As the WE controversy has spawned its own thread in Purgatory, at the suggestion of @Pangolin Guerre, I've had the Admins move the posts about it into that thread.
We had a very hot day here in Edinburgh yesterday - it got up to 28°, which is way above my comfort zone. Thankfully normal service was resumed today, and it was only 18° - far more civilised!
Happy Simcoe-or-whatever-you-call-it day everyone!
Warm here, but not too warm. Biked past my parish church this morning, thereby seeing it for the first time since March. Still very much standing, with some happy flower beds in front.
Just wondering if anyone is seeing new post indications for this thread. I remember recently when we moved a bunch of posts elsewhere on another thread the new post counter didn't adjust backward to reflect the change, so nobody noticed when there were new posts on the thread...
Either that or everyone is getting tired of talking about the weather, but this being Canada I don't see how that could possibly be happening.
(Speaking of which, it is suddenly cooler here, just in time for me to be heading in the direction of cottage country....)
What!?! I hear you say. I.have been informed by my friends at the Ontario NDP office that every time good ol' Doug says something, people send the NDP money.
Doug has been such a good friend to us that the Ontario NDP has paid off its entire debt and now has a $2 million surplus, per the recent NDP return to Elections Ontario.
I swear the NDP needs to give Doug Ford a donation receipt. He's the gift that keeps on giving.
Perhaps a socially-distanced testimonial barbecue?
My neighbours (with whom I share a common but unused parking lot--none of us have cars) held a socially-distanced barbecue last Saturday, with tables parked 3 metres apart, and orders to stay in our seats. As one of our hostesses is the great-niece of a pirate executed for his crimes (!!), we obeyed instructions with alacrity. Little ice buckets were at each table for locally-brewed beer, but half-rations for drivers.
My other neighbour's 11-year old daughter is jonesing to get back to school and her cohort, but my teacher friends are steeling themselves.... provincial policy verges on the semi-coherent, but I have not yet reviewed the local boards' plans.
Winter will be on us soon enough, and I do not know how easily people will adjust to losing their outdoor life when that happens.
Just got back from my parents' cottage outside Ottawa yesterday. A nice relaxing week, and my first time outside of Toronto since this all started. One of my brothers flew in for a few weeks from most of the way across the country with his kids, and the other one drove up for dinner one evening from Ottawa, making it I think the first time all three of us have managed to get ourselves in the same place at the same time for at least a decade.
Perhaps he and his staff were frustrated. My experience of leaders' advisers is that they are congenitally traumatized by having to negotiate with other parties on a continuing basis. A-type personalities have drive, but are not inclined to regulation.
There is very little room for the PC's to grow. The Libs have a lock on the north; they remember Higgs days with COR and have no love for the People's Alliance. I am told Mitton (Green) is likely to lose to the Libs in Tantramar, PCs may take SJ Harbour since the incumbent Lib is not running. Looking like a minority again at the moment.
I just received my first ( of probably) many email from NB NDP looking for money.
Just saw that Allan Fotheringham has died. I liked him as a teenager, but looking back, there was something a little too cutesy about his style.
That said, he must have had a gift for turning a phrase, since I don't think a day goes by when I don't recall a line from one of his Mulroney-era Macleans columns. (Okay, I am weird that way.) Though I suppose his gift for summing things up with s memorable zinger might be one of the reasons I now see his style as somewhat limited.
An example of Fotheringham's cutesiness getting in the way of his journalism.
Early in Mike Harcourt's career as BC NDP leader, Fotheringham mentioned that he was born in Edmonton, and the son of an insurance salesman. After that, he referred on several of occassions to Harcourt as "looking like an insurance salesman from Edmonton".
Speaking as an Edmontonian, I guess insurance salesmen there would broadly resemble Mike Harcourt in manner and deportment. But I'm pretty sure insurance salesmen everywhere present themselves more or less the same way.
Overall, it seemed as if Fotheringham was just taking the one thing he knew about Harcourt's family background and constructing an identity around it.
While I was a constant reader of Alan Fotheringham in his Maclean's days, I would agree with @stetson's comments on his frivolity. Around that time, I asked two of my better-connected friends why he was so highly esteemed and I was told that he was better-informed at that level than almost anyone else (such as Richard Gwyn, also departed this week) and that this was largely due to his influence among women in knowledgeable circles. I raised my eyebrows in an innocently querying manner.
Apparently in the days when scotch was still consumed at the dinner table, he was one of the few who talked to the women and, more importantly, listened to them. The 1980s and 1990s were so apart culturally from our current reality that we easily forget the extent to which "the ladies" were not taken seriously by many decision-makers and commentators. Fotheringham did, and I was told that he was superior in his trade on that account.
