Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose

Last weekend @TheBrazman was all over twitter challenging reporters to step into the ring with him and demanding to know how much they were paid and generally making an obnoxious ass of himself. Having seen last night's fight, I believe Nelson Muntz said it best for all of us:

Once again a Conservative let his mouth write cheques his ass could not cash and reality is shown to have a liberal bias. Trash-tweeting Sen. Patrick Brazeau and his karate black belt talked his way to being a 3-1 favorite in the "Showdown in O-town". He even bragged that he thought he could knockout Justin Trudeau. and he fought a good fight, at least for the first half of the first round. Then the reality of Justin Trudeau's longer reach, better conditioning and 20 years of boxing experience set in. The Brazman is lucky the ref stopped the fight when he did, another round or two and he'd have been carried out.

While this was hardly the first time a Trudeau has mopped the floor with a Conservative - and it won't be the last time, either - the "Thrilla on the Hilla" provided a certain visceral satisfaction that you don't really get from Question Period.


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He's cheesy and he's greasy

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Smug, okay maybe a little, but I think it's justified

with a tip of the beaver hat to the esteemed Mr. Otter, who reads & comments but does not blog
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Street curling

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hey, all you kids out there

here's one for you to watch and practice the next time yer down at the rink. The great Jack Todd, the Montreal Gazette's best sports writer and heir-apparent to the crown worn by Red Fisher, takes Don Cherry into the corner and puts him halfway through the boards. Bravo Jack Todd. Cherry is an ignorant blowhard whose greatest claim to fame in the NHL was his inability to count past five.
Read the whole thing.

Don Cherry is nothing but a phoney

By JACK TODD, The Gazette December 13, 2010 

There he is in Toronna, old Sour Grapes himself, invited to the inauguration of that Chris Farley reincarnation Rob Ford, decked out in a jacket of Liberace pink, dripping sarcasm and hatred with all his soul.
"Put that in your pipe and smoke it, ya left-wing kooks," Don Cherry bellows, among other sweet nothings to issue from the loudest mouth in Canada.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Cherry+nothing+phoney/3967855/story.html#ixzz180V4VxJq

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Not the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but close

If this is the biggest complaint the Parti Quebecois has, then I think we can safely start throwing soil on the coffin of the notion of an independent Republic of Quebec. I suppose the PQ also thinks les muffins Anglais are also a Federalist plot. I don't recall the Nordiques coming in for the same criticism, though I think it would be hilarious to see pro sports try to adopt a "locals only" rule for players.

Kanadian Kulture Korner

One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets re-enacted by one of my favorite rock singers.



I met Al Purdy a couple of times when I was a newspaper editor near his home on the Bay of Quinte. He came in to ask my advice (!!!) after being announced by the receptionist as "there's some older guy out front to see you, he looks kinda seedy." He had been comissioned to write one of those "My Canada" type of pieces for a magazine sponsored by Imperial Oil and wanted my suggestions for some scenic spots around The County to send  the photographer. Needless to say, I was at a loss for copies of his books to have him sign at the time, but rattled off a list of picturesque spots in the area. About a year later, I was called on to introduce him at a local literary festival and we agreed we'd have to have a beer together sometime, but unfortunately for all concerned, the Quinte Hotel burned down, I got fired from the newspaper and moved to Japan, and the celebrated poet passed on before such an meeting could be convened.

sad, but true

It is tragic that we have fallen so far.

Early homecoming presents

David over at JimDandy Goodness has a fine selection of homecoming presents from the NFB assembled for me and I haven't even started packing yet! I am officially touched.
Bill Mason is The MAN!

And by the way, if you don't know who Bill Mason is, wowsers -- have you ever been missing out!

our home on native land

And now for something completely different...



It seems odd at first, but it kinda grows on you after a second listen.

More bullshit from Rideau Hall

While it may just be the latest shiny object to be dangled in front of the public to keep them distracted from Stephen Harper's prorogation shenanigans and the response from both the electorate and the opposition until the big Burning Stick Festival in Vancouver next month, I still think this is unfair, hypocritical and just plain mean-spirited.

