Quotulatiousness

January 9, 2024

“[P]olitical violence is never ever acceptable in the United States political system”

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

Mark Steyn gets the message:

~I’m glad to see I wasn’t the only one who got a mordant laugh out of this line in Joe Biden’s Feast of the Insurrection sermon:

So “political violence is never ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never. It has no place in a democracy. None.”

An odd thing to say about a “political system” in which Lieutenant Michael Byrd was able to kill Ashli Babbitt in cold blood as his Capitol Police colleagues were able to do likewise to another defenceless woman, Mariam Carey. I would hope to be wrong, but I would be surprised if America gets through this year without more “political violence” — because one side seems to be fomenting it as a pretext for intensifying what Mr Kelly calls their “monopoly” on it.

That monopoly is part of a broader problem in the United States: the abolition of equality before the law. If you can avoid getting dispatched as swiftly as Ms Babbitt, you will nevertheless have what remains of your life ruined by detention without trial, solitary confinement, double-digit years of prison with no possibility of parole … Americans have gotten the message. Do you recall, after the Canadian truckers’ heroic Covid protests inspired the world, there was talk of a similar American Freedom Convoy?

Oh, you don’t remember? Me neither. That’s because it all fizzled out, as its proponents figured that the dirty stinkin’ rotten corrupt US Department of Justice would just treat it as January 6th on wheels.

~Of course, it didn’t work out too great for the Canadian truckers, either: Frozen bank accounts, protracted prosecution … Small potatoes by US DOJ standards, and Lieutenant Byrd wasn’t around to shoot them dead, but it has certainly been fierce and targeted by Canadian standards. Why? Because in Ottawa the “traffic disruption impacted residents’ lives in many ways”.

On the other hand, “pro-Palestinian” groups are currently disrupting traffic in Toronto. For over a week they’ve shut down the Avenue Road bridge over the 401. Why?

Well, it’s a key artery into Toronto’s and Canada’s most Jewish neighbourhood. But, relax: they’re not anti-Jew, they’re just anti-Zionist. After all, many of these Jews in Armour Heights and Bathurst Manor are out every night bombing Gaza daycare centres. It’s part of the same expansive definition of “pro-Palestinian” that has seen International Delicatessen Foods attacked because it has the same acronym as the Israeli Defence Force. But don’t worry, they’re not anti-Semites, just acro-Semites. If I were the famous Japanese tea master Takeno Jōō, I would hire additional security. But fortunately he died in 1555 …

Yet, as I said, it all comes down to equality before the law. The Canadian truckers handed out coffee and doughnuts to locals and are still in the dock two years on. Whereas on the blockaded Avenue Road overpass the Toronto Police deliver coffee and doughnuts to the pro-Hamas lads:

Roll up the Jews to win! In the old days, the German coppers pleaded that they were just obeying orders, but, as Kate MacMillan points out, the Toronto constables are just taking orders. Did you hear the way that fellow put it? “The police are now becoming our little messengers.”

December 19, 2023

Henry Dundas, cancelled because he didn’t do even more, sooner to abolish slavery in the British Empire

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

Toronto’s usual progressive suspects are still eager to rename Dundas Street because (they claim) Henry Dundas was involved in the slave trade. Which is true, if you torture the words enough. His involvement was to ensure the passage of the first successful abolitionist motion through Parliament by working out a compromise between the hard abolitionists (who wanted slavery ended immediately) and the anti-abolitionists. This is enough, in the views of the very, very progressive activists of today to merit our modern version of damnatio memoriae:

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville.
Portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence. National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons.

Henry Dundas never travelled to British North America and likely spent very little of his 69 years ever thinking about it. He was an influential Scottish career politician whose name adorns the street purely because he happened to be British Home Secretary when it was surveyed in 1793.

But after 230 years, activists led an ultimately successful a push for the Dundas name to be excised from the 23-kilometre street. As Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow said in deliberations over the name change, Dundas’s actions in relation to the Atlantic slave trade were “horrific“.

Was Dundas a slaveholder? Did he profit from the slave trade? Did he use his influence to advance or exacerbate the business of slavery?

No; Dundas was a key figure in the push to abolish slavery across the British Empire. The reason activists want his name stripped from Dundas Street is because he didn’t do it fast enough.

[…]

The petition was piggybacking off a similar anti-Dundas movement in the U.K. – which itself seems to have been inspired by Dundas’s portrayal as a villain in the 2006 film Amazing Grace, a fictionalized portrayal of the British anti-slavery movement.

Dundas was responsible for inserting the word “gradually” into an iconic 1792 Parliamentary motion calling for the end of the Atlantic slave trade. A legislated end to the trade wouldn’t come until 1807, followed by an 1833 bill mandating the total abolition of slavery across the British Empire.

