The Narrow Moose of Moose Narrows

Once upon a time, I was not only a newspaper reporter, but a columnist. This cautionary tale for campers  is one of my favorite columns from those days. I have not, despite desperately wanting to, made any changes.


From the September 27, 1989, edition of the Port Dover Maple Leaf:

Beware the Narrow Moose
Now that camping season is ending I suppose I can tell my story without causing undue panic and fear among the general populace.
It all started a few summers ago , on Labour Day. I had gone camping on Moszbong Lake, up north of Sudbury.
I was to meet up with a pair of friends who were returning from two weeks of camping and canoeing along the north shore of Lake Superior. The three of us were going to  go on a short thirty mile canoe trip over the course of a week.
After a quick breakfast of trail mix and beef jerky, we launched our canoes for a spot on the long lake called Moose Narrows, on the map.
Well, when we got to Moose Narrows, as it was called on the map, we found just what we were looking for; an island for a nice breezy point for a campsite.
We lit a small fire and cooked some bacon and eggs for lunch. Then we decided to go out and explore the rest of the island.
When we came back a few hours later. we noticed the area around the fire smelled like urine and all the canned goods were gone. All around the campsite were large footprints that looked as if they had been made by a man in swimfins, except that the man would have to had four legs and weighed 900 pounds.
We relit the fire and sat around drinking hot tea with sugar and rye whisky, smoking a few hoarded cigarettes and being more or less mystifyed. (sic)
The next day , we discovered a further clue inthe mystery of Moose Narrows. While we were out hiking down a deer trail we came across an an abandoned logging road. At the end of the road was a camping trailer. It was turned on one side and the rust testified to the the number of years it had been sitting there. The side of the trailer that was pointing skyward was half caved in, as though it had been struck by a very large, heavy, fast-moving object of some kind. There was also the distinctive odor of urine, the same as back at our campfire.
Then Mike noticed the licence plate on the rusted out trailer. The top half had rusted away, but we could tell it had been issued in 1986. The trailer was only a year old.  Even a bashed-in wreck like this could not have rusted out like this. The trailer looked like it had been there twenty years. "Curisourser and curisourser" as Alice used to say.
As we paddled back across the lake to our campsite, we heard the disgusting roar of an outboard rip through the silence of the deep north woods. We scanned the horizon and saw a boat approaching so we put down our paddles and waited.
As the boat came closer we saw the driver and passengers. There was a far, bald man in a camouflage hunting jacket, a New York Yankees baseball cap and loud plaid Bermuda shorts. He was driving with one hand and drinking beer from a brown glass bottle that he held in his other hand. In the front of the boat was a teenage boy listening to heavy metal on a gigantic ghetto blaster. He was throwing the empty bottles overboard and then trying to sink them by shooting at them with a pellet rifle. As they passed, the boy held up a string of trout, all well under the legal size.
We watched as they sped by, then Graham spotted it.
Following just behind the wake of  the big fiberglass speedboat was about a dozen humming birds swarming around a pair of brown sticks that were moving along in the water behind the boat. We just assumed that the boat was dragging something, maybe a log, behind it. Then the sticks changed course and headed on a course perpendicular to the  course of the boat.
We pursued frantically in our canoes as the sticks and humming birds went around one side of an island and the motor boat went around the other side. We followed as best we could.
When we reached the end of the lake a few hours later the scene of carnage that greeted us was incredible. On the beach was what was left of the fiberglass boat.
It had been smashed, much as the trailer we found earlier in the day, all around it were the footprints we had found at our camp, flipper prints with the front pair of feet being only about a foot and a half apart, same for the rear prints except that from the tracks the two sets of legs were nearly ten feet apart. Near the boat was a partially collapsed  tent trailer.
Then I heard it, the bloodcurdling honking of a bull moose. We followed our ears and crept quietly up the trail.
About thirty feet away was big green Cadillac Coup de Ville. On top of the Caddy stood a fearsome beast.
It was almost a long as the car and had one huge webbed hoof planted on each corner of the car. Long legs  as thick as tree trunks led up to a sort of odd parody of a moose's body. It was as though, somehow, the moose had been flattened like a coin left on a railroad track. He was six or seven feet from breast to shoulder, but a mere foot and half wide. The head was also narrow, with a pair of long wattles on either side of his muzzle that gave the impression of a sinister moustache. The antlers were the same as those of a normal moose except that they pointed straight ahead instead of out to the sides. There seemed to be small breathing holes in the tops of the highest points. Hummingbirds buzzed around the antlers, picking out bits of bloodstained camouflage fabric.
The creature opened its horrible jaws and let out a furious roar that sounded like a foghorn in pain. Then it jumped high into the air and came down, crushing the Caddy. The beast stomped on the car a few more times while we stood rooted to the ground in fear. Then it came down off the vehicle, lifted a leg against the car and let loose a stream of fluid that ate its way through the metal of the car much like a strong acid.
We quietly backed down the trail to our canoes and shoved off into the lake. From behind the screen of some nearby bullrushes we watched as the dreadful Narrow Moose ate the entire boat and then piddled on the leftovers, causing them to dissolve. When we left, the Narrow Moose was eating the beer bottles and other assorted trash.
And that was how we discovered the legend of the caretaker of the wilds, the fearsome Narrow Moose.

