Life in the Twilight Zone

Winter photos

2012-02-05T16:19:00.001-05:00

Here are a couple of photos I took as I was cross country skiing. The woodpecker was completely oblivious to the strange creatures below that shushed by on strange narrow feet. ;o)

We have not been having a great winter for outdoor sports, a rather cool, damp, rainy winter with plenty of freezing rain which doesn't make it easy to ski.

The other pictures were taken at my place where there was ice hanging down from the barbecue. I found the intense blue of the ice with the reflection of the deck behind rather beautiful so I went out onto the deck to take closeup pictures of the ice as it shone in the sun.

Of winter colds and the New Year

2012-01-01T11:26:00.001-05:00

Well, as the title says, I've caught myself a nice big cold. What a pain in the sinuses. Coughing, sneezing, nose running like maple tree sap on a warm spring day.... arghhhh. I wasn't even at school, the usual place to catch these things. So celebrating the New Year was really fun with all the family but today I pretty much feel like death warmed over in a frypan without even having really indulged in the vino. Not fair, why should I reap the consequences without the initial act. It's like paying the fine without doing the crime. Hell, even my coffee tastes bad.

And by the way, why do we say "We caught a cold" as if it was a great prize, won after a serious chase across the arctic tundra. I sure didn't go running after it and I don't know of anyone who does, so why do we "catch" a cold. Wouldn't it be more logical to say the cold caught us? After all those pesky little viruses are the predators and our poor bodies the prey.

So a very Happy New Year 2012 to all. May you be happy and healthy with your loved ones and the rest will take care of itself.

Twas the day before Christmas

2011-12-24T17:36:00.001-05:00

Today was the first day of the Christmas break and all we did was relax. Our Christmas shopping is all done and we don't have the family reunion before next week. So today was a day to relax, sleep in, a late breakfast, an expresso or two, three, reading the news on my iPad. Finally I decided to go walking despite the fact hat it was -13 degrees celsius (9 degrees F). What decided me to go out and freeze? The sun, bright beautiful sunlight. In the winter I'm like a plant, I need sunlight, which this time of year is in short supply, The sun rises about 7:30 am and sets around 4:15 PM and a lot of the time this past month, it has been grey and cloudy. So since the sun was out, so was I. I went walking at the Cap St-Jacques, a nearby nature park that I often go to. I usually cross country ski there, but right now we only have about 2-3 cm of snow, not enough to ski on without scrapping the bottom of my skis. So today I walked 9 kilometres aroundd the park. Here are a couple of photos I took as I was walking. So in the immortal words of old Saint Nic. "Happy Christmas to all and to all a goodnight!"

Christmas and an iPad

2011-12-20T22:49:00.001-05:00

It's almost Christmas vacation but we still haven't had any snow yet so it seems that we'll be having a green Christmas. The kids at school are all excited none the less and we are finishing off the orals for the Christmas project and munching on Christmas cookies that they baked as a part of the project. All in all, the cookies are very good and I'll have to do a lot of walking to burn the calories since cross country skiing is out of the question for the moment.

I've also been playing around taking pictures and using my new iPad to edit them. I bought it for traveling but I am surprised at what I can do with it to edit the pictures I take. It'll be much easier to carry around than my MacBook Pro and easier to use than my iPhone.

Here is a sample of a picture I edited with Snapseed (weird name but highly effective) I thought it gave just the right atmosphere for the Canadian Parliament since the Conservative election. ;o)

Where my roots are.

2011-10-30T20:17:00.001-04:00

We've lived in Montréal for the last 25 years yet Québec is still the city that feels the most like home. I guess its the fact that my roots are there and my ancestors have been there since the late 17th century. So this weekend, Mrs. BB and I went to visit my family in Québec City and it just felt like coming home. It is a strange feeling. I am an airforce brat and as I was growing up we moved around from place to place. Then, when I was a 17, I moved to Québec City to go to college and as I got off the bus, for the first time in my life, I felt like I was coming home to where my roots were. Even today after 25 years I still, in my heart of hearts, consider Québec to be home. I'll probably never live there again since my life and family are all here in Montréal , but Québec will always be home. Here are some pictures of "Le Vieux Québec"

Automne in Québec

2011-10-28T19:31:00.001-04:00

The weather has been pretty sh***y these last few weeks but today was the perfect autumn day with bright sunlight and cool temperatures around 6 degrees celsius. The perfect fall day, so Mrs. BB and I decided to go walking in the Cap St-Jacques regional park and take in the nice weather while it lasts. Here are a couple of pictures that I took while walking on the trails.

It must be silly season

2011-10-22T13:02:00.001-04:00

Well for we citizens of the GWN (Great White North) looking at American politics is always an interesting and rather humorous exercise as well as being somewhat frightening.

First of all you have Michele Bachmann who said during the Republican debates that the countries that the US "liberated" should pay for their "liberation". I'm sure that the Iraqis really appreciated being liberated (read invaded) after 100000 civilians dead and four million displaced, as well as having their infrastructure destroyed and their standard of living crushed. First of all they never asked to be invaded and then occupied for the next nine years and I'm sure a lot of them that lost family and friends would love to payback the US although I'm not sure the US would like the payback. Now Ms. Bachman has a right to her opinion but there really should be an intelligence test to become President of t he United States.

The next person that caught my attention was Rick Perry who believes that it is the United Sates' god given right to rule the world. He also believes that the economic recession was god's punishment for not being good christians. He also doesn't believe in evolution and really believes that god talks to him. Here in the GWN we have special places for people who hear voices telling them to do weird things. What really boggles the mind is that he was elected governor, but then again Texas also elected George W. Bush. (Who, by the way, seems a real genius beside this yahoo)

Here in the GWN, we are also not exempt from political weirdness. We have the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Minister of Labour, who wants to change the labour code so that the economy becomes an essential service, which would in effect take away pretty much everyone's right to strike, letting companies pretty much do what they want…. Somehow coming from the conservatives this doesn't surprise me, but what does surprise me is that the same workers elected them in the first place.

Indian summer

2011-10-09T20:28:00.001-04:00

Up here in the Great White North we are having Thanksgiving weekend... yeah I know it's really early but what can we do. It also happens to be the last hurrah of summer, Indian summer, with beautiful sunny warm days that are almost 10 degrees celsius above normal. I've been getting in as much biking as I can while it lasts because after this weekend biking will be pretty much finished unless I dress up like an eskimo. As I was biking I took a couple of pictures around the West Island (the western end of Montreal Island is always called the West Island. It's the suburbs mixed with some woodlands and fields. Rather strange when you consider that the rest of the island is high density city. )

Macintosh and Steve remembered

2011-10-05T21:48:00.001-04:00

I am writing this on my current Mac a Macbook Pro, which is my seventh Mac dating back to the 80's and the first Mac 512K I owned. I still remember the wonder as I played with MacPaint and MacWrite on the first Macintosh 128K at a Montreal computer store. I was seduced, I could finally make up my teaching notes with diagrams without cutting and pasting the diagrams onto the printed page. In those days cut 'n paste meant just that, you printed out the text leaving enough room for the diagram (a pain in the ass since the text on the screen was really not WYSIWYG so it was very hit or miss), then photocopied the diagram, then cut it out with scissors and pasted it with a pot of glue. Finally you photocopied the resulting mess. If you had a diagram heavy page such an algebra exam, well, let's just say it was labour intensive. When I finally got together the wherewithall to buy a computer, I went off and got myself one of the first 512K Macs. (I'll always remember the first time I opened the case of my first Mac and saw the autographs of all the people who had worked on the project etched into the inside of the case, now that's pride.) I've never looked back since then and I have always used Apple products, never regretting it. Who do I have to thank for that? Well, in a large measure, Steve Jobs. He was the man behind the dream and he made it happen.Todays computers, be they Macs or PC's can thank him for it, for without his dream of a computer for the rest of us, I'm pretty sure that Windows, mice and the GUI would probably not exist or would be much less sophisticated than they are today.

Steve Jobs was a man that had a dream and he wasn't afraid to follow his dream wherever it lead him. He was a visionary who changed how modern computing and communications work in our world and he probably had great fun doing it. Here is what he said at the 2005 Stanford Commencement. I think it pretty much sums it up.

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/steve-jobs-2005-stanford-commencement-address-20111006-1lami.html#ixzz1ZxdUaPSX

In 1987 Steve said that he wanted to put a ding in the universe. Well Steve I think that you finally put more than a ding, more like a bloody big dent... RIP and my condolences to the family you loved.

Oops, Beijing we have a problem.

2011-10-01T16:29:00.001-04:00

Oops... Beijing, we have a problem...

File this one under "Major Fail".

The Chinese Central Television's telecast of the launch of the Tiangong-1 space station was impeccably done except for one small flaw. The launch was backed up with the stirring music of... wait for it... America The Beautiful. Hmmm I think I know where the producers of this show will be spending their next vacations...

The link is for the article on the The Guardians web site and it includes a video clip of the blunder...

Rocket's red glaring error: China sets space launch to America the Beautiful | Science | The Guardian: ""

Summer happenings Part 2

2011-09-17T13:14:00.001-04:00

Here is the second part of our summer vacations. Enjoy.

Summer happenings

2011-09-16T22:18:00.001-04:00

Oh how I’m lazy, no blog since June, but as an excuse I must say that I was rather busy this summer. I went trekking in the Parc de la Gaspésie (arguably the best place to go hiking in Québec if you like mountains). Then later on Mrs. BB and I spent 3 weeks traipsing around France getting in as much of the country as we could. Now being the lazy person that I am and since a photo is worth a thousand words, here is my summer in pictures to make up for the blogs I didn’t have time to write. :o) There should be a couple of thousand words here. The photos are from the Massif Central in the centre of France and of course the Loire valley and its castles. Part 2 tomorrow. :o)

Short sightedness

2011-06-23T16:24:00.000-04:00

The end of the school year approaches and has not been made easier by the fact that our road infrastructure in Montreal is literally falling to pieces. Last week they had to close one of the four bridges to the south shore because the gussets which hold the steel beams together had rusted out. The next closest bridge is also under inspection/repair pretty much on a permanent basis since as they so euphemistically say it "has reached the end of its lifespan" (read it’s falling to pieces also). Add to that the Turcotte interchange where three highways congregate also has really big problems. They have closed some exits and reduced lanes on others because of safety concerns. They originally didn’t put in enough steel bar to solidify them so they are now falling apart. So to say the least, our island roads look pretty much 3rd world. Now add to that, that all traffic must cross onto the island to head westward because there is no ring road around Montreal to avoid the city (it’ll be finished late in 2012 maybe) and you have a recipe for chaos.

Now why is that? Well it’s pretty easy to understand. There has been massive underfunding of the upkeep and inspection of the roads and bridges for the last 50 years or more because the politicians don’t see those as being very sexy and politically advantageous. In the last 50 years we’ve spent money for the Olympics (we’re still paying for t he Olympic stadium), spent money on two referendums and all the feasibility studies that went with them, we are even now, as the roads and bridges are falling apart, spending 400 million on a new arena in Québec City so they can get a NHL hockey team. These are all nice to have, but they should be paid for, if and only if, there is money left over after having taken care of the essentials, such as roads, bridges, health care, education and all the other essential services.

Out society today needs lessons in pragmatism and in looking longterm. Our politicians can’t see farther than one or two years and the next popularity poll. I suppose that throughout human history it has been pretty much the same thing... « bread and circuses » as things fall apart around us.

