Katherine Graduates

It was a wet and chilly day, but a good time was had by all at the MacDonald Campus of McGill University on May 27th, 2011.  Katherine received her BSc in Nutritional Sciences with distinction. We're very proud of her accomplishment!  For more photos of the convocation: https://picasaweb.google.com/dcrowe2/KatherineSGraduationMay272011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMSW75K0o4vpVg&feat=email

Laying new wire

As I walked to the bus terminus at Chevrier this morning, I noticed someone laying new 1/4" wire.
I guess when it comes to laying new electrical wire along the telephone posts, there hasn't been too much innovation in the process.  Would love to get my hands on one of those spindles when depleted of wire...what a great round table it would make.

New Tourist Bureau for the Monteregie

As of March this year, we have a new Tourist Bureau in Brossard for the Monteregie.  According to a tourism brochure we received in the mail box on Friday afternoon, the tourist bureau is offering a map of all the cycle paths in the Monteregie.  What a great idea!  I bought a book published by La Route Verte a couple of years ago, but it's not terribly useful as it focuses only on their paths and does not integrate the numerous municipal paths into La Route Verte maps.  La Route Verte has done a great job managing the paths (although a bit more signage at certain junctions would be helpful), but their maps leave a lot to be desired.  I'm hoping that Monteregie maps offered by the Tourist bureau will combine the two together well...so, yesterday, I cycled over to their new tourist bureau near the dix30 shopping center and discovered that it is closed on weekends!  Seems rather odd that a tourist bureau would be closed on the two days that most people would be out and about.  Will return nect week during office hours to see what they have.

The Chestnut Experiment

Squirrels like to bury chestnut seeds in our garden.  So, every year, I find little chestnut saplings growing amongst the bulbs.  Last year, I succeeded, on my second attempt, to transplant a sapling into the lawn.  It survived the winter and began sprouting new growth last week!

It looked like it was going to make it. 

Last November, before we left for the Guatemalan mission with DSF, I had raked up all the fallen leaves, but a few of the large tress in the backyard had not yest lost their leaves by the time we left.  By the time we returned home, all the leaves had fallen, but so had snow which covered the ground.  So, I never had a chance to clean the lawn before winter set in last year.  During the winter, we received a great offer from a garden caretaker which included a Sping cleanup.  It was such a great offer, that I decided to try them out.  They cleaned the garden better than I ever did, which made for a good impression.  The contract also covers weekly lawn mowing...this is actually a job I enjoy, but because it was part of the package, it was simply one less thing to worry about.  When Michele and I returned from our bicycle trip to Lachine on Thursday afternoon, Jerome reported that the fellow who mowed the lawn confessed with great remorse to having mowed down my chestnut. 

Oh, the horror!  Hard to imagine how he didn't see it...as the picture above illustrates, there was a stake next to it and a white plastic protective sleeve around its tiny trunk.

No big deal...the squirrels had ensured that I had a supply of back-up saplings, so I simply dug up another one and replanted it.  There will be two big tests to pass in order for this sapling to survive.  It will first have to survive the hot dry summer which we are anticipating while we are away in Malta and Italy.  Then, it will have to survive the winter.  If it can make it through the first winter in it's new location, then it should be good.  I've placed an additional stake next to it as well as a plastic guard rail to protect it from accidents and will keep my fingers crossed.

Cycling To Lachine

On May 12, 2011, Michele's parents celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary!  That's something which doesn't happen very often.  Michele and I decided to cycle there.  It was a perfect day for cycling...light breeze, clear sky, mild temperature, and becuase it was a Thursday, traffic on the cycle path was light.  Gaetan, Helene, Francis, and Celine were also there to celebrate the event.  Michele and I picked up Chinese take-out on the way for lunch.  It was a great lunch and we all had fun. We added another 66 km to our odometers (what a numerical coincidence!).

Spring Time Comes Alive

Lots of new growth returning for another season.

