Uptown Waterloo: Where trails go to die

The Iron Horse Trail officially ends at Caroline Street. A few years ago, the Trails committee managed to get the trail unofficially extended along the west side of Caroline as far as William Street: the narrow sidewalk was replaced with a smooth, three meter wide asphalt trail. But even that bit of the trail lacks any signage. And at William it peters out altogether. If you know what you’re doing you can carry on down Caroline for two long blocks and cross Erb Street, where the trail starts again and goes into Waterloo Park. What we urgently need is to:

• Finish the part of the trail on Caroline, with trail signs and safe crossings.
  
• Create a trail from William to Erb along the west side of Caroline, with at least three meters width of smooth pavement, and with signs.

See also: Laurel Trail Interrupted

The Iron Horse Trail in Uptown

There’s a minor uproar in Waterloo over city council’s decision this week to sell a portion of the Iron Horse Trail. I have some concerns about the sale, but I also see some positives.

In terms of the usefulness of the trail, this change offers some improvements:

• The minor route change will not cause inconvenience. The new trail meets Park Street at the same point as the old trail, so there’s no need to jog along Park street. (See diagram.)
  
• The old portion of trail between Park and Caroline is not great. Yesterday, for example, there was a huge puddle across the entire trail at Caroline Street.

There are some things I regret about losing the old trail:

• The portion that is being replaced is a pretty, treed, curvy bit of the trail. The new trail will run alongside the SunLife parking garage.
  
• It rankles that the developer (Mady) seems to have pulled a fast one on us. Had they announced both development proposals for the site (144 Park and 155 Caroline) at the same time, the city could have had some say in the site development to preserve the trail. By announcing 155 Caroline only after 144 Park was well under way, they forced our hand: either sell us the trail or lose the entire 155 Caroline development.

There are some safeguards that need to be in place:

• The developer must not be allowed to do whatever they want with the new portion of trail. The new trail will be very close to a parking garage exit, and sightlines must be very safe (this is a trail used by children!). The trail must be clear of hydro poles, and must be a clearly marked, dedicated trail – not a section of paved space used by the building.
  
• The trail currently continues along the west side of Caroline to William, with wide asphalt replacing the old narrower sidewalk. That must be continued to the 50 meter portion between the old and new trail. (Trevor Hawkins, the city planner working on this brief, assured me yesterday that that would be done.)

There are some process issues that really need to be fixed:

• We need some protection for our parks and trails. City Council shouldn’t be able to sell off part of a trail. Now that the precedent has been set, who knows what developers will start angling for.
  
• There was a time when developers were required to provide greenspace in consideration for getting zoning approval for large projects. Sometimes public art was required instead. We have now flipped to the opposite situation: they get to take over public greenspace. Something is not right here. The way some councillors were talking after the vote, they think Waterloo needs to lure developers to our core. Nothing is further from the truth: development is booming, perhaps even too quickly.

And there are some troubling related issues:

• The Uptown is supposed to be a mixed-use development environment, with condo buildings having retail and commercial aspects at street level. However, both 155 Caroline and 144 Park are residential-only. That’s the case with all the other condo developments in the Uptown recently, with the exception of the Bauer Lofts – despite the recent adoption of the Uptown vision and Official Plan, which clearly state that new developments should be mixed use.

A classless act of petty personal vindictiveness

"When Joe Clark’s portrait was unveiled in the House of Commons, Prime Minister Stephen Harper skipped the event, a classless act of petty personal vindictiveness." - Jeffrey Simpson's column in the Globe yesterday

Simpson captured the truth very eloquently with "petty personal vindictiveness". I tend to think of Harper as someone who's a savvy political operative, but really he's more motivated by petty personal vindictiveness than by political smarts.

On Thursday Harper snubbed astronaut/MP Mark Garneau by excluding him from the unveiling of the Canadarm exhibit at Ottawa's Space Museum. There was no reason except that Garneau is a Liberal and Harper hates Liberals.

Also on Thursday, Harper scheduled the announcement of a new governor for the Bank of Canada - an event that the outgoing governor cannot miss, to ensure a stable transition - at the same time as outgoing governor Mark Carney's going-away party, which was being held in another city, ensuring Carney would miss it altogether.

These are just the latest in a long string of classless acts by our Prime Minister.