Oh the rapture

2011-05-23T09:45:00.002-04:00

Well we're still here, no feeling of lightness, no looking skywards for me or Mrs. BB. So I guess we just are not among the chosen, but then again so are 97% of the population.
Not being raptures doesn't really bother me but can you imagine the problems this 3% would have caused as they were lofted skywards?
First of all they would have had to dodge all the news helicopters trying to get exclusive footage of the event. If you go through the helicopter rotor blades will you still be raptured? Raptured in pieces, could be rather messy.
Then there is the problems of the Raptured living near the major airports such as JFK, Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle where there are always hundreds of planes in the air at one time. Going through a turbofan jet engine leaves even less pieces than the the rotor blades. Hitting the front of the aircraft like an oversized seagull is also not good but at least the Rapturee will still be in one piece albeit a bit smeared across the windshield.
Then there are the family members who will just not want to let go of the loved one.
"Johnny will you stop playing with that rope, that's your grandpa not a balloon for you to play with!"
Right now we've been having thunder storms. I wonder if the Rapturee going through the clouds would disturb the water vapor enough to cause an ionization trail that would set off a lightening strike? Fricassee of Rapture, heavenly crispy critters.
For the rest of us there might also have been fun things. I was thinking that if the Rapture had been placed at a more convenient time, at 6 pm it is still light out, let's say midnight, we could have gone around with piles of old clothes and shoes and laid them out on sidewalks and lawns in the shape of a human that had been lofted skywards. The looks on people's faces the next morning would have been priceless.
This the second Rapture I've gone through (there was supposed to have been another in 1994) predicted by the same looney-tunes preacher. Why is it that religion brings out the craziness and credulity in otherwise sane human beings? I'll let you find the answer to that since I have to go and live my post-apocalyptic life.

- Posted from my iPhone

Can you spell democracy Mr. Harper

2011-04-05T16:52:00.002-04:00

We’ve always known that the Prime Minister liked being in control and that he and his party were found in contempt of parliament (stonewalling the elected representatives of the people about information they needed to do their jobs) but this week Mr. Harper and his party has proved it without a doubt.
Usually when there is a public meeting or rally, it is supposed to be public not just opened to the party faithful. The Conservatives have been making the Canadian voters register if they want to attend a Conservative rally where the Mr. Harper will be speaking. They then do a background check and if you do not pass their loyalty criteria, you are out of there, escorted by the local bouncers.
Can this be real, oh yes. Last week Awish Aslam, a 19-year-old University of Western Ontario student and her friend, went to a Conservative rally where they were told that they were not welcome. Why might you ask? It was because they had been to a Liberal rally the week before and had posted a picture of themselves with Michael Ignatieff (see previous post) on Facebook. Miss Aslam has been going to all the different parties' rallies to get a better idea for who to vote for, which is what voters should do. Was it just a slip up of overzealous political organizers? Nope, it seems that this is not the first time that this has happened. Did the Mr. Harper apologize to the people? Again no, he feels that it is OK to do this kind of screening, but what can you expect from a politician that limits the number of questions the press may ask to only five un-embarrassing questions per photo op.
Now kicking out the « undesirables » seems to be standard practice with the Conservatives. Gentlemen, can you spell D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y, where the people are allowed access to the politicians to ask questions and get answers before making an enlightened decision??? What is really ironic is that they closely screen the voters and yet in the PMO (prime minister’s office) one of his top advisors is Bruce Carson, a man who has five fraud convictions. Hmmm, makes one think doesn’t it?

Read The Montreal Gazette article here

It's that time again.

2011-04-02T09:32:00.002-04:00

If you haven't heard yet, we are in the middle of electing our beloved leaders. BS is flying fast and furious everywhere and promises to make our lives a veritable paradise abound.
Who are the protagonists in the epic clash, well for those of you who do not live in our beautiful land here is a rapid who's who.

Stephen Harper: leader of the Conservative party. Comes from the Reform/Alliance (radical right) party before they took over the conservatives after having united their fortunes. He is known to be autocratic and doesn't really feel that he needs Parliament except to rubber stamp his decisions from the PMO (prime minister's office, a kind of unelected executive). He is a kind of "Bush lite". His platform is mainly law and order (even if the statistics prove that crime has gone down), more military, tax cuts to the large corporations (which probably means that I will be paying more taxes to make up the difference), Republican style attack ads and scare mongering. Has ties to the oil industry and the religious right.

Michael Ignatieff: Liberal leader, liberals being analogous to the Democrats in the US, is an unknown quantity since this is his first election as leader. He is an academic and was at Harvard before becoming the Liberal leader after coup-d'état against the last leader who had even less charisma. His popularity is not the highest at the moment and his chances of forming a government are pretty slim. His platform is left of center and contains promises for families and the middle class. If he does not have a good showing or Harper gets elected with a majority, his days will probably be numbered.

Jack Layton: the leader of the New Democrats. This is a socialist party a bit like the Labour party used to be in the UK. Jack is probably the best liked of the leaders. He seems to be a genuinely nice guy. His party advocates for higher taxes for corporations and the rich, more social programs and more environmentally friendly actions. He is a nice guy but nice guys usually finish last.

Gilles Duceppe: leader of the Bloc Québécois is a big bad separatist, according to Harper he has horns and a forked tail. He is a charismatic and pragmatic leader and is probably the best statesman of the bunch. He is wildly popular in Québec and his party stands to win about 50% of the popular vote here. He usually wins most of the seats for the province. His platform is socialist with the added bonus of wanting to take the province out of the Canadian Federation. His party runs no candidates outside of Québec but that doesn't stop him garnering popularity outside the province.

Elizabeth May: leader of the Green party. This party garnered about 10% of the vote but has elected nobody to parliament. As the name says their platform is principally about the environment and socially they a also a socialist party (kind of goes together). Doesn't have a chance in hell of forming the government but that isn't stopping them from trying.
So there are the choices. If you haven't yet figured it out I'm not a great Harper/Conservative fan and I can only hope he doesn't win enough seats to get a majority because, with apologies to my American friends, I really don't want to live under an American style Republican Right government. There is also my feeling that Harper's style of social policy will play into the hands of the separatist Parti Québécois (provincial separatist party with ties to the Bloc) who will use the fact that Canada has values that we in Québec (we usually have more socialist values here) can't live with. They will then have a referendum and might just win it.
So on May 2nd it's off to the polls we go. I only wish sometimes that there was always a final choice on the ballot, "None of the above". I'm willing to bet that this option would get the most votes.

- Posted from my iPhone

Traveling again

2011-02-25T12:51:00.001-05:00

At the moment we are on the road again. This time we are spending A week in the south of Spain at Marbella on the Costa del Sol. You see Mrs. BB and I were a bit tired of the cold, damp and cold. I usually don't mind winter but since we had a warm spell that melted the snow an then a cold snap that refroze it all I haven't been able to cross country ski so it has been rather boring. There is also the Rénovations we are having done in the house. Camping in the basement is not all it is cut out to be and we had to be out of the house anyhow when they varnished the floors. So here we are making my lil' sister Jazz grind her teeth, with the sea, blue skies and temperatures in the 20's celsius.
Here are a couple of pictures for you.

Our plane

View from the hotel

Our hotel

The mediteranean

The water front

Old town

The arab walls 9th century

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Plaza Puente de Málaga,Marbella,Espagne

Hell it’s February

2011-02-15T20:31:00.004-05:00

I’ve been brain dead for a while and couldn’t seem to get the energy to write something. No sun does that to me. To the contrary of my lil sister Jazz I like the cold crisp air of winter as long as I can get my dose of sunlight. No sunlight gets to me every time.

Now what is going on in our part of the world. First of all our elected representatives are being their usual brainless selves. Last week they voted unanimously to ban the kirpan from the National Assembly. Why, because it is a weapon of mass destruction and the person would be able to take them all hostage and create murder and mayhem. Mind you a kirpan is a small dull bladed knife about 3 inches long, in fact the table knives of the National Assembly restaurant are probably longer and sharper. (If someone did however take them all hostage with a kirpan, I for one would vote NOT to pay the ransom...) I sometimes wonder what could possibly go through politician’s heads besides currents of air. Are they obligated to get a brainectomy before taking office. Small wonder they are less popular than a Jehovah’s witness going from door to door.

This morning I was listening to the CBC when I heard a news report about Scott Newark’s new crime statistics report where he states that crime is really going up and the Stats Canada statistics saying that crime is going down are all flawed (with a soupçon of "Is there a conspiracy » thrown in). Now seems to be legitimate until you realize that it is the same thing that the Conservative Harper government has been saying to justify spending billions of dollars to beef up the prison system because they want to get tough on crime. Then you realize that he was the senior policy advisor (which also led to a scandal) to the minister of public safety, Stockwell Day, the same man who is pushing hard for more prisons, longer sentences because don’t you know.... OH MY GOD, CRIME IS GOIN' UP EVERYWHERE... PUT THEM ALL IN PRISON AND THROW AWAY THE KEY. (He is probably also a closet believer in capital punishment, but can’t say it yet...). Scott Newark is also the man who said,

"Anything effective in law enforcement will inevitably be forbidden under the Charter [the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms]. As we always say, the charter helps only murderers, pedophiles and judges. »

Talk about respect for the highest law in the land from a law and order guy. Anyhow, I can’t imagine that the politicians think that we’d be taken in by such an obvious ploy, do they seriously think we are as stupid as they are? Hmmm maybe they do.

Twas the night before Christmas

2010-12-24T17:47:00.002-05:00

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night. »

Merry Christmas to everybody. May you all have a peaceful, lovely Christmas with those you love.

Life of a teacher

2010-12-18T12:48:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it isn't easy teaching but many times it is very satisfying. I could always pass up the paperwork and the endless meetings but what keeps me going are the kids.
Often adolescents are said to be lazy and will amount to nothing, yet each year they amaze me with their work and creativity. My students are in Secondary 2, the equivalent of grade 8, so they are 13-14 years old. They are on the cusp of becoming adults balanced between childhood and adulthood and they go back and forth between the two. It is a remarkable age because you can see the child that they are and at the same time, the adults they will become. Their enthusiasm for new things is a wonder to see and when properly focused they can really do great things.
We have just finished the Christmas Project where they researched different countries, their Christmas traditions, songs, food etc. They were presenting all this week and their work was excellent considering that it was all done in their second language. They also had to bake Christmas cookies from their country to give to their fellow students after the presentation. Let me tell you that the cookies were good and I'll have to do some extra exercising to get rid of the calories.
Some of my former students have gone on to do great things. There is one studying in the Université d'Ottawa and is presently working as a page in the House of Commons (the equivalent of Congress for our American cousins), another is studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. We have some studying in medicine, science, law and education. One is presently doing an internship as an radio host on local radio. Needless to say that I am proud of them all. :o)
I am a lucky guy. I have a wonderful family that I adore and a job that I love. What more can you ask for in life?

Weird Canada III

2010-12-12T13:25:00.001-05:00

I haven’t blogged in a while, well make that a long while. All blogged out I guess, no inspiration and when I get home from a day of teaching, there are always odd jobs to do such as correcting and preparing classes. When I finally finish I just haven’t got the energy to think up something original to write about. Anyhow here is some weirdness about the Great White North that I picked up in the last edition of the Bathroom Reader, just to prove that we are not any less wacky than the rest of the world.

YOU WANT THE TOOTH, OFFICER?

Outside Samia, Ontario, in June 2010, a driver flagged down a police officer on Highway 402 to warn him of a semi truck meandering all over the road. The officer caught up to the truck and pulled it over. The driver's explanation for his erratic driving: He was attempting to pull out one of his teeth. No longer able to deal with a toothache, he tied one end of a piece of string to the bad tooth and the other to the roof of his cab. "One good bump" and it would come right out, he told the officer. As it turned out, he was right‑the officer could tell by the bloody tooth on a string sitting on the seat.

BEEFY VINO

In Japan, Wagyu cattle are fed beer and massaged with sake each day. The result is the richly flavored and expensive (more than $100 a pound) Kobe beef Seeking to create his own specialty beef market, Bill Freding of Southem Plus Feedlots in Oliver, B.C., has developed his own booze‑based method: wine‑fed cows. Like the cattle at other high‑volume beef producers, Freding's cattle eat a diet of primarily grain. But they also drink a liter of wine every day for 90 days prior to slaughter. The red wine is from wineries in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, and Freding claims the beef tastes "sweeter."

