As in England, Canadian inns sprang up along coaching routes. Horses and passengers needed rest and refreshment, and before long there was no shortage of places offering such services. By the time the traveller up Yonge Street got to Holland Landing, he could be in quite a state. Given that tavern-keepers usually treated coach drivers to free drinks in return for bringing passengers their way, the driver might be in even worse shape.
Nor was the early Canadian drinker certain of what was in his drink. McBurney and Byers offer a few recipes of the day. Wisely they note: “These old recipes are presented for interest only; they should not be used.” I’ll say. Their recipe for port calls for 28 gallons of cider, 9 gallons of whiskey, 15 pounds of white sugar, as well as cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, ground cochineal, carbonate of potash, and — if necessary — two ounces of ground alum. I don’t think that’s the way they make it in Portugal. There are no grapes, for starters. I’m trying to imagine how I’d feel the next day. Now I’m trying to stop imagining how I’d feel the next day.
Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.
January 14, 2020
QotD: Drinking in Upper Canada
January 12, 2020
Neil Peart, RIP
I was very saddened to see the news, but it explains why the band retired:
Rush in concert, Milan 2004.
Photo by Enrico Frangi, via Wikimedia Commons
Neil Peart, the virtuoso drummer and lyricist for Rush, died Tuesday, January 7th, in Santa Monica, California, at age 67, according to Elliot Mintz, a family spokesperson. The cause was brain cancer, which Peart had been quietly battling for three-and-a-half years. A representative for the band confirmed the news to Rolling Stone.
Peart was one of rock’s greatest drummers, with a flamboyant yet precise style that paid homage to his hero, the Who’s Keith Moon, while expanding the technical and imaginative possibilities of his instrument. He joined singer-bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson in Rush in 1974, and his musicianship and literate, philosophical lyrics — which initially drew on Ayn Rand and science fiction, and later became more personal and emotive — helped make the trio one of the classic-rock era’s essential bands. His drum fills on songs like “Tom Sawyer” were pop hooks in their own right, each one an indelible mini-composition; his lengthy drum solos, carefully constructed and packed with drama, were highlights of every Rush concert.
In a statement released Friday afternoon, Lee and Lifeson called Peart their “friend, soul brother and bandmate over 45 years,” and said he had been “incredibly brave” in his battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. “We ask that friends, fans, and media alike understandably respect the family’s need for privacy and peace at this extremely painful and difficult time,” Lee and Lifeson wrote. “Those wishing to express their condolences can choose a cancer research group or charity of their choice and make a donation in Neil Peart’s name. Rest in peace, brother.”
A rigorous autodidact, Peart was also the author of numerous books, beginning with 1996’s The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa, which chronicled a 1988 bicycle tour in Cameroon — in that memoir, he recalled an impromptu hand-drum performance that drew an entire village to watch.
Peart never stopped believing in the possibilities of rock (“a gift beyond price,” he called it in Rush’s 1980 track “The Spirit of Radio”) and despised what he saw as over-commercialization of the music industry and dumbed-down artists he saw as “panderers.” “It’s about being your own hero,” he told Rolling Stone in 2015. “I set out to never betray the values that 16-year-old had, to never sell out, to never bow to the man. A compromise is what I can never accept.”
Update: At AIER Peter C. Earle pays tribute to Peart’s life and work.
The announcement of the death of Rush drummer Neil Peart came as a tremendous shock. Having only retired about four years ago, so many fans of Rush (myself included) had convinced ourselves that this was a temporary hiatus, and that in a year or two – eventually, at any rate – there would be an announcement of a new album, a short tour, or some other project. Surely musicians of their virtuosity and passion couldn’t stay away from the studio or stage for long. But now we know we were wrong, and we know why.
It was revealed that Neil had been battling a brain tumor for over three years. Characteristically, he, his family, and friends (among the closest of whom, Rush vocalist/bass player Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson) upheld his desire for privacy. I haven’t done the math as to whether Neil’s illness was likely a causative factor in the decision to retire, or whether it seems to have come along not long after the decision to retire.
