Quotulatiousness

June 7, 2017

“To rely solely on the U.S. security umbrella would make us a client state”

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:56

That’s Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland with a statement that would cause the late Liberal PM Pierre Trudeau to throw her out of cabinet … because Canada has been relying solely on the US security umbrella since shortly after the elder Trudeau became Prime Minister in 1968. The interesting thing is that the federal government is reportedly going to announce significant new funds for the Canadian Forces in the wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency:

Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland says Ottawa will forge its own path on the world stage because Canada can no longer rely on Washington for global leadership.

In a major speech setting the stage for Wednesday’s release of a new multibillion-dollar blueprint for the Canadian Armed Forces, Ms. Freeland rejected Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy and its dismissal of free trade, global warming and the value of Western alliances in countering Russian adventurism and the Islamic State.

While she did not mention the U.S. President by name, Ms. Freeland expressed deep concern about the desire of many American voters to “shrug off the burden of world leadership.”

[…]

Ms. Freeland said Canada has been able to count on the powerful U.S. military to provide a protective shield since the end of the Second World War, but the United States’ turn inwards requires a new Canadian approach to defend liberal democracies.

“To rely solely on the U.S. security umbrella would make us a client state,” she said. “To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power.”

Giving Canada’s military “hard power” will allow it to meet global challenges, she said, listing North Korea, the civil war in Syria, the Islamic State, Russian aggression in the Ukraine and Baltic states and climate change as major threats to the world order.

“We will make the necessary investments in our military, to not only address years of neglect and underfunding, but also to place the Canadian Armed Forces on a new footing – with new equipment, training, resources and consistent and predictable funding,” she said.

Wednesday’s defence-policy review is expected to lay out the military’s priorities for future overseas deployments, and outline Ottawa’s 20-year plan for spending billions of dollars to upgrade warships and fighter jets, among other things.

Amazing. I didn’t think it would fall to Freeland to announce that we’re planning to stop being freeloaders on the US military…

QotD: Blame America

Filed under: Cancon, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Canadians love to compare themselves to Americans, for all kinds of reasons — to congratulate themselves, to flagellate themselves, to comfort themselves when they’re somewhat embarrassed. The “meanwhile in Canada” genre of tweets is a bit of all three: in the midst of chaos in Washington, someone will oh-so-cleverly take note of a comparatively minor Canadian scandal. There is no charitable interpretation to be made of it: it’s either bragging, or it’s suggesting that we worry too much about Canada’s ostensibly piddling scandals — like, say, the prime minister’s chief of staff cutting a $90,000 cheque to a sitting Senator. That’s not Watergate, but it’s bonkers nonetheless.

The effect is both to confuse the conversation about any given issue and to absolve Canadians of any responsibility for it. The ultimate example was CBC Marketplace’s moronic attempt to sell racist t-shirts on Canadian streets and chalk up any interest to “the Trump effect.” But again, that was just an extreme manifestation of this unhealthy blame-America instinct — one we would do well to eradicate.

Chris Selley, “‘Canada’s Donald Trump’ was never on offer in the Conservative leadership race”, National Post, 2017-05-26.

June 1, 2017

Terence Corcoran – It was the fake Tories that did in Maxime Bernier

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Financial Post, Terence Corcoran blames the supply management fans and other anti-free market types for Maxime Bernier’s loss in the federal Conservative leadership race:

On Monday, during a noon-hour Ontario CBC Radio show, the host opined that Maxime Bernier lost the Conservative leadership because of his “wild ideas,” as if the libertarian politician from Quebec had been offering conservatives options too crazy to contemplate.

Wild ideas? In the recent history of Canadian politics, no politician has been more grounded or sane.

[…] if accounts from the frontline are accurate, Bernier would have won the leadership were it not for vote-rigging infiltrators from the farmers’ unions and associated backers of supply management.

One source says that as many as 3,000 points went to Scheer, mostly in Quebec and Ontario, as a result of an organized campaign in which farmers temporarily joined the Conservative party and then cast votes against Bernier.

Bernier didn’t lose the leadership vote; it was stolen from him by a concerted campaign organized by members of Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) and farmers in Ontario. Via Facebook, Quebec farmers and others were urged to join the Conservative party and vote for Andrew Scheer.

Three Quebec ridings tell the story. One is Beauce, Bernier’s home riding. Right off the bat, in the opening round of the ranked ballot, Scheer collected 46.63 per cent of the points against 47.5 per cent for Bernier. By the end of the final round, Scheer was at 51 per cent versus 48 for Bernier — in a riding where Bernier is a local hero among Conservatives and hardly anyone would even know Scheer’s name.