Cancer runner Steve Fonyo stripped of Order of Canada
The Canadian Press
VANCOUVER — He finished Terry Fox's run across Canada and raised millions for cancer research, but in the two decades since then his life has been marked by run-ins with the law.
Now Rideau Hall has revoked Steve Fonyo Jr.'s membership in the Order of Canada, one of the country's highest civilian honours.
Fonyo, an amputee like Fox, was awarded the order in 1985 after raising more than $13 million. It was recognition of his 14-month, 8,000-kilometre trek on an artificial leg along the Trans-Canada Highway, completing the epic journey Fox had planned from St. John's, NL, to Victoria.
Owing to a slew of criminal convictions, however, the 44-year-old was stripped of the award on Dec. 10. A notice of the revocation appeared in the Canada Gazette on Jan. 23.
Fonyo, then of Vernon, B.C., was named The Canadian Press Newsmaker of the Year in 1985, but his stretch of inspirational stories eventually took a negative turn.
The one-time hero, who lost his leg to bone cancer at age 12, battled cocaine addiction and depression.

The story goes on to describe Fonyo's various convictions for petty drug offenses, assault, check-kiting and drunken driving. CTV ran a response from Fonyo a day later - he spoke to them by telephone from jail.

Admittedly Fonyo has not lead an exemplary life since he was awarded the Order at age 18, but he was not given the award for the life he was going to lead or for his ongoing contributions to Canada - he was given the award for finishing what Terry Fox started, running across the country on an artificial leg to raise awareness of and money for cancer research.

Compare his case to this one:

Mountie who admitted sexually assaulting teen will receive bravery
medal

The Governor General's office says an Alberta Mountie who has admitted sexually assaulting a teenage girl will still receive a national award for bravery.

By Calgary Herald
September 4, 2008

CALGARY - The Governor General’s office says an Alberta Mountie who has admitted sexually assaulting a teenage girl will still receive a national award for bravery.
Guy Armand Raes of Airdrie was recently named a recipient of the Governor
General’s Star of Courage award.
On Wednesday, a week after the announcement, Raes was in front of a provincial court judge pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a teen he befriended through an RCMP investigation. He will be sentenced next week.
Raes, 50, helped rescue a young couple and guided other residents to safety during a massive row house fire in Airdrie, a residential community just north of Calgary, in August 2005. The court case has no bearing on Raes’s award, according to the Governor General’s office.
“He is being recognized for an act of bravery that happened in 2005,” said Marie-Paule Thorn, spokeswoman for the Governor General’s office.

Now, to be honest, I think that Mr. Raes should keep his Star of Courage award. As the GG's spokewoman says, the award is about a specific deed that he performed in 2005 and no matter what he did afterwards, that deed stands alone. The same could be said to be true for Steve Fonyo - as an 18 year old he set out to run across the country and raise money for cancer research, finishing the job Terry Fox could not. He spent 14 months of his life accomplishing this astonishing feat, raised nearly $14 million dollars for cancer research and inspired the nation. Has he lived an exemplary life since then? No. So what? His troubled life since then does not in any way diminish his accomplishment and it is for that accomplishment the Order of Canada was awarded.

I'll admit the rules do say the order can be stripped from those who are "convicted of a Crime in Canada or if the conduct of the person has otherwise brought dishonour to the Order. A person can also be removed from the Order if his or her personal conduct in public departs significantly from recognized standards and is seen as undermining the credibility, integrity, or relevance of the Order; if his or her conduct is a departure from what they have accomplished to be appointed to the Order; or if they have been subjected to an official sanction by an adjudicating body, professional association, or other organization."

So, what about this guy?

A distinguished Toronto entrepreneur and publisher, he is a man of diverse achievements within the realms of Canadian commerce, education, literature and the arts. In addition to his various business ventures, which have enhanced Canada's visible presence internationally, he is well known for his generous support of many charitable endeavours, notably the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.

Or this guy:

An entrepreneur and a risk-taker, he revolutionized film presentation and distribution in Canada and has also made an invaluable contribution to the growth of theatrical production in this country. His operation of an historic Toronto theatre and another in North York has raised the standards of commercial theatre and provided new opportunities for Canadian talent in an industry which, through his influence, has become a respected player in the international marketplace.

Whoops, both of them are in jail over illegal deeds they committed in the area for which they were given the Order of Canada, and one of them renounced his citizenship to accept foreign honors just a decade after he was named to the order- why haven't they been stripped of their awards the way fellow fraudster Alan Eagleson was?

There are only two other people who have been stripped of the award:

Aboriginal leader David Ahenakew lost his membership in 2005 after being convicted of promoting hatred against Jews. He was later acquitted of the charge after an appeal.

