Currently Listening The Shepherd's Dog By Iron & Wine see related

La la land

A few weeks ago the city of Prince George was graced with the formidable presence of Mr. Stephen Lewis.

Feel free to read that sentence again. I don't know how it happened either. Whether it was a scheduling mistake or a misconception about the municipality, I had to go listen to this icon and Maclean's magazine's Speaker of the Year disperse his wisdom on global warming and climate change. There is something so delightfully unassuming about this man that even though he clearly thinks on another plane, he is able to engage with audiences from all backgrounds and deliver fairly negative prophecies with a positive spin. Though I know some did, I did not leave with a feeling of hopelessness or defeatism, I left with my brain churning fairly fantastical ideas about how my own community could transition in light of this overly-discussed and under-acted issue, how it could become a city Stephen Lewis might talk about at other appearances all over the world as a small beacon of hope and a measure of the possible.

Hope. Possibility.

I get tired of all this environmental doomsday jargon. I am afraid to assess my ecological footprint because I am sure it is the size of South America, and I just wouldn't be able to face myself if I determined that. I try to live in ignorance and do my conscience good by recycling my plastic and buying local and organic as much as possible. I walk when I can and even attended a Green Party event. But the fact of the matter is this is unavoidable, and this burden of is overwhelming. There is no point of fighting for social justice if we aren't able to breathe; one must admit necessity of life trumps necessity of shelter. But nothing is safe, nowhere is sacred. Water is becoming scarce, food is not sustainable. Air is filled with particles, icebergs are melting. Ocean temperatures are changing, wildlife and insects are on the move. Species move towards extinction, trees are attacked by pine beetles, spruce moths and other fun creatures, there are holes in the ozone, the summers are too hot and the winters too cold (or not cold enough, or too long). Forests burn in excess, and islands sink. To top it all off, gas prices are obscene.

Enter Chris Turner. Last fall I attended a taping of CBC's The Hour, on which this journalist/author was interviewed. I don't really remember what he said, but I remembered it was about the environment and it was, well, hopeful. I came across his book, The Geography of Hope, a few months ago and started in on it. I have barely slept since. While I haven't had much time to read, Mr. Turner is an individual who went on a worldwide trip to places far and wide seeking out working technology that is fighting the battle against environmental destruction. It is a book of possibility; of courage, innovation, and hope. It describes communities just like the one I live in who have completely eliminated their ecological footprint and are actually restoring the environment, of green technology that has become industry and sustainable energy sources that power whole cities. It is exciting and inspiring. But from what I've read so far, these initiatives have never come from a government, they have all come from its citizens. It makes sense, any real change that occurs in any community virtually always stems from grassroots. Top-down is imposed, bottom-up is demanded; it is fought for, and it is strong.

Okay. So citizens fighting for new technology. Got it.

Forestry has long driven the industry of Prince George. Its citizens all have some connection to a mill and everyone knows how to operate a chainsaw. However, the industry has become vulnerable, looking at the softwood lumber fiasco, pine beetle epidemics, and exceedingly large forest fires. This has lead to multiple mill closures all over the province and Prince George was not immune. Finally, May 27, 2008, one of our mills burns to the ground. 250 people are now out of work. The future of this mill is now in question, as it may not be worth rebuilding.

If this doesn't sound like a community in transition...okay, Mackenzie is probably a way better example. But I don't live there, and I believe in this city. We have a municipal election coming in the fall, and I'm excited, because it means change that has been a long time coming.

I have ideas. Not exactly detailed ideas, but perhaps the better word is vision. I'm excited for what lies ahead, and I'm not giving up just yet.

Currently Reading The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need By Chris Turner see related

Once again

Apologies. I didn't realize it had been 2 months. Where is my head...well, work and travel has taken up much of my energy. Cop out, I know, but its true.

I am an aunt! This is my sister with her brand new daughter, Lily. They are pretty much the spitting image in this picture my mom managed to get.

So Lily Ruby Roberts was born yesterday, June 14 at 6:49 am. I found out at about 7 and subsequently got in my car to drive like no Neon has ever seen before to get to the Kelowna Hospital. Lily was worth the drive, I got to meet her at 7 hours old and still had the junk in her hair. I'm sure I'm pretty biased but she is the cutest baby I've ever met and the smartest! She mastered most of the animal sounds already and has nailed the baby seal. I distinctly heard what sounded like an idling truck and possibly an impression of my sister's cat. Her dad is planning to put her in Kung Fu due to her strong grip and her already bobbing head.

