Another planet

This planet needs another moon to accommodate all the extra lunatics. No one knows when to strike, or not to strike. A deed.

The unionists wallowed in disorganized assembly. Contracts are unheralded. Times to vote. The mayor puts both feet to tickling own tonsils.

I started out on a planet. Got abducted for sure.

Water logged

People in Toronto appear to be suffering from being too waterlogged. New animal species are invading from the north. Which park was this image taken?

Ponds like this are caused by the presence of garbage piles. And attract vermin like this giant antlered water rat.

Poignant

The Toronto civic workers strike enters its final stages. Like anything dealing with the Toronto City Council a simple vote can take days.

The unions take two days to ratify the tentative agreement. But it takes until Friday to get the Toronto City Council off its fat arses to vote on ratification. Is there something wrong here?

I overheard one lady in a group of Local #79 workers state what is for me the most poignant moment in the whole sorry mess. This local is CUPE for the inside workers which includes welfare case workers. She said"I hope we settle soon. I can't get along on two hundred dollars a week in strike pay".

Welfare recipients across the street are getting only $50.

Smell complaints

Complaints about the smell of garbage confuses. It seems a remarkable complaint in a city whose population's popular hobbies are oral and anal sex.

Speech again

Scoring intelligence, on a overcast day. Bank of Canada declares recession over. They hire Dubyás speech writer???

Experimentation

Experimentalation is the digital watch word of the day. I am going to try integrating the phone into direct blogging to this web analdress.

It means some really weird postings should show up every so often. I am limited by 140 letter and space characters. Eventually this will become the haiku of media watch blogs. I will stick the photos in later.

Remember the great "E's" of life.

a. Eject
b. Egress
c. Endorphyns
d. Education
e. Ejaculation
f. Employment
g. Evolution
h. Exile
i. Enough
j. Embalmed

In the dumps

Illness has contracted my full time this week past. Submitting material has been impossible. I must say that being sick is not fun.

Ode to Flu

Devolution confines
Puking refines
Choking basement sump
Seeking the porcelain
I dream the skin
And I am one
With the dump

From MacLeans Magazine six years ago

This article is published for the education and edification of the students in digital watchers.

There are points of contention contained within this article because the choice of interviewees was spectacularly narrow. If further discussion is needed than okay, ready to rumble. Most of the contents in this article are consistent with what I was able to ascertain in the twenty years of being familiar with the TWNBMB environment.

Due to accuracy the name of TWNBMB is published. It will be the only time this happens.

Pictured is the principle Vice Principal as the subject of the horror, Reeve William Springer. It is the picture of evil incarnate. Standing in back is Member of Parliament at the time, Keith Penner. Investigations have led us to believe that Penner had nothing to do with Springer beyond the political context although they were both members of the Liberal Party. This photo has been provided by the archives of Black River Graphics.


Marathon Sued over Sexual Abuse

PAUL PARENT HAS NEVER before spoken publicly about the abuse he endured as a young teenager. Between the ages of 12 and 14, he was molested by a man who was both his teacher and the top elected official of the small town where he grew up. Two decades later, Parent, now 32, is at the kitchen table of the modest home he shares with his wife and two children. It is a Saturday night and he's drinking Molson Export. He is wearing a Maple Leafs sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, revealing ham-sized upper arms and the outline of a tattoo on his right shoulder. Since last July, he's been working with an artist to create the tattoo's design, based on a concept he's had in mind for years. It is an unholy image of a man, grasped under his arms from above by an angel. From below, he is being clawed by a devil. It will take three sessions to plant the ink under his skin. "This is me - the eternal struggle between heaven and hell," says Parent. "I've always felt like that, like I'm caught."

From 1982 to 1984, Parent was sexually molested by Bill Springer, the teacher and reeve (in a township, the equivalent of a mayor), who died in 1992. Today, Parent is suing the town of MARATHON, Ont., where he grew up, and the school board that employed Springer, for $45 million, claiming they did not protect him when he was a boy. His lawsuit is the second to be filed against the municipality and the board in connection with Springer, a convicted serial abuser, and could trigger more, including a class action suit. It lands at a time when the law regarding past abuse is evolving rapidly - and with the courts increasingly sympathetic to victims, similar cases could spring up across the country, says legal expert Mayo Moran. "There's going to be a lot of calling to account," she predicts. But for Parent, just speaking about what he endured is very difficult. "This is very emotional," he says.

