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Loblaw Companies Limited 1 President's Choice Circle Brampton, Ontario, L6Y 5S5 Attention: LCL Customer Relations Centre Dear Loblaw Ltd.: I am a Loblaw customer and I was extremely disappointed by recent public statements made by Loblaw CEO Galen Weston, Jr., regarding the proposed raise of the minimum wage in Ontario. Mr. Weston claimed that the proposed wage hikes will result in higher prices and more self-checkout aisles, and speaks about labour costs "ballooning" by $190 million.* Mr. Weston clearly values Loblaw's shareholders more than it cares about its customers. When I spend my hard-earned money, I don't think it's too much to ask the store to provide check-out and bagging, and for there to be adequate staff on-hand to minimize time spent waiting in line. Instead, Mr. Weston implies that if the minimum wage is increased, I will be forced to provide his very profitable company with free labour by doing my own checkout. When a company posts $990 mill...

I have a TIHATL double-header today, plus a bonus round. A customer asked for something by Omar Tyree. We had only one copy of one title, and that was in a different branch. I asked if I could get her something with a similar vibe, and she was up for it. Turns out she has read all of Tyree's work -- she loves it and wanted to re-read. So yes, more authors like that would be good. I had never heard of Tyree, but Google told me he is considered an urban griot. (I see by the author's website that he is much more than that, but I was specifically looking at his fiction.) "Urban griot" made me think of Junot Diaz , and with a bit more searching I also found Akhil Sharma . She took one book by each author -- so I've already struck gold -- and then I thought of Walter Mosley . I asked, "Do you like mysteries?" She said, sure, why not, I'm always looking for good things to read. "Have you read Walter Mosely?" Nope, she doesn't know him. As we...

The African American experience in Los Angeles County, California: a brief and selected timeline of sorts.* From 1940-1960, thousands of African Americans migrated from Louisiana, Georgia, Texas, and other southern states to California, hoping to find decent jobs, affordable housing, and equality of opportunity. California was not quite as welcoming as advertised. Housing was strictly segregated. The Los Angeles Police Department under the governance of Chief William Parker functioned as an occupying army in all-Black neighbourhoods. The only contacts between the all-white police force and the black residents of L.A. were roundups, traffic stops, arrests, humiliations, and beatings. August 1965. With the community at a boiling point, a traffic stop gone awry precipitates the uprising known as the Watts Riots. During the riots, Parker says: "These people came in and flooded the community. We didn't ask these people to come here." ("These people" were Americans, w...

If you have an opinion about pitbulls, chances are good that it's based on myth, misinformation, and even disinformation. I know a good deal about dogs, and I thought  I knew a lot about pitbulls, yet I was constantly amazed and enlightened by Bronwen Dickey's Pit Bull: The Battle Over an American Icon . Here are some of the things you will learn if you read this book. There is no agreement on what a pitbull is . No one can correctly identify a dog's breed-mix based on the dog's appearance, including experts. Many or most media stories about pitbulls are based on uncorroborated heresay and myths, and many are actually fiction. Many dog-bite incidents reported as involving pitbulls actually involved Golden Retrievers, Dalmatians, Poodles, and other breeds. Accurate statistics about dog bites, especially those that account for severity, do not exist. There is nothing special about a pitbull's jaws or the strength of its bite. In fact, no test exists to measure the str...

I used Telehealth for the first time this past week, Ontario's call centre for health questions. I thought it was a great service, but now that I've spoken to others about my experience, I'm confused. Is it true Telehealth sends everyone to Urgent Care or the Emergency Room? USians, you may marvel at the beauty of universal public health care. * * * * It was the Monday after Canada Day, and I had been sick all weekend. My family doctor's office always has an on-call doctor or nurse-practitioner, but the office was closed. I had a feeling I should see a doctor, in case I needed antibiotics. I Googled to find the number, and read this on the Telehealth website. Call Telehealth for medical advice Telehealth Ontario is a free, confidential service you can call to get health advice or information. A Registered Nurse will take your call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.   Toll-free: 1-866-797-0000 Toll-free TTY: 1-866-797-0007 Telehealth Ontario is only offered over the pho...

In case everyone hasn't seen this yet, written by someone named Ben Feral Selinger. July 6 Okay, I'm fucking sick of the idiocy and done with writing a diatribe every single time a friend posts about how they're upset that Trudeau is giving a terrorist $10m. You people are.... wilfully ignorant and hypocritical. Here's why. (And I thoroughly suggest reading the entire post. If you know me, you know I'm neither stupid, nor an apologist. I am pure fucking science, and this post is such. Read it before making an ass of yourself by posting about how we just gave a terrorist money). The story (the facts we know). * Canadian born Khadr was taken to Afghanistan at age 9, by his father. We don't know if he wanted to go, and we don't know why they went. There has been zero evidence put forth to suggest the trip had anything to do with terrorism. Regardless, as he was only 9, he had no choice in the matter. * Khadr, aged 15, was found in critical condition following a...

