Report says hate speech should not be covered by Human Rights Act

No.  No turning back the clock.  Call me biased and petty, but I like things as they are now.  People like Fred Phelps cannot enter this country with a (clear) intent to promote hate.

Yes, that means limits to free speach.

Reasonable limits, that is.

And I’m okay with that.

Remembrance Day is always an interesting experience in centretown Ottawa.

The obvious ceremony at the National War Memorial is one thing (although I’ve only ever been once, myself).  As part of that ceremony the snowbirds do a flyover in the Missing Man Formation.  For me, 11:11a.m. is virtually impossible to miss because of this, at least for the last 3 years.  My apartment is directly in the flyover path.  Mere seconds after they fly over the National War Memorial, the jets are flying directly over my apartment building.  You can see them, still in formation, from my balcony.  And let me tell you, they are LOUD, loud planes.

So there’s that, the ceremony and the planes.  You walk around downtown and there are men and women in uniform everywhere.  And every year, like so many others, I walk to the memorial to read the wearths, see the personal memorials and flowers citizens have left.  I mentally catalogue all the flags at half-mast, including the one on the Peace Tower.  I remember and think of my grandfather, a veteran tail-gunner from the RAF in WWII.  I leave my poppy on the Tomb of the Unknown.

It feels lucky to be able to be here for Remembrance Day, to pass the day in our nation’s capital.

Today, is also another day of Remembrance.  My stepfather passed away this spring.  Today is his birthday.  It’s ironic that I mentally mark it this year with a dream about him last night (I saw his ghost on the front porch of our house in Guelph.  I asked him how the afterlife was — apparently all is well) and a call to my mother today.  Kenny was a Jehovah’s Witness — he didn’t celebrate his birthday.  But I thought of him today, and I thought of my mother who is still grieving.

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Day 2007

Remembrance Day 2007

Remembrance Day 2007

I’m a pretty patriotic person, I’ll admit it.  And I’ll admit that having a sense of pride in and loyalty to a hunk of randon geography is pretty nonsensical, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.

So attempts like this one feels like an attempt to obliterate parts of Canadian culture.  And it makes me angry.

Lower Flag on Nov. 11th only, Panel Urges

The report [argues] for an even stricter policy that would shrink the number of scheduled days the flag is lowered to one — Remembrance Day on Nov. 11.

The proposal would eliminate half-mast treatment for four other days: Vimy Ridge Day on April 9, the Police and Peace Officers National Memorial Day on the last Sunday in September, Workers Mourning Day on April 28 and the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women on Dec. 6.

I suspect the motion won’t pass, but it still annoys me beyond all words.

Obsidian Wings: Andy Olmsted Major Andrew Olmsted was a soldier serving in Iraq. I did not know him, nor did I ever have the privilege of reading any of his blog posts. Until this last one, unfortunately. Major Olmsted died in Iraq on January 3rd 2008. He had the foresight of writing his own “final post”, to be posted in the event of his death. It is a sad state that it had to be used, and I feel for his friend who had the dubious honour of doing so. It’s funny, because there have been many comments across the internet about the fact that he uses many Babylon 5 quotes in his letter. People think this makes him uncultured or geeky or that it takes away from the solemnity of the letter. I heartily and thoroughly disagree. If anything, quoting from a television show he (clearly) loved shows exactly who Andrew was when he died. If I died tomorrow, and if I had a letter, it would probably be rife with Harry Potter, Buffy and Richard Bach quotes. Because that’s what I loved, and that’s what impacted *me*. Maybe it wouldn’t be brilliant, but it would be mine. Good for him for using the words that were important to him, even if others deem them lowly.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Good on them! I haven’t checked the news, but I hope they (we?) were able to make a point.

There was a survey from Quebec about aboriginals that was pretty depressing, and I hope the rest of Canada doesn’t feel the same way. Like the natives are “exaggerating”. It’s “not so bad”.

Really?

My father is metis. I have a native heritage I know nothing about. There has been a systematic ruin of the native culture in this country and it is pathetic.

I have seen it. I have seen my relatives brought to their knees. Or deny their culture altogether. Or struggle like I do.

This was mine, but it was taken from me.

- By the people who told me I didn’t “look” indian.

- By my father who didn’t care enough to pass on what he knew.

- By the schools and the systems that made him ashamed to be native and gave him a stutter.

- By his family who called him an Apple (red on the outside, white on the inside) when he married my mom.

- By the government who made me feel I needed their “status” to really be anishnabe

- By the same government who denied me that status because they took it from my grandmother when she married a white man (like they wanted her to).

- By my grandmother who didn’t hold on to her traditions and teach the next generation.

- By all of those who think my heart does not lie with the native people as much as it does in the rest of my heritage.

There is a collective unconsciousness. You may not believe me, but it’s there. And it lives in me. It lives in me for my grandmother who was assimilated, and my father who had a bigger war within him than I do. This native man went to church at the Martyr’s Shrine and did anyone think what that might do to a metis child? That it might make him hate himself in one way or another?

So block the highway. I hope it works.

Ottawa to run its buses on green fuel

That’s really cool, and I think it’s great that the city is doing this. Now if only they could get their recycling program in shape.

CBC News: 11 universities bail out of Maclean’s survey

While not totally surprising that Ottawa U was one of the 11 as they constantly rank very low, I WAS surprised to see U of T, UBC, Mac and others that generally do *very* well in these surveys.

Huh.

Dealers lower crack prices to stave off competition

Ah, the good ol’ crack dealers, responding to supply and demand!

CBC News: Laid-back loners love the internet: StatsCan

Ha! I originally thought the title was Laid-back STONERS love the internet. But otherwise, yes, very true, especially when considering this:

The study defined a heavy user as one who spends more than an hour on the internet during a 24-hour period.

An hour? Really? Doesn’t seem like that much to me.

So Lance Bass came out yesterday, which is on one hand kind of hilarious in the (yes, and DUH) kind of way, and really makes me say “good on ya” and all that jazz. And then I hear about the celebrity gossip douchebag who apparently was relentless with the rumours and seemingly “glad” that he made the guy’s mom cry. That takes a special kind of scumbag. But of course Lance needs to shut the hell up with his “I’m a straight-acting gay. I call it a SAG.” Duuude. Ugh.

In other news I’m off to Barrie, Toronto and then Montreal. Doing some visiting of family, some working and then some celebrating PRIDE! This year I’m proud that my mom didn’t find out I was gay on the Internet, because how much would that have to suck? [Of course telling her myself face-to-face wasn’t that much of a picnic either.]