*Lawyer and race-relations advocate T. Sher Singh lost his membership in 2008 after the Law Society of Upper Canada found him guilty of professional misconduct and revoked his license to practice law.

Chief Ahenakew's conduct was appalling and he was revealed to be an anti-Semite even though he was convicted of the charges against him initially, he was aquitted on appeal. T. Sher Singh was never even indicted for any crimes as far as I know, simply disbarred for professional misconduct, a far cry from being jailed for committing fraud in the course of the very thing for which one is being honored.

The GG's office is technically within its rights to strip Fonyo of his award, but if they do so, Black and Drabinsky had better be immediately stripped of theirs too, along with a number of other people who may have brought dishonor to the Order, or is accepting envelopes full of cash in hotel rooms and selling your influence an acceptable practice to the GG?

Canadian Question Corner

Are we all completely 100% sure that Don Cherry wasn't secretly calling the plays for the Saskatchewan Roughriders in their last-second championship loss to the Montreal Alouettes?

Just asking....

Ladies & Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

Flying Spagetti Monster bless the National Film Board of Canada.

Voyageur

I'm a little behind in my podcast listening, so it was only this morning on the way to work that I heard the wonderful Canada Day edition of CBC Radio's "As It Happens" and their feature interview with Jowi Taylor.
When Quebec was about to hold its last referendum, a whole lot of us across the country got on buses and went to Montreal for a big outpouring of "Baby-Please-Don't-Go-ism" and I guess, to some degree, it worked since Quebec is still part of the country and all. But the demonstration and the way the whole referrendum was portrayed in the press as a blue vs red, English vs French, Quebec vs Ottawa issue sort of irked Taylor and he got to thinking about the rich history of Canada and the whole cultural mosiac that makes Canada what it is. And then he got an idea. An incredible idea.

The nation as musical instrument.

It took him about a dozen years, but with the help of luthier George Rizanyi, Taylor got the thing built and it made its debut at the Canada Day concert on Parliament Hill in 2006 in the extremely able hands of Stephen Fearing.

There is metaphor and symbolism and just plain mojo in everything I guess. Everything we touch comes from somewhere and has been part of some other life. There is the Muddywood guitar and back in the early 90s I remember a lot of art that featured bits of the Berlin Wall, but this is like something out of a fantasy novel or a fairy tale. The guitar is built from bits and pieces of wood, bone and metal that come from across Canada: A scrap from Rocket Richard's Stanley Cup ring, a bit of a sideboard that held the booze in Sir John A. MacDonald's office, a slab of the sacred Haida Gwaii Golden Spruce, part of Paul Henderson's hockey stick from The Goal, a chunk of Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle, a bit of mammoth ivory from the NWT- the case even incorporates a piece of Don Cherry's pants and Karen Kain's tutu.

And its been played by anyone and everyone - Stompin' Tom has played it in his home, Gordon Lightfoot played it on his 70th birthday, and Taylor has been touring the country letting the whole population get its strum on.

You'll be seeing stuff about the guitar in all the papers this week as Taylor has just published a book about its creation. My question is this: What song would you play on it and why?

Canadian ham and cheese on wry

Stolen from Jennifer over at Runesmith's Canadian Content, who stole it from Skwib

stolen from Scott over at The Tattered Sleeve

"In history class, in seventh grade (or as we like to say in Canada, grade seven) we learned the story of the American Revolution — from the British perspective. Turns out you were all a bunch of ungrateful tax cheats. And you weren’t very nice to the Loyalists. What I miss most about Canada is getting the truth about the United States."
— MALCOLM GLADWELL, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of “Outliers: The Story of Success”

Stolen from the Noo Yawk Times article "Our True North" the collected remembrances of 11 Canadians living south of the border, as suggested by the esteemed mjs

In my mind I still need a place to go, all my changes were there

I've been living in Japan for a dozen years and I've only been home to Ontario a handful of times, so obviously I don't miss my home and native land that much right?

Wrong. Tonight I have a lump of homesickness that is sitting in my gut like a double order of congealed poutine.

Homesickness comes and goes, especially at the holidays, but Canada Day is always a tough one.