The accusation is that – if not for Dundas – the unamended motion would have passed and the British slave trade would have ended 15 years earlier.

But according to the 18th century historians who have been brought out of the woodwork by the Cancel Dundas movement, Henry Dundas was a man working within the political realities of a Britain that wasn’t yet altogether convinced that slavery was a bad thing.

The year before Dundas’ “gradual” amendment secured passage for the motion, the House of Commons had rejected a similar motion for immediate abolition.

“Dundas’s amendment at least got an anti-slavery statement adopted — the first,” wrote Lynn McDonald, a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, in August. McDonald added that, in any case, it was just a non-binding motion; any actual law wouldn’t have gotten past the House of Lords.

The parliamentary record from this time survives, and Dundas was open about the fact that he “entertained the same opinion” on slavery as the famed abolitionist William Wilberforce, but favoured a more practical means of stamping it out.

“Allegations … that abolition would have been achieved sooner than 1807 without his opposition, are fundamentally mistaken,” reads one lengthy Dundas defence in the journal Scottish Affairs.

“Historical realities were much more nuanced and complex in the slave trade abolition debates of the 1790s and early 1800s than a focus on the role and significance of one politician suggests,” wrote the paper, adding that although Wilberforce opposed Dundas’ insertion of the word “gradually,” the iconic anti-slavery figure “later admitted that abolition had no chance of gaining approval in the House of Lords and that Dundas’s gradual insertion had no effect on the voting outcome.”

Meanwhile, the British abolition of slavery actually has some indirect ties to the road that bears Dundas’s name.

The road’s construction was overseen by John Graves Simcoe, the British Army general that Dundas had picked to be Lieutenant Governor of the colony of Upper Canada.

The same year he started building Dundas Street, Simcoe signed into law an act banning the importation of slaves to Upper Canada – and setting out a timeline for the emancipation of the colony’s existing slaves. It was the first anti-slavery legislation in the British Empire, and it was partially intended as a middle finger to the Americans’ first Fugitive Slave Act, passed that same year.

December 16, 2023

It was forty years ago today

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

York County Court HouseElizabeth and I got married in Toronto on this date in 1983. It was a bit of a race to get to the courthouse on time — my so-called best man decided that he had to go back to Mississauga “for a shower” that morning, and was quite late getting back into Toronto. Trying to get a cab to hurry in downtown Toronto traffic was a waste of effort, so I very nearly missed my own wedding. Elizabeth was not pleased with me holding up the show (even though I could rightfully claim it wasn’t my fault). The rest of the day is rather a blur to me now.

Prince of Wales hotel in Niagara-on-the-LakeWe had the reception that evening at a lovely house in the Playter Estates (during which my father tried to pick a fight with Elizabeth’s uncle), and then set off for our very brief honeymoon in Niagara-on-the-Lake the next day. We could only afford two nights at the Prince of Wales hotel, and because we got married on Saturday, we were in NOTL for Sunday and Monday nights. Back in 1983, Ontario still had fairly restrictive Sunday closing laws, so there was very little to do — almost everything was closed. (And that was probably for the best, as we had almost no money to spend anyway…)

Chateau des CharmesOne of the few businesses we found open in the area was the original Chateau des Charmes estate winery (not the huge, imposing facility of today: a small industrial-looking building a few kilometres away), where the only person on duty was Mme Andrée Bosc who gave us an exhaustive tasting experience and showed us around the winery. Neither of us were experienced wine drinkers, so this was wonderful for both of us. I’d love to say that we started our wine cellar that day, but that would only be partially true: we bought about a dozen bottles of various Chateau des Charmes wines, but we couldn’t afford to restock after those had been opened. We visited the winery every year on our anniversary for about a decade, until we got out of the habit of going back to NOTL (which was around the time our son was born).

After our brief honeymoon, we both had to go back to our jobs. Very shortly after that, my employer (the almost-unknown-to-Google Mr Gameway’s Ark) went bankrupt, which was financially bad timing for us, having just spent most of our tiny cash hoard on our honeymoon.

June 9, 2023

Rush – The Making of “YYZ”

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

marvincandle815
Published 17 Apr 2011

From the Classic Albums: 2112 & Moving Pictures special. Made some minor cuts to avoid repetition and to keep it under 10 minutes.

(more…)

January 30, 2023

Crime on Toronto’s public transit system is merely a symptom of a wider social problem

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As posted the other day, Matt Gurney’s dispiriting experiences on an ordinary ride on the TTC are perhaps leading indicators of much wider issues in all of western society:

“Toronto subway new train” by BeyondDC is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 .