ANINUL ACT

Wildlife officials in Deer Lake, Newfoundland, had to put down a moose in 2009, after someone reported the animal collapsing from exhaustion in their backyard. Witnesses reported seeing three teenage boys chasing the moose for hours and hitting it with sticks The teens were quickly caught, brought up on animal cruelty charges ... and acquitted. Why? One of the boys' fathers testified that they couldn't have been abusing the moose, because at the time they were busy vandalizing a local church.

PLEASE KNOCK FIRST

For Valentine's Day 2010, the Toronto restaurant Mildred's Temple Kitchen pulled out all the stops for romantic diners‑serving intimate meals for two ... and openly encouraging couples to "couple" in the restrooms. A handful of concerned citizens reported the Mildred's promotion to the Toronto Public Health office. The agency investigated and found nothing wrong with the idea, as long as frisky patrons stayed out of food‑preparation areas.

THE LAW IS THE LAW

In June 2010, Marika De Florio's five‑year‑old neighbor was driving her crazy, riding his battery‑powered four‑wheeler past her Seeley Bay, Ontario, house over and over again all afternoon. She asked the boy's grandparents several times to keep it down, but to no avail. So De Florio went outside and, in full view of the boy, took off her shirt. That, she reasoned, would convince the boy's grandparents to bring him inside. Indeed, Mike and Nancy Berry quickly hustled their grandson inside and then called the police on De Florio. No charges were pressed, however‑it's legal in Seeley Bay for women to be topless in public.

DIRTY YOUNG MEN

Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse of the University of Montreal's social work department began a project in December 2009 investigating how pornography affects the way men view and relate to women. Part of that research required a "control group" for comparison, so Lajeunesse advertised around Montreal to recruit 20 young men who did not view pornography. He received zero responses.

BANADA

In the 1910s, Toronto police had full authority over movies, including the right to ban films they considered offensive. The criteria: Any movie that showed a pro‑America attitude, murder, or an extramarital romance could be banned. Any movie. In 1911, an inspector reported, "I witnessed a moving picture show of Hamlet, written I think by Shakespeare. That's all very well to say it's a famous drama, but it doesn't keep it from being a spectacle of violence." A few weeks later, the same inspector banned a film version of Romeo and Juliet.

Halloween in snow boots

2010-10-31T08:32:00.001-04:00

We got our first snow fall last night so it looks like the kids will be doing Halloween trick or treat in snow boots this year.
It's a pain since I wanted to take down the gazebo this week-end and now I can't. Hopefully it'll get warmer and we'll be able to finish all the garden stuff before the snow gets here for good. We'll have to start looking to change our summer tires for the winter ones sooner than we thought I guess. Hell, we're still on Daylight Saving Time. Oh well it comes from living in the great white north. I'm sure that Jazz is seriously pissed off this morning. ;o)

- Posted from my iPhone

Bikes

2010-09-26T20:26:00.000-04:00

If I was to take a bicyclist from the late 19th century and gave him today’s bike, he would instantly recognize it and be able to use it. The bike is an invention that is nearly perfect in it’s simplicity. It has changed very little over the years. Yes the materials have changed and there is a more sophisticated system of dérailleur with the gear shifts integrated into the brakes but the major parts of the bike are still the same. The 10 speed bike that I had 30 years ago is heavier than the one I have now but it functions basically the same way and side by side they are nearly the same.

I came across an internet page however that shows that this may all be changing. Go to Yanko Design and have a look. I wonder if they’ll make an almost perfect design better.

Trains and things

2010-09-11T20:08:00.000-04:00

We usually don’t look at trains as they go by but today as I was doing my daily bike ride, I had to wait at a train crossing as a super long freight train roared past. As I waited I looked at the different tanker cars going by on the rails. To tell the truth it was a little bit frightening. There were tanker cars filled with very corrosive pure hydrogen peroxide, some filled with hydrogen chloride (hydro-chloric acid) and some filled with chlorine gas. Inter-disperced among them were tankers filled with liquified petroleum gas (propane). The train was going through the West Island with all its housing and people. In fact right close to the tracks, not far from where I was, is an old folk’s home. Now what would happen if ever the train derailed? It would probably wipe out a good percentage of the people living near the tracks. The propane could leak and possibly explode, the chlorine tanks could rupture and release a gas that was used as a chemical agent during WW1, highly toxic hydrogen peroxide would mix with the hydro-chloric acid giving us god knows what. I’m kind of glad I don’t live near the tracks. Mind you it is probably just as bad on the highways with trucks filled with the same type of chemicals. I guess in this case, it is better not to know too much since there is nothing that can be done about it.

Statistics, statistics, statistics

2010-09-08T20:58:00.001-04:00

The Canadian government has decided to no longer make filing the long census report mandatory. From now on it will be purely voluntary. This has had many people up in arms since let’s face it, without a little coercion pretty much nobody will fill it out. We probably won’t say, "Hey this is intrusive, I’m not filling it out." , we’ll just put it aside on the hall table with all the other stuff we just don’t want to deal with right now and hope it’ll go away by itself. The great Canadian way, procrastination.
The effect this will have is that the sample will not be as random as it should be but will only consist of "do-gooder" or as we say in French « teteux », who always pass in everything. You know the ones when we were in school, the ones who always handed in their stuff on time and when the teacher asked for a 500 word essay would write a 5000 word master’s degree instead. Do we really want government policy to be dictated by what the do-gooders think? It’ll be as if the teacher’s pet helped dictate the school rules for the rest of us poor smucks...
Now after that, you are probably wondering when the hell I’m going to get to the point. Well the point is this, Mrs. BB just showed me the neatest thing about Blogger. In the dashboard there is a tab called stats and it gives you all the statistics about your blog, how many people visit, who visits, which of the posts are the most popular, for today, this week, this month and forever since the beginning of time micro seconds after the Big Bang and all of this with graphs, maps and percentages. It’ll even tell you which bowsers were used for the visits. It also gives you access to all the comments ever written in your blog. Rather neat don’t you think. Completely useless of course, but neat none the less. (Yes I know, you probably have known about this forever, hummm maybe I was asleep when they talked about it.)
I also discovered the other day that using Google docs you could set up a form linked to an spreadsheet page and embed this form in an internet page and have people answer questions that are compiled in the spreadsheet. We were looking for a way to put a school questionnaire on the internet and compile the answers we’d get from the students. So there it was a simple way of doing things and to top it all off, it is absolutely free which is a big plus when you teach in a public school.
Maybe the Canadian government should set up a blog, embed a form and let google compile the stats for them. ;o)

That is the end my friend

2010-09-02T09:05:00.003-04:00

Since geewits asked me so politely I'll write a out the end of our mega trip to France. (You don't want to piss off someone who has survived 100 degree weather, not a good idea at all ;o) )
To start with we had to get from Rennes to Paris which is about 400 km. Not much you say but we had to do this on a weekend at the end of August. Now let me explain about the highways and vacation time in France. The French have an excellent system of roads, well maintained, large (usually four lanes) and straight. The speed limit on the roads is 130 km/hr (that's 81 mph for our American friends), there is always Radio Route giving news, music and the traffic situation. The radio station is always available all along the autoroute and you never have to change channels. The roads are toll roads but it is very simple. You get a ticket where you get on and pay when you get off. Yes it costs but the quality of the roads is worth it, not like here where they made you pay for a road that was frankly in bad shape. At least there we got our money's worth.
Now the other variable is summer vacation. In France everyone and his uncle heads south during the summer. Since they are about 63 million people living in a country smaller than many of our provinces it makes for a lot of people on the roads during the summer. In metropolitan Paris there are about six million people. So as you can see the roads get rather full. In fact since everyone leaves for or comes back from vacation on the weekend there are often mega traffic jams. In fact one weekend at the beginning of August the radio announcers on Radio Route were saying that there were over 500 km of traffic jams on the highways. Luckily most of the time we were going opposite to the crowd. One Saturday, we went by a traffic jam over 20 km bumper to bumper and this was on a four lane highway. So let's say that on the weekends the roads can be hell.
So now let's get to the point. We needed to get to the airport on a Saturday. Suffice to say that we got up at about five am so we would be ahead of at least some of the traffic. Of course since we had gotten up really early there wasn't really all that much traffic so things went really well and we got to our hotel well before noon. We then brought Clio back to its owners and took the shuttle back to our hotel. There we repacked our baggage weighed it carefully since we were only allowed one checked in bag of 23 kg (50 lbs. ). Anything non essential went into the garbage since we had bought souvenirs and they all had to fit into our baggage allowance. Since we were allowed 10 kg for carry-on I can guarantee that my backpack was really heavy.
The next morning we got up early once again since our plane was at ten we had to be there at 7 am. We took the shuttle from the hotel at 6:30 then changed for the airport shuttle (it's a big airport) and finally got to terminal 2A and our embarkation point. We registered our baggage and breezed through security and finally we were good to go. We got on our flight and away we went back home. The flight went really well and we got into Montreal almost a half hour ahead of time. In fact our daughter had just arrived when we came out of customs with our baggage. All in all we couldn't have asked for a smoother ending to our trip.
We have now been back for a week and a half and our bodies have finally gotten used to Quebec time so now I am actually waking up at 6 am instead of 3 am like last week.

- Posted from my iPhone

Frivolous Friday

2010-08-27T17:31:00.001-04:00

Friday is the of the week and time to look upon the stupidities that have come my way this week.
First of all there was the promise made by the head honchoes of the STM who promised the people who take their buses that they would never have to wait more than ten minutes. Now this is really nice but they must have been smoking more than tobacco because this is just not going to happen in any regular way. Well maybe at one a.m. in the morning but certainly not at rush hour. As the president of the union so aptly pointed out, they don't have a magic wand to control the weather and the traffic on the bus routes. Hades they can't even keep enough buses on the road to cover all the routes in a timely fashion much less guarantee that there will be a bus every 10 minutes.
To top it all off, the promise is only for some of the routes, so no matter what, you are still going to piss off a lot of people. Knowing them, they'll probably pull buses from the suburbs to fulfill their promise. I don't know who thought of this one but they are really geniuses at making the maximum amount of people angry at them. Way to go guys, that is really going to make people take the buses in to work.
Now this morning I saw another group of peole who really haven't got a clue a out how things should be done.

We are Friday morning and I am driving down the road to work. It is in the middle of rush hour and there is a ton of traffic, suddenly in the 2 lanes coming towards me I see flashing lights. Guess what, it is a convoy of extra large vehicles. The kind that drive in the middle of the white line because the load is so wide it takes up both lanes from the side to the median divider. Of course they are creeping forwards at about ten km/hr blocking all the traffic going into Montreal. Thank deity, I was going the opposite way. I really don't know what they were thinking when they planned this one. Maybe they could have done it at night, you know when there is little or no traffic but face it that would have been way too intelligent. But what is even more frightening is that this had to have been done with the cooperation of the authorities. Good lord the mind boggles. I sometimes wonder how our human civilization has got this far. Stupidity reigns.

- Posted from my iPhone

Carnac home of the menhirs

2010-08-19T12:19:00.001-04:00

Today was a really nice sunny day so off we went to visit Carnac. Carnac is a a world renown center of the megaliths. There are acres of rows upon rows of standing stones all aligned off into the horizon. An interesting fact is that they are usually aligned west to east. The stones that are west are the largest (2-3 meters) and the eastern ones the smallest (1 meter). When you stand at the western end of the rows the fact that the stones get smaller accentuates the feeling of perspective giving you a feeling that the rows are farther than they really are. I wonder if this was deliberate on the part of the builders or if there is another reason for the discrepancy in the stones.

There are also many megalithic tombs. Some are small but "Le tumulus St. Michel" is big enough for the villagers to have built a small chapel on the top. It looks more like a small hill than a man made object. Also the were many menhir or standing stones. If any of you have read "Astérix le Gaulois" will know that Obélix, Astérix's friend has planted them all over Gaul. LOL I guess it's as good an explanation for their presence all over the region, except that they were put there about 3000 years before the Gauls were in the region.