May 30, 2017

The unfriendly border

Filed under: Cancon, Government, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 04:00

I’ve generally had little trouble crossing the US/Canadian border, but I’ve perhaps been quite lucky. An old friend of mine recently was turned back from the border crossing at Port Huron and had an exceptionally unpleasant time dealing with US officials:

On Wednesday May 10, I was denied entry into the USA.
I was attempting to travel to the International Congress for Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo MI.
I have attended this conference, presenting at organized sessions, since (at least) 2012.
One of these sessions was to be a combination demonstration / hands on. I had undertaken similar sessions there in 2013 and 2015.
I had booked a vendor’s table, selling objects made in Ontario at my studio, either by myself as the Wareham Forge, or by my partner as Elfworks Studio. I have done this since 2014.

At ICMS 2017 I was intending to undertake the following:
– travel straight to and straight back from the event, a total of 5 days.
– setting up a vendor’s table to sell products made in Canada (all at my home studio), at a total combined value of $2450 US
– participate in an panel discussion session (#41)
– participate in a hands on workshop session (#224)

I can not remain dispassionate about this whole episode.

Through this entire event, I made a deliberate attempt to keep my body language calm and unassertive. My hands folded in front of me, on steering wheel or visible on the desk. I attempted to keep my voice casual, calm and relaxed.
I do appreciate that some questions, some actions, are part of standard operations policy. I did attempt to make allowances for all this, never refusing to answer or follow instructions – as they were given.
I consider it extremely important to remember that I have decades of experience communicating to the general public. My spoken language skills are excellent.

[…]

The Officer returns. I overhear a comment about ‘all his tools’. (12)
Over this conversation, I finally get asked ‘What all are you doing at this conference.’
I state that along with the vendor table, I will be participating in two academic sessions. One a panel discussion, one a workshop session where participants will be able to make cast pewter badges they can keep. I stress that I am not being paid for any of this.
Eventually, I get told that the goods will be released with no duties and allowed to pass importation.
‘But there is something else I can’t determine, so you will have to go to Immigration.’
Just what the potential problem may be is not given.

Another, heavily equipped (tactical) Officer arrives.
‘I don’t think I need to put you in handcuffs for this, but I am required to put you under restraint’
Please put you hands behind your back, fingers interlaced.
He holds my hands with one of his, pushing up and forward so my weight is off balance on my toes. He is supporting me with his other hand on my upper arm.
This officer is polite and professional. I get escorted in this manner across an open parking area, through a public area at the front of the separate Immigration building. (13)
The Commercial Officer is accompanying as well, with my original invoice document in hand. He still has my car keys.

Dealing with customs at the border tends to be a tense moment for many travellers, even if they’re not in violation of any rule or regulation. Darrell’s account shows that the tension can be more than matched on the other side of the booth. It’s certainly soured him on the idea of visiting the US again.

May 29, 2017

Who the heck is Andrew Scheer?

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I admit, I wasn’t really paying attention to the federal Conservative leadership race … I’d blithely assumed that Mad Max would win … so I didn’t pay much attention to the other candidates (other than my local MP, who was eliminated on the 12th ballot). So who is this new guy? Tom Flanagan thinks he’s the Tory version of our current “sunny ways” Prime Minister, god help us:

Andrew Scheer is the new Conservative leader, beating Maxime Bernier by the narrowest of margins, 51 per cent to 49 per cent. Mr. Bernier campaigned on an adventurous platform of economic libertarianism, including an end to supply management and corporate subsidies, and new approaches to equalization and to health-care funding. Mr. Scheer, in contrast, stressed continuity with past party policy. He positioned himself as the consensus candidate, the leading second or third choice.

Mr. Scheer is 38 years old, young for a political leader but not impossibly so. (Joe Clark became leader of the Progressive Conservatives at 37 and went on to beat Pierre Trudeau in the next election.) Though young, Mr. Scheer already has a lot of political experience. He has represented Regina-Qu’Appelle for 13 years and won five consecutive elections in his riding. He has also been Speaker of the House of Commons and House Leader of the Conservative Party under Rona Ambrose.

Mr. Scheer’s political roots are in Reform and the Canadian Alliance, but he followed Stephen Harper in abandoning the sorts of libertarian policies still favoured by Maxime Bernier. As leader, Mr. Scheer will continue to pursue Mr. Harper’s goals of lower taxes, balanced budgets, and closer cooperation with Canada’s international allies – things that all Conservatives agree on. Like Brad Wall, premier of his home province of Saskatchewan, he is vociferously opposed to the Liberals’ carbon tax and has promised to repeal it, though that may prove difficult to accomplish if and when he finally comes to office.

