for almost 30 years. He doesn’t grandstand and he doesn’t show boat. And I like that. Chairs shouldn’t do that sort of thing generally. He lets the region’s mayors and councillors do the show boating.

I dread the thought of a Chair who’d use the position to make it all about them.

If I was going to ever vote for someone to unseat him, it would have to be someone who’s had some experience in local government. Preferably a mayor or long-time regional councillor. It’s not going to be some yahoo who wanders in off the street raving about taxes and claiming their “business experience” somehow qualifies them to wrangle a consensus out of this wildly diverse and sometimes fractious region. If you want a job like this, you need to put in the time.

It should come as a shock to absolutely no-one reading this blog that I strongly support the region’s plan to build a light rail transit system. Despite over a decade of public consultation, despite it being approved twice by two successive regional councils, despite shovels being in the ground, some candidates in this election think now is the time to stop the project, no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost to cancel it or how disruptive such a drastic change in long-term planning would be for the whole region. It’s ludicrous. Not only is it horrible policy, these people stoop to outright lies and fabrication to try to justify it. It’s appalling. So you should vote for Ken.

That and Jay Aissa is a horrible person.

Regional Councillors: Jane Mitchell, Karen Scian

One is easy: Jane is awesome. Seriously. Read her blog. She’s pretty much everything I want in a regional councillor. She’s engaged, open, thoughtful and accessible. If you have a problem with the region tweet her and if she doesn’t have an answer off the top of her head, she’ll dig it up and get it for you. She’s great.

Next is trickier. We get to pick two regional councillor candidates. The other incumbent is Sean Strickland. I have no problem with Sean. I’ve voted for him before. But this time Karen Scian stepped down from city councillor to represent Waterloo to the region. And I like Karen. Both Karen and Sean are really good and my reason for going with Karen probably have more to do with style than substance. I’ve followed Karen on Twitter for ages and I think I have a very good idea of where she stands on things. My feel for Sean is a bit more vague.

Also, there may be a bit of strategic voting in my choice, as I really, really don’t want to lose Jane Mitchell, and Strickland has always come out ahead of her.

I very much look forward to electing regional council by ranked ballot next election. Block voting is terrible.

Special non-shoutout goes to former MP Andrew Telegdi, who has been mostly invisible in this campaign. He appears to have been recruited by Jay Aissa to run on the anti-LRT ticket, with the cynical assumption he’ll coast in on name recognition without people knowing what he actually stands for. Which is despicable and makes me really sad having held him in such high regard in the past.

Mayor of Waterloo: David Jaworsky

I’ve seen Dave everywhere this year. He’s a great guy, affable, well-connected and engaged.

Unlike the Chair, none of the candidates running have served in public office. Dave, at least, has served on a bunch of non-profit boards, committees and was executive in residence at Capacity Waterloo, an organization I came to know and value through my work with Kwartzlab. I honestly think he’s the best choice for mayor.

As an aside, I was surprised at how much I like Rami Said, who is running on his business experience and an “I will speak for everyone!” platform. These are generally huge red flags for me. Pretending you can always represent everyone is naïve. And government is not, under any circumstances, a business. But he’s good. The deal-breaker, though, is he has no public service experience whatsoever. Not so much as a committee. If he was running for city councillor, I like him well enough I might let that slide, but not mayor. You gotta put in the time.

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So again, above are the words of Darcy Casselman, not mine.

As for my ward (which differs from Darcy’s), I had the happy problem of all the candidates seeming quite decent, making it a tough to pick one. But after watching the debate and reviewing their websites this weekend, I have settled on the one I will vote for.

With school boards, it is very difficult to get information, but thanks to The Waterloo Region Record running brief candidate profiles this weekend, I have managed to select one there, too.

“That we have the vote means nothing. That we use it in the right way means everything.” ― Lou Henry Hoover

Running around Seattle, seeing stuff

While we did take some time to stop and eat, meet with friends, read, and relax while in Seattle, this post will focus on the activities we managed to pack in.

The initial weather forecast for Seattle wasn’t that great, but after we got there (in the rain), made it to our hotel, had a snack, and were ready to head to explore, it had become very nice and sunny. Our hotel was right by the famous Space Needle, so we decided to take the opportunity to go up that right away, while the weather was cooperative.

While at, we also bought a City Pass, which gave us access to four other sights along with Needle, saving you about half the cost in entry fees, if you visit them all.

Continue reading “Running around Seattle, seeing stuff” →

Movie review: Pride

Like to take a break from the regularly scheduled report of my trip to Washington state to talk about Pride.

Pride movie poster**** Pride (September 2014) – Theatre. Starring Matthew Flynn, George MacKay, Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, and others.

He says: That was a great movie.