Caveats abound. Toronto is, relatively speaking, still a safe city. The TTC moves many millions of people a week; a large percentage of whom are not being knifed, shot or burnt alive. And so on. We at The Line also suspect that whatever is happening in Toronto isn’t happening only in Toronto, but Toronto’s scale (and the huge scope of the TTC specifically) might be gathering in one place a series of incidents that would be reported as unconnected random crimes in any other city. A few muggings in Montreal or Winnipeg above the usual baseline for such crimes won’t fit the media’s love of patterns as much as a similar number of incidents on a streetcar or subway line.

Fair enough, duly noted, and all that jazz.

But what is happening out there?

Your Line editors have theories, and we’ve never hesitated to share them before: we think the pandemic has driven a portion of the population bonkers. We’d go further and say that we think it has left all of us, every last one, less stable, less patient, less calm and less empathetic. For the vast majority of us, this will manifest itself in many unpleasant but ultimately harmless ways. We’ll be more short-tempered. Less jovial at a party. Less patient with strangers, or even with loved ones. Maybe a bit more reclusive.

But what about the relatively small majority of us that were, pre-2020, already on the edge of deeper, more serious problems? What about those who were already experiencing mental-health issues, or living on the edge of real, grinding poverty?

It’s not like the overall societal situation has really improved, right? COVID-19 itself killed tens of thousands, and took a physical toll on many more, but we all suffered the stress and fear not just of the plague, but of the steps taken to mitigate it. (Lockdowns may have been necessary early in the pandemic, but they were never fun or easy, and that societal bill may be coming due.) Since COVID began to abate, rather than a chance to chill out, we’ve had convoys, a war, renewed plausible risk of nuclear war, and now a punishing period of inflation and interest-rate hikes that are putting many into real financial distress. We are coping with all of this while still processing our COVID-era stress and anxiety.

The timing isn’t great, is what we’re saying.

And on the other side of the coin, basically all our societal institutions that we’d turn to to cope with these issues — hospitals, social services, homeless shelters, police forces, private charities, even personal or family support networks — are fried. Just maxed out. We have financial, supply chain and, most critically, human-resource deficits everywhere. The people we have left on the job are exhausted and at their wits’ end.

This leaves us, on balance, less able to handle challenges than we were in 2020, due to literal exhaustion of both institutions and individuals. Meanwhile, against the backdrop of this erosion of our capacity, our challenges have all gotten worse!

It’s not hard to do the mental math on this, friends. It seems to us that in 2020, the policy of Canadian governments from coast to coast to coast, and at every level, was to basically keep a lid on problems like crime, homelessness, housing prices and shortages, mental health and health-care system dysfunction, and probably others we could add. One politician might put a bit more emphasis on some of these issues than others, in line with their partisan priors, but overall, the pre-2020 status quo in Canada was pretty good, and our political class, writ large, basically self-identified as guardians of that status quo, while maybe tinkering a bit at the margins (and declaring themselves progressive heroes for the trouble of the tinkering).

But then COVID-19 happens, and all our problems get worse. And all our ways of dealing with those problems get less effective. It doesn’t have to be by much. Just enough to bend all those flatlined (or maybe slightly improving) trendlines down. Instead of homelessness being kind of frozen in place in the big cities, it starts getting worse, bit at a time, month after month. The mental-health-care and homeless shelter systems that weren’t really doing a great job in 2020, but were more or less keeping big crises at a manageable level, started seeing a few more people fall through the cracks each month, month after month. Those people are just gone, baby, gone.

The health-care system that used to function well enough to keep people reasonably content, if not happy, locks up, and waitlists balloon, and soon we can’t even get kids needed surgeries on time.

The housing shortage goes insane, and prices somehow survive the pandemic basically untouched.

The court system locks up, meaning more and more violent criminals get bail and then re-offend, even killing cops when they should be behind bars.

None of these swings were dramatic. They were all just enough to set us on a course to this, a moment in time where the problems have had years to compound themselves and are now compounding each other.

Here’s the rub, folks. The Line doesn’t believe or accept that any of the problems we face today, alone or in combination, are automatically fatal. We can fix them all. But we need leaders, including both elected officials and bureaucrats, who fundamentally see themselves as problem fixers, and who understand right down deep in their bones that that is what their jobs are, and that they are no longer what they’ve been able to be for generations: hands-off middle managers of stable prosperity.

January 27, 2023

Post-pandemic travelling on the TTC: ride the Red Rocket … cautiously

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

Matt Gurney posted a series of tweets about his recent subway experiences in Toronto:

I rode the TTC three times today. Once to downtown from my home in midtown. Once within downtown to a different place. And then home from downtown.

On two of those three rides, there was someone having a very obvious mental-health crisis on the vehicle with us.

The first one was a young man who clapped his hands over his ears and shrieked incoherently at random intervals. And then he got off.

The second, an older man sat in a chair and screamed nonsense constantly for ten stops. Maybe more. That’s just when I got off.