Oh, goody! He still supports market-distorting supply management and crony capitalist subsidies for “friends of the PM”. I’m sure he’ll fit in just fine in Ottawa — they’ll make room for him at the trough. Yay!

May 28, 2017

Maxime Bernier falls just short of victory in federal Conservative leader race

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:37

He was defeated on the thirteenth ballot by Andrew Scheer (who?)

Andrew Scheer emerged as Conservative leader after 13 ballots on Saturday evening, a surprise victory but one with which most Tories seem to be at peace.

He overtook Maxime Bernier on the final ballot, thanks to the support of social conservatives — even though he has pledged not to reopen the abortion debate — and Quebeckers upset at Bernier’s stance on supply management.

Bernier was struck by the 30 per cent curse: no Canadian leadership candidate has won after recording less than 30 per cent on the first ballot.

Scheer’s victory was a vote for moderation and continuity — a very conservative choice.

The new leader performed strongly in Quebec, even beating Bernier in his home riding of Beauce. He also won in Ontario, Atlantic Canada and his home province of Saskatchewan.

Scheer won by just 7,000 votes in the popular vote.

It’s pointed out that Bernier’s opposition to our illiberal protectionist supply management system may have been the deciding factor (it certainly cost him support in his own riding and in Quebec as a whole). It’d be almost amusing if Justin Trudeau is forced to break up the supply management system as a concession to save NAFTA…

May 27, 2017

Canada’s hollow army

Filed under: Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Thanks to a post at Army.ca, here is the rough outline of the NATO battle group that Canada will be leading in Latvia later this summer (oddly lacking in attached artillery support):

… the Canadian-led battalion level battle group will be composed of about 1,138 soldiers, as well as armor, armored transport and combat support. Of that number, 450 will be Canadian mechanized infantry bringing with them armored vehicles and various support elements. A specialized Canadian reconnaissance platoon will also be on the ground. Albania will send 18 combat (explosive ordnance disposal) engineers. Italy will send a mechanized infantry company consisting of 160 soldiers plus armored fighting vehicles. Poland will send a tank company with 160 troops. Slovenia will send 50 soldiers specializing in defense against weapons of mass destruction, (chemical, biological and nuclear weapon defense, decontamination operations etc). Spain will send the second-largest contingent: 300 soldiers from a mechanized infantry company and armored vehicles, combat engineers and support elements.

As Ted Campbell points out, this is an odd and unwieldy formation and seems unnecessarily multi-national for such a small tasking. Why isn’t the Canadian Army just sending a full battalion with the necessary supporting troops (artillery, armour, engineers, medical and logistics, etc.) to minimize operational and linguistic friction? It’s because we don’t have enough troops to do that successfully:

There is an old, tried and true, military expression to describe this: “it’s a dog’s bloody breakfast!” Can you imagine trying to command and control that organization? Especially under NATO’s rules that, as we saw in Afghanistan, allow each country to impose caveats on what where when and how its forces may be told asked to do anything at all.

So how did we, Canada, get to this? How is it that we cannot, it appears, deploy a complete battle group without Albanian, Italian, Polish, Solvenian and Spanish troops? After all, we had a full battle group in Afghanistan just five years ago, didn’t we?

Well, yes, but …

First, a “battle group” is rarely a formed unit (never in the Canadian Army). It is, usually, either a full up armoured (tank) regiment or infantry battalion with add-ons: tanks or infantry, artillery in direct support, engineers and so on and so forth. Our battle group in Afghanistan was always based on one of Canada’s nine infantry battalions with attachments from a tank regiment, an artillery regiment and so on. But even the infantry battalion, the “base” of the battle group had to be augmented. Canada has not had one, single, full strength, properly organized and equipped infantry battalion for more than a decade. A battalion ought to have 950± soldiers and its own, organic, mortars, heavy machine guns, anti-tank or assault weapons, and, and , and … but many years ago, in an effort to “balance” the army the infantry was (stupidly) stripped of its mortars ~ the artillery will take care of it, it was said … and, bless ’em, the gunners have not let the infantry down, but that doesn’t mean the decision to strip the mortars, especially, from the infantry made any military sense at all. It didn’t; it was a dumb decision ~ the wrong thing for all the wrong reasons. But, a good friend tells, me, the prevailing view in the Army, especially, is that nothing must ever be cut because it will never, ever be gotten back. Thus we strip the battalions but leave the empty shells ~ a Canadian battalions circa 2017 has 500+ soldiers, not the 1,000- it needs. Even at the height of the Afghan campaign, when Major General (then Lieutenant Colonel) Omer Lavoie led Operation Medusa (you know, the one which Harjit Sajan said he conceived as “the architect”) his battalion, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Canadian Regiment 1RCR) had to be augmented with a company from the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry because there were not enough companies in all three of the RCR battalions that had not been deployed within the last 18 months … the Army, in other words, had been hollowed out for years, even decades.