- Posted from my iPhone

Normandy and Brittany

2010-08-19T11:51:00.001-04:00

We are presently in Vannes in Brittany, although there isn't much to see here it is close to the megalithic stones of Carnac. Since the last post we've travelled across Normandy and visited the landing sites of D-day. Those soldiers had a great deal of courage because even today it a daunting sight.
We also visited Mont Saint Michel, a medieval monastery perched on top of a rock in the Bay Mont Saint Michel. It was very impressive but there were way too many people visiting there must have been 30 buses parked in the car park along with the cars of course. Wall to wall people. After having gotten out of there without kicking anyone we went and visited the Chateau de Fougère, which is the biggest medieval castle in Europe with an area of two hectares.

Yeterday we visited the port of St. Malo. This is a walled medieval town that was one of the principal seaports of France. In the 17th and 18th centuries it supplied 25% of France's wealth in trade. It is also the hometown of Jacques Cartier the French explorer who discovered the Saint Lawrence river. He sailed all the way to Montreal before turning back down the river. At a café the had American style coffee which they called "jus de chausettes" or sock juice. Their coffees are small and very very strong.

In the afternoon we visited the Chateau de Combourg, the home of Chateaubriand (no not the steak the author). It was a medieval castle that had been refurbished in the 19th century to make livable, but none the less it can't be all that comfortable. The descendants of the Chateaubriand family still live there.

The pictures are taken with my iPhone since I haven't had a chance to download them from my camera and post them.

- Posted from my iPhone

Photos instead of words II

2010-08-14T13:24:00.000-04:00

We are now in Normandy after having driven across the north of France. We pretty much followed the front lines of the First World War. We noticed as we drove along ruler straight roads, that there are no really old buildings, everything pretty much dates from the 1920’s, nothing medieval or even 18th century. Then it dawned on us, everything looked new because everything had been destroyed, nothing was left so they had to rebuild everything. It was a very sobering thought, even the straight roads were a result of war, when you rebuild a road why make it crooked like it was before, just draw a straight line and get on with it. There’s nothing left anyhow.

20 to 25% of all the headstones where unknown at the cemeteries of the Battle of the Somme

Canadian cemetery at Courcelette

In Flanders field where poppies grow...

The British Monument to the missing

Unknown French soldier

Unknown British and Canadians

The Battle of Vimy was the crucible of hell where Canada’s identity was forged. It was the first battle where Canadians fought as Canadians and not as a part of the British army. Forty thousand fought to capture Vimy Ridge and they succeeded where both the French and the British had failed with terrible losses. After Vimy we no longer considered ourselves to be colonials but we were Canadians able to do what other countries had not been able to do. From then on we fought together and under our own leaders and we were considered to be second to none. We had developed new tactics, new ways of doing things and the others came to us to learn how. Canada paid a heavy price, 10 000 casualties, 3500 dead or missing. Vimy was burned into our nations soul.

Today Vimy is a quiet, wooded park that France has given to Canada in perpetuity. It still bears the scars of that day. In fact you are not allowed to wander around the park since there is still live ammunition hidden in the ground that are still dangerous. Here and there, you can see remnants of the trenches, the craters and the underground bunkers.

Finally on the highest point of the ridge is the monument to those who have no tomb. They are just names, thousands of names along the walls of the base of the monument. I may be biased, but I found that the Vimy memorial is the most beautiful of all those I saw in France. There is nothing in the monument glorifying war, just emblems of sadness and loss.

The trenches

One of the craters over 3 meters deep

Canadian Cemetery

Danger Explosives

The Vimy Memorial

But northern France is not only sadness, waste and loss. It also reflects mans higher instincts for beauty and light. Northern France has probably the most beautiful gothic cathedrals, which are a poetry of light and stone that reflects man’s better nature. This is the most beautiful cathedral we visited, the Cathedral of Amiens. It is simply breathtaking.

Makes you think

2010-08-09T14:11:00.001-04:00

We visited the battlefield of Verdun this afternoon. One of the bloodiest battles of the First World War, today the area is covered in woods. Dispersed through out the woods are bunkers and redoubts of scared and pitted concrete. There were over 300,000 casualties, 168,000 French and 148,000 German. It was the longest battle of the war, lasting 300 days and the sequels can still be seen today. The land is still cratered like a lunar landscape and the traces of the trenches are still there. There a villages that were completely destroyed and nothing but the name remains today. Even the farmers of the region are still digging up live artillery shells when they plow their fields.
However what really brought home the scale of the carnage is the cemetery of Douaumont where the 15000 crosses are perfectly lined up row on row. Under the monument is an ossuary where the skeletal remains of a further 130,000 unknowns are stored. After the war the people of Verdun located as many bodies as they could and brought them to the cemetery. Many were unknown, some were buried in mass graves and some were never buried but came to light at he end of the war as the land was cleaned up. Are there still soldiers unaccounted for in the area? Most probably since human remains are still being found here and there.
Needless to say it makes you think and I can tell you that I left there a lot more quietly than when I had arrived.

- Posted from my iPhone

Photos instead of words

2010-08-08T16:46:00.000-04:00

Since I don’t always have reliable internet access, I can’t really follow the meme my little sister and SAW have been doing for the last couple of days. So instead of posting one a day, I’ll just post some of the photos we’ve been taking as we travel along our merry way. The first two pictures are from the Abbey of Fontenay and the others are from the city of Troye. We are now in Sélestat en the Alsace region near the German border.

The rise and fall

2010-08-03T12:02:00.000-04:00

In the last few weeks we have visited French towns that contained Roman ruins. Many of these towns were built upon the remains of the city that existed before. As I was gazing at the ruins I wondered what it must have been like for the people 200 years after the fall of the Roman Empire to see these magnificent ruins and to know that their civilization had slipped so far back. They could no longer maintain or repair the infrastructures that their ancestors had left them. The Romans had running water, a good sewage system, fine public buildings, public baths with central heating, a road system second to none and now there was nothing but ruins that were cannibalized for the blocks of stone to build their much reduced town.
Our civilization has always progressed for the last 1500 years. Yes there have been some ups and downs but each generation built upon what the last had done and our civilization has always gone forwards. So we really don’t know what it must have been like for them to see all these things that they no longer had. Mind you, they were probably so busy just trying to survive that they just didn’t care about it and the thought never even crossed their mind.

Mega recycling

2010-07-30T15:02:00.000-04:00

Today we visited Vaison-la-Romaine, a little Provençal town north of Avignon. Why visit this little place? Well the name says it all really. It contains some really remarkable Roman ruins. There are 500 square meter villas, baths, public spaces, roads, and shops. There is also a spectacular amphitheatre. A couple of days ago we also visited Nîmes a bigger city that also contains Roman ruins, except this time it is a Coliseum like that in Rome.

Besides the Roman ruins, what do they have in common? They have pragmatically recycled their amphitheatre and coliseum into public venues for shows and concerts. Imagine seeing a musical concert in a 2000 year old amphitheatre. (By the way the acoustics are excellent, far better than many modern concert halls. ) Mind you it is rather strange to come out from the galleries and see a modern stage and lighting for the show that will go on that night.

Amphitheatre of Vaison-la-Romaine

Carcassonne

2010-07-26T16:45:00.001-04:00

The last few days we’ve stopped at the town of Carcassonne which still has its medieval walls intact around the old part of the city. In fact some of the walls of the town are so old that they date back to the Romans. The town is situated smack dab in the middle of a valley between two mountain ranges that permits passage from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This is a good place to be because everyone who went traipsing up your road had to pay a toll for the right of passage. This made the little town rather rich and sometimes caused it grief since when you have a nice rich town, on a well known road, it becomes mighty tempting for assorted barbarians to come around to get a piece of the action.
The town of Carcassonne was first built by the Celts the Gauls to be exact, then the Romans came along and took over. By the 5th century, things were going rapidly downhill so along came your friendly neighbourhood barbarians called the Vandals. Today we still recognize their penchant your destroying things with the word vandalize. After that came the Moors from North Africa, who were kicked out by Charlemagne. Then the Cathars became the in group only to be massacred by the same bunch as the ones who did in Montsegur. Finally the French rebuilt and renovated the defences to protect against the Spanish who were not all that far away. After the French beat the Spanish, pushing back the frontier the defences were really no longer needed so the town went into decline, which was in a way a good thing since they pretty much left everything as it was. Even the Germans in WW2 didn’t destroy the town since the made it their HQ for the region. So there we are today with a medieval town with it walls intact just as they were since the Romans.

The bottom of this section of wall is the original Roman fortifications.

The Gatehouse of the major entrance way

Medieval painting of battle between Norman knights and Moors

Base of Roman walls Medieval walls were built outside of them

Of ghosts and mountains

2010-07-24T13:04:00.001-04:00

It's been a couple of days since the last post but we didn't have access to the Internet because the hotel's WIFI wasn't working.
In between times we crossed the Pyrenees mountains on a road that is to say the least very interesting. Five kilometers of descent in hairpin turns and a slope that defies description. Suffice to say that missing a curve would not be a good thing. After the descent you end up in a gorge where the cliff overhangs the road for most of the 11 kilometers.
Though before that we visited a mountain top castle called Montségur. For those of you who might not know the name it was the final stronghold of the Cathars, a religious group who believed that we should go back to the precepts of Jesus and live simply as the first Christians did. Of course this did not go over well with the pope or the King of France since the Cathars didn't recognize their sovereignty. A crusade was declared, yes that's right a crusade inside Europe, and the king's barons marched in with 10000 troops and of course the Inquisition in tow. They destroyed villages and pillaged the countryside. Finally the only holdout was Montségur perched on top of its lofty crag. The Cathars there held them back until finally the crusaders breached the defenses and captured the fort in March of 1244. Two hundred and twenty of the defenders were burned alive in a pit rather than renounce their faith. It is said in the records that a black pall of smoke hung around the summit for weeks after.
It is a place that has a strange melancholic feeling to it and doesn't leave you indifferent. The castle that is there now is not the original since it was torn down as well as the cathar houses that covered the summit.

-Posted from my iPhone

Chemin des pellerins

2010-07-20T07:30:00.001-04:00

We are sitting in a small café in the town of St-Jean Pied de Port. This is one of the staging areas for the Pilgrim's Road to Compostelle. From here it is 800 kilometers across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain.
This little village of 1700 will see 25000 pilgrims come through their town in a year. It has been the major stopping point on the road to Compostelle since early medieval times. Everywhere you look you see seashells carved on doors and walls. These shells (the same ones as for coquilles St-Jacques) are the symbol of the pilgrimage to Compostelle and many pilgrims we saw had them tied to their backpack.

- Posted from my iPhone

Artists

2010-07-17T15:52:00.001-04:00

Today we visited the "Grotte de Pech-Merle » which is a cave in the region of Lot. This cave contains beautiful prehistoric cave art between 15000 and 25000 years old. These amazing pieces of art date back to the earliest humans in Europe and are surprisingly sophisticated. In one of the deepest galleries we found something positively breath taking. It is really simple, all it is is the footprint of a child in the mud of the gallery, except that this child lived 15000 years ago at the very beginning of human history. There is a complete foot print and part of other prints as if the children were dancing around. It kind of brings into focus that they were as human as we are. These are not my pictures since you are not allowed to take pictures of the cave art since a flashes would quickly degrade the pictures.

a child’s 15000 year old foot print

a bears head

Horses 24000 years old

We also visited the medieval village of St-Cirq La Popie. This is a very beautiful village perched on a limestone cliff 200 meters above the River Lot. The streets are really in three dimensions, left and right as well as up and down. The people who live there must have great leg muscles since you are continuously walking up and down steep hills.