During the Chretien years I would frequently get into discussions with people about how puzzled we were that we felt affection for the man even though we disagreed with a lot of what he did (such as his sloppy environmental record). I think it was partly that he was a good prime minister and got most policies right, but also that we had a sense that he was a good, caring person. That's just not so with Harper. History will probably show that after the AdScam scandal it was inevitable that the Conservatives would replace the Liberals in government, and that Harper squandered that opportunity with mismanagement and an inability to refrain from petty personal vindictiveness.

Troubling news from the Bank of Canada

The Bank of Canada, like all central banks, is supposed to be independent from the government. That, as the Globe & Mail put it this morning, is sacrosanct.

When a governor resigns, the BoC's board of directors is supposed to recommend a candidate to the finance minister. However, we learned this week that Stephen Harper decided to make the Governor of the Bank of Canada a political appointment, so Jim Flaherty did not involve the board of directors at all. This is a disturbing repeat of the way Harper changed the appointment of judges a few years ago.

We learned that Harper's interference in the BoC goes much deeper:

• The whole world sees Mark Carney as one of the great economic minds of our times and as the world's greatest central bank chief - the whole world but Stephen Harper, who apparently pushed Carney out of his position early. Carney's no fool - he got himself a much better job at the Bank of England - but Canada has lost immensely, and at a time when our economy is still in peril.
  
• Carney's pick for his successor, and the person groomed for the job, was ignored by Harper in what appears to be a petty retaliation against Carney. Harper's nastiness towards Carney went so far that he held the Ottawa press announcement of Carney's replacement at the same time as Carney's Toronto goodbye party, ensuring that Carney couldn't make it.
  
• We learned that Harper has been letting his ego drive in other ways: lecturing Carney about basic economics, releasing photos that seek to show Carney as an inferior, and so on.

Is all this important? Very.

A central bank exists to set monetary policy for a country, but its real business is to maintain stability and confidence in the economy and financial markets. The governor is supposed to be free from political interference so the markets (and public) know that central bank decisions are being made impartially. By making the job a political appointment - and by forcing out the previous governor - Harper is removing that freedom from political interference.

Let's be very clear. Our prime minister is not an economist. He holds the same degree I do and has no work experience as an economist. Worse, his approach to economics is ideological rather than pragmatic. He is motivated by ego and political ambition rather than a concern for the citizens of the country.

Note: In a very strange "letter from the editor" in the Globe yesterday, John Stackhouse admitted that during the prorogation, he knew that Carney felt that Harper/Flaherty did not have a plan for how to deal with the recession. Carney's assessment was not exposed at the time, even though the opposition was saying that was why they prorogued parliament and Harper was claiming that prorogation was over the per-vote subsidy.

Improving accessibility

Here's a photo from the inside of the washroom in the COC Friend's Lounge at the Four Seasons Center for the Performing Arts in Toronto:


(Sorry for the fuzziness. The light was really low and I was using my phone.)

The dampening arm at the top prevents the door from slamming - or maybe it's there to ensure that the door shuts itself - but it also makes the door very heavy to open. The Friends Lounge is largely used by elderly people, and it's difficult for some of them to open the door. I had to help someone today.

The typical solution would be to put a handicapped door opener on the door (with one of those big silver buttons). That's really expensive and it doesn't work when the power is out.

Instead of all those handicapped door openers, why not just remove the dampers and hang the doors so that they can be swung with a finger push? A stick could be added to make them pullable by someone with a walker.

Stealing a car to steal a truck

When I first moved to Africa my employer assigned me a luxury double-cab pickup truck. I quickly learned that that particular model was the number one choice of car jackers (a particularly nasty form of crime that was rampant in Tanzania at the time). So I gave back the pickup and asked for the cheapest vehicle they had, which turned out to be a small, very basic Suzuki Samurai. But then I learned that car jackers' number one vehicle preference for car-jacking double cab pickup trucks was, yes, the Samurai - so the Samurai was in fact the most stolen vehicle in the country.

What has all this to do with Conservative strategy in attack ads?

The ad this week was a light lob to energize the Conservative base and generate some revenue. The revenue will likely be used in a massive onslaught aimed at undermining Justin Trudeau with the Canadian populace. The timing of that onslaught will probably be determined on the fly: when Justin makes a gaffe or has a dip in popularity or an election is imminent, the Conservatives will be ready to take advantage of it.

I mention this because Liberal supporters in the Globe comments sections are so confident that Harper's attack ads can't hurt Justin. I hate to see us underestimating Harper again. There is no doubt in my mind that it was attack ads that brought down Ignatieff in 2009. He was riding high in the polls, but the "Just visiting" attack ads raised a question mark that sapped enthusiasm even from staunch Liberal supporters. The effect of the ads was brief, but just long enough to throw Ignatieff off course. And as we know, he never recovered.