the hits just keep on coming

G20 Justice. com has been collecting all the horror stories from the G20 police riots. Some of them, like this one, show that the brutality started well before anyone in a black hoodie broke any windows.

 I was dragged into an interrogation room with the door shut to be held by officer 8830 & 8659, while the booking sergeant began to beat me in the face, body and kick my legs. I was never asked to remove my clothing nor would I have objected if a strip search was what they were attempting to do - but my clothing was forcibly removed in way as to flip myself around like a rag doll on the concrete floor. The buttons of my shirt were ripped open. At this point I was completely naked and the beating continued. At no time did I resist or fight back, nor did they perform a search of my areas. I had defensive bruising to my foreams and many welts, burns from being dragged along concrete which I have documented with a physician and taken pictures of. The booking sergeant advised that he was going to rip out a nipple ring that I had (which was not returned to me) and made an attempt to pull it out, however, either officer 8830 or 8659 advised him not to. This was torture. It was removed in such a forceable way that it was swollen and painful for days following the assault. I did not resist and would have removed it myself if I was asked to. I was taken through the booking hallway completely naked in front of female officers and forced to sit in a holding cell for approximately 4 hours - completely naked.

 When the two people arrived to question me they were in plain clothes and would not identify themselves as officers or provide (real) names, one stated "I'm officer C and this is officer SIS". They asked me about what I "allegedly said to the officers on Front Street", and if I was a part of any "labour group". I advised them that I wished to speak with counsel, which was ignored. I asked them for a glass of water, which was ignored. I did not have any information to share with them as I didn't even know what the G20 was, and I was placed back in my cell to await release, however this time - I was allowed to take my clothing into the cell with me.

In the morning when I asked for information relating to the booking sergeant and to provide the ID's of who interviewed me, I was advised that no information would be provided as to who the booking sergeant was, and even more shockingly - that no one came to interview me during my detainment - that it simply did not happen. 

All this because he had the temerity to wish a couple of mounties "good luck  with Saturday" as he left the Blue Jays game on the Wednesday before the G20.

The Maple Syrup Revolution, Episode 9

Christie Blatchford vs "real" journalism

First, go read this piece by the Globe and Mail's Christie Blatchford from last week.


Then read this excellent dissection of Blatchford's  arguments by Fillibluster.


I find that on a logical and factual basis, there is little need to add to what Fillibluster said in commenting on Blatchford's petulant, nonsensical bloviations, but since I have earned my living in the newspaper business for most of the last 20 years, I feel compelled to comment.


Now, stand back and give me room to swing. You may want to get a drink, this is going to take a while.


To borrow a phrase, virtually every word Blatchford has written is wrong, including "and" and "the."

Sez the Blatch:

"First, journalism is not merely a collective of the self-anointed."

Yes, it is. Very much so. There are no licences, or government permits required to be journalist. Bill O'Reilly calls himself a journalist, Geraldo Rivera calls himself a journalist. Walter Cronkite, Hunter S. Thompson and even Christie Blatchford have never had or needed licences. You don't have to be a full-time employee of a major media outlet -- many journalists, especially in print media, freelance for most of their careers. And being self-published is hardly a disqualifier either. Journalism icon, I.F. Stone published his own work for most of the latter part of his career, as did George Seldes.