[…]
In his role as the lyricist of Rush, Peart took on such topics as pernicious nationalism (“Territories”), mass hysteria (“Witch Hunt”), the division between constructive and destructive belief (“Faithless”), the fall of Communism (“Heresy”), conflict and power (“The Trees”), the horrors of totalitarian rule (“2112,” “Red Sector A”) and many allusions to individual liberty (“Tom Sawyer,” “Anthem,” “The Analog Kid,” “Finding My Way,” “Caravan”). He did so via lyrics which artfully and passionately evinced those sentiments; sentiments which early on suggested Objectivist perspectives, but over time developed into what he called “Bleeding Heart” libertarianism:
I call myself a bleeding heart libertarian. Because I do believe in the principles of Libertarianism as an ideal – because I’m an idealist. Paul Theroux’s definition of a cynic is a disappointed idealist. So as you go through past your twenties, your idealism is going to be disappointed many many times. And so, I’ve brought my view and also – I’ve just realized this – Libertarianism as I understood it was very good and pure and we’re all going to be successful and generous to the less fortunate and it was, to me, not dark or cynical. But then I soon saw, of course, the way that it gets twisted by the flaws of humanity. And that’s when I evolve now into … a bleeding heart Libertarian. That’ll do.
Neil, through his lyrics, managed to do what so many lyricists and writers – even, perhaps especially, so many libertarian intellectuals – fail to do: make liberty neither an alien fixture, a flat slogan, or a utopian slog. It is a way of thinking and living, and one which not only doesn’t ignore, but embraces the flaws and frailty of humanity, tempering realism with hope and optimism.
January 10, 2020
Pierre Poilievre’s bid for federal Conservative leader
Chris Selley on the varying reactions to the notion of Pierre Poilievre as Andrew Scheer’s replacement:
Glee is spreading among Liberal partisans at the thought of Pierre Poilievre succeeding Andrew Scheer as Conservative leader. The theory is he is so pugnacious, so obnoxious, so poisonously, sneeringly partisan as to be literally unelectable.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre at a Manning Centre event, 1 March 2014.
Manning Centre photo via Wikimedia Commons.It is true that the man longtime Conservative cabinet minister John Baird nicknamed “Skippy,” in tribute to his enthusiastic Question Period performances, does not suffer from an excess of gravitas — though Poilievre’s reported support for his leadership bid from Baird and Jenni Byrne, a former senior adviser to Stephen Harper, lend him some within party ranks. His candidacy hasn’t made any measurable dent thus far in public opinion polls. And the opposition war rooms would certainly have fun unpacking his baggage.
Never mind Poilievre questioning the value-for-money proposition of compensating residential school victims (for which he apologized), or his use of the term “tar baby” in the House of Commons (for which he did not, and nor should he have, because it was a perfectly apt and inoffensive analogy in the context he used it), or the dreaded Green Light from the Campaign Life Coalition. Having been Harper’s parliamentary secretary, Liberals will blame him for every supposed atrocity of the Harper era.
All that said, the notion that people widely viewed as pugnacious, obnoxious and partisan-to-a-fault can’t win in Canadian politics is belied by reality. A quick glance around the federation brings Jason Kenney, Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau immediately to mind.
That’s not to say they won because of those character traits: Kenney’s and Ford’s leadership opponents would likely have fared just as well. Trudeau hoodwinked many with his Sunny Ways fraud, but he might well have won as the classic born-to-rule Liberal he turned out to be. If his government continues venting credibility at the rate it established late in its first mandate, the next Conservative leader could well become prime minister no matter who he is.
After recounting the dismal tale of Sheer’s “leadership”, Selley recounts a favourite story about Boris Johnson which contrasts strongly with the Milk Dud’s occupancy of the job.
Again, that degree of swagger and eloquence is far too much to ask of Canadian politicians. But it shouldn’t be too much to ask a party leader to have enough confidence in his party, his members, his movement and his ideas to arouse him to at least some degree of annoyance when they’re unfairly deprecated. If Conservative members aren’t excited by the prospect of a Poilievre leadership, they shouldn’t be half as mortified as Liberals think they should be.
January 9, 2020
The “Ostrich” school of Canadian foreign policy
Ted Campbell on what former Canadian diplomat David Mulroney calls the “Ostrich” school:
John Ibitson, writing in the Globe and Mail, suggests that Justin Trudeau might want to try what former diplomat, national strategic planner in the Privy Council Office, and commentator David Mulroney refers to (on social media) as …
… “the ‘Ostrich’ school of Canadian foreign policy.” It has, he says, two pillars:
First, “Canada has no interests/allies“; and
Second, “The best way to deal with bad regimes, bad people is to pretend they’re nice.”