However, I think Lily likes to play games already with her auntie Sarah, as it appears she was able to open her eyes for everyone but her aunt who drove 714 km that day just to see her. Ya. And isn't it funny that the minute I left the room to get food she woke up and looked at everyone until I got back and suddenly she is tired again. What is that about?!

Needless to say, I can't sleep. So I'm baking cookies and organizing my closet and updating my blog. Productivity has never been an issue for me.

Last week I was sent to a tiny remote community about 570 km north of Prince George of about 250 residents. It's mainly a fly-in area, and to get there one must take one of the smallest aircrafts ever created, in my mind. This community is a place I've always wanted to visit, once I learned about it. Probably because it is so remote, but more so because of the unimaginable violent crime rate (something like 900 open RCMP investigations and 33 attempted homicides this year!), I needed to meet this community for myself. So when the opportunity came up, I jumped on it. And jumped on the beechcraft as well, as it turned out. If you've never been on one of these machines, it felt like being airborne in a minivan. The great thing about this little plane was it flies fairly close to the ground, so I got a good eyeful of what northern BC looks like. Since I didn't bring a camera, I have created an illustration for you:

Its an interpretive abstract. Okay so the orange spots are the pine beetle devastated areas, the blue ones are the lakes and ponds, and the rest of it, the green, is the untouched forest! Sometimes I get mad at BC's oh-so-modest Best Place on Earth self-imposed title, but then I get to see things like this and really...who can argue with this. Really.

After the 2 hour journey, I got dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Literally. But I fell in love with this little community. Over the one and a half days I was there, I was introduced to exactly what I would dream in a small community. Everyone knew who I was and why I was there. I felt like a celebrity. After I did my interviews, I explored their store ($10 for a bag of grapes! $8 for milk!) and walked the circle that is their road. The residents drive either a truck or a quad, and more than a few people stopped to introduce themselves, ask some questions and then offer me a ride to a destination I "had to see." Where else could you go and have this experience?

Though I was walking around in a state of bliss and trying to figure out how I could live and work there, I knew there was alot more to the community. It had come out in the interviews, and was becoming increasingly real to me as I realized I had a follower. At that point, it was time to return to the safety of the "hotel." At night, the community changes. Different people walk the street for different purposes. Alcohol is a major problem in this place, and drugs are increasingly more of an issue. The barrier between "outsiders" and those with roots in the area is strong. There are many people with many deep-running secrets, which also makes collaboration difficult.

Community development is an area often neglected and fragmentation has become common place in today's society. When a community like this already has so much going for it and is completely bogged down with absolutely addressable issues, it is frustrating for outsiders like me to walk away. But community development is just that, development of the community, by the community. I'm hopeful about what I experienced, but am well aware that until something changes, it will entirely dissipate into despair and total chaos.

Currently Listening Postcards and Daydreaming By Dan Mangan see related

After spending six hours in a hospital waiting room, finding this in my inbox--sent by a like-minded young woman--was the absolute highlight of my night:

(please note she is inspecting troops in maternity wear. AWESOME.)

Large and in charge
Spain's first majority female cabinet - including a seven-months-pregnant Defence Minister - reflects a greater European shift away from 'criminal machismo.' Siri Agrell reports
SIRI AGRELL
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
April 16, 2008 at 8:55 AM EDT

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080416.wlspain16/BNStory/lifeMain/home


As the U.S. electorate continues to ask whether it is prepared for a female commander-in-chief, Spain watched its new Defence Minister inspect her troops this week, a maternity blouse doing little to obscure the fact that she is seven months pregnant.

Over the weekend, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero named the country's first majority female cabinet, with nine of 17 ministries headed by women.

Among his appointments was 37-year-old Defence Minister Carme Chacon, the government's former minister for housing and a constitutional law professor who studied in Toronto and Montreal, and is expecting her first child.

Ms. Chacon has pledged to boost the number of women in Spain's armed forces, which first allowed female members in 1988 and is part of the NATO engagement in Afghanistan.