May 26, 2017

Toronto-London high speed train plan – “many Ontarians wouldn’t trust the Liberals to see an HO-scale model of this plan to fruition on time or on budget”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Chris Selley discusses the weak-but-barely-plausible high speed train plans announced by the Ontario government the other day:

High-speed rail is expensive — to build, certainly, and more on that shortly, but just as importantly to ride. It’s 202 kilometres from Le Mans to Gare Montparnasse in Paris. The first TGV of the morning takes 58 minutes — total average speed, 208 km/h — and will set you back €45. It’s 180 kilometres from Frankfurt’s Hauptbanhof to Cologne’s Hauptbanhof. The 7:27 a.m. ICE train takes 65 minutes — average speed: 167 km/h — and Deutsche Bahn wants €60 for the privilege. Brussels to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is 195 kilometres. The Thalys will get you there in 92 minutes tomorrow morning, at a relatively modest average speed of 127 km/h and for the eye-watering sum of €82.

This is the sort of distance Ontario’s Liberal government says it plans to cover with high-speed rail — from Union Station in Toronto to London via Pearson Airport, Guelph and Kitchener-Waterloo. A report and “preliminary business case” by former federal transport minister David Collenette, released Friday, envisions 185 kilometres of track with a maximum speed of 300 km/h in one scenario and 250 km/h in the other, and by 2025.

The London-to-Toronto trip would take 66 minutes in the faster scenario and 73 in the slower, for a total average speed of between 152 and 168 km/h. Either would represent genuine high-speed rail, and it would come at genuine high-speed rail prices: somewhere between $4 billion and $11 billion under the 250 km/h scenario; somewhere between $15 billion and $44 billion at 300 km/h.

[…]

So it’s a bit of a conundrum for the Liberals. This is a big offer — just the sort of thing people in the GTA say they want when they come back from Cologne, Paris and Amsterdam. It ought to be a reasonably compelling plank of an election platform.

But many Ontarians wouldn’t trust the Liberals to see an HO-scale model of this plan to fruition on time or on budget. It’s vulnerable to the sort of grievance-mongering and populism that sometimes makes it hard to tell a New Democrat from a Tory these days. We haven’t even gotten into the technical details. And ultimately, I’m just not really convinced people want this to happen as much as they say they do — not unless it’s free, and stops just the right distance from their back yards.

On the technical details, here’s a very brief overview from a post I wrote several years back, at the time California was beginning their insane high speed rail project:

The best place to build a high speed rail system for the US would be the Boston-New York-Washington corridor (aka “Bosnywash”, for the assumed urban agglomeration that would occur as the cities reach toward one another). It has the necessary population density to potentially turn an HSR system into a practical, possibly even profitable, part of the transportation solution. The problem is that without an enormous eminent domain land-grab to cheat every land-owner of the fair value of their property, it just can’t be done. Buying enough contiguous sections of land to connect these cities would be so expensive that scrapping and replacing the entire navy every year would be a bargain in comparison.

The American railway system is built around freight: passenger traffic is a tiny sliver of the whole picture. Ordinary passenger trains cause traffic and scheduling difficulties because they travel at higher speeds, but require more frequent stops than freight trains, and their schedules have to be adjusted to passenger needs (passenger traffic peaks early to mid-morning and early to mid-evening). The frequency of passenger trains can “crowd out” the freight traffic the railway actually earns money on.

Most railway companies prefer to avoid having the complications of carrying passengers at all — that’s why Amtrak (and VIA Rail in Canada) was set up in the first place, to take the burden of money-losing passenger services off the shoulders of deeply indebted railways. Even after the new entity lopped off huge numbers of passenger trains from its schedule, it couldn’t turn a profit on the scaled-down services it was offering.

Ordinary passenger trains can, at a stretch, share rail with freight traffic, but high speed trains cannot. At higher speeds, the actual construction of the track has to change to deal with the physical problem of safely guiding the fast passenger trains along the rail. Signalling must also change to suit the far-higher speeds — and the matching far-longer safe braking distances. High speed rail lines cannot be interrupted with grade crossings, for the safety of passengers and bystanders, so additional bridges and tunnels must be built to avoid bringing road vehicles and pedestrians too close to the trains.