But to more important matters. The nights are cooler now, and last night's swim at Westboro beach re-introduced me to swimming into the waves.
Interesting you should mention that as I seem to recall he was the first major media commentator to seriously propose Kim Campbell as Mulroney's replacement. Of course, that turned out to be a mixed success at best, but mostly that was for reasons well beyond her control.
I know I read Fotheringham back in era when he owned the back page of Macleans but honestly I don't remember virtually anything of what he wrote, except for taking credit to being the first to promote Campbell (and I think at the time I read that I also remembered that it was true).
Sorry to hear about Richard Gwyn.
In other news it is cooler, even in Toronto, and we all approve, even the cat.
I also have a memory connected with Fotheringham's supposed affinity for women. For some reason or other, one of his columns got him accused of sexism, and while defending himself the following week, he stated that he was a "card-carrying male feminist".
The week after that, Macleans published a response from a female reader, saying "Sometimes card-carrying male feminists are the hardest to educate".
I also have a memory connected with Fotheringham's supposed affinity for women. For some reason or other, one of his columns got him accused of sexism, and while defending himself the following week, he stated that he was a "card-carrying male feminist".
The week after that, Macleans published a response from a female reader, saying "Sometimes card-carrying male feminists are the hardest to educate".
Much would depend on the date of their membership. Continuing education must be managed by the card-holder, and not all of them are aware of it.
I was just reading Gwyn's biography on Wikipedia. Sounds like he had an interesting life.
Unfortunately my most vivid recollection of Gwyn's work is spending what felt like hours in WH Smith when I was about 10 trying to find George Radwanski's biography of Trudeau, which my mother had asked for as a Christmas gift, and seeing nothing but shelves full of Gwyn's The Northern Magus (also a biography of Trudeau, but not the one my mother had asked for...).
I was up until 12.30 waiting for the Conservative results when Morpheus overtook me. I found Leslyn Lewis' victory in Saskatchewan remarkable if mystifying. This morning's CBC gave me final results, which were not shocking. Much rain last night. This afternoon may be cool for a swim but it must be done. Winter comes, as they say on the television.
I jumped in the lake after (pretending) running with the dog around the park. 15°C without wind.
Andrew Scheer interviewed on CBC. He agrees with O'Toole re defunding the CBC. He was confronted about bot-written articles he thinks are better than real journalism. Dogs whistles.
From what I've seen, he's right-of-centre, and made a specific appeal to the social conservative bloc in the party. Probably not a "Trump", with all the baggage that implies, but maybe someone who would govern like a garden-variety Republican, if he thought he could get away with it.
I noticed in his acceptance speech that he explicitly said the party is open to glbqt people. While that might be just the contemporary version of "Some of my best friends are...", I wouldn't expect the party to seriously try to roll back gay rights, despite whatever O'Toole has promised the SoCons. Though you can be sure the Liberals will try to portray that as exactly his agenda.
Three leaders of the Conservative Party of Canada all three have come from the right-wing Reform section. Time to eject the so cons. ;^)
I know what you're saying, but just for the sake of accuracy, O'Toole does not seem to have been a member of the Reform Party, and hails from a region where Reform never made any significant inroads.
I have been in a dark funk for about four days. Four days without a single laugh. Maxime Bernier - of all people - lifted me out of my darkness. On the CBC R1 1pm news there was a clip of him in which he described MacKay and O'Toole as "two peas in a pod - They're both red Tories!" If O'Toole is a red Tory, I'm Leon Trotsky.
What's the difference between a Red Tory and a New Democrat?
Which part you emphasize in Noblesse Oblige, Red Tories go for the first part, New Democrats the second.
And actually, the meaning of Red Tory has changed over the years. As recently as the 1960s(Lament For A Nation etc), it meant someone who was an economic interventionist, and a social traditionalist, eg. John Diefenbaker.
But now it is used to mean someone who is an economic neo-liberal, and a social libertarian, eg. John Tory.
My joke is that the current definition of a Red Tory is a slash-and-burn technocrat who shows up at Pride once a year.
Passing by the anti-mask (a Spanish friend calls them contramascarillistas) demonstration today on Parliament Hill, I noted the old patriotes banner (think of the Hungarian flag with a musket-wielding pipesmoking farmer) as well as the fleudelysé (provincial flag of Québec) with the Sacred Heart enwreathed superimposed. As well, there were two Trump banners and the US flag with the red line through it.
I was about to go out on my bike and it started to hint at rain, so I went back inside and decided to go for a walk with an umbrella instead. Of course, actually having the umbrella in hand meant no rain at all for the duration of the walk.