Mr Ibbitson himself says that it may be impossible to work “with European and Asian allies, including Japan, to forge a coherent response that provokes neither the Americans nor the Iranians.”
The situation in the Middle East is, as I have explained several times, hideously complex. President Trump may have made it worse … although it’s hard for me to see how any added complications really matter all that much. The socio-cultural and religious hatreds that bedevil the region are likely beyond making “worse.”
In fact, there may be an argument that a nice, all-out, albeit contained, Middle East war might be useful. Perhaps the Iranians and Saudis and Iraqis and Syrians and Yemenis and so on need to sort one another out in the way that tends to produce lasting results: on a bloody battlefield … it worked for Europe, more than once, in 1648, in 1815 and again in 1945.
John Ibbitson says that “Iran’s rage over the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani risks dragging Canada and the rest of the Western alliance into a new confrontation in the Middle East, courtesy of Donald Trump … [that true, as far as it goes, and he adds] … Most Canadians would want no part of such a conflict, especially since the U.S. President might simply be seeking to distract attention from his impending impeachment trial in the Senate … [and that, the first part about Canadians wanting no part of any conflict, is also true, but President Trump’s motives are irrelvant]. The fact is that he has ignored many Iranian provocations while he attempts, vainly, in my opinion, to disengage America from the wider world. The attack on a US embassy seems to have crossed a “red line.”
[…]
But, John Ibbitson says, “Mr. Trump’s high stakes gamble – that killing one of the most senior figures in the Iranian regime will deter rather than provoke further acts of aggression from Iran – could lead to some kind of asymmetrical war, with the U.S. military attacking Iranian targets, and Iran responding through militias and proxies in Iraq and possibly in North America and Europe … [true enough, and he asks] … What would Mr. Trump expect from Canada in such a conflict?” That’s the key question.
My guesstimate is that President Trump will ask little or nothing, militarily, because his military chiefs of staff will not even have mentioned Canada when they proffer lists of nations that might help or hinder US efforts. Canada is not on any of their lists of countries that matter. Diplomatically, however, I think we do matter to the USA and I would not be surprised if the phone lines have been busy all weekend as US officials tell (rather than ask) Canadian officials to get our government “onside” with the USA. The Americans hold ALL the high cards in the game of power.
I’m sure that Prime Minister Trudeau will follow John Ibbitson’s advice and adopt the “Ostrich” strategy … head buried in the sand, pretending that Canada has neither interests nor allies and pretending that evil people are good.
Perhaps co-incidentally with the “revenge” Iranian missile attacks on Iraqi airbases known to have US troops in the area, a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger jet crashed shortly after take-off from Tehran airport. Officially, the Iranian authorities are saying it was due to catastrophic mechanical breakdown, but they have refused to hand over the aircraft’s “black box” flight recorders for analysis. All of the 176 passengers and crew died in the crash, including 63 Canadians. It has been suggested by many that the timing was not a co-incidence and that the plane was likely hit by an Iranian surface-to-air missile due to the heightened state of tension in Iranian airspace during and after the missile launches against Iraq. Colby Cosh has more:
Some of the wreckage of Ukraine International flight 752 near Tehran, Iran.
Photo from MOJ Newsagency via Wikimedia Commons.
I am writing these words at a strange moment Wednesday morning. The president of the United States has just been on television, reassuring the American public that the crisis inspired by the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has reached a satisfactory equilibrium. Iran made a demonstrative show of force against U.S. installations in the Middle East that killed nobody. Honour has been satisfied. Relief, among American observers, is general.
Meanwhile, Canada is mourning the deaths of dozens of its citizens in a passenger jet crash on Iranian soil. Perhaps it is a terrible coincidence. Stranger things have happened. But if you are old enough to remember the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988, you are old enough to doubt it.
The Vincennes incident is part of the historical litany that has made news consumers innately distrustful of the first draft of history. The ship was in the Persian Gulf, which at the time was swarming with Iranian gunboats trying to squeeze off the supply of arms to its enemy Iraq. The U.S. Navy had rushed to the area to keep one of the world’s economic arteries open to neutrals. But this had foreseeable consequences — plenty of confusing penny-ante firefights, and some notable accidents, including a puzzling Iraqi attack with air-launched Exocet missiles on an American frigate, USS Stark.
QotD: National music
James Lileks, Screedblog, 2005-07-08.