The Roku streaming device gives you access to thousands of apps... most of which are completely useless. That doesn't mean I don't love Roku. I do! But we use it almost exclusively to watch Netflix and the Red Sox, and to access downloaded files on the TV. We've also installed a few other apps, most of which we rarely or never touch: PBS, Democracy Now!, Google Play, National Film Board, a cooking channel or two. Sometimes I page through the available apps, install one, try it, then immediately remove it. There are dozens of apps for movies and TV shows. Some are the streaming option you get when you already have a network or cable channel. Some have expensive monthly fees, others are expensive pay-per-view, and lots are free. If the description says "classic movies" read "public domain". Classic or contemporary, there may be one or two movies of interest, then a whole lot of filler. One popular free movie app is Crackle, owned by Sony to stream their ow...

The City of Mississauga has a community recognition program , through which community groups can have their banner fly at City Hall for a day. When the program was announced, I said to a few of my union sisters, "I know a flag I'd like to see there...". I was only joking -- but they took me seriously! This morning, to the astonishment of many, the beautiful pink CUPE 1989 banner is flying beside Mississauga City Hall! This week marks one year since the members of CUPE Local 1989, Mississauga Library Workers, walked off their jobs and onto the picket lines. It was the first strike in our local's history and the first strike against the City of Mississauga. I am a member and now the president of Local 1989. In the past year, I've been invited to speak on panels, in conferences and conventions, in rallies, meetings, and gatherings of labour activists. Our local was honoured at the CUPE Ontario convention , and featured in a conference called "Building Strong Loc...

I love these old covers! Last year, I blogged about a wonderful essay by Raymond Chandler called " The Simple Art of Murder ", written in 1950. Reading that, I realized that I knew the work of both Chandler and Dashiell Hammett -- the originators of the hardboiled detective genre -- only through film adaptations. I hadn't read any of their novels. To remedy that, I borrowed several titles by each from the library.*  (I also plan to read some of the giants of the noir novel, having seen the classic film adaptations of their work: James M. Cain, James Ellroy, Jim Thompson.) I read Hammett's  Red Harvest  and The Maltese Falcon , and Chandler's The Big Sleep  and The Long Goodbye . If I didn't have so much other reading pressing on me, I would have read many more. I loved everything about these books. The writing is simple but vivid and evocative. The characters are interesting and multi-dimensional. The twisting plots are full of surprises. And above all, the p...

In our home, shopping at Whole Foods was once reserved for special dinners or used a stop-gap during an extremely busy week. Then slowly, over time, it became habit -- and a big one. For a long time now, we've had two regular shopping days each week, one at Loblaws and one at Whole Foods. Sometimes we end up at Whole Foods multiple times in one week. This has been expensive, of course, but I felt it was worth spending more for better quality, and even more so for convenience. Because of Whole Foods' prepared food, we've been able to spend less time on food preparation, but still eat healthfully. Where prepared food in most supermarkets consists of rotisserie chicken and mayonnaisey pasta salads, Whole Foods carries an array of fresh, healthy, delicious -- expensive -- choices. Over time we relied on this more... and more. I did determine that some prepared food was actually no more expensive than if I had made it myself: see my post about Roman tuna salad . Now I suspect th...

Do you watch Aziz Ansari's show " Master of None "? I like it. It's not zany or wacky; it doesn't try so hard to be funny, which I find annoying in so many TV comedies. Parts of the show are funny, but parts are earnest, and interesting. It's not sappy, but it's not afraid to be a bit serious. In the episode we just watched, we see Dev, the main character played by Ansari, as a child, encountering bacon for the first time. He's at the home of a friend, and when his mom calls, he innocently tells her that he's eating bacon. Mom reminds the young Dev that Muslims don't eat pork -- and informs him that bacon is pork. Young Dev looks at the bacon, confused and a bit perturbed, deciding what to do. Then he opens wide and takes another bite. Back in the present, the episode involves Dev and his friend Navid eating pork and drinking alcohol -- but leading their parents to believe they are devout. * * * * If you grew up in Canada or the US, and you...

It's Canada Day, this year dubbed Canada 150, with its own  corporate brand  and a carefully worded story of that number 150. We also have Canada 150+ , which acknowledges that human cultures and societies have been living in what is now Canada for thousands of years. I have mixed feelings about Canada Day. First, I despise nationalism of all kinds, including the kind called patriotism. I used to make a distinction between the two (something I learned from my mother), but have come to feel that it is all the same: I am better than you because I live on this piece of land and you don't. In Canada, patriotism mostly translates into complacency, as if "we're much better than our neighbours to the south!" is good enough. But more importantly, when it comes to Canada 150, are indigenous people. The very concept of Canada 150 excludes and erases the original inhabitants of this land. From an indigenous point of view, Canada 150 marks the beginning of colonialism, occupa...