Friday, July 24, 2009
Storming Google
I know I've been absent for a long time, yadda yadda yadda. This is just too cool not to share.
A user-created Google map of the storm that ripped through Edmonton last weekend. With different icons for downed-trees, the CN Tower damage, and even flipped semis (!). I've had people mention that our neighbourhood was hit worse than others (and we did lose a tree). This map definitely shows a lot of wind damage in Mill Creek area. Crazy.
Labels: edmonton
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Vriend and on and on
Back in Edmonton, this year's Day of Silence* went by yesterday, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the Delwin Vriend case. The Supreme Court's ruling in his case came 7 years after he'd been fired from his position as a chemistry teacher at King's College for being gay.It forced the Alberta provincial government to amend our human rights legislation to protect citizens from workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
From the March 30th issue of the Journal:
In the following years, Edmonton has lost its reputation for being gay unfriendly, say local gays and lesbians. The gay drain to Vancouver and Toronto has stopped. The majority of gay people are out of the closet, with some coming out as early as junior high school.So many people fight for us before we even arrive. What's that old saying - a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit?
Verbal and physical abuse of gays is far more rare. And, because of the Vriend decision, no longer can gay people be fired from their job simply because they are gay, a practice that had been going on in Alberta for decades.
Learning about Delwin Vriend, I felt a sense of privilege and a sense of responsibility this week. Lots of work to do. Let's get at 'er.
*Full disclosure: this Vue issue from last year's Day of Silence features an interview with my friend Ryan pretty prominently. It was actually the first time I'd ever heard of him. Life.
Labels: edmonton, queer stuff
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
ExFest
This week, for our first time ever, Edmonton hosts the most awesome thing: the Exposure Queer Arts Festival.
Labels: arts, edmonton, festivals, queer stuff
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Losing my F.E.M.E. cherry
So I'm pretty excited. As you probably know, I'm a bit of an informed cynic about politics in general; enough faith in the systems to know what will be useful when we abandon them for something a lot better, but probably a political junkie the way other people like to watch famous people going to jail. Or train wrecks. Or something. Someone once told me Americans are benevolently uninformed about Canada, and Canadians are malevolently well-informed about the US. Along those lines. But I kind of like being the nerd who goes to all-candidates forums and gives every one a fair, critical listen. It gives me some quiet pleasure to know I've actually taken the time to sit through 5 or 10 politicians talking out of their ass for an hour or two and will be making a reasoned, well-thought out decision never ever to vote for them. And this year, my friends, is my First Ever Municipal Election.
What does it feel like to lose my F.E.M.E. cherry? Well, for the first time ever I've put up a sign in my window for a candidate. Since they don't come in any partisan shades of orange or red or blue that say 'Here lives a socialist' or 'Here lives a fiscal conservative', I felt genuinely and 100% confident about taking out some scotch tape and fidgeting with my (not very hard-earned) down-cyclable sign for Mr Lewis Cardinal, Ward 4. Ain't Edmonton great? Lewis is smart, passionate, talks about social justice and sustainability that makes it easy to see he gets his talking points from his convictions, not the other way around, and to make it even juicier, his brother is Lorne Cardinal, the guy from Corner Gas. How awesome is that?
But we get two votes for City Council round these parts, and right now it looks like my other vote is leaning toward either Hana Razga or Ben Henderson. Initially, I was willing to discount Ben altogether because his signs were out so suspiciously early and conspicuously, but he had some very reasonable, intelligent things to say at the forum last Thursday. Unfortunately, he should have been roundly beaten by Hana, who has many ideas along the same track in a more well-thought out way. Some that are even pretty ambitious. I like that.
She didn't win that forum, though. Not by a long shot. Despite a number of ideas I could get behind, she's not a very compelling speaker (or, at least, not in that kind of environment). It's possible to chalk this up to the extremely, humiliatingly poor attendance of about 30 in the Myer Horowitz. Issues about our sham mislabelling of ourselves as an informed electorate aside though, she just doesn't have the buzz to get a seat right now.
So. With a week and and a bit to go til the polls on October 15th, I ponder... should I get involved in a campaign? For a candidate I believe in? In a system I don't believe in? I'm tempted by the opportunity to do so without having to hear people's minds shut down once they hear the words 'conservative,' or 'liberal,' or 'separatist gunshot-toting baby-hating plague-bearers.' But should I really get mixed up in who wins Monopoly when I'd rather we look ahead to Twister and Jenga?