You see, one of my earliest jobs in the newspaper biz was at a little local weekly on the shores of Lake Erie - the Port Dover Maple Leaf - a nice little family owned and operated paper, which last I heard was being operated by the third generation of the Morris family. I was the only reporter for the paper - I actually lived over the Main Street office two blocks from the beach - and pretty much ate, slept and especially drank Port Dover 24/7/365.

(A brief digression: There is one good thing about being the only reporter for the only newspaper in town and that is that everyone in town knows you. There is one bad thing about being the only reporter for the only newspaper in town and that is that everyone in town knows you. The hour are very long and no matter how generous your boss is, he can't afford to pay you much wages. I didn't do these kinds of jobs for eight years across Southern Ontario because I was getting rich. 'Nuff said)

Port Dover, Ontario, perched (no pun intended) on the edge of Lake Erie, about an hour up the highway from Hamilton, is a summer town. It was, back in 1990 when I was there, the largest freshwater fishing port in the world. (See Stan Rogers "Tiny Fishes for Japan") and the fish they caught was the perch. The perch is not exactly a great sport fish. They don't get very big or put up much of a fight or require a tremendous amount of skill to catch with a rod and reel once you find them -- but cleaned, battered and deep fried when fresh out of the lake they are about the tastiest thing that swims as far as I'm concerned and I ate my share of them in Port Dover.

Aside from the fish, the town is a tourist trap. Back in the 20s and 30s it had been a big deal and all the steel barons from Hamilton and the rich folks from Toronto used to have summer homes there. Al Capone owned a mansion there during prohibition with a secret tunnel that led down to the lake for running rum across to the U.S. side. There were regular ferries from Erie Pa. and a big pier with a dance hall that was still a going concern when my parents were teenagers in nearby Brantford in the 5os an even into the 60s. There's a decent beach, a little hotel, a couple of bars and restaurants, a bunch of cheesy souvenir shops. Back when I was living in town, there was a great summer theatre too, and cherry blossoms in the spring, but the big attractions were the Friday the 13th Biker summits and CANADA DAY.

Friday the 13th promised excitement and noise and drunken partying and a sense of danger. I could sit in my front window and watch the fights in the parking lot of the Commercial Tavern across the street and see the bikes roar up and down the main street.

Canada Day promised local musical favorite Doug Feaver at the Norfolk Tavern, the Lions Club fish fry and beer garden and a huge parade right outside my front window. I entertained a lot in those days, with friends coming down summer weekends to drink beer, eat perch and hang out at the beach but Canada Day was the best. I'd have to shoot photos all day and night for the newspaper, but on a day like that people are glad to see the man with the camera and the notebook and just want to make sure their names are spelled right in the caption. Between the floats sponsored by local businesses, service clubs, church groups and politicians and the marching bands and the clowns and the school kids and the 4H kids and so on half the town marched in the parade and the other half - and thousands of tourists- lined the streets to watch them. Short of an isolated island in Algonquin Park with a bottle of Canadian Club and a few guitar-playing, canoe-paddling kindred spirits, it is by far the best place to spend Canada Day that I know.

Do I miss it? Would I swap working at the world's largest newspaper amid the bright lights of one of the world's greatest cities for covering planning council meetings in a hick, one-horse, backwater, struggling resort town in the middle of the South Ontario countryside?

This is not a good day to ask me that.

Let me ask you something - I've been gone from Canada longer than Abousfian Abdelrazik - so long that Canada's New Government has changed the law to say that I can't vote in Canadian elections without moving back to the Great White North. I don't own any property in Canada. I don't even have a Canadian bank account. Am I still Canadian?

Let me tell you something:

I still remind American co-workers why the White House is white. I am the go to guy in my Tokyo office if you have a question about French (though I barely scraped through high school French). I know my way around a canoe. I have a visceral loathing of American beer. My Japan-born-and-raised kids say "eh" when speaking English and blueberry pancakes with maple syrup is their favorite breakfast. I get cravings for peameal bacon and still call french fries "chips". I got drunk and argued politics one night at the Norfolk Tavern in Port Dover with Stompin' Tom Connors - my shoulder and left arm were even in the TV commercial for his "A Proud Canadian" album that they shot in Port Dover. I grew up playing hockey in Sault Ste. Marie when native sons Phil and Tony Esposito were huge stars and Wayne Gretzky spent a year at my high school while playing Jr. A for the Sault Greyhounds just before he turned pro and while the holy Montreal Canadiens were winning the Stanley Cup every year. I remember the windstorm that blew our neighbour's chimney down the night the the Edmund Fitzgerald sank a couple dozen miles away on Lake Superior. I've polka'd to Walter Ostenak live at Oktoberfest in Kitchener. I spent my 17th summer planting trees and clearing canoe portages northwest of Kenora for $10 a day. I cook tortiere at New Years from my aunt's recipie. I've seen bears at the dump. I spent a couple of St. Patrick's Days getting hammered and singing Stan Rogers songs with cadets from RMC at the Wellington in Kingston. I was once the editor of the oldest community newspaper in Canada. I've eaten moose and seen them up close in the wild. I've seen the Habs at the Forum and eaten smoked meat at Schwartz's, Ben's and Dunn's. I've slept under a beached canoe after watching the Northern Lights on a late summer evening in the middle of the bush in Northern Ontario 100 miles from anywhere. I've made maple syrup. I've eaten lobster bought right off the dock in Peggy's Cove. I've played hockey with my grandfather on a frozen pond. I've chased raccoons and skunks out of my garbage. I've eaten fresh smoke salmon in B.C. and salted dried cod in the fortress of Louisbourg. I am one (very small) part Mohawk. I've had my pipes freeze. I've called in sick to work because I've been snowed in. I've had beers with old soldiers at the Legion on Rememberance Day. I've heated my home with a woodstove. I've seen Neil Young at the Ex and Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Cockburn at Hamilton Place and the Cowboy Junkies and Murray McLaughlin at the Festival of Friends and once met the Tragically Hip in a boozecan in Kingston. I've been rained on in Vancouver. I've jumped off the roof of my house into snow deeper than I was tall. I've been told to evacuate a provincial park in BC because there was a forest fire coming over the hill a mile away and closing, hell, I once fought a forest fire. I was in Montreal for the big "please don't separate" march before the last Quebec referendum. I was once a member of the Montreal Expos Battery Bleachers Fan Club when they still played at Jerry Park. I had a subscription to the original Captain Canuck comic book. I've been ice fishing. I own both and audio and a video cassette of the last Morningside with Peter Gzowski. Pierre Elliot Fucking Trudeau once asked me if I wanted to be Prime Minister when I grew up. I have tears flowing into my glass of Crown Royal and Canada Dry as I write this, but goddamn it Canada - There is a town in North Ontario with dream comfort memory to spare and I could drink a case of you and how I wish I was in Sherbrooke now.

Oh, Canada....

(a special tip of the touque to Rina for telling me I must move back immediately last night and to all the other expats who are pining for home this week)

Cute fluffy bunnies of the sea or dinner?

Okay, this has gone on long enough. All this bullshit about the Governor General eating some seal meat that is. It is no better or worse than eating a big mac, roast chicken or a salmon steak. 

Meat is meat and this is simply a matter of cultural differences. Different people in different parts of the world eat or avoid different kinds of animal protein for all kinds of cultural and religious reasons. Try getting a bacon sandwich in Islamabad or Tel Aviv, or stewed dog in Philadelphia or jugged moose in Timbuktu or Okinawa-style horse sashimi in Cincinatti, or whale meat in London. Try asking for rabbit in Tokyo or a nice sirloin in New Delhi. 

Some societies have culinary cultural prejudices that are so strong that they don't eat any meat. Many individuals have adopted vegetarianism on health or ethical grounds and more power to them, but for a lot of people on this planet a vegetarian diet is not only impractical, but nigh impossible. You can't live on vegetables in a place that can't grow a sufficient quantity of them and so for people in the far North, vegetarianism isn't really an option. The Inuit and the Lapp have survived for millenia on meat - fish, caribou, reindeer, whale, seal, hare - you name it - if it swims or runs, its edible and there isn't much else edible in the far north. 

People, historically, have eaten what was available to them in most societies. At the same time, our various societies have evolved certain prejudices about eating companion animals or those that we consider unclean for religious reasons often based on bronze age sanitary conditions, when a bad clam could mean life or death. Other religious restrictions require animals to be killed in certain ways on the argument that such a method is the most humane. As our culture has become more globalized, these prejudices have either faded and are kept alive strictly as religious traditions or have become more strictly localized and often clung to in the name of tradition. Many Jews and Muslims no longer keep strictly kosher or halal, and dog is not widely eaten outside Korea as far as I know. Most Japanese no longer eat whale except as a sort of delicacy, while it used to be part of the school lunch menu for a variety of economic reasons.