December 31, 2019
QotD: Canadian journalism
… a Canadian Journalist’s main job is to smooth over any rough spots and shush away worries as the Liberal government plunders the public purse to pay for technocratic solutions to problems we didn’t know we had while adopting a laissez-faire attitude to the problems we do have. If the Opposition has a point, it falls to a Canadian Journalist to correct the record and say that, well, actually, no they don’t.
Josh Lieblein, “Hack or Flack: Aaron Wherry Edition”, Raving Canuck, 2017-11-29.
December 30, 2019
The federal Conservative Party’s dilemma
Canadians currently have two left-of-centre federal parties (three if we count the Greens), but only one party on the right (Maxime Bernier’s PPC), leaving the right-of-left-of-centre to the hapless, leaderless, useless, spineless, craven Conservative Party. “Conservative” in name only, of course, for those of you who don’t follow Canadian politics (and neither blame nor shame to you if you fall into that happy group). Bernier’s been labouring under an almost complete media blackout except where engineered drama can be used to demonize him or members of his party, so the roughly one-third of Canadian voters who would prefer an actual conservative alternative don’t really have anyone to vote for.
Jay Currie offers his analysis of the Conservative dilemma (but he’s also a known PPC sympathizer, so good Canadians must pay no attention to what he says):
Frank Graves and Michael Valpy ask the question, “What if the Conservatives had a ‘centrist’ leader?” like Rona Ambrose or Peter MacKay. To their credit Graves and Valpy recognize that while a centrist Conservative party would appeal to the media and various elites in Canada it would effectively maroon the 30% of Canadians who might loosely be described as “populist”.
A billboard in Toronto, showing Maxime Bernier and an official-looking PPC message.
Photo from The Province – https://theprovince.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-berniers-legitimate-position-on-immigration-taken-down-by-spineless-billboard-company/wcm/ecab071c-b57d-4d93-b78c-274de524434cI think Graves and Valpy are right and I can’t wait for that exact outcome.
Scheer managed to hoodwink a lot of natural populists with a combination of Liberal-lite policies and some goofy socon gestures (I am not sure Pride Parade non-attendance really counts for much with the serious socons.)
Graves and Valpy maintain that this was enough to avoid “orphaning the party’s biggest lump, and he more or less cut off oxygen to Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada (PPC).” It might have been last election but if the CPC goes centrist with its next leader, the lump will be looking elsewhere.
I am fairly certain that the CPC will go for a centrist leader if only because there are really no populist candidates available to it. Pierre Poilievre might fill the bill but it is not obvious that the CPC will be willing to support an MP who is as “direct” as Poilievre.
Which will leave “the lump” looking for a home. Graves and Valpy give a rundown of the lump’s core issues,
Like the United States, the United Kingdom and sizeable chunks of Western Europe, Canada has a significant portion of citizens — about 30 per cent — who are attracted to the current psychographic and demographic binge of ordered populism. They are profoundly economically pessimistic and mistrustful of science and the elites. They have no interest in climate change, they don’t really see an active role for public institutions and believe there are too many immigrants. Of those immigrants coming to Canada, they think that too many are not white.
Other than the dig about thinking “too many are not white”, that is a pretty good summary. (On the “not white” thing, I suspect it is more nuanced than that: more along the lines of the current Quebec government’s desire to preserve its culture in the face of immigration.)
QotD: Microbrew beer
Risk-taking microbreweries these days are known to replace or supplement hops with such oddities as heather, bog myrtle, ginseng, and hemp. As hops are related (by marriage) to cannabis — that other great medicinal herb — we shouldn’t be surprised to encounter hemp beer, and indeed you can usually find it on tap in Toronto at C’est What down on Front Street. It’s not bad either, once you get it lit, which is the hard part.
Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.
December 22, 2019
The North Magnetic Pole … a refugee from Canada’s Arctic
Colby Cosh on the latest refugee to flee from Canada:
On Dec. 10, the World Magnetic Model used to calibrate compasses was officially updated. The “model” can be thought of as a map that you would use, given your location on or near the Earth’s surface, to find out how many degrees your magnetic compass is off from true geographic north (or south). This ordinarily happens every five years, but the wizards in charge of the system decided to update a year early because the north magnetic pole is moving particularly fast right now.
Positions of North Magnetic Pole of the Earth. Poles shown are dip poles, defined as positions where the direction of the magnetic field is vertical. Red circles mark magnetic north pole positions as determined by direct observation, blue circles mark positions modelled using the GUFM model (1590–1890) and the IGRF-12 model (1900–2020) in 1 year increments. For the years 1890–1900, a smooth interpolation between the two models was performed. The modelled locations after 2015 are projections.