Les Maurelles

2010-07-16T12:54:00.001-04:00

We have been traipsing across France for almost two weeks now and we have spend the last six days in the region of Perigord and Lot. This is a region of many contrasts and great beauty. The region sits upon a plateau of limestone which is cut up with many springs, streams and rivers. It is a region of human history from the first Neanthertals and Cro-magnons to the Romans and the medieval villages and castles.
While we were here we stayed in a wonderful "gîte" called "Les Maurelles" which is situated in a small medieval village called Milhac. The proprietors of the gîte are called Erica and Philip Cabos. The gîte itself consists of a series of buildings around a centuries old house that once belonged to the notaire (notary) of the village. There are two types of lodgings here. One is the gîte, which is a kind of small apartment with a kitchen that can lodge from four to ten people depending on the one you choose. The other way is by "chambre d'hôte" which is more of what we would call a bed and breakfast. The rooms are large and comfortable and have a bathroom en suite. The welcome we received is one of the warmest we have ever had in all the time we have been traveling. They are warm hearted and always willing to help us, be it recommendations of places to visit or to point out the best way to get around on the small country roads or just a place to store our ice packs in the freezer. The typical French breakfast of baguette and coffee is copious and the bread is always fresh from that morning, delicious. There is a swimming pool and since Milhac is such a small village it is very quiet and restful.
I would highly recommend Les Maurelles for anyone who would like a great place to stay in the Perigord.

Email: les.maurelles@orange.fr
Internet site: www.maurelles.com

- Posted from my iPhone

Macdonald's

2010-07-13T10:53:00.000-04:00

Macdonald's does have something here that is much better than the food. We are presently sitting in the only Macdonald's of the region, not because we love the food but because it has free WIFI after all it can't be all bad.
Today we went visiting in the region of Eyzies. This is a region of tall limestone cliffs that are riddled with caves. People have been living in them since the the very beginning of human habitation. In fact there are many houses and whole villages that have integrated the house and the caves.

We also visited a museum than contains artifacts from the caves around the region. This region contains the remains and the art of Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal man. In facts there is probably the greatest collection of cave art in the world concentrated here. In fact the world famous cave art of Lascaux is not 20 km from here, but today they are no longer open to the public because the humidity of the number of visitors was destroying the irreplaceable art. Unfortunately we were too late in the day to reserve a visit to one of the hoer caves so it will be for another day.
For those of you who might be curious about what our room looks like at "Les Morelles" here is our room and a view out of our window.

- Posted from my iPhone

Life in the medieval

2010-07-12T13:14:00.000-04:00

Moving right along with trip we are presently sitting in the courtyard of a bistro in the medieval heart of Sarlat. This is a part of the city that is made up of small winding streets bordered by medieval buildings made of a golden colored stone. The streets a very narrow and winding and it is easy to get lost in them. Today we also visited two castles, one Castlenaud was English and the other Castle Beyac and they face each other across the Dordonrive which was the frontier between Aquitaine controlled by the English king and the rest of France.
I'll post more pictures later since at the moment my pictures are on my camera not my iPhone and since we don't have access to the Internet where we are staying it'll have to be later on.

- Posted from my iPhone

Heroes and things

2010-07-09T09:40:00.003-04:00

Funny how one people's hero will be almost completely unknown to another. Yesterday we visited a small fortified village called Brouage. This small village was once an important salt port (where they exported salt) and had a population of 4000 which is now at 160. It was fortified during the religious wars between the Catholics and the Protestants in the 16th century but that's another story. In our case in the late 1500's was born a man called Samuel de Champlain who was baptized in the parish church of the village. In Québec he is the founding father of New France and his name is used to name streets, towns, counties, and even one of the largest lakes in the northeast. EVERYONE in Québec knows who he is and what he did. Without him, we probably wouldn't even exist. But in his home country, besides his native village, nobody has heard of him or if they have it is very vague. Different history and timeline I guess.

Today we visited La Rochelle which was, in the time of Champlain, the jumping off point for the exploration of the new world. Here are some pictures we took today.

- Posted from my iPhone

Medeval Chauvignie

2010-07-07T13:10:00.000-04:00

We visited the medieval town of Chauvignie today and here are some pictures. We also saw a live show about falconry. It was to say the least very spectacular with the birds flying inches over our heads.

Bishop’s Castle

One of the streets

The outside and inside of the church

An even smaller street no cars allowed

A door knocker on one of the doors

The view from the dungeon

Castle ruins

Main street

Some of the birds

Another day another abbey

2010-07-06T17:24:00.001-04:00

Today after having slept a good 12 hours and being the avid historians that we are, we went off to visit two abbeys from the 9th century. These abbeys are really well preserved even if they are more than a thousand years old.
The first was the Abbey of Saint Savin (don’t ask me who he was because I don’t have a clue, probably some martyred early christian) What is so remarkable about the abbey church is that the ceiling and walls still have the original 10th century frescos. They are stunning and when you consider their age and their condition having survived wars, revolutions and natural disasters it boggles the mind that they are still there to be admired. We always assume that the buildings, churches and castles were dull grey stone but if this church is anything to go by they were very colourful.
The second abbey was founded pretty much at the same time as the first. The Abbey of Nouaillé-Maupertuis. Although is is less well preserved than Saint-Savin it is none the less a fine example of a romanesque church. What makes it stand out is the fact that it is site of one of the greatest battles of the medieval age... the battle of Poitiers, which never happened at Poitiers.
This battle was one of a trio of battles that marked the hundred years war between the French and the English. There was the battle of Crecy in the Normandy, the battle of Poitier and the battle of Agincourt (Shakespear’s Henry V for you Shakespeareans) In all three battles the English won in a big way. Was the the English knights that were so much better than the French knights? Nope, what really made the difference was the commoner with his long bow, that and the fact that the English were much better tacticians and better disciplined.
The Black Prince (son of Edward III and grandson of Isabella of France (nicknamed the She-Wolf of France) and Edward the II*) didn’t lose a man while King Jean II of France lost 5000 men and was captured by the English. This cost the French a fourth of their kingdom and a huge ransom. In fact the Franc which was the French currency before the Euro was based on the measure of gold asked for by the English. Franc meaning freedom.
Today all there is, is a field with a small stone monument commemorating the battle and the lives lost on that long ago day in 1356.
Here are some photos of what we saw and did.

* For those of you who are more historically minded, here are the reasons behind the Hundred Years War (which lasted 116 years to be exact). It makes for interesting reading. Everything goes back to Edward I of England (of Braveheart fame). He was a great king and did much for his country but he was also in a bitter feud with Philip IV of France who was also a strong king. The English throne had gained lands in France from Eleanor of Aquitaine (mother of Richard I) and Philip really didn’t like that and would rather have them for himself. So finally a compromise was reached where Edward I married his son to the daughter of Philip IV. So Edward II married Isabella of France. Edward was a lousy king and had a leaning towards the boys rather than the girls. Soon Isabella was fed up and finally got rid of her husband by raising an army, and getting into bed with arguably England’s best general Roger Mortimer who was Edward II’s sworn enemy. Her son who became Edward III was of both Plantagenet (from his father’s side) and Capet (from his mother’s). Now we are finally coming to the point, when Philip IV died he left his kingdom to his sons, who died one after another without leaving an heir. Finally there were no Capets left, so Edward III being a Capet on his mother’s side decided to claim the throne of France since he was the only remaining Capet descended in a straight line from Philip. This obviously didn’t suit the nobles of France who named Philip of Valois, Philip IV nephew king. Having his mother’s character, this didn’t sit well with Edward III, who promptly declared war on the French.
Addendum: An interesting fact is that Philip IV was the one that destroyed the Templars and when he had the Grand Master burned at the stake, the Grand Master cursed all his line and cried that the pope and Philip would both die before a year had passed and Philip’s line would end with with his sons. Also the Templars were arrested on Friday the 13th which is why today it is unlucky.

We have arrived

2010-07-05T15:45:00.001-04:00

After a six hour flight we finally arrived in Paris this morning at eight thirty Paris time. We then picked up the car (a cute little Renault Clio fully equipped. It even has an integrated GPS unit which was very useful as we were driving around Paris)

and drove down to Poitiers. We unfortunately had to use the Paris ring road and spent the next two hours crawling around at twenty kilometers an hour (that's 12 mph for the no metric folks). Hell I go faster on my bike. Now remember that we did this with no sleep. It was a rather interesting experience.
We finally arrived at our hotel at 5 pm completely exhausted. Thirty-six hours with no sleep and a 300 km drive, I can assure you that we'll sleep well tonight for tomorrow we are off to visit some 8th century monasteries. I'm lucky Mrs. BB loves history and "old stones" as much as I do.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Rue de la Paillerie,Poitiers,France

And away they go.

2010-07-04T18:11:00.001-04:00

We made a list and checked it twice. We packed and repacked our baggage, then weighed it and repacked it a third time.
We are now finally in the airport waiting to board the plane for France. Now it starts, tomorrow morning we will get our car at Charles De Gaulle airport and we are off to Poitiers.

- Posted from my iPhone

Location:Boulevard Roméo Vachon Nord,Dorval,Canada

The life and times of an iPhone blogger

2010-06-30T14:55:00.001-04:00

Since I'll be in France for most of the summer I'll be posting this blog from my iPhone. This means that it'll probably shorten the posts since typing with two thumbs is not the fastest way to type although I do get along quite well.
Hopefully I will be able to post regularly since I will have to find free WiFi spots in cafés and things. I will also try to include as many photos as I can, though they will probably be more low res photos taken with my iPhone. Hopefully they won't be too bad. Maybe I will be able to find a way to download pictures from my DSLR into my picture gallery.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Rock and Roll

2010-06-23T19:38:00.001-04:00

Jazz and I both live on the island of Montreal if you hadn’t figured it out yet, but I bet that you didn’t know that Montreal is in a major earthquake zone. Yep, we are very seismically active, not as much as California but active none the less. There are three major faults in Québec. One the runs along the St. Lawrence River valley, one that runs north along the Outaouais River (that’s the Ottawa River for the rest of you) and the last that runs along the Saguenay River up to Chicoutimi.
Today just north of Ottawa, in Buckingham, there was a magnitude of 5.0 earthquake that lasted for 40 seconds. Here in Montréal we could easily feel the house shake, the windows and dishes rattle and there were even some books and papers that ended up on the floor. It was quite interesting. This is the second earthquake I’ve felt since I’ve been living in Montréal. The last one had the chandeliers swinging. Mind you, they are nothing compared to the ones in Haiti or Chili, thank diety, because the one we had was interesting enough as it was and I wouldn’t want to live through one that was much bigger.
If any of you are curious here is a link to the story on the CBC.

BP the spill

2010-06-16T16:19:00.003-04:00

This video should help you all understand how BP has been managing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill...

Enjoy :o)

Inside Google

2010-05-30T13:32:00.003-04:00

One of man’s greatest assets is his curiosity and being the curious little blogger that I am, I have always wondered how Google finds all the information to satisfy those billions of queries it receives each day. Well my curiosity was finally satisfied yesterday when I found a site on the internet that shows exactly how it’s done. Click on the link and all shall be revealed. Enjoy.

Inside your Google search

Apollo 11 Saturn V takeoff.

2010-05-19T21:16:00.000-04:00

I came across this on the internet and found it rather cool. It is a film taken during the liftoff of Apollo 11 with the camera running at 500 frames per second versus the usual 24 frames for a movie. The super slow motion shows the ignition and lift off in minute detail. The film runs for 8 minutes but in real time it is only 30 seconds.

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

A trekking we will go... we're back

2010-05-16T14:23:00.000-04:00

We finally survived three days and 40 kilometres of trekking through the wilderness. We had a beautiful sunny day, a cloudy day and the last morning with drizzle, so it wasn't as bad as the weatherman had made out. It was a hard trek on a trail that wasn't always the best (a lot of dead-falls and a mud hole about every 50 metres it seemed) but the students were great and even in the hardest going they kept up their spirits. Hre are some of the photos I took during the trek.

Hiking down the trail

The lake where we slept

Our shelter for the night

The lake calm as a mirror

Reflections

Part of the trail

Some falls

A trekking we will go...