But a new kind of prejudice has emerged as people have gotten farther from first hand experience with the food they eat, especially in the developed world. We don't like to see where those hamburgers and chicken fingers come from. We don't like to acknowledge the realities of the factory farm, the feedlot and veal pen.  We like the sausage just fine, but we don't want to see how its made. We like the steak, but we don't want to see the slaughterhouse. 

And so many condemn hunting as barbaric. They see no need to for people to go out into the woods and shoot Peter Cottontail or Bambi's mom when one can go to the supermarket and get slices of Wilbur and Babe wrapped in cellophane on nice anticeptic styrofoam trays. We don't like to eat anything cute - rabbit, deer, squirrel and yes, seal - all fall into this category.

I'll agree that buying your feedlot fattened beef and factory farmed chicken at the supermarket is a more efficient way of getting animal protein than hunting deer. I'll even specify that the majority of hunters in North America don't need to hunt to put groceries on the table. I'll even put aside all the "wildlife management" models that are used to argue the need for culling animal populations to avoid animal starvation based on the notion of man replacing natural predators. I'll also put aside the issue of fur for the moment.

 I won't put aside the simplistic "all meat is murder" argument beloved by some, because frankly it's complete bullshit. Mother Nature is red of tooth and claw, and we are part of nature. Man would not have survived the stone age, nor flourished as we have, without eating meat. Animals eat each other and for all our strivings and philosophy, we are part of the food chain. I'll admit we eat too much meat these days and treat animals badly on the whole, but anything that walks or swims or crawls is a meal for something else in the long run, circle of life, ashes to ashes etc etc.

Which bring us back to the seal hunt and Canada's Governor General Michaelle Jean. The objection seems to be that she ate a cute little seal, the ones with the faces like puppies and the big sad eyes, and she ate it's heart! raw! Oh noes! Icky! -- and those nasty Canadians go out and massacre poor helpless baby seals for fun and profit in the cruelest ways imaginable! It must be true, because I saw it in a PETA brochure. All that video footage you've seen of Newfies and Eskimos killing baby seals looks bad and is great for raising funds, but most of it is no worse than what goes on in any other abattoir. 

Have a look around for the facts, not the PETA version of them. Most of what you hear from PETA on this subject is complete bullshit. In fact, most of what you hear from PETA on most subjects is complete bullshit. Their latest campaign, a boycott of maple syrup to convince the Canadian government to ban the seal hunt, is like boycotting American kiwi growers to convince the American government to end the Iraq War.

I don't always agree with Penn Jillette  - in fact I think he's often guilty of selective use of the facts to prove points that conform with his own beliefs, but Penn and Teller raise some interesting questions about PETA here -- though I think they do a severe disservice to their own arguments by allowing Dennis Prager and Ted Nugent on camera.

The extremists of PETA who want to "free" pets and domestic animals don't do any favors for the cause of protecting animals who actually need protecting. I agree that there should be limits on testing things on animals, but I'd rather things like AIDS drugs were tested on rats than humans. If we are going to have chemical cosmetics, they have to be tested for safety and I'd rather they were tested on animals than humans.  Animal experiments are a vital and necessary part of medical research and there are millions of people alive today who would be dead if it weren't for scientists sacrificing the lives of a lot of rats, rabbits, dogs and monkeys.

Whether Canada needs a commercial seal hunt is an open question, but the hunt wouldn't exist if people weren't buying sealskins. Whether the commercial hunt is any more or less humane than the poultry, beef or pork industries is not in question. There is virtually no difference. And Michaelle Jean was joining Inuit subsistence hunters for a meal. And there is no grounds I can see for criticism of the Inuit for hunting seal for food -- there aren't a lot of grocery stores up in the Arctic Circle

So if you want to go full PETA and eschew the use of animals in any way, be my guest. Stop wearing leather and eating meat and eggs and dairy - and stop using modern medicine and modern materials such as mylar that involve the use of animal products. You should also be aware that destruction of habitat is the real threat to most animal species, so stop using roads and living in cities or even wood or concrete structures and  get yourself a nice unheated cave somewhere. You have the right to make that decision of conscience, but so do other people and our decision may not be the same as yours. Humans as a species have eaten meat and worn skins since the dawn of time, I don't expect we will stop anytime soon just because a few people get a bit squeamish. The outrage over Michaelle Jean sampling some seal is in large part misguided, misinformed, arrogant and hypocritical. 