Map by Cavit via Wikimedia Commons.As most Canadians will have heard, magnetic north is, at the moment, fleeing Canadian territory and heading toward Russia. The rate of change is still very high by historic standards, first established in the early 19th century, but it has slowed just a little. In the year 1900 the pole was firmly in the Canadian Arctic, off Somerset Island. It wandered north, broke out of our high Arctic archipelago in about 2000, and has been streaking Siberia-ward across the open sea at more than 50 km a year since. The time component in the new WMM forecasts a slight slowing over the next five-year period, to about 40 km/yr.
This, like everything else involving Earth’s magnetic field, is a bit of a guess. The WMM has to be updated often because it does incorporate guesswork about the magnitude and direction of changes in the short-term future. The model will be most accurate now, and increasingly less so over the five-year term as the magnetic poles do their little dance — independently, by the way; the magnetic poles are not exactly opposite the Earth from one another, and the “south” one is scooting along much more slowly than the “north.” (Also, the magnetic north pole, the one to which the “north” needle of your compass is attracted, is actually a “south” pole to physicists.)
The truth is that the naive inquirer should not research Earth’s magnetism in the expectation that it is as well understood by scientists as, say, oceanic tides. (You can probably detect that I am talking about myself here.) The question “Why is the magnetic pole leaving Canada?” does not really admit of a solid answer. Maybe it’s the investment climate?
Probably most everybody is dimly aware that the magnetic poles flip outright from time to time — every half-million years on average. But the assumptions embedded in your handheld compass run much deeper than that. The Earth itself is only a big dipole magnet generally, rather than locally, and there is no guarantee of only one “north magnetic pole” as the field is measured near the surface. Competing “north poles” can form. (Which would, at least, let Russia and Canada each have their own …)
December 20, 2019
QotD: Ontario pubs
Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.
December 18, 2019
Mark Steyn on what passes as “conservatism” these days
It’s certainly Conservative-In-Name-Only:
In 2000, when the Vermont Supreme Court mandated same-sex “civil unions”, American conservatives were outraged. By 2010, when the left had moved on to gay marriage, conservatives were supportive of civil unions but insisted marriage was an ancient institution between a man and a woman. Now, the left having won that one and moved on to transgenderism, conservatives profess to be a bit queasy about transitioning grade-schoolers.
So you can take it to the bank that by 2030 rock-ribbed Republicans will be on board with penises in the girls’ changing rooms, but determined to hold the line against whatever the left’s next cause du jour is: human cloning, the state appropriation of parenthood, voting rights for animals.
There really isn’t much point to conservatism that’s just leftism ten years late, is there? It’s like that ITV+1 satellite service they have in Britain that offers you the ITV schedule but an hour later, in case you were caught in traffic heading home. If you’re considering on which side to bestow your tribal loyalty, the left is right quicker; the right is left behind — but only for a few years until they throw in the towel. If you’re all headed to the same destination, why not ride first class on the TGV instead of the creaking, jerking stopping service? Justin Trudeau’s vapid modishness was perfectly distilled by his campaign catchphrase of four years ago: “Because it’s 2015.” But that beats waiting till 2025 to say “Because it’s 2015”.
While we’re on the subject of the northern Tories: Because the late unlamented Andrew Scheer finessed his views on same-sex nuptials as lethargically as did Barack Obama, he was flayed by the Canadian media as some fire-and-brimstone social conservative of televangical inflexibility. I wish. As I wrote the other day, he’s as unmoored from principle as Boris Johnson, but without the countervailing strengths of being able to stick it to the other guy and to pass himself off as a human being. He was particularly contemptible in the hours before my appearance at the House of Commons Justice Committee, as I may discuss in detail one of these days. Yet the never-learn Conservatives are minded to replace an entirely hollow man with someone just like him, only more so.
It is surely telling that the only issues on which the right has made any progress at all in moving the ball in its direction — Brexit in the UK; illegal immigration and a belated honesty about the rise of China in the US — had to be injected into public discourse by two outsiders, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. And indeed in the teeth of opposition by the establishment’s catch-up conservatives.
Catch-up conservatism gives the game away: The right has lost the knack of persuasion, and increasingly doesn’t even bother to try.