Friday, January 26, 2007
The sweet and the bitters
Someone on YouTube has written that Patrick Wolf is a 'unique guy who wears both a belt and suspenders,' and another has described him as 'a ginger bloke sitting at a piano.' He also plays the theramin and the harpsicord. I like to think of him (along with Owen Pallett) as one of the leaders of a brilliant new genre: Wastrel. And so for you I present the video for his newest single, 'Bluebells,' from imminent drop The Magic Position.
As sweet as Patrick Wolf's voice is though, there is trouble in the henhouse. Thomas, who helps run the Padmanadi estaurant down on 97th Street and is one of the kindest, sweetest people in Edmonton, is about to be deported. The story is longer and more sordid than you'd expect for someone who always makes sure to ask how you are when he comes to each and every table to pour the chrysanthemum tea. Read Ross Moroz's article about it in Vue here.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Canon
On the topic of sexy poetry, a sample of cantos of the non-sensical by educated educator emerson, a fantastic series of poems she's written as multiple riffs on a salacious idea:
Two other blogs worth reading from the 780 (we've got to stick together here up in Hometown brown):
deletia (migrating soon?), with a healthy dose of hilarity and fascination by books and other things which consume me by my erstwhile online buddy prolix and
Pete's Picks, a cunning selection of reading done and to be done by a man who must surely be one of St Albert's most exciting librarians.
And control will be lost entirely**
Hands will caress
And lips will greet each other ravenously
A personal exploration of our personal paradoxes laid aside
In a silence we’ve been looking forward to for a long time
A secret we’ve been wanting to share
Only between us
Never to be uttered
Like we will never utter a word in each other’s presence
Unless it is by a kiss
Sliding hands on bodies
Legs flowing into one another
Inhibitions pushed aside by emergent urgency
Dishes pushed aside by surging emergencies
An increase in warmth flowing to hot meeting hotly
Meeting liquid insides and moist tongues
Personal paradoxes aside
As one of us will be inevitably be pushed up against something
Not even noticing
Drowning in the presence of the power in the other
Maybe that is what attracts us
Power to power
Paradox to paradox
Loner to lone wolf
Two other blogs worth reading from the 780 (we've got to stick together here up in Hometown brown):
deletia (migrating soon?), with a healthy dose of hilarity and fascination by books and other things which consume me by my erstwhile online buddy prolix and
Pete's Picks, a cunning selection of reading done and to be done by a man who must surely be one of St Albert's most exciting librarians.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
East
In case you've been wondering about the Downtown East redevelopment project the city's been talking up this year, so was I. If you are interested, I would kindly direct you to this week's issue of Vue Weekly or, for my French Polynesian and Latvian readers, you can check out my article here.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Did you GuluWalk in your town?
An earnest kid.
Signing the banner we carried around. Thanks, Earth Water.The GuluWalk today was amazing. I didn't expect as many people to come out as there were, but all told about 100 of us walked from Strathcona down past Garneau and Victoria Park, all through Oliver and back down Whyte Ave. It was mostly young people, students especially, but there were kids from youth groups there too, and letter writers and peaceful rabble rousers. A couple MPs spoke (one of them seemed to think Africa was a country, disappointingly) and a student from the U of A who I guess leads a Ugandan Students Association? and it was a little cold and a little cloudy but I was warm warm warm walking with such passionate people.
Did it feel like a long distance? Yes. About 11, 12 kilometres is a long way to walk on an autumn day in Edmonton. But I couldn't imagine walking it twice a day back and forth to the city with the constant threat of being abducted or worse by the LRA. Those kids have it a lot tougher than us, and don't get the promise of hot chocolate or water bottles at the end. Walking 11 kilometres for donations is a lot different than doing it to survive.
There were a lot fewer people than came out in Toronto at the one I went to last year, but Edmontonians are more of a shy, retiring folk when it comes to these things and northern Uganda isn't exactly high on the public consciousness. But I guess things like the GuluWalk help bring it to the top, and more power to people like Lillian and Jamil for helping organise a pretty successful walk, I'd say. I guess they stopped by this site a few days ago and I promised I'd put their picture up on here, but Lillian closed her eyes in the one I snapped, so here is a more candid one of them where she has her eyes open. Keep up the good work, guys.The founders of GuluWalk in its international incarnation (as in, apart from the kids who do it every day) are Adrian Bradbury and Kieran Hayward, and I know they'd like the kids affected by the war in Uganda to stay in people's minds. Canada has the very real ability to help push Museveni's government and the Lord's Resistance Army to keep dialogue open and sieze this opportunity for peace. I don't know if Joseph Kony will ever be tried by the ICC or not, but these children are not safe in refugee camps or in their homes, and it is time this brutal war came to an end.