Parent was just one of many. After teaching children aged 11 to 14 for almost 25 years, Springer was charged in the fall of 1984 with 53 counts of sexual assault, indecent assault and buggery involving young boys. His victims are believed to number in the dozens. He pleaded guilty to 10 counts and was sentenced to two years less a day in prison. In addition to being a teacher and Marathon's reeve, Springer, 47 at the time of his sentencing, was active with the Scouts and president of the Minor Hockey Association and of the Lions Club. He was also head of the Thunder Bay Municipal League, director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario and chairman of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Advisory Council. In the small, rough-hewn milltown of Marathon, Springer was a big man.

Parent was one of the boys who gave a statement to police. He also travelled to Thunder Bay, ready to testify at Springer's trial. (Since Springer admitted guilt, no witnesses were called.) What Parent wasn't prepared for was his own father's reaction. Tony Parent tormented, and blamed, his son. "I got the comments: 'Why didn't you stop it, why didn't you kill him?'" Paul Parent recalls. He folds a beer bottle cap between his thumb and index finger and drops it into an empty sitting on the table. His children, a boy who has just turned 13 and a daughter, 11, play on the computer in the next room as Parent talks about his father. "He said, 'You must be gay.' He called me a homo, he called me a faggot."

In the early hours of Jan. 12, 1986, six months after Springer went to jail, Parent attacked and killed his father, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and back. His mother and sister were also injured in the melee. Parent, then 15, was given the maximum sentence for manslaughter, three years in a tough juvenile detention centre. The judge, rejecting a psychiatrist's call for leniency, said Parent was under the influence of alcohol, heavy metal music and a preoccupation with the devil. During the trial, the abuse from Springer did not come up at all.

Parent's lawsuit against Marathon and its school board blames Springer's "malicious" conduct for a deterioration in the relationship between him and his father. Parent says the abuse caused him to suffer a breakdown, which in the end led him to kill his father. In his statement, Parent says Springer's misuse of authority "to control, manipulate and extort was cruel and sadistic."

THE TOWN OF MARATHON sits on the north shore of Lake Superior, roughly halfway between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, along one side of a small bay dotted with islands of spruce trees. The surrounding landscape - the humpbacked hills of the Canadian Shield, the sweeping vistas of lake and sky, the seemingly endless forests - is quietly beautiful. Five kilometres off the Trans-Canada Highway, and protected from the wide-open side of the lake by a hill, Marathon feels sequestered and remote. It dates to the 1940s, when Marathon Paper Mills Co. built a pulp mill that still operates. The town's first homes, built by the company - and even heated with its steam - cluster around the mill, which spews a white plume high into the sky. In 1985, around the time of Springer's conviction, three gold mines opened in the area, and the town roughly doubled in size as workers flooded in.

Today, Marathon is well-off - at $70,000, the average annual family income is well above the national figure - and its wealth is visible: campers, boats, snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles line many driveways. In early December, the wind was blowing out toward the lake, leaving only faint whiffs of the often powerfully putrid mill fumes. Another, more comforting, smell was in the air - smoke from burning wood in fireplaces and stoves in people's homes. Like many northern resource towns, the population, at 4,700, is slowing thinning.

In the 1970s and early '80s, when Paul Parent was growing up, the population was about 2,300. His father, like most, worked in the mill. It was a small enough place that everyone knew their neighbour's business; children walked to school on their own. Even today, back and front yards all run into each other: there are no fences. Wendy Bell, a long-time resident and an early, unsuccessful whistle-blower on Springer, says the tight community made people feel safe. Gerald Graham, Thunder Bay's afternoon CBC Radio host, grew up in Marathon and recalls a carefree childhood, building tree forts and listening to the Beatles. "It was an isolated little town along the shore of Lake Superior," says Graham, now 50. "There was an innocence about it."