In other words, a high speed railway line is far from being just a faster version of what we already have: it would have to be built separately, to much higher standards of construction.

May 24, 2017

“I don’t know if Lou would be cracking up about this or crying because it’s just too stupid”

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Reactions to the University of Guelph student association’s characterizing Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” as transphobic:

Friends of the late Lou Reed responded on Saturday with disbelief to a claim by a Canadian student body that the singer’s 1972 hit Walk on the Wild Side contains transphobic lyrics.

“I don’t know if Lou would be cracking up about this or crying because it’s just too stupid,” the singer’s longtime producer, Hal Willner, told the Guardian. “The song was a love song to all the people he knew and to New York City by a man who supported the community and the city his whole life.”

The Guelph Central Student Association, a group at the University of Guelph in Ontario, apologised for including the song on a playlist at a campus event.

In an apology published to Facebook and subsequently removed, the group said: “We now know the lyrics to this song are hurtful to our friends in the trans community and we’d like to unreservedly apologize for this error in judgement.”

The lyrics in question focus on Reed’s friends from Andy Warhol’s Factory, among them transgender “superstars” Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling.

“Holly came from Miami, FLA,” Reed sings. “Hitchhiked her way across the USA/ Plucked her eyebrows on the way/ Shaved her legs and then he was a she/ She says, ‘Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side.’”

Uploaded on 19 Nov 2009

***Rest in Peace to Holly [Woodlawn] who came from Miami, F-L-A, and who Lou first mentions in the opening lines of the song***

**Congratulations (a long overdue one at that) to the Newest Member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Lou Reed!**

*So sad to hear about Lou’s passing today at the age of 71. There will never be another one like you Lou. A true original and pioneer. Like The Who said in their Facebook status: “Walk On the Peaceful Side”*

“Walk On The Wild Side” from Lou Reed’s 1972 second solo album, Transformer, (after leaving the Velvet Underground) did not chart in the top 10 on Billboard. Some of the songs that year that did chart in the top 10 were: Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally),” Mac Davis “Don’t Get Hooked On Me,” and Wayne Newton “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast.” I’d say “Walk On The Wild Side” is just as memorable, if not more so than those ones. My favorite part of the song is probably the saxophone solo at the end 3:44.

To say the least, this song was highly controversial when it came out considering it is about transvestites who come to NYC for prostitution. They would say to their potential customers, “Take a walk on the wild side!” Lou Reed once said about the song: “I always thought it would be fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn’t met before, or hadn’t wanted to meet.” What an amazing storyteller and lyrical genius Lou Reed was.

Try to find another song from this time period where the artist talks so openly about subjects such as oral sex, transvestites, and drug use, there weren’t very many others. He was writing about things in a style that, frankly, almost no other artist at that time would even consider writing or singing about. Lou was well before his time, and has inspired countless artists from all genres. What a classic, classic song! Still no song like it to this day. What artist other than Lou could get away with lyrics like: “And the colored girls go doo do doo, doo do doo, doo do doo”?! The lyrics are way too clever and fun not to post in the description so here they are:

Lyrics:

Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
He said, ‘Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side’

Candy came from out on the island
In the backroom she was everybody’s darlin’
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
He said, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’

And the colored girls go
Doo do doo, doo do doo, doo do doo

Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City’s the place where they said
‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
I said, ‘Hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side’

Sugar plum fairy came and hit the streets
Lookin’ for soul food and a place to eat
Went to the Apollo, you should’ve seen ’em go go go
They said, ‘Hey sugar, take a walk on the wild side’
I said, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
Alright, huh

Jackie is just speeding away
Thought she was James Dean for a day
Then I guess she had to crash
Valium would have helped that bash
She said, ‘Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side’
I said, ‘Hey honey, take a walk on the wild side’

And the colored girls say
Doo do doo, doo do doo, doo do doo

May 22, 2017

Who’s afraid of Mrs. Grundy?

Filed under: Books, Britain, Cancon — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

In my family, the name “Mrs. Grundy” was used to describe someone of rigidly conformative taste and judgement (and keenly censorious bent). I’d always assumed it was just a family notion or perhaps a Yorkshire-ism, but the Wikipedia entry makes it clear that Mrs. Grundy has been the bane of many a would-be adventurous or daring spirit for centuries:

Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what the respectable might think is also referred to as grundyism.

Although she began life as a minor character in Thomas Morton’s play Speed the Plough (1798), Mrs Grundy was eventually so well established in the public imagination that Samuel Butler, in his novel Erewhon, could refer to her in the form of an anagram (as the goddess Ydgrun). As a figure of speech she can be found throughout European literature.