I’m working on a bigger piece for later so I’ll save any complex thoughts and big conclusions for then. But there was something interesting I noticed today. I’m a regular TTC rider. Not daily but frequent. And for the first time today, I’m noticing gallows humour and planning.

“Good luck to everyone,” cracked one guy. There was laughter. Everyone knew what he meant.

But I’m also seeing little groups of strangers agreeing to each keep watch on one direction or another. Sometimes also joking about it.

None of this is funny, but my gut tells me that if Torotonians are now so thoroughly convinced that riding the TTC is so risky that it’s worth a dark joke, any politician who reacts to the next unprovoked attack or murder with a proposal for a national summit is gonna get smoked.

I like the TTC. I have great access to it. It’s super convenient and affordable. It’s a huge asset for me. I have token cufflinks. I’m a fan, is what I’m saying.

I’m now at the point where I’d think twice before taking my kids on it. And we used to ride it just to kill the time.

My son used to stand on the couch in our living room looking out the window counting buses as they went by, loudly shouting to announce each one. Getting to go on a bus or subway or a streetcar was an event for him. My daughter, maybe a bit less excited. Still loved it.

Ah man.

Anyway. I hope tomorrow is better.

Update: You might think the increased concern over using the TTC might be merely a bit of confirmation bias informed by recent reporting, but apparently the situation is serious enough that Toronto Police will be stepping up their presence on the system.

November 9, 2022

Liberal political fortunes ride “especially women in the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area” … and those women are angry right now

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Health, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Line, Ashley Csanady has some advice for Justin Trudeau in the lead-up to the next federal election that he really needs to pay attention to:

Poll after poll has told us the Liberals lost white male voters a long time ago, and their electoral fortunes, especially in Quebec and suburban Ontario, rely on women, especially women in the suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area. This isn’t to say dads and other caregivers aren’t angry. Families take many shapes and anyone with small people at home has faced the same indignities over the past nearly three years. However, politically and demographically, it’s the Ontario moms who are going to make or break the next election. And when folks are angry, it doesn’t matter who the incumbent is, they are wont to vote them out.

Nor is it not just about the children’s pain meds.

It’s about the fact we can’t find antibiotic eye drops over-the-counter either (a shortage one pharmacist told me is even worse than the one for pain and fever meds for the wee ones). Another shortage that means we must then turn to an already over-burdened health-care system to get a prescription for a medicine that may or may not be in stock.

Oh, and if that respiratory virus going around turns nasty, we aren’t even certain there will be a hospital bed for our babies when they need it most.

Then there is the infuriatingly slow roll-out of affordable childcare in this province. Parents once again caught between the feds and the province in a battle that may drag out the process so long that many expecting relief will see their kids off to junior kindergarten before it arrives.

Grocery bills are skyrocketing, and while I admit I’m privileged enough to absorb the eye-popping increases, so many families simply cannot. Imagine telling a picky toddler they can’t have their favourite snack because you can’t afford the crackers.

Now, Ontario moms had to deal with yet another disruption to their kids’ schooling, which threw their work lives into chaos once again. More disruptions are possible should bargaining fail again. This just after many women who left the workforce or took a step back from their careers during the pandemic were just getting back into the swing of things.

I made this point — that Ontario moms are angry and much of that anger is directed at political leaders, but I don’t expect it to fall on Ontario Doug Ford — on Twitter a couple weeks back. For this, I was “reminded” — more like chided — that many of these challenges are Mr. Ford’s fault. Or global challenges no logical person could blame the prime minister for. The partisans in my mentions were right on both counts. But here’s what they got wrong:

It doesn’t matter if I’m being “unfair” to Mr. Trudeau, because politics is unfair.

And as for Mr. Ford’s share of the blame, voters punish who’s up next at the ballot box, especially in a crisis. They had a chance to take out their rage on the PCs in June. They didn’t. So who does that leave up next?

June 26, 2022

The Toronto District School Board draws inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”

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

It’s normally a good thing when people in positions of power and influence have clearly understood the lessons from many sources, including speculative fiction. In the case of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), this isn’t the way it’s supposed to work:

    The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Thus begins Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s famous short story “Harrison Bergeron”. The satire story paints the picture of a dystopian future where absolute equality has been achieved thanks to various handicapping devices that force all the smart, good-looking, and talented people down to the same intellect, looks, and skills as everyone else. The rationale, of course, is that it wouldn’t be fair to let them get ahead because of their privilege while others are left behind.

The story has enduring appeal because it asks a question that strikes at the heart of our culture, namely, how much are we willing to sacrifice excellence in the name of equality? Should those who are endowed with more privilege or talent be allowed to reach their potential, even if it means others have fewer opportunities, or should those who are less gifted be given an equal chance at success, even if it means holding the gifted back?