Perhaps the isolation, and the innocence, was part of the appeal to Bill Springer, who arrived in 1960 at age 23, hired to teach Grade 8. By 1969, Springer was called Marathon's "voice of minor hockey" by the local weekly, and he was running for a seat on the municipal council. He'd already become involved with Cubs and Scouts, and was the school's vice-principal. By the time Parent was in his Grade 6 class, Springer had been reeve for 11 years, a pillar of his community. Former students who, like Graham, weren't molested remember Springer as a flamboyant, jovial teacher. "Marathon," says Graham, "was the perfect place for a guy like Springer to pick - it was miles from everywhere and everybody had young kids. He preyed on the naïveté of people like me."

Springer was often around adolescent boys, says Bob Cheetham, a police officer in Marathon from 1978 to 1985 and one of the three cops who busted Springer in 1984. "There was always a kid in the front of Bill Springer's pickup truck," he says. Just over a year after arriving in Marathon, Cheetham says he began to hear "little things about some improprieties, that Bill Springer was involved in sexual activities, but nothing very tangible." Still, Cheetham mentioned the rumours to his chief, whose advice was to keep an ear to the ground. No formal investigation was launched.

Stephen Boon, who grew up in Schreiber, a nearby township with an intense hockey rivalry with Marathon, had heard about Springer, too. Boon, who today is a friend of Parent and who remembers brawling with him on the ice as a teen, says Springer was well-known among hockey players because he offered board to the visiting teams. "He made an attractive environment for those kids he lured," says Boon. "It was common knowledge among players. He offered 15-year-old boys everything they wanted: booze, porno, the run of the house."

Springer also brought groups of three or four boys to his cabin on Lake Wabikoba, about 45 minutes from Marathon. Parent says they'd start drinking around noon, and the boy who was most drunk would sleep with Springer. Parent has a recurring nightmare, still: he is a boy, back at Springer's cabin, and is very drunk. He's stumbled outside to throw up. He is trying hard to convince himself that what just took place in Springer's bed didn't actually happen. He returns to the cabin and pauses: just inside the door is a rifle, and he considers picking it up and shooting Springer. But he doesn't know if it is loaded and is scared to death of what Springer would do to him if it doesn't fire.

In recounting the story, Parent stops and says the dream, to this point, is a replay of what really happened to him as a boy. As the nightmare continues, though, he picks up the rifle, aims and pulls the trigger. There is nothing but a dead, empty click. He wakes up, panicked and in a cold sweat.

PARENT HAS A WAY of creating an impenetrable, guarded look about himself, as though he's pulled an invisible hood down low over his eyes. He is six-foot-four and weighs 250 pounds. His shoulders are enormous. He has a temper, he says. Until last fall, he wore his hair long, to his shoulders. His friends call him Banger, because he's a fan of heavy metal. Like many men his age, he has a goatee, but Parent's is long and shaped low on the edge of his chin, almost like a tufted lion's beard. Grey has begun to creep in on one side. For years, he says, he tried to bury the horror of the abuse. A social worker raised it about a year into his sentence, but he refused to open up. "That's the last thing you want people inside to know - that you were molested," he says. "I just sat there and looked at her and said, 'You know what? Nothing happened. Let it go. I don't want to talk about it.'"

Speaking out is very hard, still, and it is risky. He is concerned for his children, and worries about how other kids will treat them. He requests their names not be printed and forbids photographs. Last fall, he sat down and told them the truth about their grandfather's death. It was the hardest thing he's ever done, he says. But he has launched this lawsuit, he adds, partly for his children - to protect them from ever being abused.

Joe Rule, a 36-year-old man who has spent much of his adult life in jail, launched the first lawsuit against Marathon and its school board, claiming $12 million. He was abused by Springer from the age of 12 to 17, he says. He has had severe substance abuse problems, but is now sober and working hard to get his life in order. As a child, he was hit in the head with a baseball bat by another child and suffered brain damage. There is often a blank look in his eye. Like Parent, he lives in Thunder Bay. Parent launched his challenge after reading of Rule's lawsuit - and learning through it that complaints about Springer had allegedly been ignored by police and school board officials. He was appalled. "I had 19 years of suppressed - I don't even know what you call it - a ball of emotion," says Parent, his voice dropping into a low tone, seething with disbelief, "that just nailed me between the eyes. Somebody actually told them? They knew?"