It also discusses a real-life Mrs. Grundy from the early nineteenth century:

During the reign of William IV (reigned 1830-1837) a Mrs Sarah Hannah Grundy (1 January 1804 – 30 December 1863) was employed as Deputy Housekeeper at Hampton Court Palace one of Henry VIII of England’s most famous residences. Her husband, John Grundy (1798/1799 – August 1861), was keeper of the State apartments. Mrs Grundy became Head Housekeeper on 22 April 1838, a year after Queen Victoria ascended to the throne, and she served in that position until 1863 when she retired. Her duties included the care of the chapel at Hampton Court.

Royal families stopped using Hampton Court as a residence in 1737, and from the 1760s onward, it was divided up for “grace-and-favour” residents who were granted rent-free accommodation in return for great service to the Crown or country. These private rooms numbered in the hundreds. Much is revealed about the Victorian ladies living at Hampton Court Palace through their letters, particularly their correspondence to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office as the Ladies attempted to get around the regulations — to exchange their apartments for better ones, to sub-let their apartments for profit, to keep dogs, or other matters of convenience. Equally revealing are the letters from the Housekeepers to the Lord Chamberlain, complaining about the Ladies’ behaviour.

However, a bit of Canadian history indicates that the use of the term “Mrs. Grundy” as I’m familiar with it long predated the lady who policed morals at Hampton Court:

… in a book published in 1836, The Backwoods of Canada Being Letters From The Wife Of An Emigrant Officer, Illustrative Of The Domestic Economy Of British America, by Catharine Parr Traill, she writes: “Now, we bush-settlers are more independent: we do what we like; we dress as we find most suitable and most convenient; we are totally without the fear of any Mr. or Mrs. Grundy; and having shaken off the trammels of Grundyism, we laugh at the absurdity of those who voluntarily forge afresh and hug their chains.” This appears to show that the modern concept of “Mrs. Grundy” was current before the Mrs. Grundy of Hampton Court began her reign.

May 20, 2017

On board The Canadian

Filed under: Cancon, Railways — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

The Toronto Star‘s Jennifer Bain takes a trip on VIA Rail’s premier passenger train from Toronto to Vancouver:

VIA dome observation car, 2007. Photo by Savannah Grandfather (Wikimedia)

ABOARD THE CANADIAN-That first overnight on the train was a gloriously sleepless blur disrupted by clickety clacks, rumbles, grinding squeals and ding, ding dings. Alone in F-130 in the Château Cadillac car on a Murphy bed pulled down from the wall to fill the room, I stared mesmerized through an extra-large window into the dark depths of northern Ontario and thought deeply Canadian thoughts.

Happy 150th birthday, Canada. This year cries out for a celebratory road trip. I use the term road loosely. A train track will do just fine. Let someone else drive. For four nights on the Canadian, Via Rail Canada’s iconic train from Toronto to Vancouver, I relaxed and watched boreal forest become prairie and then mountains.

Somewhere north of Sudbury that first morning, I threw on clothes and tiptoed down the narrow hall, hands outstretched to brace for sways and lurches, through the Château Dollard sleeping car to the end of the train.

The Laurentide Park car is tricked out with a downstairs lounge and upstairs domed seating area. The DIY tea and coffee station became my watering hole.

Routes of The Canadian: the original 1955 route is in red (on CPR trackage) and the current route is in blue (mainly on CN tracks). VIA took over operation of The Canadian in 1978 and changed to the current route in 1990.

You are in your own world on the Canadian, but not necessarily alone. Work on the lost art of small talk in the dining car when you’re seated with strangers. Play a board game with fellow passengers since there’s no Wi-Fi and often no cell service.

This 4,466-kilometre journey is a throwback to simpler times.

Jason Shron — a train nut from Thornhill that I met through Box — has done the Canadian upwards of 40 times and found “there’s a tendency for people on the train to spill their guts to strangers,” especially if they’re on divorce tours, which can become awkward the next day. “There’s a certain magic to that,” he admitted. He was taking his three kids to Winnipeg to meet his wife and other family for Passover.

Shron owns Canada’s largest model train company, built a section of a full-size Via car in his basement, is restoring two train cars and is writing a book about Via for its 40th anniversary next year. The Crown corporation “doesn’t celebrate its own history and doesn’t celebrate its own people” nearly enough, he lamented, and so he’s “like this one-man Via fan club.”