For all that it may not be a regulated profession, neither is it just a coming together of people with cellphones, video cameras and blogs as receptacle for an apparently endless stream of unfiltered, unedited consciousness.

Well, perhaps my initial criticism was unfair --even a broken clock is correct twice a day and some of Blatchford jumping off points are factually correct: I agree, journalism is more than a bunch of people with cellphone and cameras, but journalism is often unfiltered and unedited. Most live television feeds for example are, by definition, unedited. That is why we were treated to the moving spectacle of the likes of CNN's Anderson Cooper and even FOX-hole Sheppard Smith freaking out on location in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and demanding to know why something wasn't being done. You want to know who edited the work of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow when they were at the height of their network careers? Surprise, trick question - they were their own managing editors.


In other words, just as you are not a physician or a lawyer merely because you say you are, much as you may want to believe it so, neither are you a journalist because you and your friends say you are or because your “writings” appear on a website.


This is a completely bogus comparison, physicians and lawyers being regulated professions. You are not a doctor or lawyer until the appropriate professional association and the government say you are. Being a journalist, like being a clergyman or an artist, is a calling, an avocation - not a profession - and there is no set criteria for calling yourself any one of those three. Grandma Moses or Andy Warhol or Banksy can decide they are artists. The pope, Jim Jones and Jerry Falwell are free to declare themselves holy men. Amy Goodman, Paul Wells, George Stephanopolus and Bob Woodward can all call themselves journalists. It is up to their audiences to decide whether they are any good at it, but they are free to identify themselves as they choose.

You will have heard reports of various independent/alternative journalists who claim to have been illegally detained and threatened by the police.


Again the blind squirrel finds a nut. This is objectively verifiable truth.

Four of them, for instance, have formally complained to the office of the independent police review director, and as the insufferable Lieutenant Horatio Caine says ad nauseam on CSI: Miami, let us follow the evidence on that.


Oh yes, let's!

I am all in favour of their complaints, and anyone else’s, being investigated, and I reserve my opinion on how well they were treated by the authorities, or not, until that verdict is in.

Uh, that would be you hedging, Blatchford. If you are "all in favour" then why are you writing this transparent smear piece? Where is this evidence you mentioned?

But let us not pretend that these folks are working journalists or that they are the equivalent. They aren’t, for the most part.

Ooooh, bold statement, other than the "for the most part" weaseling. And nice attempt at a  qualifying statement with "working" -- as any journalist knows, one is always "working" because if there is a news story happening in front of you, you are working, whether it is your day off or not. And no one is pretending, they are working journalists, but more about that later. Now, about that evidence...

Their work isn’t subject to editing or lawyering or the ethical code which binds, for example, the writers at The Globe. The websites on which they appear don’t belong, as do most reputable newspapers in this province, to the Ontario Press Council, a body which hears complaints against traditional journalists and publications.

First, since Blatchford refuses to produce any actual evidence or even name the media outlets involved, let's look at her claims and how she weasels them.
One of the complainants, Jesse Rosenfeld, is a freelancer for The Guardian, one of the world's leading newspapers, which comes complete with layers of editors and a legal department. The attack on him by police was witnessed and described by TVO's Steve Paikin, who was also manhandled by the cops, though not arrested. (Let's see Blatchford explain how he's not a journalist either.)
Another, Amy Miller, who alleges that the police threatened to rape her, is an independent filmmaker (like Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald and many people who film news reports for media outlets overseas) who also writes for The Dominion, a web magazine that covers news from a left wing perspective, but certainly has editors and appears to be at least as reputable as the Toronto Sun or CFRB radio.
The Guardian is a British newspaper and The Dominion is based in Montreal, so neither are members of the Ontario Press Council. Neither are the Napanee Beaver or the Picton Gazette, the oldest community newspaper in Canada, both which I used to work for. Neither is the CBC or any other broadcast media. It also bears pointing out that the Ontario Press Council, while I think it is a very fine organization, is very much a self-anointed  collective and membership in the council and adherence to their codes of conduct and ethics is entirely voluntary.
As to the other two complainants, according to Canadian Journalists for Free Expression:

Lisa Walter, 41, an indie magazine writer for Our Times, said she was thrown to the ground and cuffed as she and another independent journalist covered the same group that was being arrested in downtown Toronto on Sunday afternoon, according to her complaint.  She said officers mocked her, saying her credentials were "fake," questioned whether she was a man and the sergeant who ordered her arrest called her a "f-ing dyke" and "a douche bag," her complaint states.

According to McIsaac's complaint, he was covering the same protest as Amy Miller for the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition. He said he was with Miller when he was assaulted and arrested by police. He was taken to a hospital after telling police that he had a pacemaker and then later transferred to the detention centre. The 27-year-old was also released later without being charged."

McIsaac's case may blur the line between journalist and activist in that he was not there on behalf of a news media outlet but was covering events for a website run by an advocacy group, but Our Times is unquestionably a legitimate publication, however since it is a magazine, it - like MacLeans and Time and The Economist - is not a member of the Ontario Press Council either. So much for Blatchford's contention that "for the most part" the four are not working journalists and for her attempt to discount the media outlets they were working for as mere "websites" as though they were blogging out of mom and dad's basement for an audiences made up entirely of their family and friends.


We in the mainstream media make plenty of mistakes and bad calls, even given the safeguards (layers of editors and other sets of eyes reading our copy; lawyers too, in some instances; established standards) that are in place.


Golly, "we" sure do Christie, and by "we" I mean "you" --like the other day when you swallowed hook, line and sinker the story put forth by Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair that masked black-bloc anarchists had disrupted the repatriation ceremony of the remains of a Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan, despite the fact that other eyewitness accounts and video taken at the event show that no such thing happened. But a man in uniform told you the story and so you ran with it.


Why should an alternative journalist (self-anointed, often with a demonstrable political agenda) be automatically assumed to be an infallible truth-teller or always accurate?


They shouldn't, but sworn legal affidavits attached to an official complaint to the official police review are a little different from something some guy said on some blog somewhere. And let me ask you this: Why should a mainstream journalist or columnist (paid by a large corporation, often with a demonstrable political agenda and history of being completely wrong) be automatically assumed to be an infallible truth-teller or always accurate?

Second, the press pass doesn’t grant even traditional journalists carte blanche access everywhere.

Stop the presses! Visually-impaired bushy-tailed tree rat finds second hard-shelled edible seed! For more on this earth-shaking statement of the incredibly obvious, see "No Shit, Sherlock" page 17.

In the midst of a riot, it is not a shield that can be waved to keep either police or rioters at bay. It is neither an avoid-jail nor get-out-of-jail-free card.

Which is clear from the fact that people with press passes got arrested. That isn't the point. Press passes have nothing to do with any of this. The complaint is that people who were observing the protests were arrested simply for being present. The possession of a press pass serves to explain why that person is present and indicates that they are an observer, not a participant. That's why we carry press credentials. Didn't they cover this is in employee orientation at the Globe?

One doesn’t get to cross the yellow tape at a crime scene in order to have a really good look at the dead body even if one has a press pass. One doesn’t get into cabinet meetings because one has a press pass. One doesn’t get to march into the judge’s chambers and sit in on the lawyers’ private discussions that go on there because one has a press pass. Etc., etc.

Media accreditation sometimes allows reporters to go where the general public can’t, such as sports dressing rooms and backstage at concerts and the like; it may give us better seats (as in a courtroom, where there may be a press row, or at a sports event, where there is a press box); it may get us closer to the action or the participants in the action.

Period.


Oooooh, she said "period" and even made it a one-word paragraph. I guess this discussion of irrelevancies is over. 


Thus, in the G20 protests, journalists, real or self-appointed, traditional or otherwise, had no special rights to go where we wanted and no special badge of protection against arrest.

No, journalists didn't have any special rights, but in Canada we have this thing called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that promises certain inalienable civil rights - perhaps you've heard of it? Last time I checked it said something about the police not being to arrest people without reasonable cause.

Third, I would point out that the area north of the Ontario Legislature was indeed designed as a protest area during the summit.

It was never, however, meant to function as a no-go zone, to which the darling practitioners of the Black Bloc arts could retreat unchallenged and un-interfered with by the police to change clothes so that they might blend back with the regular crowd.

Indeed, it might have been better for the police to arrest the vandals and miscreants while they were running amok instead of standing around Queens Park hassling the non-violent protesters. May the police should learn to obey the law, to wit:

Criminal Code of Canada - Neglect by peace officer

69. A peace officer who receives notice that there is a riot within his jurisdiction and, without reasonable excuse, fails to take all reasonable steps to suppress the riot is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

R.S., c. C-34, s. 70.

Speaking of the criminal code, Blatchford might want to keep this one in the back of her mind:

C.C.C. - Spreading false news

181. Every one who wilfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

But back to her so-called arguments:


Fourth, since with the wisdom of hindsight it is now apparent that everyone knew that the anarchists/Black Bloc types would try to wreak havoc on the city, why are the organizers of the legitimate protests not being questioned about their accountability? They too presumably knew – as did police and security forces – that their peaceful demonstrations likely would be disrupted; what steps did they take to stop such a hijacking?


So in hindsight why didn't the organizers demonstrate their foresight and stop the black bloc from joining their protest? How would they have done that? If "everyone knew" why didn't the downtown merchants board up their windows for  the weekend? Why didn't every single resident south of the 401 leave town for the weekend? 
The protest organizers were not being paid a billion dollars to provide security, the police were. It is not the responsibility of the protest organizers to vet everyone who joins a demonstration. It is the job of the police to stop crimes in progress.
I think better questions might be "Since the police bragged about having infiltrated the Black Bloc and having monitored their communications, why didn't they stop them from running amok?" and "Does Christie Blatchford not realize that organizing a political protest is akin to herding cats and that the organizers have no authority to make anyone do anything -- is she really that stupid or is she just being incredibly dishonest?"

Fifth, in Toronto Star lingo, since “the sweeping powers” granted the police via the “secret” law saw them, according to Toronto Chief Bill Blair, arrest exactly one (1) person under the temporary regulation to the Public Works Protection Act, isn’t the angst-ridden, hyperbolic debate rendered, as someone brighter than me remarked recently, nothing but an intellectual exercise?

"Toronto Star lingo?" Really, Blatchford? Well, I suppose this will let you play victim for your conservative audience if the scribes at The Star decide to hit back or fact check anything you write. From now on any and all criticism of the Globe or yourself can now be attributed to people at The Star not being able to take a little joshing, right?

And I guess if you haven't been arrested, just searched, yelled at, possibly beaten or otherwise abused under a law that doesn't actually exist, well your civil rights haven't really been violated.  I guess us angsty, intellectual eggheads should stop worrying about the rule of law and abuse of authority in civil society and just shut up, is that it?

It would quite one thing if the 1,000 folks who were detained on G20 weekend were detained under the temporary regulation. The discussion would be meaningful.

But when it’s all said and done, it will turn out that most of those detained were arrested for breach of the peace or to prevent a breach of the peace, which is an arrest authority, not a criminal charge.

So discussion of abuse of that arrest authority is meaningless?

In my view, it’s a vile authority too, generally speaking easily misused by police, and it may have been misused here as well.

So giving the police the authority to arrest people for breach of the peace is vile and you agree that such authority may have been abused, but talking about that is meaningless?

But the point is, it wasn’t under the new secret sweeping power, which was only partly secret and not very sweeping. It was under long-established common-law police authorities, such as arresting people for breach of the peace or to prevent a breach of the peace that has yet to take place, that most people were picked up.

You want to be angry about something, be angry about that.

We are, that's why people are complaining to the police review board. But we can be angry about more than one thing at a time. Don't you even read your own paper?  And "partly secret?" Is that like "sort of confidential" or "a little bit pregnant" or "slightly illegal" -- or is it sort of like "kind of a hack as a writer?"

Finally, how amusing it is to see Toronto, press and public alike, whip themselves into a frenzy of outrage over alleged police inaction and then alleged police overreaction, when all of this, in terms even more stark, happened in Caledonia, Ont., from 2006 onwards, and no one gave a fig.