Canadian Democracy

I think most people living in a democracy expect, or at least are not surprised by, a certain level of corruption in their politicians.  Those elected to represent us in our capitals are, afterall, instilled at birth with all innate aspects of human nature and, occasionally, we will, predictably, be disappointed when they succumb to some of those darker and least appreciated characteristics which have been expressed by humans throughout the ages.  What is more disturbing and deeply disappointing to me, however, is both the individual and collective condonement of such behavior demonstrated by citizens who choose to either ignore the issues of revealed corruption or, worse, vote for a political party which has demonstrated a consistent pattern of succumbing to the dark side of their nature.  So, a ruthless, rule-breaking minority government in Canada whch was held in contempt by the House twice (the first time in Canadian history, by the way, that a leading party has been held in contempt) and which, after receiving a healthy budgetary surplus from the previous government, has generated the largest budgetary deficit in Canadian history, has just been given a majority government by Canadian voters.  What's most depressing about this is that Canadian voters have indicated to our political representatives that respect for the rules of parliamentary process and the support for the civil servants who have fulfilled their mandates is unimportant.  Anyone who voted for this majority governement has, fundamentally, legitimized and authorized the corruption of Canadian politics.  Lest we forget, here are a dozen examples of the type of political behavior which the current election has, essentially, condoned:
(1) Forcing the Chalk River nuclear power plant to reopen despite the fact that it had been closed for violations of safety regs and, furthermore, forcing the removal of Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, for opposing the reopening of the plant on the basis that the risk of a fuel leak was estimated to be "1 in a 1000" rather than "1 in a million" as set in the Canadian atomic energy standards....that is, in her capacity as president of the commission, she had estimated that the risk of a nuclear incident was 1000 times higher than it would have been had the plant been operating within the regulations. 
(2) pro-roguing parliament to avoid certain defeat by a coalition of the opposing parties over the government's failure to produce unredacted reports over the Afghan detainee issue in contempt of the orders from the Speaker of the House.  Richard Colvin, 2nd in command at the Canadian embassy in Afghanistan was ridiculed by the minister of defense and his entire party for claiming, what everyone knew to be true, that Canada knew that the Afghan detainees were being tortured.
(3) veto of the long form census and precipitating the resignation of Munir Sheik from his position as the head of Statistics Canada
(4) the dismissal of Elena Georgis from her party over unsunstantiated claims
(5) Bev Oda unilaterally directed the alteration of a document previously signed by three members of parliament which had approved funds for a foreign aid group...the alteration resulted in the denial of funds to that group.  The Speaker of The House ruled, for a second time, that the minority government was in contempt of parliamentary process.
(6) Jason Kenney used federal assets to solicit donations to his party
(7) 2006 election campaign funds were transferred in and out of the accounts of local ridings contrary to parliamentasry rules...there is the added speculation that these same funds generated tax rebates as expenses by the local campaign offices which were never actually incurred at the local level.  One Conservative candidate, David Marler, was fired from his party for questioning this practice and ultimately refusing the use of his local campaign account for the laundering of $30,000 of Conservative funds.
(8) Conservative MP's required to refer to "The Harper Government" rather than "The Government of Canada"
(9) The issuance of cheques for economic stimulus with the Conservative party logo rather the logo of the Canadian government.
(10) the forced removal by security staff of a female student from a campaign rally for Harper because she had a posted a picture of herself with the Liberal leader on her Facebook page.
(11) in an attempt to justify their expensive budget on the 2010 G8 summit, the conservatives made an inappropriate and misleading reference to the auditior general's remarks after the Sep.09.2001 security costs report from the Liberal government in which the transparency of that report was praised.  In fact, the auditior general took great offense to that reference and indicated in her initial report that the Conservative government's spending was far from transparent and, possibly, illegal in that it appeared on the preliminary analysis that approximately 50 million dollars allocated for G8 secutity had been misdirected towards development in the Conservative riding of Tony Clement.
(12) refusal to release the projected costs report on the purchase of new fighter jets contrary to the orders of the Speaker of the House.  Before this current election, indications were arising that the actual costs would be twice that projected in the budget.
Final thought: this government which has been given a mandate to continue to ignore legal parliamentary process will be in a position to appoint 4 judges to the Supreme Court of Canada during its new mandate.  It cannot be beyond the realm of possibility that the corruption emanating from this government will have the capacity to infect the health of our legal system.
For me, this is, sadly, a depressing day for reflections on the integrity of Canadian democracy.