He strokes his beard. And pulls the invisible hood over his face. "The cops knew, the board of education knew, town councillors knew." His voice is filled with contempt. "I want the people who knew and failed to do anything to know what I went through." He stabs a rigid finger at the table. For a moment the hood is lifted, and his eyes are burning. "They will know my pain."

Bob Cheetham believes Springer abused as many as 100 boys. He thinks different generations of the same families were molested. Thirty-odd children were involved in the police investigation, conducted in 1984 and 1985, he says. Their names, of course, were never released. In a small town, this doesn't make a lot of difference. While they don't know who was abused, people think many of Springer's victims are still close by - they are bound to be neighbours. Bonnie José, 39, looks at a photo taken in 1976 of her Grade 8 class trip. Springer stands in the bottom left corner. She scans the faces in the crowd: "I'm sure someone here was affected." Like many in the community, she was stunned to learn about the extent of the abuse. "I felt sick and shocked and shameful. I didn't really know," she says. The town has, at least, a moral responsibility toward Springer's victims, she says. "This did happen here. Yes, the whole community has a responsibility."

Not all residents are so sympathetic, and already the town is beginning to split over the lawsuits. Last fall, Artie Cooper, a one-time friend and business associate of Springer, received an envelope in the mail, postmarked in town. Cooper, now 54, was in Springer's Grade 8 class and later became a colleague, teaching at the same school. They led many class trips to Toronto together. In the envelope were paragraphs cut from local newspaper reports about the suits. While he had heard rumours about Springer, he "never, ever" saw inappropriate behaviour, he says. He thinks the mailed missive is "a call to come forward as part of the healing process." But he has nothing to offer, he says. "I don't have anything to hide and I don't have anything to come forward with." He has no clue who sent the envelope.

Many resent the spotlight on their town, illuminating a nasty part of its past. The abuse happened long ago, before most of the town's current population had even moved in. The man responsible - Springer - is dead, they say. "Why now and why us?" asks Rose Marie Comeau, 50, who was born in Marathon and taught by Springer. People wonder when it will end, she says. "When can we bury the SOB permanently?"

The broader community was victimized by Springer, along with the boys he abused, says community leader Wendy Bell. "He was very, very good at being a predator. He was very devious, a difficult man to catch." She is sitting on a sofa in her spacious living room, her feet tucked up beside her. Bell, who was Marathon's newly retitled mayor from 1985, shortly after Springer's sudden departure, until 1991, had complained about him in 1982. As a parent-chaperone, she had joined a class trip to Toronto and had been told by a student that Springer had pulled down his trousers. The behaviour was inappropriate, she told the board, and Springer should not be permitted to travel with students. When her complaint was ignored, she wrote a letter and hand-delivered it to the regional director of education. Again, there was no response.

Bell doesn't believe the community knew Springer was a pedophile. But she is appalled that the power of his position allowed him to so gravely breach trust. What is most galling to her, and causes tears to soak her cheeks, is that nothing was done to help the boys he abused. "The victims got nothing," she says. "It's the injustice. It's so sad that anyone would have to go through that - and do it on their own."

Cooper, who was shocked by Springer's arrest, expresses sorrow for the damage his one-time friend did to his victims. Still, he doesn't think much of the lawsuits. "How would you go about proving that the powers of authority knew about it - and did nothing?" he asks. "I think it's ridiculous, especially the money they are going after."

THE LAWSUITS are likely to take years to wend their way through the justice system. The key issue will be: who knew what when - and, most importantly, what did they do with that knowledge? Did they turn a blind eye? Mayo Moran is a law professor at the University of Toronto and has a forthcoming book on legal responsibility. Even if, in the past, the blind-eye approach was accepted as the right thing to do, the courts today are likely to frown on the practice, she says. A school board's responsibility to children, she adds, is more clear-cut than a town's. Parent and Rule will have to show either that the board knew or, with all clues out there, that it should have known and did not act; for instance, that it ignored or failed to follow up on a complaint. "It would be enough," Moran says, "to show that the board should have known."