I did eventually get on the bike and biked down to the lake. Some pretty fierce winds on the way back, but I'm getting better at this than I used to be.
I went into the office on Wednesday, for the first time since mid-March, for a meeting that for various reasons had to be held face-to-face (three of us sitting around a table that could easily sit 20). The good news is that my office still exists, and even the food courts are operating sorta kinda. But downtown certainly has an eerily deserted feel to it.
We are a week away from the NB election. 63k voted in Saturday's advance polls. Higgs is flirting with majority territory. A PC candidate is found to have had a cartoon mocking violence against transwomen on his FB page. A Liberal who is a transwoman is running in the only Saint John riding that went Liberal last election. It seems the PCs will take the south, the Liberals will take the north. The People's Alliance may be reduced to one candidate and the Greens will come in around the 3 they got last election. Can Higgs hit the magic number of 25.
Passing by the anti-mask (a Spanish friend calls them contramascarillistas) demonstration today on Parliament Hill, I noted the old patriotes banner (think of the Hungarian flag with a musket-wielding pipesmoking farmer) as well as the fleudelysé (provincial flag of Québec) with the Sacred Heart enwreathed superimposed. As well, there were two Trump banners and the US flag with the red line through it.
In broad ideological terms, the patriotes flag sorta goes with the American flag, and, via some rather convoluted channels, the Trump banner.
The ultramontanized Quebec flag REALLY doesn't go with the patriotes flag, and at best gives a cold-shoulder to Old Glory. Ironically, though, it probably makes a friendly enough match with the Trump insignia, since I know Donald J. includes Catholics on the list of supposedly persecuted Christians of whom he is the champion.
Re: stetson's vexillological observations. How disorienting for Christians to have a pagan champion... and so many "Christians" champion him.... Like Nonno in Moonstruck, I'm crying because I'm confused.
On a more serious note, Trump's hypocritical championing of Christian liberty seems to me another example of just how...ordinary, the guy really is. I think we all know the kind of person who wails loudly about how "We can't even worship God in our own country anymore!", while being unable to rouse himself over to a church service more than twice a year.
And his shallow posturing is really not that much different from that of Ronald Reagan, also lionized by self-professed champions of "religious freedom", while attending church on an irregular basis at best, and evincing, as far as I could tell, not much more knowledge of the Bible than Trump does.
Higgs called the election after talks with the other three parties to prop him up for 3 years failed. He was going to have to face 3 by-elections and feared a negative result.
Comments
As the WE controversy has spawned its own thread in Purgatory, at the suggestion of @Pangolin Guerre, I've had the Admins move the posts about it into that thread.
Thank you.
Piglet, AS host
Now, back to talking about the weather ...
Warm here, but not too warm. Biked past my parish church this morning, thereby seeing it for the first time since March. Still very much standing, with some happy flower beds in front.
Either that or everyone is getting tired of talking about the weather, but this being Canada I don't see how that could possibly be happening.
(Speaking of which, it is suddenly cooler here, just in time for me to be heading in the direction of cottage country....)
What!?! I hear you say. I.have been informed by my friends at the Ontario NDP office that every time good ol' Doug says something, people send the NDP money.
Doug has been such a good friend to us that the Ontario NDP has paid off its entire debt and now has a $2 million surplus, per the recent NDP return to Elections Ontario.
Thanks Doug!
Or even Cat Ford...
Perhaps a socially-distanced testimonial barbecue?
My neighbours (with whom I share a common but unused parking lot--none of us have cars) held a socially-distanced barbecue last Saturday, with tables parked 3 metres apart, and orders to stay in our seats. As one of our hostesses is the great-niece of a pirate executed for his crimes (!!), we obeyed instructions with alacrity. Little ice buckets were at each table for locally-brewed beer, but half-rations for drivers.
My other neighbour's 11-year old daughter is jonesing to get back to school and her cohort, but my teacher friends are steeling themselves.... provincial policy verges on the semi-coherent, but I have not yet reviewed the local boards' plans.
Winter will be on us soon enough, and I do not know how easily people will adjust to losing their outdoor life when that happens.
Perhaps he and his staff were frustrated. My experience of leaders' advisers is that they are congenitally traumatized by having to negotiate with other parties on a continuing basis. A-type personalities have drive, but are not inclined to regulation.
I just received my first ( of probably) many email from NB NDP looking for money.
That said, he must have had a gift for turning a phrase, since I don't think a day goes by when I don't recall a line from one of his Mulroney-era Macleans columns. (Okay, I am weird that way.) Though I suppose his gift for summing things up with s memorable zinger might be one of the reasons I now see his style as somewhat limited.