Posts I never thought I'd write: Michael Ignatieff is my homeboy

The CBC has an excellent letter from an expat grad student in England about the Conservative Party of Canada's attacks on Michael Ignatieff for being a) a successful intellectual and b) living outside the country for many years before returning to enter politics. By all means read the letter, then have a quick scan of the comments and ask yourself why anyone with a top notch education and contacts abroad would want to return to a country that is so full of ignorant, provincial knuckledraggers. The woman is obviously a patriot, just don't tell her about the Blogging Tories and Small Dead Animals and she might still come back one day.

What I really want to talk about are the idiotic attack ads by the CPC, which attack Ignatieff on everything except substance. He must really scare them. And he should.

A quick look at Michael Ignatieff's bio shows him to be an academic and public intellectual of the highest caliber who has held posts at the most prestigious institutions in the English-speaking world. That those institutions happen to be located outside Alberta and mostly outside of Canada is hardly his fault, as in show business and sports, you go where the work is. Yes, one can be a highly respected public intellectual on the world stage while living in Canada, but there are only so many jobs for such people.

Crapping on Ignatieff for spending his career at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard instead of the University of British Columbia is like criticizing Phil Esposito for spending his hockey career with the Bruins and Rangers instead of staying with the Sault Greyhounds, or slamming Dan Ackroyd and John Candy for not sticking with Second City in Toronto.

One of the commenters on the CBC site criticized the author of the letter, described as a Rhodes scholar and Ph.D candidate at Oxford, calling her "a snob" and claiming the author "thinks she's better than us." As a Rhodes scholar, she is certainly demonstrably smarter then the cementheaded commenter. She is certainly more open minded, almost certainly more well-travelled, better-read and more cosmopolitan, and probably has "qualities of truthfulness, courage, devotion to duty, sympathy for and protection of the weak, kindliness, unselfishness and fellowship; exhibition of moral force of character and of instincts to lead and to take an interest in one’s contemporaries," but then to the audience of resentful, embittered, small minded, petty bourgeois, know-nothings that the Conservative attack ads are pandering to, none of those things are desirable.

I'm not a big fan of Ignatieff and his running for office in 2006 with his eyes firmly on the Liberal Party leadership was unquestionably a bit opportunistic. So was Stephen Harper's channelling of western Canadian resentment in helping form the Reform Party. So was his departure for the National Citizens Coalition when it became evident that Preston Manning wasn't going to turn the party over to him. While Ignatieff at least got himself elected to parliament before seeking the Liberal leadership in 2006, Harper decided to try for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance Party when Stockwell "Doris" Day looked weak in 2002 and after an ugly campaign won the leadership. Then he pushed Ezra Levant out of the way to run for Preston Manning old seat in Calgary.

Ignatieff is criticized for considering a return to Harvard is his bid for election in 2006 didn't work out. He got elected and stayed in the House, despite losing in his first campaign for party leader, and was re-elected again in 2008. If he had not won a seat in parliament in 2006, Ignatieff would have continued on at the University of Toronto for a least another year as visiting professor and senior fellow at the Munk Centre for International Studies. After that, he might have run for parliament again, or he might have returned to his career as a scholar, living wherever the work took him as he pleased.

Harper, on the other hand, has a history of quitting when things don't go his way. He quit the Liberal party because he didn't like the National Energy Program (He was working in Alberta for Imperial Oil at the time). He quit the Progressive Conservatives a few years later after going to work for a Mulroney government backbencher because they didn't end the NEP fast enough to suit him. He quit the Reform Party when he couldn't get Preston Manning to step aside as leader and let him run things along more Straussian ideological lines. He quit the National Citizen Coalition a little less than four years later when he saw a chance to grab the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party after using the NCC to undermine Stockwell Day for a year. Once leader of the Alliance party, he devoted all his energy to co-opting and absorbing the Progressive Conservative Party to try to present a united right wing front.

If he fails to win a majority government next time around, will he quit Canadian politics? If some conservative think tank down south like the Heritage Foundation offers him some primo wingnut welfare job to push economic integration or some other neo-con pie in the sky, do you think he'll hang around Calgary scanning the want ads? I'm sure with his hard won Masters degree, Liberty University could find a job for him teaching remedial English or something, but he's not really qualified to do much else. Aside from the mail room at Imperial Oil nearly 30 years ago, he's never really done anything outside of politics and think tank work.