In addition to Bell's complaints, there was at least one other, earlier incident that Parent's lawyer, Christopher Watkins - who is also acting for Joe Rule - will bring forth. In 1972, Springer was convicted of giving alcohol to minors while on a trip to Thunder Bay for a Scouts event. Subsequently, some parents wrote a letter to the school board, complaining about Springer. In a measure of the power Springer enjoyed, the letter was signed only, "A group of concerned parents." Still, he was dismissed from the Boy Scouts - only to rejoin some years later - and was forced to step down as vice-principal of the school, but allowed to stay on as a teacher.

Both the school board and the town say they will defend themselves. School board officials declined further comment. Pat Richardson, Marathon's mayor, says the matter is in the hands of the town's lawyers. "I don't believe the town is liable," she adds. "It was one man who did this damage. This was a person not sanctioned by the town."

In cases where there is merit, the parties often settle out of court, Moran says. Parent is willing to go all the way with this suit, he says, even though a settlement would be easier. The last thing he'd accept, he stresses, is a deal that prohibits him from speaking about the abuse. "I will not allow them to bury the issue. At the end of the day, they'll have to look me in the eye."

See also SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN.

Maclean's January 20, 2003

Author KATHERINE MACKLEM

The Canadian Encyclopedia © 2009 Historica Foundation of Canada

McGuinty's needs

McGuinty needs excuses. He needs a clean slate. MP Geo. Smitherman was caught by almost all the media sweeping up Toronto streets.

One wag supposed that not only was Geo planning to run for mayor, clean up streets, he also planned to scoop up the used condoms he found.

McGuinty needs brains. So much for the rational thinker. Ask yourself, just what does he do? You cannot get the answer from him, he doesn't know either.

Cheapskating quarterback

Jessica available??? Tony Romo dumped Jessica Simpson. Get this... The day before her birthday!

I smell .... Cheap Skate! Cheap Cheap Cheap Wow.

Trash talk with Big Gord

Worker tosses one more full garbage bag onto the thousands at Moss Park garbage site. Under the vision of the business people in the towers of power.

This park will be the site of a demonstration by Christie Pits residents.









Moss Park armory in background waits as the slow crawl of the procession of garbage creeps nearer. At present estimates place that this site will be full about November of this year.

Sit on this

My piles are bigger than your piles. :))

One great idea...

This was the idea that comes along once in a blue moon. This is the dump site. The idea of putting chips or mulch down beneath the piles of garbage bags was my idea.

I did suggest that Jack Pine Chips or mulch be used because of the high levels of turpentine in that stuff. However the city had six skids of cedar mulch kicking around and its free.

Its a substitute and won't quite do the same job but it will filter out water borne solids and make for a better speedier and less smellier clean up.

I finally had an idea that someone actually used!!!

Twinkies live longer

Men who meet the following criteria are more likely to live longer, according to the study:
・ Are married
- Are not overweight
- Have low blood pressure
- Possess a strong grip (indicating overall strength and fitness)
- Have attained a high level of education
- Have low blood sugar
- Avoid heavy drinking
- Do not smoke
- Have a low level of bad cholesterol.

This is a list of a study made by some nutbar agency. And here's the mistake most people make. Length of life is not the same as... Quality of life.

You will note the clarification... “likely”.

You will also note “Happy” is NOT on the list.

You will note that social accomplishment or fame... NOT on the list.

You will note that being married is on the list... having kids is NOT and indeed, not even hinted at.

Driving fast... is NOT on the list. Driving in fact is NOT on the list.

Here's one that will shock the females... While marriage is on the list... Romance and Love are NOT on the list.

Here's one for the employer's and biz.... Work, hard work, or any form of employment are NOT on the list.

Golf.... NOT on the list.

Fishing .... NOT on the list.

Take out the garbage... NOT on the list.

So using this little study... what sort of men live long? From the list, apparently its married twinky little queers, who are best described as pet boys.