Repost – Induced aversion to a particular Christmas song
Earlier this year, I had occasion to run a Google search for “Mr Gameway’s Ark” (it’s still almost unknown: the Googles, they do nothing). However, I did find a very early post on the old site that I thought deserved to be pulled out of the dusty archives, because it explains why — to this day — I can barely stand to listen to “Little Drummer Boy”:
Seasonal Melodies
James Lileks has a concern about Christmas music:
This isn’t to say all the classics are great, no matter who sings them. I can do without “The Little Drummer Boy,” for example.
It’s the “Bolero” of Christmas songs. It just goes on, and on, and on. Bara-pa-pa-pum, already. Plus, I understand it’s a sweet little story — all the kid had was a drum to play for the newborn infant — but for anyone who remembers what it was like when they had a baby, some kid showing up unannounced to stand around and beat on the skins would not exactly complete your mood. Happily, the song has not spawned a sequel like “The Somewhat Larger Cymbal Adolescent.”
This reminds me about my aversion to this particular song. It was so bad that I could not hear even three notes before starting to wince and/or growl.
Back in the early 1980’s, I was working in Toronto’s largest toy and game store, Mr Gameway’s Ark. It was a very odd store, and the owners were (to be polite) highly idiosyncratic types. They had a razor-thin profit margin, so any expenses that could be avoided, reduced, or eliminated were so treated. One thing that they didn’t want to pay for was Muzak (or the local equivalent), so one of the owners brought in his home stereo and another one put together a tape of Christmas music.
Note that singular. “Tape”.
Christmas season started somewhat later in those distant days, so that it was really only in December that we had to decorate the store and cope with the sudden influx of Christmas merchandise. Well, also, they couldn’t pay for the Christmas merchandise until sales started to pick up, so that kinda accounted for the delay in stocking-up the shelves as well …
So, Christmas season was officially open, and we decorated the store with the left-over krep from the owners’ various homes. It was, at best, kinda sad. But — we had Christmas music! And the tape was pretty eclectic: some typical 50’s stuff (White Christmas and the like), some medieval stuff, some Victorian stuff and that damned Drummer Boy song.
We were working ten- to twelve-hour shifts over the holidays (extra staff? you want Extra Staff, Mr. Cratchitt???), and the music played on. And on. And freaking on. Eternally. There was no way to escape it.
To top it all off, we were the exclusive distributor for a brand new game that suddenly was in high demand: Trivial Pursuit. We could not even get the truck unloaded safely without a cordon of employees to keep the random passers-by from snatching boxes of the damned game. When we tried to unpack the boxes on the sales floor, we had customers snatching them out of our hands and running (running!) to the cashier. Stress? It was like combat, except we couldn’t shoot back at the buggers.
Oh, and those were also the days that Ontario had a Sunday closing law, so we were violating all sorts of labour laws on top of the Sunday closing laws, so the Police were regular visitors. Given that some of our staff spent their spare time hiding from the Police, it just added immeasurably to the tension levels on the shop floor.
And all of this to the background soundtrack of Christmas music. One tape of Christmas music. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
It’s been over 20 years 30 years now, and I still feel the hackles rise on the back of my neck with this song … but I’m over the worst of it now: I can actually listen to it without feeling that all-consuming desire to rip out the sound system and dance on the speakers. After two three decades.
December 14, 2019
Huot Automatic Rifle: The Ross Goes Full Auto
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Dec 2019http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…
During World War One, Joseph Alphonse Huot, a Canadian machinist and blacksmith living in Quebec, designed a conversion of the Ross MkIII rifle to become an automatic rifle. The Ross was the standard issue Canadian rifle at the beginning of the war, and Huot wanted to find a way to economically provide Canadian forces with an automatic weapon. His conversion functioned by mounting a gas piston onto the side of the Ross barrel, adding a large action cover and 25-round drum magazine, and a Lewis-style cooling shroud over the barrel.
In initial testing with the Canadian army, the Huot performed well. It was seriously considered for adoption, but had to undergo British testing and approval before that could happen. In British testing (by now near the end of the war), it was found to run well enough and have some positive attributes, but not sufficient to justify replacement of the Lewis Gun. It was rejected, and the Canadian Corps finished the war with the Lewis instead. Huot had spent several years privately developing the weapon and two more working on salary for the Canadian military, and had gone into considerable personal debt for the project. He had secured a deal to receive royalties on production, but that of course came to naught when the design was rejected. Ultimately, he was compensated $25,000 in 1936 (of the $36,000 he claimed to have spent).