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) seems to have chosen the latter approach. In May, the board’s Trustees voted to approve the Student Interest Programs Policy, which will change the way students are admitted into specialized arts, athletics, and STEM programs. Currently, admission into most of these programs is based on various “assessments of ability” such as auditions, portfolios, and report card marks. But starting in September 2023, these assessments will be scrapped and replaced with a random selection from students who express interest in the programs. In short, equality will take precedence over excellence.

“It is our responsibility to take action to improve access for all students where we identify systemic barriers,” said Alexander Brown, Chair of the TDSB. “This new policy will ensure a greater number of students have access to these high quality programs and schools while reducing barriers that have long-prevented many students from even applying.”

Unsurprisingly, the move was first proposed by the board’s Enhancing Equity Task Force.

“The idea that your child entered one of these programs because of his talent, which he had the privilege of cultivating, I don’t think is appropriate in a public school system,” said Trustee Robin Pilkey. “We need to make sure people have access to all programs.”

To paraphrase, “it wouldn’t be fair to let them get ahead because of their privilege.” Sound familiar?

June 19, 2022

The bookselling biz in Toronto

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

In the latest edition of the SHuSH newsletter, Ken Whyte looks back to those dimly remembered days early in the never-ending pandemic lockdown theatre we’ve all been trapped in since, like, forever:

I was in downtown Toronto one morning this week for the first time in a long time and while there was still lighter traffic and fewer people than in pre-pandemic days, things were bustling. That’s good news for thousands of retail businesses in Toronto’s core, not least Ben McNally’s bookstore.

Grumpy Ben is a favorite of this newsletter, always good for a quote. Way back in SHuSH 10, a reader asked us: “Why do books have prices printed on them? Very few items I purchase have ‘suggested retail prices’ but books and magazines do.” We went to Ben for an answer and, as reported at the time, almost lost our hearing:

    Why do they have prices printed on them? Great question! It makes me fucking nuts. Why shouldn’t I be able to set my own price? I mean, the publisher can have a suggested retail price, fine, but I shouldn’t have to honor it. As a bookseller, I should be able to sell it for what I can get. Some of those books from places like Harvard University Press, I could price the shit out of them. Who else is gonna carry the goddamn things?

I caught up with Ben again at his former Richmond and Bay store […] for SHuSH 53, a few months into lockdown. He was closed to foot traffic but delivering by courier and fulfilling curbside pickup orders. His lease was almost up and he had no option to renew. His landlord was turning his space into a breezeway. He felt fortunate not to have signed on for another ten years given that the retail world was falling down around his ears and I was happy for him from a financial perspective, but that location was easily the most beautiful bookstore in Toronto, and maybe in Canada. It was a real loss when it closed in August of that year. Ben put its gorgeous hardwood fixtures into storage and moved to a temporary location with plans to perhaps open again at a new spot if life ever returned to normal.

It was interesting for me to re-read that conversation. So much was unknowable at the time. Would the virus pass as quickly as SARS, or would it haunt us for years? Would there be a vaccine? Would people return downtown or work from home in perpetuity? Would they ever feel comfortable returning to a bookstore, buying a book off a shelf that some other customer may have handled a few minutes before? Was the future of book retailing home delivery and, if so, would Ben ever need another store? Were book launches and book events, an important part of his business, ever coming back? On a brighter note, would there be great opportunities to snap up prime commercial space on better terms after landlords had suffered for a year or two?

He also revisited the situation of Canada’s only big box book retailer (who long ago gave up on selling many books and now seem to give much more floor space and marketing attention to candles, housewares, decorative cushions and goodness knows what else):

“Indigo Books and Music” by Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine is licensed under CC0 1.0

In our review of Indigo’s travails in SHuSH 152, I complained, almost as an aside, about the chain’s commitment to selling crap general merchandise. It strikes me that putting blankets and candles on an equal footing with literature leaves the customer with the impression that the retailer believes books are nothing more than housewares or decorative objects. It trivializes them. Most of the feedback I received focused on this point. I’ll let author Judy Stoffman speak for the majority:

    Ken is absolutely right about Indigo having to learn or relearn to be a decent bookseller first instead of selling cushions and cheese boards. Here in Vancouver the store stocks few quality children’s books and no children’s music — staff has never heard of Dennis Lee. They never host a reading or book launch or an interesting talk about books. It’s a continuing source of frustration to readers like myself.

While we had his attention, we asked Ben McNally what he thought of Indigo’s merch strategy. He understood the attraction: “The margins are ok on that stuff. Books, you’re pretty much locked into a 40 per cent margin. You sell sweatshirts or something and you price them at whatever you want. So the margins are there, but long-term, I don’t know. I haven’t been into [an Indigo superstore] in a long time but I’m hearing that their stores are pretty spotty. Not looking healthy.”