2010-05-12T20:56:00.000-04:00

I am leaving tomorrow for three days of backpacking with my students. The weather has been nice all week and will be nice all next week, but on two of the three days we are walking we are supposed to get showers. There must be someone up there with a strange sense of humour. ;o)
I'll publish some photos when I get back from carrying my backpack across the Laurentians.

Dear Pedestrians in answer to Jazz

2010-05-05T22:30:00.002-04:00

My lil sister Jazz wrote a blog today about cyclists being a menace for pedestrians. So seeing as I'm an avid cyclist I thought I would share my thoughts about pedestrians.

Dear Pedestrians,

Most cities in the world have specially made places for pedestrians to walk on. These special paths should be only for you, dear pedestrian, bikes should not ride on them and cars even less so. They belong exclusively to you... They are called sidewalks. Now cities are also building bike paths. These may look like super wide sidewalks but they are not. They are made for bikes and bikes travel quite a bit faster than you do and cyclists just hate having to dodge around you as you stroll along, without a care in the world. How do you know if it is a bike path? Well that should be easy, there are usually big yellow signs with a black bicycle on it and sometimes there is a big white bike painted on the ground. Is there a little black pedestrian on a yellow sign or a little white man painted on the path? Nope... well then you sure as hell ain't on a sidewalk... Another clue should be the yellow line painted in the middle, very much like a highway. (see examples below)
Now I really don't mind if you want to get yourself killed, but if that is your fondest wish, go for a walk on the highway with the cars because hitting you at 30 km/hr will really warp my front wheel and lead to my having serious bumps and scrapes. Also please remember, that baby carriages do not qualify as bikes, neither does your 3 year old on his tricycle qualify you to be walking along the bike path.
A concerned cyclist...

Bike path

Sidewalk

Washington

2010-05-03T07:07:00.000-04:00

Just came back from Washington DC with my students. The kids really liked their trip and were impressed by the grandeur of the buildings, the free museums and the weather. (It snowed in Montreal while we were running around in bright sunlight, cool but bright. ) It is hard to beat all those free museums. I've been going there for years and I still haven't got through them all. We also took them to the Holocaust Museum, which is less fun but a very good lesson to them. Each year when the kids finish the visit they are very thoughtful and silent which for 13-14 year olds is saying a lot.
All in all a good trip.

Earth day, my day

2010-04-22T11:24:00.000-04:00

One year older, no I don't mean Mother Earth since in geological time one year is nothing. (Mind you at the rate we are abusing our poor mother, a year might not be all that long.) No I'm a year older (56 if you want to know). Am I a wiser person? Nope I don't think so, greyer perhaps but not really wiser.
This has been a year of changes and movement. I travelled with and without my students (see Ecuador trip), I am leaving for another class trip to Washington on Monday and going trekking with students later in May, and all this doesn't include teaching, coaching student teachers and all the other minutiae of my profession. On the home front, Mrs. BB is taking a well deserved retirement (yours truly still has a way to go but that isn't so bad since I like my job) and there are also my two grand-daughters, Zoé and Allsion, who being two year olds, have a lot more energy that poor old grand-dad. But what a wonder it is, exploring the world through their wondering eyes. So as you can see, my life has been rather busy.
I think that that is all we can really expect from life, to do whatever we can, the best we can and try to be a decent human being while doing it. That is about all the wisdom I have. I know that I'm far from being enlightened and sainthood would sit rather badly on my shoulders (I get rather grumpy with life's stupidities and usually don't suffer fools gladly), but I do my best and that's all I can ask of myself. So here's to another year and may it be as well filled as the last.

Ecuador, Cotopaxi

2010-03-10T20:26:00.001-05:00

Ok guys, after some distractions from Kindles and spring, I'll continue with the trip to Ecuador. After having shopped in Otavalo, went on to Cotopaxi province which is named after the world's highest active volcano. We stayed at a really nice hostel called the "Puerto de Corezon" or in English the door to the heart. It was a really nice place, quite luxurious, with good food. The hostel is at 3600 meters which means that we went to bed exhausted.
The next day off we went to climb Cotopaxi. The bus wheezed up to 4500 meters and from there we hoofed it up to the glacier at 5000 meters. Believe me when I tell you that at 5000 meters (16400 feet) the old engine really pumps oil. ;o) At that a height you are only breathing in 50% of the oxygen you get at sea level, so the only way to go is slow but sure by just putting one foot in front of the other.

Cotopaxi

Spring has sprung

2010-03-07T21:18:00.000-05:00

Here in the Great White North, winter seems to be rapidly losing its grip on our land and lakes. The lakes are melting and the maple sap is running already. Jazz will be particularly happy that it's over. ;o)

My Kindle has arrived

2010-03-04T13:55:00.003-05:00

On another note I received my Kindle today and I am now playing around with it. The principal reason I bought it, beside the fact that it’s a nice guy toy, is that every time Mrs. BB and I travel we carry around a ton of books that we finally leave behind where ever we are going. With the Kindle I can carry all my books with me in a small convenient package that is way lighter than a dozen books.
On another note I am trying out MacJournal as a as a blogging writer, hopefully it’ll work out. So if there are any problems, let me know.

Good karma no less... travel to Ecuador part 2

2010-03-02T10:06:00.001-05:00

While we were in the village, it was not always work, work, work. We were also invited to many festivities where we participated whole heartedly. They shared their culture with us and we shared our Québecois culture with them. One night, it was singing and dancing and another it was our "Souper Québecois" where we initiated the village to the good old sugar shack menu of eggs, beans and maple syrup. At first they were a little leery of beans and eggs soaked in maple syrup, but once they tasted it they were fans. We fed over 100 people that night and left them with a dozen cans of maple syrup that we had left over. We also visited their preschool and were treated to a native dance by the little ones to thank us for the donation of clothing and shoes we had made to them. (One of the things that we do each year is collect and buy school supplies, good serviceable clothing and shoes throughout the year and each of us brings an extra suitcase crammed with 50 lbs of stuff we collected and bought.)

Here are some pictures of where we stayed in the village.

After leaving the village, the first place we went to was Lake Cuicocha. This lake is in the caldera of an extinct volcano. We walked around the lake on the rim of the the caldera, a 3 hour walk along steep cliffs dropping down to the water below.

After our invigorating march around the lake, which by the way is at 3900 metres, we went down tho the restaurant by the lake and had a really good meal.
Then on to Otavalo to visit the artisans and do some souvenir shopping. We mostly bought directly from those who produced rather than from the stores, fair trade at its best, but we did, the next day, visit the market to finish shopping. We had already shopped for things in the small local market of Chicapamba but the market at Otavalo is much bigger and has a much more diverse products. I bought some really nice jewelry for Mrs. BB, some beautiful wool knit sweaters for my grand-daughters, a beautiful woven wool pull over for my son's birthday. Needless to say that we did our part for the local economy. ;o) I know it's materialistic but the things there are really beautiful and the price they ask is ridiculously low. Since we mostly bought directly from the producers, it eases our conscience a little. ;o)
So the next post will be onto the Cotopaxi, the highest volcano in the world.

Good karma no less... travel to Ecuador

2010-02-27T13:36:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty much out of touch for the last two weeks since I have travelling with twenty three of my students. We left February 12th and returned today February 25th at midnight. Where did we go you ask? We went to Ecuador to help a small native village called Chilcapamba fix up their local church.
Each year in our school sends students from the International Education Program on a humanitarian trip. This year my colleague Lyne and I organized it with 23 Secondary 4 and 5 students, and off we went. The trip is organized so that we do the work at the beginning and then we get to play tourist so the kids can visit Ecuador's natural beauty.
This trip is not an easy cultural jaunt since we live in rather primitive (a least by our standards) but comfortable accommodations and it includes a lot of hard work. For example, a hot shower was almost impossible to get, usually we had to content ourselves with an ice cold shower that dribbled rather than showered. But there were compensations, the food was abundant and nutritious and the villagers quickly adopted us. When we left there were tears all around, we were family.
The village had built a new community centre which was attached to the church, but the church was in poor repair and there was the bathroom to finish between the two buildings. So we scrapped all of the walls inside and out, then put on a coat of resin primer over the brick and finally we repainted it with two coats of white paint with blue trim. Then we cleaned everything up and we were in business. We also helped put the roof on the toilets and paint the interior. Besides our hard work, a part of the cost of the trip went directly to the villagers which permitted them to buy all the material needed for the renovations.
Here are some pictures of the work that we did.

Before we started.

Sanding the walls

Painting the inside

Painting the outside

Finishing the blue trim with the help of the local children.

After we had finished.

I'll write about the rest of the trip in the next post. So hasta la proxima.

The mouse that roared

2010-02-01T16:41:00.000-05:00

I found this on the Internet and found it hilarious. It is by the animator John Nolan and so no actual mice were hurt by the making of it. Enjoy.

Weird winter

2010-01-26T09:30:00.001-05:00

Well my cross country skiing will be finished for a while since yesterday's weather was to say the least warm (10 C/50 F) and wet (40 mm / 1.5 in of rain). We are really having a warm winter up here with temperatures way above normal. What is strange is that the south eastern US are freezing their butts off and Europe has been snowed under.
Go figure. Of this keeps up we'll soon
Be sending our winter tires down south.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Haiku on skis

2010-01-23T23:00:00.012-05:00

In a recent post my lil sister Jazz waxed poetic about her life at the moment... quite literally in the form of a poem. Here is my contribution to the poetic form inspired by my cross country skiing this morning.

Swishing of my skis
Shadows of trees barring my trail...
All winter wonder.

Fixed the second picture I hope. Funny It seemed to work for me. Oh well, that's blogger for you.

Sunset on the lake

2010-01-10T10:14:00.001-05:00

Here a picture of the sunset I took yesterday while cross country skiing by the Lac des Deux Montagnes. It was rather cold but it was the first sunny day we've had in weeks.

Isn't technology great? Here is the exact place where the preceding picture was taken.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Winter Solstice

2009-12-22T09:38:00.005-05:00

Yesterday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year where darkness is at its height and daylight at its least. From now on the day will gain time as the night gradually shrinks. This day has been important for pretty much all of human history, our ancestors rejoiced on this day because the sun was again on the ascendancy.
When we were in Ireland we visited Newgrange, a neolithic tomb that is 5000 years old, which makes it older than the pyramids at Giza and 1000 years older than Stonehenge. This mega tomb was built completely without metal tools and is really, really huge. In fact we saw other passage tombs that had not been completely cleared away and they resembled hills. What is remarkable is that the passage way to the burial chamber in the depths of the burial mound is perfectly aligned with the rising sun on the winter solstice. As the sun rises over the horizon, the light creeps along the roof of the passage way and just as the sun clears the horizon it illuminates the burial chamber for a brief moment before creeping back down the floor of the passage as the sun climbs higher in the sky. What is remarkable is that our ancestors 5000 years ago were able to figure out precisely the angle and inclination of the passageway to achieve this and were able to build it into their tomb without our modern technology. In fact they didn't even have metal tools but were using stone, bones and wood to build this. This is truly awesome and is a testament to human ingenuity.

Newgrange Neolithic Tomb

The passageway in Knowth the sister tomb to Newgrange

The entrance to the tomb, the opening above the entrance permits the light to enter on the winter solstice. Notice the spirals carved on one of the entrance stones, these spirals are found carved on many of the stones used to built the tombs and probably had great spiritual significance.

What's The Difference?