Her high-profile position in the new government came after Mr. Zapatero's Socialist Party won its second four-year term in a March 9 election and the Prime Minister named women's issues as his priority, placing female ministers in charge of Science and Innovation, Development, Housing, Sport, Environment and Public Administration.

He also named a woman as Deputy Prime Minister and created a new Equality Ministry, which will be filled by the country's youngest-ever minister, 31-year-old Bibiana Aido. The new office was created to promote opportunities for women in Spain, address violence against women and combat what Mr. Zapatero has dubbed "criminal machismo."

A photograph taken of the Spanish leader and the women in his cabinet this week may have looked more like a Vogue shoot than a paradigm shift, but is much more than a photo op.

Last year, Spain introduced a bill requiring certain firms to employ 40 per cent women at top-ranking positions, and Mr. Zapatero has proudly referred to himself as feminist.

"I am very proud to be the Prime Minister who for the first time has made a woman Defence Minister," Mr. Zapatero said after he was sworn in on the weekend. "Moreover, I feel very proud that there are more female ministers than male."

Jeffrey Kopstein, a professor of European studies at the University of Toronto, said the new Spanish government is part of a larger shift within the European Union to make political representation and policy more reflective of society, especially when it comes to gender.

Last year, Finland became the first European country to appoint a majority female cabinet and, in 2002, Norway introduced a law that required state-owned and some private companies to fill their boards at least 40 per cent with women by January of this year. And last spring, the Portuguese parliament legalized abortion after a referendum on the subject.

"In the case of Norway and the Scandinavian countries in general, people aren't all that surprised," Dr. Kopstein said. "With Mediterranean countries, it's more surprising because the preconception is that they are macho cultures."

But the effort to expedite gender equality across Europe has been motivated by several factors, he said. From a purely political standpoint, Dr. Kopstein said, putting women in cabinet positions is a move that appeals to female voters.

But it is part of a larger, continent-wide reaction to the European Court of Justice, a judicial body that operates like a Supreme Court of Europe.

"One of the things they're allowed to rule on is equal pay for equal work, and that has allowed the European Court of Justice to take a very outspoken line on all kinds of gender-relation issues," Dr. Kopstein said. "And what they rule, you have to follow."

In the case of Spain, the government is also trying to bring social policies in line with the country's relatively new and prosperous democracy.

"Spain and Portugal are like the California and Oregon of Europe," said Dr. Kopstein, referring to the Iberian Peninsula's economic and tourism credentials. "These are countries that have developed their economies and have consolidated their democracies against long odds and now they're kind of headed down the route of what you might call social modernization."

Currently Listening Songbook By Wood Pigeon see related

Big Money for Bilingualism/Grand Argent pour Bilinguisme

Huh. I'm surprised this actually made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and I would very much like to read their decision comments. It was New Brunswick, for crying out sideways, our only officially bilingual province. This became a Supreme Court issue there? Really??

I concur with Ms. Paulin's case. If one is going to be a federal employee in a bilingual area, then one had better be prepared to converse in both languages. Actually, if memory serves me correct, Canada is itself a bilingual nation with its two official languages...and where is that again...oh right, our Constitution. If I were an outsider looking in, I would feel safe to assume that Canadians, then, are bilingual. This, obviously, is false. Yet any document emerging down the Hill is always in both languages. The Prime Minister addresses the nation in both. CPAC translates one for the other. Cereal boxes list ingredients in both. So there is some evidence; however, a significant portion of the Canadian population is monolingual (not unilingual...another rant, another time). So this may appear to be a slight waste of resources. Why not reduce Canada to one official language?

I think we all know why. This country was created with two, not one, European imperialist presences. And though one was defeated on the Plains of Abraham, they were given a seat at the table and a place in the new Dominion. Canada was founded on conflict, and has come to not only idealize it, but identify as it...we have expanded to know this as diversity. We embrace this so much Quebec can have its own federal party whose sole purpose is to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada. I don't know why this works, but it does, and it would be disgrace to try to simplify. For anyone who argues otherwise, I would refer you to Belgium and look at a country that cannot make two language groups function together in any manner.