Ben sells some gift cards, because people are often buying his books as gifts, but he’s otherwise light on general merchandise: “We’ve always shied away from that stuff because we want people to think that we’re serious about selling books.”

Serious about selling books. Imagine that.

I can see the sense in selling book-adjacent items, but Chapters/Indigo seemed to decide well before the pandemic that they needed to attract a non-reading audience who otherwise would never set foot in their retail stores. In the process, of course, they de-emphasized the advantage that big box stores have over smaller retailers: the width of stock they can offer. If you go into one of the cavernous Chapters or Indigo stores these days — and it’s been over two years since the last time I did — you rarely find much in the book sections beyond the “bestsellers” (taking up vast swathes of shelf space) and suggestions to go to their website if you are looking for something they don’t have on hand. If I have made the effort to go to your store, telling me I’d have been better off firing up a web browser isn’t the best method of luring me back again.

March 22, 2022

The LAST Tribal-Class Destroyer — HMCS Haida

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Royal Canadian Navy / Marine Royale Canadienne
Published 21 Mar 2022

HMCS Haida has a long and distinguished naval career of service during the Second World War, the Korean Conflict and the Cold War, that’s why Canada’s “fightingest ship” is today a National Historic Site and the ceremonial flagship of the Royal Canadian Navy.

BUT … have you heard the rest of the story?

The incredible journey of saving Haida after being decommissioned in 1963 is told as you’ve never heard it before directly from the last survivor of HAIDA Inc., the group responsible for rescuing the aging Tribal-class destroyer from the scrap heap.

December 19, 2021

Canada’s almost functional flying saucer; the story of the Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Polyus Studios
Published 14 Jul 2018

Support me on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/polyusstudios

The Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar: Canada’s first attempt at vertical take off and landing aircraft. Although the concept ultimately turned out to be a dead-end, the engineers and designers at Avro experimented with bold new ideas. Their concepts would push the limits of the imagination and reflected the extreme technological optimism of its time.

Music:
Denmark – Portland Cello Project

Research Sources:
“Declassified: America’s Secret Flying Saucer” – https://www.popularmechanics.com/mili…
Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar – https://www.aviationsmilitaires.net/v…
Avrocar: Canada’s Flying Saucer: The Story of Avro Canada’s Secret Projects by Bill Zuk (2001)
How to Build a FLYING SAUCER – https://declassification.blogs.archiv…
LaesieWorks – AVROCAR VZ-9AV – http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/lib/AV…
The Living Moon – Project Silverbug – The Avrocar – http://www.thelivingmoon.com/49ufo_fi…

Footage Sources:
Avrocar I Progress Report 01/02/1958 – 05/1959 – US National Archives (~1959)
Disc Flight Development, Avrocar I Progress Report, 05/02/1959 – 04/12/1960 – US National Archives (~1960)
Avrocar Continuation Test Program and Terrain Test Program, 06/01/1960 – 06/14/1961 – US National Archives (~1959)
Tiltwing Versatility – San Diego Air and Space Museum (~1971)

Aircraft mentioned:
Project Y
Project Y-2
Project PV 704
Project 1794
Project Silverbug
Weapon System 606A
VZ-9AV Avrocar
CL-84 Dynavert

#Avrocar #CanadianAerospace #Polyus

August 26, 2021

QotD: Toronto, the centre of the universe (according to Torontonians)

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

Toronto is a sucking vortex of stupid due to being the axis about which the world revolves. But you already knew that having become dizzy from your slow orbit so far from the centre of things.

Ghost of a Flea, “And while I am being annoying”, Ghost of a Flea, 2005-05-02.

June 7, 2021

QotD: Toronto in summertime

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Humour, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I notice from an article in the Toronto Scar, that a problem with walking in the city parks and ravines is now publicly acknowledged. This is caused by redwing blackbirds, who resumed breeding recently, in honour of the spring. There is a population explosion of them, and they are extremely aggressive towards anyone who passes within fifty yards or so of any one of their innumerable nests. Brave, too, considering their size. I call them “hairdresser birds,” for the delight they take in rearranging hair styles. I noticed in scanning 63 comments on this and related local media articles that all were on the side of the birds, and inclined to condemn people like me for failing to avoid their quickly expanding ranges. This would be a good example of Canadian environmental liberalism. My countrymen are trained from birth always to take the side of another species. (I missed this brainwashing, somehow.)

On the other hand, the raccoon population appears to be dwindling. It would seem that the skunks are driving them away. Perhaps they will turn on the coyotes, next.