Yawn care

Oh the people who outsmart themselves. Toronto people line up largely in the wrong category. Yes according to school standards they are very smart.

For instance in this picture here we have our city dweller returfing his front yard. I also know another thing. This turf was "free".

It is movie turf. Movie turf is shipped in very cheaply from farms in Manitoba usually. It is used on outdoor movie sets to green up the movie. It is often laid over normal turf then removed later. And the stuff is so cheap that it is often left behind or given away for free.

City people do not understand that good lawn turf is three to four times thicker than movie turf. In every sense of the word it is almost grown hydroponically. The type of grass is used for the speed that it grows not for its durability or suitability to be turf. Indeed walking on it the first time can kill it the first time.

Often movie turf cannot survive even Toronto's weather because the roots are way too shallow and the cold gets all the plant. A good turf protects plants. Movie turf doesn't. Also movie turf cannot be walked on for several years and must always be watered three to four times more than regular turf.

A photo record of this poor lawn will be kept. Looking good right now though.

Joining up

La Legion Etrangere. When I was a kid I wanted to join. Like the only qualification I had was, like I was a foreigner.

The neat thing about young fantasies is the degree of unreality associated with them. However I was at that point where I could look at the fine print.

I wasn't a criminal.

It matter little whether I changed my name because well, no one was looking for me then or since.

I didn't have any love of my life that I particularly wanted to forget, hide from or destroy myself over.

I don't particularly like killing anything. The hunt was fun until the necessity to kill erupted as a road block. Killing some thing is disgusting albeit necessary in certain conditions.

La Legion went to some spectacularly bad climates, all hot. If not very dry, it would be very humid. All climates which scorpions, cobras, and crocodiles love.

Romance is hard.

Go Blue Jays!!!

The hardline executive managers of the city put up this blue screen mesh around the dump site. This happened only a couple of hours that I posted the recent pics.

Oh woe is the clown that works in secret. Since the blue walls are up, they might as well get maximum use out of the color..

They should put up the Blue Jays Logo on these blue fence walls. The Jays are garbage too.

Cheeks on first

Yesterday's idea flew past first base. It has everything to do with Jack Pine wood chips and trash talk. Its all positive.

The secret already

The Toronto City Council decided today to meet with labor officials "in camera" which is government speak for "in secret". Miller decided to finally talk to someone.

In secret? Hey Dave... Big secret? We know they are on strike!

New feathers for Ms. Pigeon

Speaking to me in pigeon english, Ms. Perle said "Coooo"

Now going back into the bleg a few days you would have seen my entry into the world of pigeon tail feathers. At first I thought the tailless pigeon may have been born like that. But the pins came in and now has a new sent of feathers in the tail section.

Time Collapse photos

Now today is that day to compare. The top picture is the most recent. It was taken this morning from the very same spot the second picture had been taken from.

The pic below is the second in the record.

Cheek to cheek chips

Waking up this morning I decided to make this a good day by doing something original, altruistic and brilliant. Another eureka moment. It was sort of hard to do. It was done in the shower.

The criteria. Must be original. Must be altruistic. Must be good idea. Must be done while wet.

One of my childhood heroes was actually Archimedes. What a guy. I mean what the hell anything ever good came out of taking a bath. Think about it. Easy work being a genius.

Guy digging a irrigation canal. He works in dirt and heat. All day.

I’m a genius. I take a bath. Bingo.

Anyway, I got the idea in my ass pocket. Gotta keep those ideas close to the source.

Couchy Couchy amen

Six years old and lying on Grannies couch. Light streaming in through the front window. You hit the top of the couch. Poof its a cloud of dust.

You watch the dust swirl in the sunlight rays like a whirling ballet then gently fall.

Swat, swat, swat. More dust jumps off the couch into the light rays to join a bigger dance.

Swat, swat, swat. Again and again.

The NHL's recent free agency season for players was much like the couch swatting. All those free agents in ballet falling to earth slowly... And you know what? The couch is still dirty. All that promise. All that physical dance. Not much has changed.