She says: Pride is based on the true story of a how a group of gay and lesbian activists in London decided to raise funds for the miners striking against the Margaret Thatcher government in 1984. As depicted in the film, the gay rights group at first had trouble even getting anyone in the Miner’s Union to return their phone calls. But by bypassing the national officials and directly  contacting a small, affected community, they find some local support. The two groups gradually gain trust in each other, but are challenged by the rising spectre of AIDS on the one side, and the drawn-out and seemingly hopeless nature of the strike on the other.

That synopsis likely makes the movie seem somewhat sad and dreary, but it’s actually anything but that. Much in the style of “The Full Monty” and “Billy Elliott”, it starts from a place of sadness to tell an ultimately triumphant story with a lot of humor. The movie to me seemed perfectly paced (which I guess reflects editing skill); it never seemed slow, information was hinted and revealed at just the right times. It made you feel good — about people, about the world — without milking the emotion.

The trailer gets that across pretty well:

It’s a great movie.

(By the way, we also, finally, saw Guardians of the Galaxy a few weeks ago. That was good, too! But we liked Pride more.)

Climb every mountain (and slog through some rain)

We’re just back from a trip to the Seattle area. In retrospect, we ended up giving ourselves too many travel days: the Saturday to fly there and drive to our Inn near Mount Rainier; the Monday to get from Rainier to our Lodge in Olympic Park; the Wednesday to get back to Seattle and check into our hotel there. (Then of course, Sunday we just flew home. Today is the “day off work to catch up on laundry and get used to Eastern time zone” day.)

Then again—and this was our thinking while booking—we’d never been to the Seattle area before, and who knows when we’ll get back? So might as well pack in the sights while there.

Continue reading “Climb every mountain (and slog through some rain)” →

Municipal elections: Democracy in action leading to inaction

Not so long after I first moved to Kitchener, I decided that I should vote in the upcoming municipal election. That year the long-term mayor of Kitchener had resigned, and something 13 other people were running to take over the job. As a relative newcomer to the area, I had no idea who any of them were. It was daunting prospect trying to pick one out.

I watched the debates, I read articles in local newspaper. I finally settled on one candidate. I was handed my ballot, and was shocked to discover that it was this packet of paper with a bunch of other options I expected to select: city councillors, regional councillors, school board trustees, hydro commissioners!

I still don’t entirely recall what I did. Hopefully I just left the options other than Mayor blank, rather than pick names at random on them.

But that’s thing about municipal politics, isn’t it? They are, far and away, the most labour-intensive voting decisions Canadians have.

It’s no wonder to me most people don’t bother.

Barring acclamations, most Ontarians have three votes they can cast: for mayor, city councillor, and school board. Lucky us in Waterloo region, we have another level of government, so more votes: for regional chair and regional councillor (which, in my city’s case, grants me two votes).

If you’re counting, that’s six votes I have to figure out. Six. Whereas in every provincial and federal election, I just have one decision to make.

Furthermore, nobody in municipal politics runs as part of political parties. So there’s no shortcut to what the candidate is all about, just based on the fact that they chose to, for example, run for the Green party rather than Progressive Conservatives.

No. You have to research every single person individually.

And there’s not exactly one central point that you know you can go to and find that information. Sure it’s there—some cities like London have done a great job of creating election portals for people; our local CBC radio has KW ward profiles I’ve found useful; Rogers Cable runs debates for every race (except school board) and plays them multiples times (as long as you have cable!)—but you really have to want to find it.

It doesn’t surprise me that not everyone does. Or has the time to.

I don’t know how you solve this.

  • Electronic voting? As noted, I really don’t think the main deterrent is the need to walk down the street to fill in a paper ballot. Still, if the convenience slightly raises voter turnout, it’s worth it. But I do think it will be only slight.
    We’ll have an idea after this election, because some cities are trying it.
  • Ranked ballots? A conflict for me, because I’m very much in favor, in principle, of enhancing our democratic institutions. And at the municipal level, this seems the best option. But the truth is, that only makes it a bit harder, doesn’t it? That now you have to put in order all the candidates in all three or all five of your elections, not just mark an x beside your top one or two?
    However, as long as people are still allowed to just rank somebody number 1 and not bother with the rest, I think it should be fine. Frankly, if you are researching everyone anyway, it’s likely not that much harder putting them in order rather than just picking your top choice.
  • Political parties? No! Because although it would make things easier, partisanship has rendered our provincial and federal institutions incredibly unrepresentative and and undemocratic.
    Do you want your city council meetings to turn into Question Period, full of heckling and clapping, but signifying nothing? No, you do not!

That’s what it comes down to Municipal elections are real democracy, real representation. And if you care about that stuff in principle, you’ve got to put it in action and vote in the darn things.

Get out and vote

So though it’s been a slog, I’ve made my decisions on mayor and regional chair, and I’m narrowing it down on regional councilors and city councilor.

But if anyone has any idea where or how I can find out about the three people running for French Public School Board (Conseil scolaire Viamonde) trustee, that would be great! Because at this point, that may be where my democratic principles break down.

(Also, what do school board trustees do, exactly?)