The Conservatives have pioneered the practice (in Canada) of running attack ads outside of election campaigns. It is a weapon that has been extremely effective both in generating donations and in undermining other party leaders. The Conservative ads aren't truthful (the one this week used a quote so out of context that it totally misrepresented his words) and their impact is short term, but that's all they need.

I don't see how we're going to survive without joining in. I'm not suggesting that Justin should try to become a nasty pit bull character like Harper: I think we need attacks that come a step away from the leader. Just as high schools have nice-guy principals and disciplinarian vice-principals, we need an attack dog in the upper ranks of the Liberal party, or a new generation of Rat Pack.

A VERY good first week

I supported Justin Trudeau. I voted for him for leader. But I had no idea he would burst from the gate with such incredible vigor. He has far surpassed my expectations. He has outperformed the much more seasoned leaders of the government and official opposition. And he has shown an aplomb that defies typical political handling. He's sincere, honest, frank, thoughtful, and obvioulsy extremely intelligent and politically astute.

Can he keep up this pace? Can he continue without making a gaffe? Obviously not. That's impossible. But then I would have said that this week was impossible.

The right to bear pressure cookers

So the main import of the events this week in Boston is a demonstration that the US is not invulnerable to another terrorist attack. Of course it was never invulnerable, but a lot of people thought it was. A mythos had developed that US authorities have been able to keep the terrorists at bay. Surely nobody still believes that.

Does this change anything? Will Americans become more fearful? Will terrorists be emboldened? And in the end, why do a few people killed by terrorists matter so much more than the thousands killed in other sorts of American violence?

I don't want to sound unsympathetic. I'm an American by birth. I don't want to see anyone hurt, ever. But there are some bigger issues here than outrage at the actions of two young men.

En garde!

Here's a still from the first Harper attack ad against Justin Trudeau, which was released about 12 hours after Justin became Liberal leader.



It's a weird ad. I thought with all their money the Conservatives could come up with something more effective. They're obviously trying to ridicule him, but...

• The ad shows Justin with a goofy mustache - which he grew for charity as part of Movember.
  
• It shows Justin standing on stage slowly removing his outer shirt (he's wearing an undershirt) - which he did for another charity.
  
• It shows him saying that Quebec is the best - obviously pulled out of context, and looking very, very young.

I got an email today with the following text (and I think it's pretty classy that he also asks for donations to the liver foundation). This is the email:

The Conservatives are already back in the gutter.

Now they're using pictures from a charity fashion show to attack me and undermine what we've built. Can you chip in $5 to help us get out our positive message of change?

They've seen what we can do and they're desperately trying to drown us out with the childish, food-fight politics.

We need to move past that - donate $5 or more now and stand up to these guys:

https://www.liberal.ca/be-part-of-the-change/

Thanks.
Justin

P.S. I raised a bit of money for the Liver Foundation but I bet we could raise more if you made a donation too.

The best way to put a stop to this negative advertising is to make a donation against it! (I did.)

Fingers crossed

I admit it: I'm a worrywart. At our last leadership convention in 2006 Conservatives played dirty tricks, circulating fake buttons and posters to try to discourage delegates from voting for Bob Rae. Has Harper dropped another little turd to surprise us with on Sunday? It's probably fine; I haven't heard even a murmur of suspicion; but I can't help worrying.

Governments are longing for WikiLeaks... or should be

So the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists scored the largest leak in history, and they've got the names of thousands of people with off-shore bank accounts, many (or maybe all) of whom are tax evaders. They have more than names: they have emails detailing fraud; they have transactions; they have amounts; they have account numbers... they have all the things a prosecutor needs.

But the problem is that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists doesn't want to let anyone see their info. They say that it's a journalistic principle, but I suspect it has more to do with hoarding valuable intellectual property. They can dole out this stuff little by little in all sorts of stories and make a mint.

The Canadian government is apoplectic, arguing (reasonably) that there is a law on the books that any Canadian with knowledge of tax evasion over $100,000 must report the info to Canada Revenue Agency. The CBC (the sole Canadian member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) is standing firm.

It's got to be the case that the US government is similarly desperate to get its hands on all those details. The irony is that if WikiLeaks had the info, they would make it all public. WikiLeaks doesn't hoard info so that it can enrich itself by dribbling out tidbits. WikiLeaks works for the public good.

...which is just why the US government is engaged in such a malicious attempt to wipe WikiLeaks out.