The geese and swans along the Lakefront are also acting unionized, having long nursed a powerful dislike for the city’s other inhabitants. They are large, and forceful in expressing their opinions. Ditto, the trolley drivers. And the schoolchildren are about to be released from their cages, in time for what is now called “Canada Day.” Monstrous little creatures in the main, especially after they have shot up their drugs. (The older-looking ones are their teachers.)

David Warren, “Sumer is icumen in”, Essays in Idleness, 2018-06-16.

November 28, 2020

Showdown at the O.K. BBQ joint

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Toronto police reacted with overwhelming force to a rebellion centred on a small business in Etobicoke, intending to overawe any more potential lockdown opponents on Thursday. Jay Currie is of the “worse before better” school on this particular flare-up of public sentiment:

Well over 100 Toronto police officers and at least ten horses shut down Adamson’s BBQ today. They arrested the proprietor for “trespass” on his own property.

His sin was, of course, opening when Toronto is under “lockdown”. And then opening again and then, today, getting around the changed locks on his premises and opening again.

Now there will be plenty of people who will say, “Well, it’s the law and necessary if we are going to ‘stop the spread'”. But I suspect there will be a strong minority who will say, “Lockdowns don’t work and Costco is in full operation a block away.” Have at it, my interest is in the show of force.

For the City of Toronto and the Province of Ontario, Adamson’s was a point of rebellion which had to be crushed. At any cost. If Adamson’s was able to open the entire pandemic lockdown regime would collapse. So out came 100+ cops and the horses. (I was surprised there was not a tactical vehicle or two.)

Given that there were all of about a hundred people at the BBQ spot today this was more than sufficient force to ensure Adamson’s would not be able to open. No doubt Mayor Tory and Premier Ford are pretty sure the job is done. Adam Skelly, the owner, is cooling his heels in custody pending a bail hearing. (If that hearing goes as I expect, there will be compliance conditions attached to his bail, namely no re-opening.)

Big government relies upon the general complacency of its citizens. A couple of hundred people showing up to a BBQ joint can be handled with a large police presence. A couple of thousand? Much more difficult. 20,000, not a chance.

I keep saying to my very worried wife, “Worse before better.” Which means that before there is any chance that reason, moderation and good government is restored, things have to get a lot worse. On the left, groups like BLM and Antifa work very hard to create martyrs for their narrative. So far with limited success. Adam Skelly may have set in motion the process which will make him a living martyr for common sense and a degree of justice.

As of Friday morning the GoFundMe campaign for Skelly had reached $130,000 (I’m expecting it to be shut down for “reasons” any time soon … but it was still online and accepting donations when I checked at 10am).

July 2, 2020

Fallen flag — the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway

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

This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is my favourite Canadian railway … I founded the TH&B Railway Historical Society many years ago (you can download a PDF of the first newsletter I did here … I didn’t have access to any TH&B photo I could use in the publication at that point, so it’s pretty much all text and tables). I put together as much information as I had about the railway at that time and printed up a few hundred copies to distribute at a regional railfan event (the CN Lines event in Oakville during October 1997), hoping to find fellow fans of the TH&B (back in those long-distant days when you couldn’t just run a quick search from your web browser, and most people didn’t yet have email addresses). The gamble worked and we had a formal historical society up and running for the following issue. I published the newsletter for five years before finally burning out and handing it over to more capable hands.

The society is still in operation, and the newsletter (now called The Ontarian) is mailed out four times per year. Membership information available at the society website.

Greg McDonnell begins the article with a quick look at the TH&B’s early history:

Detail from a map published in The Commercial and Financial Chronicle in 1908. TH&B trackage has been marked in red (not on the original image).
Wikimedia Commons.

Canada, thanks to its two transcontinental giants after 1923, had few small “regional” railroads. One, though, was the 111-mile Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway, which vanished in 1987.

Little TH&B had a larger-than-life presence that belied the reality of its being merely the southern Ontario stepchild that linked parents New York Central and Canadian Pacific. TH&B never realized its dream of being an independent road linking its three namesake cities, but in its heyday, it did haul sleeping cars from Toronto for New York, Boston, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. In 1911, it became the first North American railroad to install Absolute Permissive Block signaling; it erected a splendid art deco station and office tower in Hamilton, Ontario; and it had Canada’s only 2-8-4 steam locomotives, not to mention two ex-NYC Hudsons.

In 1890, even before a rail was laid, TH&B deviated from its chartered intentions, dropping Buffalo from its plans in favor of an eastern terminus and connection with the Canada Southern, a subsidiary of NYC’s Michigan Central, at Welland, Ontario. In 1892, TH&B acquired its first operating trackage, the faltering 18-mile Brantford, Waterloo & Lake Erie, a Brantford–Waterford line that was extending itself to Hamilton.