I love this paradox of our nation. But I think the government needs to take severe action in this. Why not increase the availability of French Immersion education, perhaps even to the extent of making only French Immersion available across Canada? My parents put me in an English school for some unknown reason, believing perhaps more opportunity would be available to those only speaking one language. Even so, I took as much French as possible through high school and throughout university. But even so, living out west I am surrounded by English, and the little French I do know is slowly atrophied and lost. New Brunswick itself is currently revising their own education system, but currently puts all children until Grade 6 in French Immersion, at which time they can branch off into English if they so choose.

But my point is Canadians need this base of knowledge. We suffer from fragmentation and ignorance, and yes, I suppose I am a federalist at heart. The west resents the east, the east mocks the west, and no one knows what the north is doing. I remember a teacher in high school telling us how when he himself finished high school, he and his graduating class nation-wide was given train tickets across Canada to see and explore their own country. This is brilliant. The number of people who have not been outside of their own province is actually astounding. So of course history has little to no bearing on their interests and the federal government can promise all they want but no one's listening until it affects their own house within white picket fences, their 2.5 children and dog. I would argue it is indeed in our nation's best interest to get Canadians on board with a vision, to get caught up in it and fight for it when it is attacked. I strongly believe we would see higher voter turnout than ever and a government like never before. We would be unstoppable.

But back to reality. All I'm saying is, Mr. Harper, make French resources abundantly available across this nation, with particular emphasis on the West. Let's make Canada bilingual.

Currently Listening Fall and Winter By Jon Foreman see related

Bad

 Oops. I didn't mean to not post anything for this long. One of the Directors on the Alumni Board I was on was also a blog professor, literally, and emphatically told me on numerous occasions that if a blog isn't updated regularly, readers stop checking, traffic goes down, and it becomes defunct. Irrelevant. Lost. Washed up. Used to be. Which might be why like 10 people have been here in the last 7 days.

I'M SORRY.

Okay, now that that's over with. So. My excuse is my attention has been elsewhere. As much as I love the work, the new job actually turns out to be quite draining. And I'm doing my best to make my new place a home, of which I promise to show some pictures once it stops looking horrendously dull. It still just feels like a place, a boring, non-descript white walled apartment, that screams at me to do something with it. It's the first time I've been without at least one roommate. It's a bit sobering to realize no one will be there when I get home, I won't wake anyone up accidentally in the morning and no one cares how I arrange the kitchen. Everyone says I'll love it. I'm not so sure. I've had the great privilege of sharing a bathroom with some amazing people, some of whom have become my best friends. It's true, you don't know someone until you live with them, and I think I got to know some truly beautiful women who have strong drive to seek out the path laid before them. But since they have all refused an invitation to blaze out that path in Prince George, here I am in my white walls.

Pretty much I'm at my best friend's house every day, where I not only get to debrief my day, I also get fed, not to mention take on a few rounds of Ring Around the Rosie. 

I've been thinking. A few weeks ago, I was back in Vancouver for a friend's wedding and had dinner with an old friend. After barraging me with questions regarding my views on birth control and abortion (this is actually fairly common for us), he started in on ambition. He basically said he cannot find contentment and envies those who can. This struck a chord. Both of us have significantly large dreams for the future and have a long road ahead of us to wrangle them into reality. While this is exciting to look to and to plan for, it means that a sense of satisfaction never happens. The achievements are never achieved, they are mere steps. They cannot be savoured or rested upon, in light of what is ahead. The work is never done, and it often feels like climbing a mountain of which one is perpetually reaching for the summit but never quite getting there. 

Contentment is a word I associate with settling. To have reached a stage of which there is no need to progress from. To have the burning drive for more gone from your body. Contentment is something I fear, yet also envy it in those around me. It's almost like being chased by something that you run with all you have from, but what would happen if you just stopped? What if it caught up to you? And yet where does this ambition lead? The ceaseless striving must end somewhere, can it ever result in contentment? I'm not convinced. I think we dream big for a reason, for a purpose that is not to torture us for not living it out in the present. Not to get all myth-of-Sisyphus in this, but I think perhaps another presence can factor in here: happiness. While I will hold human life is not meant to pursue happiness, I think it can be drawn from the labour that results in following ambition. Though, it must be noted that ambition cannot be sought purely for ambition's sake, as so aptly proven in Macbeth.

So where does that leave us?

I think I should probably go to bed.