Si halba español, este blog tiene una buena historia de GuluWalk.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Of giving and taking
Canada World Youth/Jeunesse Canada Monde celebrated its 35th anniversary yesterday. If you haven't heard of it before, it's a Canadian NGO that works with partner organisations overseas to set up international youth volunteer exchanges -- and if that doesn't make sense, an example would be the exchange I was sent on 2 years ago to BC and China for a total of 6 months to learn about... many things.
It's an amazing organisation and I think I've internalised the experience I had with CWY-JCM so much that I forget sometimes how much of an impact it's had on me. Getting to live with a host family in another region in Canada and overseas made me shift my perspective on a lot of things. Parts of your culture you take for granted as being universal, ways of making compromises in groups, ways of overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles in language, relationships, planning community events... The learning that comes from the program is almost all informal, and much of it doesn't make sense until long after it's over, when you can look back and see Oh, that's where my thinking totally changed on this and this and this and I was forced to let the world in.
Anyway, they had a shindig last night at City Hall and two groups on Africa/Canada Eco-Leadership programs came to do some dancing and talking and signing and listening, and I realised how much I missed being surrounded by people who are passionate and driven to learn and consume and thrive off of everything around them. I really think Canada World Youth does a tremendous job of cultivating that thirst, so here's to them, and here's to 35 years, and here's to 35 more.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Robert found.
I am very sorry to say that earlier today, Robert Barrington Leigh was at last found, but not at all the way his family and friends or any of his community had hoped. Police said they recovered a body in the North Saskatchewan River this morning, which his family confirmed to be that of their son, last seen at Folk Fest last Sunday.
There was a memorial this evening, with some really touching speeches about Robert. So, just so you know. He's been found. My sincerest consolations to his family.
There was a memorial this evening, with some really touching speeches about Robert. So, just so you know. He's been found. My sincerest consolations to his family.
Labels: edmonton
Monday, August 21, 2006
Find Robert
Have you seen Robert?
This young man, Robert Barrington Leigh, went to my junior high, lives just down the street from me, and went missing last Sunday, August 13th. He was on his way to Folk Fest from Old Strathcona through Mill Creek Ravine. There's been a fairly large outpouring of volunteers and community involvement to find this guy, and his family is asking anyone with any information to please step forward and contact them. The police and community members have been searching in Edmonton, but have recently widened their efforts to Toronto, where he is a math student at U of T. If you know anything at all about Robert's whereabouts, or would like to volunteer to help find him, please go to findrobert.ca.
Labels: edmonton
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Which way ahead
Protesters outside Corbett Hall, 22 July 2006I've never gotten an email from the Red Cross before today. There's probably a good reason I'm on one of their mailing lists, but until this morning I had never received any messages from them asking me to donate, not for Darfur, not for Java, not for Aceh. It probably says something, then, about the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis in Lebanon right now that they are appealing so directly for help aiding civilians.
This Saturday I saw a group of protesters gathered outside Corbett Hall at the University of Alberta pleading for an end to the bloody conflict, which has claimed hundreds of Lebanese and Israeli lives and displaced an estimated 750 000 people in Lebanon. This isn't the first protest of this kind in Edmonton since the rockets started firing two weeks ago; earlier, about 500 people gathered in front of the Legislature to demand a ceasefire. These are not just Canadians with family in Lebanon (and some from Edmonton have already lost family members), and these are not just a group of eccentrics and anti-Israeli protesters. It takes a lot to get people in Edmonton out on the streets, and a lot of people from all backgrounds here just want the violence to end.
BBC has reported accusations of Israeli soldiers using Palestinian civilians as human shields during incursions in Gaza, Human Rights Watch has published a report condemning the use of cluster bombs in Israeli army attacks in Lebanon, and the United Nations has warned both Hezbollah and Israel may be guilty of war crimes for using excessive or indiscriminate force as the humanitarian crisis in the region mounts. On her recent visit to Beirut, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice showed only the faintest interest in supporting an end to the bloodshed in the region before Israel has unilaterally accomplished its goals, however grave the cost.
There has been a lot of talk about UN Security Council Declaration 1559, which called for the disbanding disarmament of all Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias in the region, as well as the withdrawal of foreign troops (which Syria reluctantly followed through on last year after an upswelling of public pressure in Lebanon following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri). Since Syria's withdrawal, not much has been done in following through with the rest of the resolution, a situation which has made Israel understandably nervous, since Hezbollah had been lining up rockets along the border well in advance of the kidnappings that were the immediate provocation for the escalating war there now. So the Israeli government has been arguing that since no one else has stepped in to enforce Resolution 1559, it must do so itself, by any means necessary. Well, I wonder if Stephen Harper would use the word 'measured' to describe other violent unilateral enforcements of UN Resolutions, like, say, the ones condemning the construction of the barrier through the West Bank.