Butter days ahead

Sunday was a slack day. Miller's Mountains didn't climb by very much. But the smell is starting to waft northward into the quiet streets north of the park.

So minor was the contribution that no photo is required until tomorrow. Tuesday a butter day.

Memorial Wilson

Change of pace. Get rid of those political enemas for a day. For those who are keeping track yes the piles known as Miller's Mountains on Moss Park grounds continue to grow. Phhht.

I wish to return to yesteryear. A long time ago. Before cell phones, computers, and eight tracks. Yes before the introduction of Sach's vaccine against polio. In the steam age.

This is the picture of a building that no longer exists. I took this picture about twenty four years ago. Come this September, 60 years ago, I was born in the top floor room to the left. That was supposed to be the operating room.

The far left has a major entrance that is an enclosed staircase with a large double door and vertical windows going up the stairwell. Climb up the stairs to the top floor. Immediately to the right.

It was also the very same room that I lost my tonsils about 12 years later. This picture was taken in the morning. Its just one of those things I should mention. Time seems important to some readers.

The building couldn't survive in the modern world. It was an energy pig in a world with cheap energy. It had few insulating components in the wall. In the basement frost used to build on the walls.

The building could've been fixed up for less price than it took to construct a brand new town hall. But there is no historic sense in TWNBMB. It is why I took this picture so long ago. I knew that I would enter it into the blug twenty four years later as something worthwhile to look at.

Think of it as a ... manger.

Couch sportatoes

Someone told me that I have some USA readers. For that reason I cannot resist apologizing for the recent trash talk. And I have to apologize for this article which involves hockey. But in Canadian terms hockey the favorite spectator sport lies with the American moral attachment to baseball. I try to use hockey as a life allegory.

Look to the rays of the sun streaming in through the south windows. Swat the couch. Watch the dust rise in the still air, and fall back.

Free Agency came to the staggering National Hockey League a couple of days ago. Dozens of players went everywhere. It was like the dust from the couch. When the free agents all were in the air and falling to the ground it became obvious that whatever the frenzy nothing much had changed. Toronto a light fast team that couldn't score goals changed into a tough slow team that still can't score goals.

Like swat a dirty couch. After you will still have a dusty couch.

Millers Moontains Independ-dents Day

Saturday brought a comic relief. Early morning light stream onto the peaks of the Smitherman Range of Miller's Mountains reminiscent of Ansell Adam's depictions of rugged walls and shiny tree barren summits.

Mayor David Miller's shoe size has now been estimated as a 23 EEEEEE by blyg consultants at the McWhaler Institute of Political Carnage. It has to be that big otherwise that foot couldn't stay in his mouth long enough to make the biggest bonehead statement of all time. He said Enough is Enough!

The union called his bluffy blusterful posturating. Of course Miller's a bonehead but he is only one in a city full of boneheads. I mean most of the people in this city believe its the fault of the civic workers.

There are hundreds of cities and municipalities in this country who seem to manage their labour contract negotiations with comparitive ease. Another bonehead, Premier Dulltone McSquinty doesn't want to deal with this citing non-interference. Normally I would agree with such lazy fairy ideas, but not here.

This is the third contract negotiations between these two parties that have wound up in a strike. Translation the two parties can't negotiate and contract points and sub agreements have nothing to do with the issue. Point is that provincial level interference is warranted here and in Windsor.

Arbitrators must be appointed and put into force. A court style setting may be the appropriate setting. Once this agreement is signed then its up to the province to assign a labour relations supervisor to the cities to recommend and suggest changes to the relationship.

Now that we see Miller... Where are the rest of his councillors?

Spineless Vegans

I sort of suspected the vegan diet aint what its cracked up to be. This is only the first study to be issued about the true comparisons between a meat, a vegetable and an omnivore diet.

Of course the results of this study will be completely rejected by vegetarians. I've yet to meet a vegetarian who is neurosis free. Often they are complete idiots. Of course the girl vegans I can cope with. I am such a man for all sneezins.

Good News for all us Predators

Vegetarian diet 'weakens bones'

SYDNEY (AFP) - People who live on vegetarian diets have slightly weaker bones than their meat-eating counterparts, Australian researchers said Thursday.