Make that two. Shron and Box love trains for different reasons — the actual machines and the art of train travel — but they are anomalies. Too many Canadians have never been on a train, much less slept on one.

Trains are not a part of our modern lives or lexicon, so my learning curve is steep. Passenger trains don’t have cabooses, conductors are obsolete and drivers are called engineers. Freight trains have priority in Canada when there’s one line, so passenger trains like the Canadian have to wait on the siding, causing delays.

There are economy-class seats that you sleep upright in, and banks of seats that convert into upper and lower “berths” at night with just a curtain for privacy. There are private rooms, some with a toilet that gets covered when the bed comes out, and a shared shower down the hall. I was lucky enough to experience “Prestige class” in a room with an L-shaped couch, Murphy bed and private en-suite washroom, with access to a trio of concierges, reserved seating at the front of the dome car, meals, booze and all the Earl Grey I could drink.

Part of the reason “many Canadians have never been on a train” is that there are a lot fewer trains running today than in years past: when VIA took over most intercity passenger service, it rationalized a lot of the routes (but not enough to become profitable, hence the federal government’s ongoing subsidies to VIA). Even with those subsidies, passenger trains aren’t a bargain for the average traveller, and usually compare poorly to bus or air travel in both cost and frequency. Most of VIA’s trains lose money, as this table from 2014 shows:

So, how expensive is the trip that Ms. Bain took? I went to the VIA website to find out. Booking a trip from Toronto (in my case, Oshawa) to Vancouver on The Canadian to leave today (Saturday) would cost an eye-watering $9,684.10 per person in Prestige class (including a $500 service fee, but not including HST [Harmonized Sales Tax] of $1,114.10). There are cheaper fares — booking in advance, not taking the Prestige class ticket, other available sales, etc. — but a quick Google search shows return flights in the $600 range (but I could save $226 off that if I booked for tomorrow instead of today).

For a potted history of The Canadian there’s a useful Wikipedia page.

May 19, 2017

Marijuana use promotes incoherence … on the part of non-users

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Science, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley rounds up some of the less-than-realistic concerns of the anti-legalization folks:

The move toward marijuana legalization is … still not as coherent as it could be, let’s say. The Liberal legislation, unveiled last month, would establish rules around THC-impaired driving that may well prove unconstitutional: science has yet to establish a solid link between a given level of THC concentration in a driver’s blood or saliva and his level of impairment. Frustratingly, there are still those who use this as an argument against legalization — as if it would create pot-impaired drivers where there are none today.

Last week on CTV’s Question Period, host Evan Solomon asked former U.S. ambassador Bruce Heyman what would happen if someone showed up to the border with his car or his clothes smelling of marijuana. It’s a variation of a question that’s been asked often: As it stands, Canadians who admit having smoked marijuana in the past are sometimes turned back. What would happen after legalization?

The de facto answer is, as always: Whatever the hell the U.S. border guard in question wants to happen. (It amazes me how many Canadians haven’t yet figured this out.) And furthermore: “Don’t rock up to the U.S. border reeking of pot, you utterly unsympathetic tool.”

The de jure answer: Well, who knows? Why would Canada’s decision to legalize marijuana have any bearing on the admissibility of foreign pot-smokers to the United States of America?

Heyman’s answers were more, er, nuanced than mine. Bafflingly, he started talking about sniffer dogs and their performance limitations: They won’t care that pot’s legal, so they’ll still detect marijuana, and that will bog down the border.

Now, marijuana legalization certainly might lead to a bogged-down border — if humans, not canines, decide to bog it down. For example, one can imagine Donald Trump thinking legalization necessitated much more aggressive screening of incoming motorists, and not caring too much about the trade implications. Whether that makes any sense is another question.

May 15, 2017

Chorley Park, Ontario’s lost viceregal mansion

Filed under: Architecture, Cancon, Government, History — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Bateman on the odd history of Ontario’s fourth official home of the Lieutenant Governor:

Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Elizabeth Dowdeswell is one of four Canadian viceregal representatives to be (officially) homeless. Toronto pulled down its last government house, an astonishingly opulent mansion even among its Rosedale neighbours, in 1959 in the name of cost saving.

Just over a century ago, on 15 November 1915, the first official guests were welcomed inside the grand hall of Ontario’s million dollar palace. Twenty years later it was be derelict. Chorley Park is now largely forgotten, save for the small piece of it that remains on the edge of the Don Valley.

[…]

The province, however, had other ideas. It rejected Gage’s offer and forged ahead with the Rosedale site, known as Chorley Park, after the town of Chorley in Lancashire, England, the birthplace of Toronto alderman John Hallam.