Only five of the guns were made in total, with four known to still exist. Two of them are in Ottawa at the Canadian War Museum and one in the Seaforth Highlanders Museum in Vancouver and one in the Army Museum in Halifax.
Thanks to the Canadian War Museum for providing me access to film this Huot for you!
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
6281 N. Oracle #36270
Tucson, AZ 85704
Who will “Big Dairy” push as the next Conservative leader?
The Canadian supply management system is a classic case of concentrated benefits and diffused costs … all Canadians pay more for milk, cheese, and other dairy products, but the extra profits go to those who hold the quota allotment for production. During the last federal Conservative leadership race, the “temporary conservatives” were enough to push the Milk Dud over the top to defeat Maxime Bernier — because Bernier was outspoken in his opposition to the whole supply management cartel and threatened those guaranteed profits for the insiders. The Milk Dud has announced he’s stepping down, so who will Big Dairy choose to replace him?
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
To my mind the defining image of Andrew Scheer’s efforts to become prime minister of Canada, which officially came to an end Thursday, comes from the 2017 Press Gallery Dinner in Ottawa. “There’s some suggestion out there that I’m beholden to a certain group within the Conservative family,” he told the crowd, grinning. And then, dimples at maximum, he took a swig from a one-litre carton of Neilson two-per-cent milk.
It’s nice when politicians can poke fun at themselves. Most are really bad at it, betraying only their own ego. Scheer’s routine, by contrast, reportedly brought the house down. The problem is that, by all the evidence, Scheer was utterly beholden to the dairy industry. And absent the effects of alcohol, that’s not really very funny.
We knew at the time that, days before, Scheer had barely beaten Maxime Bernier in the party leadership contest with help from a few thousand votes from people whom Bernier not unreasonably called “fake Conservatives” — i.e., people who had purchased memberships for the sole purpose of voting for Scheer, for the sole purpose of maintaining supply management in the dairy industry (which Bernier opposes) intact.
We came to know later, thanks to a Dairy Farmers of Canada briefing book discovered by an aggrieved delegate to the 2018 party convention in Halifax, that the dairy lobby considered Scheer a “safety net.” Regardless of any vote by the party membership that might recommend freer markets in dairy, the book alleged, the farmers had Scheer’s commitment never to undermine supply management in an election platform.
Scheer denied any such deal existed, of course. But it seemed doubtful the dairy industry’s notoriously fearsome, professional and effective lobbyists could have been so misinformed.
It ought to have been a liability from the start: Here was the self-styled middle-class alternative to Justin Trudeau, the man who knows what it’s like to plan a family budget around the breakfast table, to scrimp and save, whose parents didn’t own a car, declaring his fealty to a cartel dedicated to inflating milk prices for the benefit of wealthy businesses. Har, har, har.
December 13, 2019
We won’t have the Milk Dud to kick around any more … eventually
News of the moment in Canada is the sudden resignation of “Conservative” party leader Andrew “The Milk Dud” Scheer:
Andrew Scheer, paid tool of Big Dairy, chugs some milk during a Press Gallery speech in 2017. I’ve called him the “Milk Dud” ever since.
Screencapture from a CTV video uploaded to YouTube.
Andrew Scheer used money from the Conservative Party to pay costs of private schooling for his children, according to sources in contact with Global News. Some are suggesting this story might have ultimately let to Scheer’s resignation.
Scheer has since stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party, but he will not fully resign until the party has a replacement to fill the position.
According to some senior Conservative members, Scheer’s use of the Conservative Party of Canada funds was improper.
While in the House of Commons, Scheer said, “I just informed my colleagues in the Conservative caucus that I will be resigning as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and I will be asking the Conservative Party national council to immediately begin the process of organizing a leadership contest.”
“In order to chart the course ahead in the direction this party is heading, the party needs someone who can give 100 percent.”
Dustin van Vugt, the Executive Director of the Conservative Party of Canada wrote a statement saying, “All proper procedures were followed and signed off on by the appropriate people.”
Van Vugt talked about the party covering some of Scheer’s costs in the statement saying, “As is the normal practice for political parties, the Party offered to reimburse some of the costs associated with being a national leader and re-locating the family to Ottawa.”
Where, oh where will the “Conservatives” find a leader of Scheer’s “stature” to fill his dainty little shoes? Maybe Justin can spare one of his cast-offs…