2009-12-15T20:15:00.003-05:00

A couple of years ago the then mayor of Montréal came up with a new slogan for the city, "Une Île une Ville" which roughly means one island one city. What he wanted to do was merge all the municipalities into one huge city, which he would be the mayor of. Why would he do that? Well Montréal's finances were a mess, the city was deeply in debt and it was a simple way of making some cash by getting a nice cash cow in the West Island which would never have enough representation to do something about it. Now the PQ provincial government of the time was in a centralizing mode saying that bigger was better.
Needless to say that most of the citizens of the West Island municipalities did not take kindly to this and raised a mega stink. The provincial government being the highly democratic entity that it was, simply overruled everyone and merged the cities. After all they knew that nobody from the West Island would vote for them anyway being separatists, since there was a good percentage of Anglos and immigrants. To make a long story short, finally the Liberals were elected partly on the promise of being willing to demerge the already merged island. Came the big day and most of the West Island communities voted to demerge, but some of them didn't get the percentages to demerge so they stayed a part of Montréal. Now what difference does it make you ask? Well as they say a picture is worth a thousand words. These are pictures I took as I was walking to the pharmacy tonight.The first picture is of Pierrefond's sidewalks The second is a picture of the sidewalks of Kirkland which demerged and the third is a picture of the path through the neighbourhood park. I rest my case, bigger is not better it's just less efficient.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Ouch the sharp end of pricky things

2009-12-03T20:14:00.001-05:00

Our school went in today to get the students vaccinated against the H1N1 flu and I accompanied them. Since I was already there, I finally gave in and got the shot. (It's hard not to when you've been telling the kids that there is nothing to worry about, that it doesn't hurt a bit and then turn around and refuse to get it yourself.) Mind you, I think that the whole situation is very highly overrated and is more the product if the media circus than anything approaching reality. But since I have 20 month old twin grand daughters, Allison and Zoé, I won't take the chance because they had yet to be vaccinated because of a cold the last time I saw them. I really wouldn't want them to catch it from me.
This means that in the last couple of weeks I've had more sharp objects poked into me than I've had in a very long time. Let's see, I gave blood then I got four vaccinations for the Ecuador Humanitarian trip in February (The yellow fever is a real bitch, it hurts like hell) and now the H1N1 vaccine. Hopefully my hide won't be punctured again for a while. ;o)

First snow

2009-11-30T07:53:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning and it's snowing. Jazz will be in a foul mood for the day at least. Hopefully soon there will be enough to cross country ski. On the other hand we'll be stuck shoveling, wearing winter coats and boots. I hope that it'll be a cold dry winter and we won't keep having a mixture of snow, sleet and rain all the time.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Back to the past

2009-11-24T18:43:00.001-05:00

As you all know by now, I've been a teacher for over 30 years (and I still love doing it by the way) but having moved around a lot, I've lost track of my students over the years. This week imagine my surprise when I got a post on my Facebook page asking me if I had taught at CFB Valcartier. I answered that yes I had in the early eighties and I got a message back from one of my ex-students saying how he had liked my ESL class when he was in secondary 3 (grade nine). Since then others have also made contact from that class.
It was a really nice feeling to see that I had done a good enough job that they still remember me fondly 25 years later. Teaching adolescents is not always the easiest job nor is it the job where you get the most feedback but I think that it is the job where you can still really make a difference. And once in while, someone from the past will come by and pat you on the back and say thanks and nothing beats that.

Groaners

2009-11-07T11:36:00.001-05:00

I seem to be pretty much blogged out these days. Inspiration just doesn't come easily and when I get home in the cold, damp November darkness, I'm too bushed to get my act together much less blog. So I've decided to take the easy way out. Here are a couple of puns taken from the Bathroom Reader Series. Enjoy....

A MAN HEARD ABOUT the discovery of gold in California. He immediately packed up his possessions and moved out west. Six months later, he gave up and returned home. Why? It didn't pan out.

A GUY GOES INTO a hardware store and asks the manager for a tool to break up the hard ground. The manager shows him a wall of shovels, hoes, and other tools and says, "Take your pick."

A RANCHER WAS taking inventory of his livestock. He figured that it wouldn't take him too long because he knew for a fact that he had exactly 196 head of cattle. But then he discovered that he actually had 200 head? How'd he find out? He rounded them up.

"DOCTOR, DOCTOR, you've got to help me!" "What's the trouble?" "One night 1 dream that I'm a car's muffler. And then the next night, I dream that I'm part of the wheel." "Why is that such a big deal?" "I wake up exhausted and tired."

JOHN LOVES WHEAT-wheat bread, wheat rolls, wheat muffins-he can't get enough wheat. Only problem: He's allergic to it. Whenever he eats it, he breaks out in a rash. But does that stop him from eating it? No, he's a real gluten for punishment.

THE STATE TREASURER had to balance the budget, so he sliced a little bit off the proposed funding for schools, parks, and other services. It was the most successful fund razor of the year.

TOM IS OBSESSED with monorails. All he ever talks about is monorails-especially how amazing it is that they travel with the use of just a single rail. He has a one-track mind.

One last ride.

2009-10-23T17:32:00.001-04:00

It rained and snowed last night but today it was sunny but rather chilly. Since it was sunny and the roads were dry, something that we haven't had in abondance in the last month, I decided to get in one last bike ride. Dressing up in a mix of x-country skiing stuff and biking stuff, (rather cool to be riding in a short sleeved bike jersey and cycling shorts) off I went. The temperature was about 4 to 5 degrees Celsius (40 F) but what was really a killer was the stiff breeze. The tailwind was OK and really accelerated the ride, but the headwind was another matter entirely, boy was it cold. I still managed to do my 30 km but at a slightly slower pace than normal. I am usually able to do the 30 km in an hour and today it took me 70 minutes... So I guess that this is my last ride of the season unless we get really warm, sunny weather.

Snowflakes keep falling.

2009-10-14T19:09:00.002-04:00

My lil' sister Jazz will have a fit when she hears that I saw and felt snowflakes falling tonight when I got home for supper. Not big flakes and not too many of them but enough to be noticed. We have also gotten a frost warning tonight with the temperature falling to minus 2 degrees celcius.
We should hear some interesting comments from her when she gets back from vacation.
Going trick or treat on snowshoes now there's a thought.

-- Posted from my iPhone

Website programming

2009-09-28T21:49:00.002-04:00

I haven't blogged in a while, what with the start of the year and all. Things have been rather hectic and I just haven't had the energy to think up something to write... my brain, she is jello, not even the yummy red kind, more like the yucky yellow stuff.
What have I been doing, well this weekend I blitzed to redo *PEI's website. It is based on SPIP, which uses PHP, CSS and a MySQL database to built the web site. Believe me that is not really user friendly, although once you get it going it is easy to add material and keep it up to date. So I read up, explored, tried things that didn't work, tried other things that didn't work either, to finally find a way to make it work. After spending hours and hours, I finally put it all together and it works. Using an SFTP client (Cyberduck for those of you who use a Mac, great program and it's free) to upload, look at, rename and generally play around with things, as well as Firefox to look at the result as well as the code for the pages and finally Photoshop to change the top banner's images. There are still a couple of things, such as the fact that I can't find the section that provides messages when you change the language. At the moment the site is in French only and going to the English site gives you nothing but a "Bravo ! Le squelette ALTERNATIVES est installé - Congratulations! the template ALTERNATIVES is installed." Oh well I'll have to go searching once again.
If you are curious the website is here: http://pei.csdgs.qc.ca/

*PEI = Programme d'Éducation Internationale, international schools.

PS: This morning I finally found the way to do it... wonders of a good night's sleep.

The game

2009-09-09T20:43:00.003-04:00

A while back in one of her blogs, my lil' sister Jazz told us about how she met Mr. Jazz and dared the rest of us to come back with our own stories. Well better late than never.

Way back when, in the early 70's to be exact, I was a young lieutenant in the 6e Régiment d'Artillerie de Campagne. This was a militia regiment and as a part time job it paid well and went a long way to paying for university. Being an artillery regiment we were a line regiment* and as such we had no officers of the female persuasion and only one or two female admin clerks. (In those days women just didn't go out and fight for their country, that was a man's job, don't rip my head off, I didn't make the rules.) Well that was the year where it all changed, a hundred women officers (+ or -) had been recruited, and they were distributed in the different regiments, including our own. Can you say culture shock...
Mrs. BB was one of those lieutenants, and came a day when we had a major weekend exercise. I remember it was pouring rain on the Friday night when we left and across the Manège Militaire, I saw Mrs. BB carrying her rather voluminous backpack, dripping wet and limping since she had hurt her knee that summer. Being the gallant person that I am, I helped her with her equipment and off we went to CFB Valcartier (the military base). Once there, the male lieutenants were to take one of the women lieutenants and show her what an artillery regiment was all about. (Remember, there had never been women in a line regiment of the Canadian Army. Mrs. BB and her colleagues were he first ones to wear the Artillery Badge on their berets and have 6e Régiment d'Artillerie de Campagne on their shoulder flashes. They led the way for the equality we know today.) At that time I was the Recce Officer, so I would do a reconnaissance of places to put the guns and then I'd take off for the next place, which meant pretty much living in the jeep for the duration of the exercise. When my turn came to choose, I of course, chose Mrs. BB since I knew that she was tough and wouldn't complain. The other female lieutenant had the nickname of "La Chromé" since she was always beautifully made up, with lipstick, eye shadow, long finger nails and I could just see her complaining as we slogged through the mud and spent the rest of the time in a jeep full of radio, equipment and the rest of my team.
Needless to say that spending two days in close proximity, in a damp and muddy jeep permits you to get to know someone pretty well and we started going out together not long after.
There is also a postscript to this story, later on, after another exercise, we were at her apartment and I was still in my combats, not having gone home to change. (Being a student with no car, meant at least a two hour bus ride home and back) She had made a really delicious stew. I jokingly said to her that with cooking like that she was very marriageable and she jokingly asked me if that was a marriage proposal. Suddenly it clicked in my mind that she was the one that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, so I answered her that yes it was and would she please marry me. She looked at me, smiled and said yes. We have been together ever since and celebrated 33 years of marriage last May, Not bad for a weekend in a jeep.

* Line Regiment = the combat regiments that directly fight the enemy.

Renovations anyone?

2009-08-21T15:35:00.001-04:00

I haven't been posting since coming back from vacation since we've been doing renovations in the basement. We used to have burnt orange carpeting in the basement and since we don't like carpeting we finally decided to got rid of it and put down flooring instead. So I ripped up the old carpet, and what a mess. No matter how much you clean it it is a real dirt magnet. I had to cut it up into smaller pieces so the garbage would pick it up. I was covered in dust when I finished. Then we put down the under flooring that insulates and has a vapour barrier. Then I started laying out the floor which went well. You lind of get into a routine, lay out the boards, measure, and cut. Then hook the whole line into already finished floor.
What takes up an enormous amount of time isn't the project itself but putting on the finishing touches such as the baseboards etc. When I finally finished the floor there were two packages of floor boards left, so being the frugal person that I am, I decided to do the landing between the first floor, the garage floor and the basement since it was covered in old orange cushion floor (linoleum). When that was finished and still having some flooring I finished off the stairs also.
So now, everything is done and cleaned up and I start school next week. I had estimated that it would take me about a week to do the basement and it turned out taking me 2.5 weeks instead. There must be a Murphy's law in there somewhere.

Vacation Time

2009-08-08T18:59:00.010-04:00

Haven't been around a computer or any other electronic device for the last week since Mrs. BB and I were on vacation in the Charlevoix. This region of Québec is on the north shore of the St. Lawrence river and is a ruggedly beautiful region of mountains, lakes, and rivers. We stayed at a small bed and breakfast called the l'Aubergine. (The name is a small pun on the word auberge or inn... so a small inn would be an aubergine) It's small and friendly and is situated just north of Baie-St-Paul one of the bigger towns. We really enjoyed staying there.

A water wheeled mill that is still used to produce flour for the bakeryThe view from near the Aubergine

So what did we do during our stay, well we went and visited a lot of art galleries in Baie St-Paul. The region is a mecca for artists and there are more art galleries per capita in Baie St-Paul than most major cities. We didn't buy anything since the paintings were way over our budget, but it was fun looking at them and there were a couple that I wouldn't have minded having on my walls. While we were there we also had supper in some really good restaurants, since Baie St-Paul is also renowned for its fine cuisine.

Baie St-Pail's main street

Since we were there we also went up to Tadousac to go watch the whales. Every summer many species of whales come up the St. Lawrence river to feed on the abundant food sources. The Saguenay river is a fjord and it has a depth of 270 metres. Where the Saquenay meets the St Lawrence, the depth of the St. Lawrence is 350 metres, but just past the meeting point the river bottom rises drastically. This causes an upwelling of the cold water toward the surface bringing up tons of krill and shrimp. The whales gorge themselves on it. There are blue whales, minke whales, belugas, dolphins and porpoises, humpback whales as well as different species of seals. It is quite spectacular to see.Pictures of whales and seals taken on the boat

We also went up to the Hautes-Gorges de la rivière Malbaie. This is a fault in the mountains that was widened and dug out by glaciers leaving the Malbaie river flowing between truly huge cliffs. You can rent a canoe or a kayak and paddle up the river, or you can hike up to the Acropole des Draveurs a cliff bound plateau faced with a cliff that is spectacular. There is also a boat ride up the river with a guide who explains everything about the river and the gorges. If you are so inclined you can take your backpack and tent and canoe up to a wild camping called l'Équerre since it is in a 90 degree bend in the river. This is about as far as it is possible to go since from there there are major rapids and falls. Close to the camp site there is a waterfall so in a way you could say that there is running water. Mrs. BB and I have every intention of going back to the park with our backpacks and renting a canoe to spend a couple of days there.

The Acropole des Draveurs

Cycling around the west Island Part 2

2009-07-27T20:53:00.002-04:00

One of the stranger facts about the West Island is that there are villages embedded in the fabric of the big city suburbs. Before the suburbs took over there was a series of small villages along the shore of the Saint Lawrence River. With the growth of the urban landscape these villages found themselves in the middle of the housing developments. The first time you are biking or driving along and suddenly you are in the the middle of a typical small village, it is a very strange feeling. It is one of the better kept secrets of our part of the island.
At the complete end of the island is the town of Ste-Anne de Bellevue. This town has been around since the 18th century and has a canal that connects Lac St-Louis, Lac des Deux Montagnes and the Ottawa river. This canal is a National Historic site and was originally built in the 1840's. There has been a canal with locks here since 1816, bypassing the rapids between the western end of the island and Île Perot.

This is the canal facing toward Lac St-Louis

Main Street

The Town Hall (in French l'Hôtel de Ville is not a place to sleep. ;o)

Despite having been gussied up, this is the original general store of the village. G Daoust & Cie has been a fixture of Ste-Anne for more than 100 years. It still has its creaking wooden floors and an old fashioned method of paying. There is a sort of pulley system that goes all around the store. The clerk takes your money, puts it in a small metal box and hooks it to line which is whirling around the pulley system. The money and bill go to a central office where they make up your final bill and then send it back to you with your change. The owners even bought up several old systems when other places closed so they would have spare parts to keep their system going.

Ste-Anne is also the home of John Abbott college and the Macdonald Campus of McGill University. It is a beautiful campus made up of red brick buildings, mature trees and large fields of grass. My daughter got her degree in microbiology there. Macdonald Campus is the agricultural portion of McGill and they even have a complete working farm. John Abbott is a CEGEP and rents a part of the campus from McGill. The whole campus is quite nice and reminds me of the universities near Boston.

We are now riding along Lakeshore road, which as you can see runs along the shore of Lac St-Louis. As we get to Baie d'Urfé, a rich suburb we can see one of the many marinas.

This is the town hall

and this is a picture taken at night of the boats on the lake near the town hall.

As we ride along Lakeshore Road, we will finally come to Pointe-Claire Village.

The town of Pointe-Claire has a windmill on its coat of arms and here is the reason. The windmill in on a point of land jutting out in the lake near the church. The windmill originally belonged to the church.

As you can see there is a small town atmosphere but yet we are in the middle of the suburbs. So though the West Island is known as a bedroom suburb, in reality there are many hidden facets that most people don't know about. In the next blog I'll show you some of the hidden gems, for there are still many of the old farm houses that have survived and can be found throughout the more modern suburban housing.

Cycling around the West Island

2009-07-23T12:02:00.007-04:00

Not long ago my lil sister Jazz showed us her neighbourhood, which is situated in Outremont. Outremont is a borough of Montréal and as such, is an urban cityscape. When we think of the Island of Montréal, we always think of the city and suburbs but this is not really true. The West Island, aptly named, is the western part of the island of Montréal. Although there are suburban cities, there is also a lot of green space, not just parks but farms, woods. (See Google Map)

Pretty much all of the northwest part is, as you can see, green space. Developers are gradually encroaching upon this rural setting but for the moment it is still very green.
As some of you might know, I am an avid cyclist and I thought that I would take you around my neighbourhood on my bike.

As you can see, I'm not going very fast since it is hard to ride a bike and take a picture at the same time without breaking your neck. ;o)

This is a typical street in Kirkland, a typical suburb. So now we ride toward Gouin Boulevard one of the oldest roads on the island.

This road leads down to Gouin Boulevard and as you can see, it is pretty much a country road. The condition of the road is also pretty much country being, in places, more patch than road.

There are also quite a few wild animals in the West Island, there are deer, foxes (I saw one as I was riding but I wasn't quick enough to get a picture.), raccoons, skunks and various other critters.
One of my favourite places to go to is the Cap St-Jacques Park. (On the map it is the big headland sticking out of the northern shore of the island.) It is the biggest park on the island and includes a ecological farm that employs troubled city youth as part of a rehabilitation program. In the summer there are walking trails and in the winter these become cross country skiing trails. Since it is only a few kilometres from my home it is an ideal way of relaxing. Some of the following pictures have already been posted since I often bring my camera with me to take pictures there.

Once we have left the park we ride down Gouin Boulevard until it becomes Senneville Road. Now Senneville is really the rich enclave of the West Island. When Montreal was still a young city, the rich and famous had summer homes along the shores of the Lac des Deux Montagnes, even today the biggest and richest homes are still all along the lakefront.

This is Senneville road. There are many huge mansions but also some working farms as strange as this may seem. It is probably the greenest past of the West Island and runs along the northern shore of the island.

One of the old farm buildings with an old truck.

Here are some of the mansions along the shore. Some of these domains are huge and I wouldn't want to be the person paying the property taxes.

This is an example, usually they are set so far back from the road that it is impossible to take a picture through the gates. The garage of this mansion is bigger than my whole house...

When I first saw this house I figured that it was a nice tutor house of reasonable size, then I realized that it wasn't the owner's house, it was just a house for the gate keeper. Behind the house is an apple orchard that leads down to the main house that we can't see form the road. Obviously some peole are richer than I am. :o)
This brings us to the village of Ste-Anne de Bellevue and the villages of the West Island, which we will look at in my next post.

The Eagle has landed!

2009-07-20T09:18:00.003-04:00

On this day 40 years ago, when I was in my teens, a man made a small step which was in fact a giant leap for mankind. I remember seeing it on television then going outside, looking up at the moon and thinking about Armstrong and Aldrin standing there so far from home. It was moment in history that every person on earth shared, and made us realize how small we really were in the cosmos.

Like many kids in the 60's I grew up with the NASA space program. It was exciting and grandiose and I remember watching John Glen take off during breakfast, the first space walk in Gemini, and of course Armstrong's first step off the lunar lander. Since then the earth has pretty much abandoned manned exploration and the world is a bit less exciting for it.
As Dickens once wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us..."
That pretty much sums up those years.

First Moon Landing 1969

IE 8

2009-07-03T20:06:00.002-04:00

This week all the folks using Internet Explorer 6 had problems with one of my posts. It would take down the whole blog, nothing would load, or at least that is what I was told since I use Firefox and Safari and they were working just fine. (Being a Mac person from way back I don't consort with the dark side... "come to the dark side Luke, come to the dark side...." ;o) )
Now M$ is coming out with IE 8 which hopefully will be a little more forgiving than its predecessors. To market this new browser they came out with this ad, which they promptly pulled after people complained.
Now besides the fact that the humour has the subtlety of something my 13 year old students would think up, there is also the underlying message that it's OK to go to disgusting porn sites, because now you can hide it from your wife and family. What kind of selling point is that? No wonder people complained enough for them to take it off. What is remarkable is that nobody at M$ saw that before using it. Putting a positive spin on it, they even had the chutzpah to crow about how they listened to their customers. Two inches of cheek all over...

O M G I G P Internet Explorer 8 Puke Vomit Girl

Trying again

2009-06-30T22:33:00.002-04:00

It seems that the earlier versions of IE no longer do my blog.... I usually use Scribefire, a Firefox add-on, to write and post my blog but for this post I'm using Blogger's blogging engine. Now I'll see if it is Blogger or Scribefire that is having problems. Please leave a message if you see it OK using IE 6 or earlier. Thanks.

Blogger or M$ Explorer???

2009-06-30T15:49:00.003-04:00

It seems that either blogger doesn't like Explorer with my blog or Explorer has figured out that I am a Macintosh person and has decided to boycott my blog. I'm posting this to see if it can be seen by Explorer. Since I use Firefox or Safari I can't really tell. So if you can see this post let me know.é

Let the bells ring and the banners fly...

2009-06-23T13:34:00.006-04:00

Let the bells ring and the banners fly, I'm done, I'm finally done. All my orals, compositions and exams are finished, corrected and the marks finally entered into the school's data base... and all that despite the fact that they cut off two days from the deadline about two weeks before the end. So much for planning. So unless there is a f**k up at their end, my endless days of correction are finished. Yahooo!

Bring the man home.

2009-06-04T19:17:00.006-04:00

I was just reading a news story from the CBC about the Mr. Abdelrazik, a canadian, who has been stranded in Sudan for the last six years and living in the Canadian Embassy for the last year all because the Canadian government under our right wing reactionary PM, Harper, refuses to give him his travel papers. As a reason they give the fact that he is on a UN terrorist watch list list even though the RCMP and CSIS (our clownishly paranoid spy agency. kind of like a CIA wanna-be) have cleared him of having any terrorist links. (They were probably the ones that put him on the list in the first place. What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty)
Today the Federal Court of Canada has told the Canadian Government that by refusing to repatriate him, they are denying him his rights as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights in the Constitution. Otherwise saying they are breaking the law, pretty much as "Bushie" was doing during his mandate. These right wing rednecks are really not great believers in the rule of law. The court has given them thirty days to comply, and what do you think their answer was... "The Department of Justice will study the judgement." How much do you want to bet they'll appeal and stall it in the courts until they get booted out of parliament. Canadians should be ashamed of having elected such a bunch of right wing reactionary morons.

Mr. Prime Minister, your role is to uphold the Canadian Constitution and the rule of law. If you can't do anything else right can you at least try to do that.

A traveling we will go...

2009-05-19T17:58:00.003-04:00

I haven't blogged in a while, being too busy and tired. (I sometimes feel that I should be paid by the kilometre.) We just got back from our annual class trip to Washington. Yes I know it's a h*ll of a long way from home but Boston and New York are taken by the other grades so off we go to Washington. This year we left on a Tuesday morning at 7 am and arrived in Philadelphia in the afternoon where we visited the historical city. We then went to the hotel and the next morning we left or Washington. Having arrived there we then visited the museums (Smithsonian and Holocaust) and walked around the monuments (Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Jefferson, and the war memorials) and streets of the city. The Americans sure know how to build monumental buildings in white marble. After three days we finally got back on the bus and after having driven all night, (realizing that I'm getting way too old to be trying to sleep on a bus) we finally arrived back at school. The trip went well and the kids loved it. What impressed the students the most you ask? Well the Holocaust Museum and the war memorials (Vietnam and Korean) as well as the Lincoln memorial were probably their favourites as well as the Medieval Banquet they participated in. The girls were all sighing over the Blue Knight who was our section's champion. The boys however were much more interested in the sword battles on horseback. ;o)

Earth Day

2009-04-21T21:12:00.004-04:00

As well as celebrating my birthday tomorrow, it is also time to celebrate our mother earth. This picture, taken by Apollo 16, illustrates the beauty and fragility of our small blue planet. Let's take care of her, since this small blue ball is the only one we have.

Photo courtesy of NASA.