The final design for the grand residence was drawn up by Francis R. Heakes – the province’s official architect also responsible for the Whitney Block on Queen’s Park Crescent – in the style of a French Loire Valley château.

Heakes’ blueprint borrowed heavily from submissions to the 1911 design competition, including many of the exterior details and the floor plan, and was limited to a budget of $215,000.

Chorley Park in Rosedale

[…]

The ongoing cost of maintaining the ostentatious mansion proved to be its eventual undoing. The Conservative provincial government found the cost even harder to justify as the Depression began to take hold in the 1920s.

Despite voices calling for the house to be abandoned, it lingered on as the official home of Ontario’s lieutenant-governor until 1937 when the fine furnishings and fixtures were stripped out and sold at auction.

When world war two began, the gutted interior was converted into a military hospital for wounded soldiers.

Chorley Park met its eventual end in 1959 when, with the last of the patients gone and a brief period as a refuge for Hungarian immigrants fleeing the revolution over, the Metro government under Fred Gardiner ordered the building torn down.

May 12, 2017

“Maybe this is creeping privatization after all. It’s certainly worth a shot”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the neither one thing nor the other state of alcohol retailing in Ontario:

On Tuesday the government enumerated 76 new Ontario supermarkets where, by Canada Day, you will be able to buy beer. That will make a total of 206 Ontario supermarkets where you can buy beer — an artificially limited selection of beer, only in six packs and singles and only during the same bankers’ hours as the LCBO and Beer Store. But still. That’s about one-third as many supermarkets selling beer as there are LCBO outlets selling beer; add in the 212 rural agency stores that sell wine, liquor and beer, and you’ve got almost two-thirds as many private enterprises selling beer as you have government bottle shops.

This could help prove several useful concepts that deserve much wider acceptance in Ontario. One is that it’s very easy for the government to make money off liquor sales without retailing liquor itself. Indeed, it’s easier; that’s why so many governments do it. The supermarkets buy the beer wholesale from the LCBO; the LCBO doesn’t have to worry about paying civil servants to sell that beer or running the stores.

Another is that the private sector can be counted on to keep liquor out of children’s hands. Indeed, with inspections and draconian fines in place, it can probably be trusted more. My observations suggest LCBO employees certainly card everyone who should be carded, but it’s nothing like it is in the U.S. I’m almost 41, not in especially good nick, and I still get asked about half the time.

Might Ontarians develop a taste for all this convenience? The hard cap on beer-in-supermarket licences is 450; having doled them all out, including agency stores, that would mean about half the liquor outlets in Ontario were privately run. And people might start to notice the bizarre inconsistencies: why can the Walmart on Bayfield Street in Barrie sell only beer, and only in six packs, while the Walmart on Hays Boulevard in Oakville can sell beer and wine, and meanwhile Hope’s Foodland in Novar, Mac’s Milk in Craigleith, Redden’s campground in Longbow Lake and Lac des Mille Lacs Bait and Tackle in Upsala can sell beer, wine and hard liquor — and smokes and fireworks and beef jerky and bread and eggs? Why can scores of convenience stores sell everything alcoholic as agency stores, but other convenience stores aren’t even eligible to apply for the new wine and beer licences?

May 10, 2017

BC Greens the biggest winners in provincial election

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

Jay Currie explains why, even though they didn’t “win” the election, the BC Green Party is the biggest winner from yesterday’s general election in the province:

There are two losers tonight: the Liberals and the NDP. And there is one winner: the Greens. They managed to split the NDP vote and likely cost the NDP a majority government.

However, where the NDP and the Liberals have no obvious room to grow their electorate, the Greens have a very good shot at expanding theirs. The fact is that the people who shop at Whole Foods, send their kids to “French Immersion” if they can’t afford private (not for racist reasons of course) and think recycling is an act of benediction are legion. They used to vote NDP, now they have an alternative.

Andrew Weaver may be a lousy climate scientist but he is not an unintelligent man. He can count (so long as it does not involve climate change time series) and there are six ridings where the Greens came second. A rational, non-coalition, support of the Liberals would let him pass legislation of greater consequence than a ban on mandatory high heels for women in serving jobs. The Liberals, who will likely be reduced to a rural rump despite having likely won the most seats, are basically being elected by BC’s version of “deplorables”. Nice people think they are a bit, well, common.

Dr. Weaver, well educated, Oak Bay resident and articulate guy that he is should be able to target those nice, white, very liberal people and peel them away from both the Liberals and the NDP. Plus, Weaver has the children who have grown up on Green ideology masquerading as education.

One winner tonight: the Greens.

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