The original Hunter Street station in Hamilton, replaced in 1929 with the current Art Deco station now operated by GO Transit.
Local History & Archives, Hamilton Public Library via Wikimedia Commons.

As crews spiked TH&B rails from Hamilton to Welland, the line’s strategic importance attracted suitors. And not just anyone, for on July 9, 1895, the still-incomplete railway was sold to a consortium headed by two of the most powerful men in North American railroading: NYC’s Cornelius Vanderbilt and CPR’s William Van Horne.

NYC, dividing its holdings with subsidiaries MC and CASO, took a 73% stake in the fledgling bridge line; CP held the remaining 27%, an arrangement that would endure for 80-plus years. TH&B was afforded a considerable measure of autonomy, but parental influence from New York and Montreal gave TH&B its unique international character.

The TH&B Society picks up the history in somewhat more detail (the original draft was mine, but several others have made additions and changes since then):

The next phase of construction was to be the line from Hamilton to Toronto. The surveyed route to Toronto closely paralleled the existing Grand Trunk Railway mainline. In order to avoid construction of a parallel line (and the potential loss of traffic to the competing line), the GTR granted running rights to the Canadian Pacific Railway between Toronto and Hamilton in 1896. That same year the TH&B constructed what became known as the Hamilton Connection between its line and the GTR at Hamilton Junction. The Hamilton Connection was subsequently leased to the CPR and became their physical connection to the TH&B.

In 1897, the TH&B obtained running rights over the Hamilton & Dundas Railway for the provision of freight service into the Town of Dundas. The H&D Railway, a local interurban line, ceased operations in 1923 and the TH&B acquired the former H&D right of way into Dundas to continue freight operations. The line into Dundas was known as the H&D Branch.

In order to tap into Hamilton’s expanding industrial sector, construction began on the Hamilton Belt Line in 1900. The Belt Line expanded with the construction of two additional branch lines in 1911 to allow access to all industrial sectors of the city, many of which were previously serviced exclusively by the GTR. Although the Belt Line was only six miles in length, it contained over 40 miles of yard and industrial sidings and would provide much financial sustenance to the TH&B over the years.

In 1914, the 14-mile Dunnville Subdivision was constructed southward from Smithville to the Town of Dunnville and extended five miles further to the shores of Lake Erie at Port Maitland in 1916. Access to Lake Erie allowed the creation of the TH&B Navigation Co. that operated between Port Maitland and Ashtabula, Ohio, from 1916 until discontinuance in 1932.

The TH&B’s final expansion occurred in 1927 when running rights were awarded over the Canadian National Railways to gain access to the industrial City of Port Colborne.

1935 saw the first abandonment of trackage when the Ridgeville Spur, a small four-mile branch extending off the Welland Subdivision just outside of Welland, was abandoned and the rails were removed in 1936.

The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority completed the construction of the present-day Welland Canal in 1972 resulting in the relocation of several rail lines in the area. The Welland Subdivision was realigned between Fenwick and Welland where a new yard was constructed and operated in conjunction with New York Central’s corporate successor, Penn Central. The new shared facility allowed the closure and removal of the original and independent TH&B and Penn Central operations located within the city. Welland Yard continues to operate today as a Canadian Pacific’s marshalling facility for the Niagara Region.

In 1976, the United States Government amalgamated six bankrupt railroads, including the New York Central’s corporate successor, Penn Central, into a new entity called Conrail. In an effort to reduce debt, Conrail began shedding foreign investments including their controlling interest in the TH&B. In 1977, CP Rail acquired Conrail’s 73% interest giving CP 100% control of the railway.

In 1985, CP Rail and Canadian National jointly acquired the assets of Conrail’s Canada Division, the former Canada Southern Railway. CP Rail acquired exclusive ownership of the eastern end of the line between the TH&B connection at Welland and the international border crossings at Niagara Falls and Fort Erie, Ontario. While CP equipment was used to operate this portion of the line, known as CP CASO, the TH&B provided the managerial and administrative functions on CP Rail’s behalf.

The TH&B would continue to operate as a separate entity until 1987 when it was amalgamated into the Eastern Region of the London Division of CP Rail.

CP Rail abandoned the H&D Branch in 1988 with the Waterford Subdivision following in 1989. Also in that year, CP discontinued operations into Port Colborne, opting not to renew the running rights agreement over the CNR.

Today, the surviving portions of the TH&B, including the Hamilton Belt Line, the former Welland Subdivision and a portion of the Dunnville Subdivision operate as part of Canadian Pacific’s Hamilton Subdivision in CPR’s Southern Ontario Service Area.

TH&B GP7 number 72 arriving at Port Colborne with a caboose hop. This is the only paint scheme used for all diesel locomotives on the railway from delivery until the CPR merger.
Daryl Sherlock photo via the TH&B Railway Historical Society.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress