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A blind dog with a guide dog! The guide dog volunteered for the job, on her own. Thanks to imp strump .

I tried to suspend home delivery of the Globe and Mail while we were away, but I guess my request didn't go through, as we came home to a small pile of newspapers. That's how I saw not one, but two columns by union-basher Marcus Gee elevated to the front page. The G&M used Gee's columns as an excuse for giant, above-the-fold headlines for their one-sided stories. On Tuesday, there was a litany of numbers ("36 days on strike, 4,425 cancelled day camps, lessons and programs..."), then "AND FOR WHAT?", in all caps. Yesterday's headline "Miller alone in declaring victory for city" is accompanied by another Marcus Gee head: "The sick leave stays. Let the anger begin. The mayor will pay a price for the strike". Let the anger begin? Marcus Gee has been striking that match since day one. Nothing like objective journalism. This is the same media that ridicules bloggers as all opinions and no facts. At least we're honest about what...

We had a great little trip to Boston, marred only by the outcome of the baseball games. The Red Sox split a series with the Oakland A's, winning two games and losing two. Did they have to lose the two games we saw? The first loss - the Joy of Sox gathering game - was particularly brutal, as the Sox were ahead and should have had the game well in hand, but our once-great closer blew the lead. The Sox lost 9-8 in 11 innings. The second game was no picnic either. On the first pitch of the game, an Oakland hitter smashed a home run, and it was downhill from there. By the time the Sox came up to bat, they were already down 5-0. They clawed their way back, but too little, too late, and ended up losing 8-6. Our first time at Fenway in four years, and who knows when the next time will be, and we see two losses. That's baseball for ya. Other than that... It was amazingly wonderful and wonderfully amazing to meet in person good friends who we've known online through Joy of Sox , and ...

As you may have guessed, I've had no internet access for the last four days, the latest chapter in a long line of hotels that say they have wireless internet but really do not. I like a taking a break from the computer, but I also like to check my email when I need to! Well, I'm back, happy to be online again, and ready to tell all. Talk to you soon.

This morning we are heading to Boston for two games at our beloved Fenway Park. We haven't been to Fenway since the summer before we moved to Canada, so this trip is long overdue. But this isn't just any two games. Tuesday, July 28 is the highly-anticipated "JoS1", the game a group from our Red Sox community (from Allan's Joy of Sox ) will attend together, most of us meeting in person for the first time. People are coming in from as far as North Carolina and Virginia - age range from 8 to baby boomers - bringing partners, children or parents, as the case may be. We are very excited! By luck and coincidence, the Red Sox are retiring former Red Sox slugger Jim Rice 's number 14 before the game. It promises to be a great day. Also on Tuesday, we're taking the tour of Fenway Park, which Allan has done by I have not. On Wednesday Allan and I will do some city exploring around Boston, and see a second game that night. Then we drive back on Thursday. Please tak...

This ran in both the Calgary and Toronto Sun papers. Dodgy manoeuvres Are American soldiers seeking to stay in Canada heroes or villains? By Kerry Thompson and Lyn Cockburn Should U.S. soldiers who flee to Canada to avoid fighting be allowed to stay? Columnist Lyn Cockburn says yes, in the spirit of Vietnam draft dodgers. But Sun Media's Kerry Thompson gives that argument a one-finger salute. THOMPSON: A lot of people compare this situation to Vietnam, reminding us that Canada welcomed U.S. draft dodgers. What they forget to mention is that these most recent war resisters weren't drafted, they knew what they were signing on to and the consequences if they decided to leave their units. COCKBURN: Rubbish. No one knew they were signing up for a war based on lies. George W. Bush promised weapons of mass destruction and there were none. This was an unjust war that prompted some soldiers to refuse to serve in Iraq. Some went to the stockade, some to Canada and we ought to have supp...

Where does the unwinnable "war on drugs" end? Where does the state's right to your body end? Do they intersect here? Warning: I felt - literally - sick to my stomach and dizzy from reading this. I had to look away, as I'm at work. Some people may find this story triggering. There is only one word for what happened to this man: torture. $125,000 doesn't even begin to compensate violating a human being in this way.

Several wmtc readers will be interested in the cover story of the current issue of Maclean's : "No Kids, No Grief - A new manifesto argues that parenting is bad for your career, your marriage, your bank book and your love life" . The story, fortunately, is not as snark-laden as the title. It's a round-up of some books that are out and what Maclean's writer Anne Kingston calls "a tiny but growing minority challenging the final frontier of reproductive freedom: the right to say no to children without being labelled social misfits or selfish for something they don't want." It's frustrating and a bit sad to me that, as the first decade of the 21st Century nears its end, adults who are childfree by choice are still thought to be challenging anything - still explaining themselves, still defending their choices. As I near my own half-century mark, I'm amazed that some people think that there is anything - any life choice - that is appropriate for ...

Several readers send me stories on the renewed US wingnut lie campaign against universal, single-payer health insurance, aka Canada Sucks. I just can't follow the blow-by-blow. Although the heat and the lies have escalated sharply in recent months, it's been going on for years - decades - and I burnt out on it long ago. I'm glad the Canadian blogosphere is on it, though. Here's something important to read: The real story on Canadian Health Care Hater Shona Holmes , by Ross, The Gazetteer . Also, don't forget to circulate this everywhere: "Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths" , with more links and my commentary here .

The updated news in Abousfian Abdelrazik's case - yet more shameful revelations of the Harper Government's treatment of Canadian citizens (who are brown and have non-Anglo last names) - came as I was heading into a blogging lull. Lucky for wmtc, someone else always says what I'm thinking. (If you're not up on the story, follow the links.) A letter to the editor in today's Globe and Mail : I have been increasingly sickened and shamed by the revelations of the actions of my government in the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik . Before this came the news that Canadians diplomats were acting in a manner that arguably amounted to ever so softly enabling the murder of a Canadian citizen. For the first time in 30 years, I regret being an atheist. If I weren't an atheist, I'd believe in God. And if I believed in God, I'd believe in hell. And if I believed in hell, I'd prefer Dante's version of inferno. And that is where I would delight to think of those bure...

I recently blogged about Mister Pip - a wonderful book that I highly recommend - and some Dickens-related blather. Little did I know that Pip himself has a political blog, and covered the 2008 US election! Pip Dawkins, 19th Century street urchin and blogger The US elections defy parody, having long ago devolved into parodies themselves. But leave it to The Onion to find a way.

From Reuters, emphasis added. ROME – A team of archaeologists using sonar technology to scan the seabed have discovered a "graveyard" of five pristine ancient Roman shipwrecks off the small Italian island of Ventotene. The trading vessels, dating from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, lie more than 100 meters underwater and are amongst the deepest wrecks discovered in the Mediterranean in recent years, the researchers said on Thursday. Part of an archipelago situated halfway between Rome and Naples on Italy's west coast, Ventotene historically served as a place of shelter during rough weather in the Tyrrhenian Sea. "The ships appear to have been heading for safe anchorage, but they never made it," said Timmy Gambin, head of archaeology for the Aurora Trust (www.auroratrust.com). "So in a relatively small area we have five wrecks...a graveyard of ships." The vessels were transporting wine from Italy, prized fish sauce from Spain and north Af...

Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney continues to make Canada less welcoming to immigrants and refugees. The latest move comes hot on the heels of his imposition of sudden visa restrictions on travelers from Mexico and the Czech Republic , which itself was the latest in a long list of Tory anti-immigration moves. It's very sad. Sadder still is that we are stuck with this interminable Conservative government, thanks to spineless, capitulating, self-serving, unprincipled Liberals. Directly from the horse's mouth: A change related to the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement was announced today by Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney. The change removes one of Canada's exceptions to the Agreement and is another step toward improving Canada's asylum system. The Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement was signed on December 5, 2002, and implemented on December 29, 2004. Under the Agreement, refugee claimants arriving in North...

If you support US war resisters in Canada, and you haven't signed this yet, please do. Petition in support of Chris Vassey. Chris served five years in the US military, including a decorated combat tour. After returning from Afghanistan, with deployment to Iraq looming, Chris decided he could no longer participate in a mismanaged war of aggression. All he wanted was to separate honourably from the US military. But he was not allowed to do so. Now Chris asks nothing more than to stay in Canada - to work, to live in peace, to settle into his new life. Some friends of his, also resisters, started this petition, to show public support for Chris and other war resisters. Chris had to leave his family and friends, he had to come to a new place where he didn't know anybody, he had to start all over. He must go through the Immigration and Refugee Board process, and probably to court. If there is no change of government or change of heart in Canada, Chris may one day be court martialed an...

At last night's Campaign meeting, we were joined by a Quaker activist from the southern US who has been visiting war resister Cliff Cornell - deported by the Harper government and jailed by its US counterpart - in military prison. It sounds like Cliff is doing all right, but he misses Canada a lot. He can receive visitors without a lot of advanced planning, and some of us are hoping to go down there before the year is out. As you may imagine, Cliff loves to receive mail from supporters. You can write to him at this address: Clifford Cornell Building 1041 PSC Box # 20140 Camp Lejeune, NC 28542 USA We also got an update on Robin Long from one of his war resister friends. As you know, Robin has been released from military custody. He's doing really well. He has big plans and is headed in a good direction. Hopefully, one day, that direction will be north. We hope that Robin can be reunited with his Canadian-born son at some future date. [CIC: I mean that in a purely theoretical se...

Change we can believe in? Some things don't change, no matter how much "belief" one throws at them. The Obama administration has approved the sale of timber from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska. The 17-million acre forest is the largest stand of continuous temperate rain forest in the U.S. and contains a lot of old-growth trees. It's basically a snapshot of what the world looked like before we rolled heavy onto the scene. The U.S. Forest Service gave the green light for the sale after approval from Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who stated in May that he would be the final gatekeeper on all decisions to sell timber from roadless areas of the national forests. This first sale will come after seven miles of roads are built for the 381-acre clear-cut. From NRDC's Save BioGems , not updated, but interesting background, in retrospect: Stretching 500 miles along the southeast coast of Alaska, the Tongass National Forest lies at the heart of the world...

I can't write right now, but I can pass things along. If you are care about justice, and you want a Canada that is a fair and safe haven for refugees, please read this story in its entirety. Emphasis added throughout. You can supply your own commentary. Here's mine: Jason Kenney must resign. From Embassy , Canada's foreign policy magazine. Political Interference Crippling Refugee Board: Former Chair Jason Kenney's comments are bringing personal harm to refugee claimants and may have overstepped the legal line between politics and independent refugee decisions, say several immigration experts. by Michelle Collins Published July 22, 2009 Jason Kenney has compromised his position as immigration minister by repeatedly slamming the validity of various refugee claims and blatantly undermining the independence of Canada's refugee tribunal, legal and immigration experts, including former IRB chairman Peter Showler, are charging. Over the past several months, Mr. Kenney h...

I have many things to blog about, but a poorly functioning brain. I'll take a short break while I wait for the fog to lift.

John Bonnar has an excellent piece on Rabble about the CUPE strike, and the misinformation - one might say disinformation - surrounding it. Well worth reading. ...Workers said they're upset about the misinformation that's been put out to the mainstream media by the Mayor's office. They told me that 416 and 79 had been budgeted to receive the same contract (with no concessions) as other city workers received this year, yet at the last minute the Mayor presented them with over 100 pages of takeaways. They don’t think it's right for the City to settle with other locals, increase councilor's pay and then turn around and say they can’t do the same for locals 416 and 79 because we’re in the midst of a recession. For these workers, the issue is about fairness and equity. They want the same deal as everyone else: no more, no less. As for the sick bank, everyone is entitled to 18 days a year that can be carried over. However, due to an arbitrated decision many years ago, th...

Russell, stalwart peace activist from Western New York State, attended the most recent federal court hearing in Toronto for war resister Kim Rivera. I thought his post about the experience was beautiful: Kim (and Katie) fight against the war and deportation from Canada . I know Russell also attended a ground-breaking conference in Chicago: Stopping The War Where It Begins: Organizing Against Militarism in Our Schools . Anti-recruitment efforts are such a crucial part of the peace movement. Almost all the war resisters I know grew up with military recruitment as a permanent fixture in their public schools. The lies and entrapment start early, especially when other options are few and bleak. I'm sure the conference was a lot to process, but I hope Russell will tell us about it soon!

Here are two three of the strike blogs that I know about. City of Toronto Strike Blog is excellent, and written by a striker. City of Toronto Strike 2009 is written by a thoughtful observer. Hogtown Striker is also on strike her- or himself. I don't know if Hogtown is still blogging. I hope so, since as we move into week five, these voices need to be heard. Also, some pointed sarcasm in the Globe and Mail letters today: Ben Dachis correctly points out that allowing private companies to compete with public unions for garbage collection in Toronto will lower costs to the consumer (Set The Garbage Hostages Free – July 18). Those efficiencies will be achieved by forcing union employees to take wage cuts in order to compete, in the race to the bottom, with private firms. To reduce the risk of annoying labour unrest all we need to do is take wages and benefits away from a few thousand people. Let's not stop with the city workers, though; for every service we privatize, and ever...

But you know, Matilda, you cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames. For me, Matilda, Great Expectations is such a book. It gave me permission to change my life. -- Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip

It seems I blogged about this book too early. I sat down to read today - day off, outside, on my patio, ahhhh... - and the book is suddenly so much better than I thought. As the backdrop of war and violence intersects with the foreground story of Matilda and the two adults in her life, all the themes deepen and intersect. Mister Pip is about trust and betrayal, memory and forgetting, safety and fear, obedience and resistance, our sense of self, our sense of otherness, the creation of art, and what part of us cannot be destroyed. Excellent book. Technically "young adult fiction," I think, but the best of that genre always works for not-so-young adults, as well.

Allan and I met 24 years ago today. Wow.

A little Canadian history in The Nation . As always, best enjoyed comment-free. Canada did not establish its national health care program with a bold, immediate political move by the federal government. The initial progress came at the provincial level, led by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation's Tommy Douglas when he served from 1941 to 1960 premier of Saskatchewan. The universal, publicly-funded "single-payer" health care system that Douglas and his socialist allies developed in Saskatchewan proved to be so successful and so popular that it was eventually adopted by other provinces and, ultimately, by Canada's federal government. For his efforts, Douglas would be hailed in a national survey as "The Greatest Canadian" of all time. But Douglas' regional initiative also offers a lesson for Americans. Those of us who know that the only real cure for what ails the U.S. health care system is a universal public plan that provides health care for all Ame...

Another great pro-labour post from Impudent Strumpet: The other other problem with all this anti-labour sentiment . The other problem: here . The problem: here . (I think. She might have meant a different post.)

I'm in the middle of a surprise novel, something not plucked from my endless To-Read List, but that Allan included in my birthday loot: Mister Pip , by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones . The story is told by a 13-year-old narrator and involves Charles Dickens' Great Expectations . Teenage narrator? Dickens? Good call. Mister Pip won the Commonwealth Prize in 2006, and was nominated for the Booker Prize the following year. In my experience, both those awards mean excellent books. I'll read any book that won either a Commonwealth or a Booker, and I've never been disappointed. This is no exception: an excellent book. The main story involves a girl discovering the power of fiction - for solace, for escape, and to understand her world. Matilda also discovers an unexpected teacher and a father-figure, and her relationship with her mother begins to change. Those are standard elements for a teenage-narrated book, but Jones is subtle and skillful, and his young narrator's voi...

Support US war resisters in Canada? Sign for Chris. Spread it around.

Celebrating Cronkite While Ignoring What He Did , by Glenn Greenwald. Go read.

Remember Wendell Potter? He's the former head of corporate communications (i.e., PR) for Cigna, the fourth largest insurer in the US, and he's been speaking openly about the dirty tricks the insurance industry employs to deny coverage to paying customers. I blogged about him here ; if you missed it, you might want to check it out. Potter is still speaking out. He sat down with the great progressive journalist-activist Bill Moyers. You can watch their conversation or read a transcript here . Through Moyers, Potter makes it very clear he is not a disgruntled former employee bad-mouthing a company that wronged him. He is a man wracked by conscience, and determined to speak the truth. Here's an excerpt. WENDELL POTTER: Well, I was beginning to question what I was doing as the industry shifted from selling primarily managed care plans, to what they refer to as consumer-driven plans. And they're really plans that have very high deductibles, meaning that they're shifting a...

A courageous human rights and peace activist named Ezra Nawi is in prison in Israel, awaiting sentencing. Nawi, a Jewish Israeli, was arrested when he tried to stop a military bulldozer from destroying the homes of Palestinians in the South Hebron region. Please watch this moving video of the army's action and Nawi's arrest. I find it extremely disturbing. Nawi's actions threaten the Israeli Government because they call attention to its immoral and illegal actions in the Hebron region. Yet he represents the best of Israel: Jewish citizens fighting for justice. From a New York Times profile of Nawi: His family has trouble understanding his priorities. His mother says she thinks he is wasting his time. And many Israelis, when told of his work, wonder why he is not helping his own. Mr. Nawi has an answer. "I don't consider my work political," he said between phone calls as he drove. "I don't have a solution to this dispute. I just know that what is goi...

Long-time CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite is dead at age 92. When I was growing up, Walter Cronkite was the nightly voice that helped end the Vietnam War. The media was very different then. Network newscasts had enormous clout, and each network had a distinct political viewpoint. CBS wasn't radical by any means, but it was generally liberal. And of course, it was independent. It wasn't trying to entertain, and it took the appropriate adversarial relationship to government that journalism is meant to have. Cronkite showed us the blood, the napalm, the amputations, the burned villages. He showed us the flag-draped coffins and the endless body counts. I watched the news every night with my father, who would repeat, "What a waste. What a terrible waste." My brother was draft age. My father and he explored their options, like a bad knee or Quaker meetings. Ultimately, my brother got a "good number" in the draft lottery, but my father always said that if it came t...

In brief: absolutely lovely. The town itself, in the central "Heritage District," is a sweet tourist town almost absent of kitsch and cutesy. Both sides of the Avon River are parkland with walking and biking paths, and you can rent paddle boats. Swan and ducks paddle by, many with their little puffball babies in tow. (The swans are cared for by the city itself.) The gardens are all immaculate. The town of Stratford obviously takes pride in its physical appearance and works hard to groom and maintain it. Good for business, sure, but also just good. (I'm really sorry I didn't bring a camera. I would have liked to add Stratford to my Ontario collection on Flickr. I thought of the camera as we pulled onto the 401.) All four theatres are in walking distance from the "heritage district". One theatre is best reached by the riverside walking path, which seems really special to me. Once we parked at the B&B, we didn't drive again until we left. * * * * The ...

This piece from Dutch television about US war resisters in Canada seems to be very supportive. I don't understand Dutch, but the gist is easy to catch. If you speak Dutch, perhaps you will translate some highlights in comments. Either way, please watch: Canada wil deserteurs VS niet meer . Here's a US story about Josh Randall. Josh's own statement is here . Many thanks to David for sending. Update. Translation now in comments!