A joint Australian-Vietnamese study of links between the bones and diet of more than 2,700 people found that vegetarians had bones five percent less dense than meat-eaters, said lead researcher Tuan Nguyen.

The issue was most pronounced in vegans, who excluded all animal products from their diet and whose bones were six percent weaker, Nguyen said.

There was "practically no difference" between the bones of meat-eaters and ovolactovegetarians, who excluded meat and seafood but ate eggs and dairy products, he said.

"The results suggest that vegetarian diets, particularly vegan diets, are associated with lower bone mineral density," Nguyen wrote in the study, which was published Thursday in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

"But the magnitude of the association is clinically insignificant," he added.

Nguyen, who is from Sydney's Garvan Institute for Medical Research and collaborated on the project with the Pham Ngoc Thach University of Medicine in Ho Chi Minh City, said the question of whether the lower density bones translated to increased fracture risk was yet to be answered.

"Given the rising number of vegetarians, roughly five percent (of people) in western countries, and the widespread incidence of osteoporosis, the issue is worth resolving," he said.

Millers Mountains.. into the 7

Canada Day sucked. I haven't posted for two days. I figure the piles of garbage will go up by itself with the artful hands of the non-union public employees.

I mean posting daily blogs on garbage daily lays at the feet of boringnessicety. Mustard smeared my brain. I decided to take a couple of days off. On Monday I will take a photo of the piles.

Today's trash talks involve the Windsor strike which has had a longer fragrance. Apparently, there is going to be a vote on a potential deal on Monday. Everything happens on Monday.

Since I was laid up for a day or so, there has been dramatic increase in garbage production. Like most municipal things, piles upon piles. Another range has been placed along side of the Smitherman Range. We can call it the Rae Range.

I live in a fortunate place where two of the three porkbarrellees have Rae for a last name. None of which appears to be in the country at the moment.

Fag Flags and memories

Canada day sucked. They keep using the wrong flag in commemorating all of the great wars. The conflict in Afghanistan will be under the new flag. This will be the first official war. After about 40 years of having the menstruating Maple Leaf as flag, I've come to the conclusion that it sucks too.

I posted a Canadian Flag Classic. It looks like our country. The new one looks like a pop marketing ad campaign done by a bunch of gay people for gay people. Gotta work on those constitutional issues for this great Dominion.

Miller's Mountatains part 5 or 6

Canada day sucked. I mean nothing worked except the City of Toronto Management at the garbage dumps. And the media stank with patriotic events applauding falsely to the tune of the goonies standing on guard at polluted lake.

All my internet access died out. Since it was Canada Day some things were open, somethings were closed, and nothing open that you needed to be open.

Weather notes. Really outstanding. Sunny and rain and cool. Trees appear happy. Urbanites are not happy. This makesa for happy.

Notes on a blig

Canada really sucked big time. I even overdosed a little on my nutbar medicine which has made the last 48 hours, less than entertaining. Here is a series of posts written during that time.

Gettysburg

This is the last day of the battle of Gettysburg. No matter what anyone tells you this event changed the course of American History and all history including Canadian history.

Without this single battle I believe the British Government would not have contemplated an independent Dominion of Canada, responsible for self defense. However, it is the Address that Lincoln made that grips the minds of those who believe in Democracy. No matter Conservative, Liberal, or Socialistic bent, it is a minder that gaining and protecting a democratic form of government must be fought for.

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln said this...

“ Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate...we can not consecrate...we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Chipskates

From the smell of this, the ground in this newly constructed kiddies park got surfaced by a layer of shaved Jack Pine chips. (sniff, sniff) smells like from Espanola woodlands.

Now these Jackpine shavings are antiseptic. And the stuff is fresh and makes for a good surface for this year. It is cheaper than one tonne of beach sand.

But as this stuff weathers, it goes to a sickly grey. The shavings lose the elasticity and will begin to splinter into the little darlings' skins. Of course, this is a city project. The city designers are on strike. The politicians are on holidays.

For some reason I am thankful I am not a kid in today's world.