Early in Mike Harcourt's career as BC NDP leader, Fotheringham mentioned that he was born in Edmonton, and the son of an insurance salesman. After that, he referred on several of occassions to Harcourt as "looking like an insurance salesman from Edmonton".
Speaking as an Edmontonian, I guess insurance salesmen there would broadly resemble Mike Harcourt in manner and deportment. But I'm pretty sure insurance salesmen everywhere present themselves more or less the same way.
Overall, it seemed as if Fotheringham was just taking the one thing he knew about Harcourt's family background and constructing an identity around it.
Apparently in the days when scotch was still consumed at the dinner table, he was one of the few who talked to the women and, more importantly, listened to them. The 1980s and 1990s were so apart culturally from our current reality that we easily forget the extent to which "the ladies" were not taken seriously by many decision-makers and commentators. Fotheringham did, and I was told that he was superior in his trade on that account.
But to more important matters. The nights are cooler now, and last night's swim at Westboro beach re-introduced me to swimming into the waves.
I know I read Fotheringham back in era when he owned the back page of Macleans but honestly I don't remember virtually anything of what he wrote, except for taking credit to being the first to promote Campbell (and I think at the time I read that I also remembered that it was true).
Sorry to hear about Richard Gwyn.
In other news it is cooler, even in Toronto, and we all approve, even the cat.
The week after that, Macleans published a response from a female reader, saying "Sometimes card-carrying male feminists are the hardest to educate".
Much would depend on the date of their membership. Continuing education must be managed by the card-holder, and not all of them are aware of it.
Unfortunately my most vivid recollection of Gwyn's work is spending what felt like hours in WH Smith when I was about 10 trying to find George Radwanski's biography of Trudeau, which my mother had asked for as a Christmas gift, and seeing nothing but shelves full of Gwyn's The Northern Magus (also a biography of Trudeau, but not the one my mother had asked for...).
Re sexism. It took the 1980s to get over the 70s. Which we're replaying just now.
Andrew Scheer interviewed on CBC. He agrees with O'Toole re defunding the CBC. He was confronted about bot-written articles he thinks are better than real journalism. Dogs whistles.
It would appear so, yes. Wikipedia is now listing him as such, and he's already a sitting MP, so no by-election required.
From what I've seen, he's right-of-centre, and made a specific appeal to the social conservative bloc in the party. Probably not a "Trump", with all the baggage that implies, but maybe someone who would govern like a garden-variety Republican, if he thought he could get away with it.
I noticed in his acceptance speech that he explicitly said the party is open to glbqt people. While that might be just the contemporary version of "Some of my best friends are...", I wouldn't expect the party to seriously try to roll back gay rights, despite whatever O'Toole has promised the SoCons. Though you can be sure the Liberals will try to portray that as exactly his agenda.
Howdy Doody hands the reins to Humpty Dumpty.
Social conservative. What's that code words for?
I know what you're saying, but just for the sake of accuracy, O'Toole does not seem to have been a member of the Reform Party, and hails from a region where Reform never made any significant inroads.
He's no red Tory.
Which part you emphasize in Noblesse Oblige, Red Tories go for the first part, New Democrats the second.
And actually, the meaning of Red Tory has changed over the years. As recently as the 1960s(Lament For A Nation etc), it meant someone who was an economic interventionist, and a social traditionalist, eg. John Diefenbaker.
But now it is used to mean someone who is an economic neo-liberal, and a social libertarian, eg. John Tory.
My joke is that the current definition of a Red Tory is a slash-and-burn technocrat who shows up at Pride once a year.
I was about to go out on my bike and it started to hint at rain, so I went back inside and decided to go for a walk with an umbrella instead. Of course, actually having the umbrella in hand meant no rain at all for the duration of the walk.
I did eventually get on the bike and biked down to the lake. Some pretty fierce winds on the way back, but I'm getting better at this than I used to be.
In broad ideological terms, the patriotes flag sorta goes with the American flag, and, via some rather convoluted channels, the Trump banner.
The ultramontanized Quebec flag REALLY doesn't go with the patriotes flag, and at best gives a cold-shoulder to Old Glory. Ironically, though, it probably makes a friendly enough match with the Trump insignia, since I know Donald J. includes Catholics on the list of supposedly persecuted Christians of whom he is the champion.
Well, actually, there is some precedent for that.
And his shallow posturing is really not that much different from that of Ronald Reagan, also lionized by self-professed champions of "religious freedom", while attending church on an irregular basis at best, and evincing, as far as I could tell, not much more knowledge of the Bible than Trump does.