While Ignatieff was working outside of Canada, he made no secret of his Canadian-ness and we as a nation were happy to call him one of our own. He may have referred to Britain as his "adopted nation" a few times in the 20+ years he lived there or used the rhetorical flourish of "We Americans" when writing for an American audience, but unlike Conrad Black, Wayne Gretzky, Michael J. Fox and Pamela Anderson he never became an American or British citizen. He has been a Canadian all along. More importantly, he has not publically badmouthed his country to foreign audiences, (which as we know from conservatives' descriptions of Bill Clinton organizing anti-war protests in England while he was a student there during the Vietnam War is high treason or something) unlike Stephen Harper, who had this to say to a U.S. think tank less than a year after leaving parliament the first time:

"Canada is a Northern European welfare state in the worst sense of the term, and very proud of it"

"If you're like all Americans, you know almost nothing except for your own country. Which makes you probably knowledgeable about one more country than most Canadians"

As I said, I'm not a big fan of Ignatieff, mostly for his original positions on the Iraq War and torture and for yanking the rug out from under the idea of an NDP-Liberal coalition government. He is a bit conservative for my tastes, but I think he'd make a much better prime minister than any of the other options on offer.

His job history and personal story are nothing if not enviable and his time abroad is a feature, not a bug. Ignatieff has done more than simply teach at the world's finest universities. He has been a broadcaster, a filmmaker, a journalist, a writer of non-fiction and fiction alike and travelled the world. Unlike Stephen Harper, who's last real job was in the Imperial Oil mailroom and who didn't even have a passport until he entered the House of Commons. Harper graduated high school in 1978 and went work for Conservative MP Jim Hawkes in 1985 and has been out of the job market ever since.

Before entering electoral politics, Ignatieff wrote prize-winning books on human rights and foreign policy, delivered the Massey Lectures and had a novel short-listed for the Booker Prize. Stephen Harper has supposedly been working on a book on hockey for longer than anyone can remember and wears sweater vests to try to make us think he's human.

Only the complete "morans" who make up the current electoral base of modern conservatism would consider being well-educated, widely-travelled and highly accomplished bad things. They get the leaders they deserve.

And as for the notion that spending time, even a long time, outside the country make one any less Canadian --I've been living in Japan for dozen years and, like Ignatieff, the place I miss most is Algonquin Park. If you think I'm somehow less Canadian because of where I live (and I'd move back tomorrow if the right job opportunity presented itself, but you go where the work is) or who I married or because I eat sushi more often than poutine these days, you are just plain wrong and can kiss my fat, maple-syrup loving, multicultural ass. I may be less engaged than I once was in the daily cut and thrust of Canadian politics, but I'd venture to guess that I still pay more attention than most in the Great White North. That must be true, because you sure as hell wouldn't catch me voting for Stephen Harper.

I know that my Habs will live on

But I'd really rather see Brofman in charge than that other Quebecois institution. But hey, at least they squeaked into the playoff.

Power ballad schlock queen eyeing bid for Les Habs.

No good deed goes unpunished

Yeah, this should be entertaining when and if it gets to court.
The short version of events is this: Sudanese Abousfian Abdelrazik fled civil war in his home country and was granted refugee status in Canada in 1990. He became a citizen in 1995. Six years ago he flew to Sudan to visit his ailing mother and was arrested at the request of the CSIS and U.S. security services who suspected him of links to Al-Qaida, imprisoned and tortured and abandoned by the Canadian government. As with Mahr Arar, it appears that they had the wrong man. Neither the Sudanese or our own RCMP have been able to build any kind of case against the man, but for the last six years he's been living in the exercise room of the Canadian embassy in Sudan because his Canadian passport has expired and the government refused to give him a new one until he bought a plane ticket home. He cannot legally work in Sudan and because he is still on a terrorist watch list, anyone who gives him money is considered to have aided a terrorist. 115 Canadians -- many of them bloggers -- have thumbed their nose at the government and ponied up the cash to fly their fellow citizen home.

Canada used to occupy the high ground on issues of human rights. Not anymore.

If the government had any shame at all, this would not have been necessary. But of course if the government and CSIS had any shame at all it would never have happened in the first place.

What next, will lawyers start making sense?