This is not how peace goes forward.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Oh, of course
Todd Babiak has written a much more eloquent piece about the impact of the Bell Globemedia-CHUM merger on local specificity of news coverage. Perhaps it was hasty to assume so much of our national media converging will reduce the spectrum of opinion open to people, given that so many get their news from new sources like podcasts and blogs, something like this, but Todd has a point about people knowing less and less about events going on in their community.
Depending on how long the munificence of CanWest Global's servers lasts, the article is available here.
Depending on how long the munificence of CanWest Global's servers lasts, the article is available here.
Mergers and missiles
I wanted to write about what's going on in Israel and Lebanon and the Gaza Strip right now, but I have been quieted by the sheer pace of the violence. It seems I am more naïve than I realised, because I have really been stunned by how quickly the situation has escalated. Possibly more on that later.I am, however, perhaps predictably concerned about Bell Globemedia's overtures toward CHUM. Edmonton has three main daily news broadcasts, CFRN News (owned by BGM), Global (owned by CanWest Global), and CityTV (owned by CHUM). Global used to be called ITV, and was an independent station established and owned in Edmonton; CityTV was called A-Channel, and was relatively independent until it was bought out by CHUM a few years ago and they added that Much More Music driftwood guy to the morning show, Bill Welychka.
So the already small number of media outlets with a news broadcast in Edmonton, if the merger goes through, will be basically divided between a company owned by the Aspers and a company owned by the Thompsons. The unique spin on this story in The Globe and Mail (BGM's -ahem- national newspaper) is worth mentioning; rather than portray the merger as one giant company trying to get an even bigger share of the market to run down their competitors by folding in another relatively large and willing partner, they published a front page article about purported tensions between the adult children of CHUM founder Allan Waters, who passed away last December. I was intrigued by how cleverly The Globe told the story as one of desperate sibling drama reaching a seemingly inevitable breaking point and forcing them to sell. I'm not biting, but then, I'm not in charge of the CRTC.
It's now up to the independent broadcasting watchdog, which regulates Canadian media from radio to satellite TV, to decide whether to allow BGM, which already controls CTV, the Discovery Channel, the Comedy Network, and has 15% shares in the Toronto Raptors, among other things, to take control of CHUM's newsrooms from Vancouver to Winnipeg, its muzak division, its sprawling radio network, and, of course, MuchMusic. Any sane and rational person might point out that the media in Canada is already incredibly concentrated, and perhaps even take the bold move of arguing that allowing Bell Globemedia to have such a huge slice of the pie might be bad for say, people wanting to get a balanced set of perspectives from their nightly news, let alone the hundreds of people fired by CHUM hours before the merger was announced.
The BGM management's triumphant announcement that this will create a 'national champion in broadcasting' seems disingenuous at best. I've heard people saying the CBC's rather negative coverage of the merger from its Arts division is overly harsh, that it's a bit rich for them to be arguing there won't be enough variety of opinion in the Canadian media if it goes through. But who can honestly say they would rather have fewer newsrooms operating in our country, fewer journalists, fewer talented hosts on sports radio? Perhaps it's wishful thinking to assume I'm not alone here. Anybody?
Photo credit: Dan Barham
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Validity and bubbles
On the off chance of wanderers, I would like to tell you about international bubbling this Sunday at 3.00 in Vancouver, Montréal, Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Philadelphia, all local time. You should go.
And now, I have to say the following is long overdue. Radio Canada this morning reported that
And now, I have to say the following is long overdue. Radio Canada this morning reported that
and Gulf News is reporting that other inmates at Guantanamo Bay had been planning to commit mass suicide (apart from the three who successfully did so several weeks ago). American military officials, GN says, have been replacing beds and bedsheets after a number of prisoners were found to have made nooses and hid pills in waistbands and prosthetic legs.La Cour Suprême des États-Unis vient d'infliger une cuisante défaite à l'administration Bush. Elle rejette la validité des tribunaux militaires d'exception créés pour juger les détenus de Guantanamo, désignés comme combattants ennemis.
Cette décision historique remet en cause les pouvoirs exceptionnels dont s'était doté le président George W. Bush, au lendemain des attentats du 11 septembre 2001.
Le juge John Paul Stevens a rédigé cet arrêt, estimant que les procès proposés sont illégaux au regard du droit américain et des Conventions de Genève.
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A blog about books, ideas, Canada (or lack thereof) and more. We've got more RPMs than a Latin American history DVD.
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