Plenty of people, especially in Caledonia and on the Six Nations Reserve have been giving more than a fig for quite awhile, since well before 2006. I used to work there and trust me, the dispute goes back a lot further than that. You and the rest of Toronto just haven't noticed because it didn't happen in Hogtown.


Honestly, the Globe should be embarrassed by this ill-considered, poorly-written screed of a column.
Blatchford just doesn't get it at all. The point of the complaint is that the police were unlawfully attacking, abusing and arresting people for being observers at a demonstration that they forcibly (and quite possibly illegally) broke up. Their status as journalists strongly supports their contention that they were observers, not bystanders. Blatchford's attempt to smear them as some sort of lying amateur wannabes just because they don't work in her office is dishonest and dishonorable. Real journalists everywhere should be disowning this police mouthpiece as a colleague.

We're doomed! Doomed I tell ya, DOOMED!

Aw, that's okay BP! Bygones! I suppose, like Rush Limbaugh and others have said, oil is a natural substance and the oceans will clean themselves eventually, so why worry?

Ominous reports are leaking past the BP Gulf salvage operation news blackout that the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico may be about to reach biblical proportions. 

251 million years ago a mammoth undersea methane bubble caused massive explosions, poisoned the atmosphere and destroyed more than 96 percent of all life on Earth. Experts agree that what is known as the Permian extinction event was the greatest mass extinction event in the history of the world. 

55 million years later another methane bubble ruptured causing more mass extinctions during the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum.... Now, worried scientists are increasingly concerned the same series of catastrophic events that led to worldwide death back then may be happening again-and no known technology can stop it.

The bottom line: BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling operation may have triggered an irreversible, cascading geological Apocalypse that will culminate with the first mass extinction of life on Earth in many millions of years.The oil giant drilled down miles into a geologically unstable region and may have set the stage for the eventual premature release of a methane mega-bubble.

Yeah, Joe Barton was right, why should BP be held to account for something like this? I mean, it coulda happened to anybody!

They say that living well is the best revenge

Well, that and holding war crimes trials.

Context really is everything.

If you or I decided to disco dance in front of a Nazi death camp, we would deserve all the criticism that could be thrown at us, but this is a survivor of the Holocaust and his family, dancing to celebrate surviving Auschwitz. Some may see it as disrespectful, but if the people who died there could choose, I think they would prefer to be dancing. Further, I think it is entirely valid and appropriate to celebrate life in the face of so much death.
Obviously, grief, sadness and repugnance will always be a part of any visit to such a place of epic horror, but I don't think it is wrong for this man and his family to celebrate his survival. Some of the commenters accuse them of dancing on the graves of million of dead Jews, but I would look at it as dancing on the grave of the "Thousand Year Reich" that killed so many and tried, unsuccessfully, to kill him.







Remember, every time a Holocaust survivor or one of their descendants smiles, Hitler and his pals are forced to smoke another turd in Hell.

They probably would have arrested Don Ho, too

"If that bubble touches me, you're going to be arrested for assault"

-Constable A. Josephs, Toronto Police 

Dear Constable A. Josephs of the Toronto Police,

You are such a dick.

Respectfully,

Rev. Paperboy



Seriously, arresting people for blowing bubbles? That is pretty much the Unabriged Oxford English Dictionary definition of cops without enough to do -- good thing there is no crime in Toronto.
(Video totally stolen from A Creative Revolution, who rock, bubbles or no bubbles)

Addendum: Perhaps we could all chip in and send Const. Josephs to some sort of relaxing event to help him unwind, perhaps a soccer match or something? I'm sure it's lovely in East London this time of year.

Plus ca change, plus ca meme freakin' chose

Frank Capra was neither subtle nor wrong. The opening with the words being jackhammered off the cornerstone of the newspaper building tells you all you need to know. This movie was released in 1941 and aside from the old fashioned-telephones, men all wearing hats and the homeless not being as universally shunned as they are today, it could have come out last week.



Of course, if you replace the John Doe Clubs with the teabaggers and Gary Cooper with Glenn Beck you get the Bizarro World version in which a mean spirited demagogue encourages people to hate their neighbors and be just a little bit nastier to each other.

Addendum: As is often my mantra - what Driftglass said.