Tribute to Bob

I'm watching the leadership convention live at liberal.ca/live. It's great - John Turner is giving a very funny speech at the moment - but the tribute to Bob Rae is bittersweet, given that he was denied the chance to run for leader... again. Last time, it was decided we needed unanimity so Bob was pressured to bow out and let Ignatieff run unopposed. This time he was told he couldn't run because he was interim leader.

I will happily vote for Justin Trudeau, but Bob was always my first choice.

The class system is alive and well and living at the GRT

(Conestoga College, WLU and UW fares are based on a 4-month term, and I converted that to monthly to compare them to monthly pass prices.)(Update: Perhaps the figure for high school students should be $47, which is the monthly equivalent of a 5-month pass.)

There is something wrong with a system where the privileged are treated to nearly free transit, while the less privileged are forced to pay nearly full fare.

Add to that that the universities are getting a billion dollar train that bypasses most of Waterloo to provide improved comfort to their students, while the Region says it's too poor to create decent bus routes to Conestoga College.

The difference isn't just that one set of students goes to university while the other goes to community college. It's also that the universities are in Waterloo and the community college is in Kitchener.

As a UW alumna and Waterloo resident, I'm ashamed.

Loliondo and the Shiek

The A marks Loliondo, a Maasai village and district in northern Tanzania.



I have written about the Maasai before, on this blog in The Wheat Field, and in African publications in the 90s. In the fight between pastoralists and farmers, I tend to support the farmers, if only because poor countries need food sources. But in the fight between the pastoralists and the oil sheiks who want to turn Maasai land into the Disneyworld of Big Game Hunting, you have to support the Maasai.

At this very moment, the government of Tanzania is evicting Maasai from their land in Loliondo to please Mohamed Abdul Rahim Al Ali, an uber-wealthy Arab who bought the rights to hunt there. This is the sad end to a land dispute that has been going on for over 20 years.

Eighteen years ago, I visited Loliondo and saw what was going on.

The drive from Arusha to Loliondo is less than 400 km, but it's a hard trip. The first few miles are paved, but quickly you have to turn onto a road with ruts so deep that people are regularly killed when their cars roll. The going is slow. About 100 kilometers from Loliondo, in the heart of the Serengeti plain, we had to abandon roads altogether and drive cross-country, navigating by the stars. We used all three of the spare tires on our truck. It's not a trip that anyone would want to make frequently.

The rich man from the United Arab Emirates doesn't have to drive. He built himself an airport. He also built himself a large compound, which for some reason I was invited to visit. Two decades ago large screen TVs and satellite reception were rare even in North America, but he had both in a huge tent with a sand floor covered in layers of carpets. Giant hookahs with many hoses were scattered around, along with large pillows. The compound was surrounded by high fences, and there were lots of security personnel with lots of guns.

Tanzania doesn't allow hunting, but this fellow apparently bought himself an exemption. His airport and compound awaited his occasional weekend visits with friends.

The Maasai are semi-nomadic cattle herders who graze their herds over large areas. They don't believe in killing wild animals, or even their own cattle if at all possible. However, the Tanzanian government (apparently at the behest of this fellow) is claiming that the Maasai are killing wildlife, and that the wild animals need to be protected by ousting the Maasai and their cattle from large tracts of land. The restrictions that are being imposed right now are so large that Maasai cattle herds will have to be reduced by 75%.

There aren't a lot of people in Loliondo, and those that are there live on a narrow margin. These reductions mean depopulation, the end of a traditional way of life, and possibly starvation. For the wildlife they have stewarded so well, the future also does not look rosy: with no laws to stop them, the Arab hunters are already known to hunt from helicopters.

Here's an excellent brief video that shows the Maasai speaking on this issue: Voices of Loliondo.

Tanzania relies greatly on tourism, and so the government is sensitive to international public pressure. There's a petition that needs a lot of support: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_the_maasai.

More information:
History of OBC in Tanzania

Update: I just remembered how I got on to that compound. I met a Maasai man who was selling honey to the cook on the compound, and I tagged along - then got a tour.

What I would do with a 3-D printer

Every time I see a piece of furniture or plant or piece of art or food that I like, I would take a 3-D photo of it and then reproduce it in miniature with my 3-D printer. Then I would build a little house and arrange my little stuff in it. (If this caught on, it could become a replacement for acquisitiveness. Especially if we could melt the plastic back down.)

I would also like to use my 3-D printer to make consumer items instead of going to the store. Maybe also parts for my appliances and automobile and so on. For consumer items (for example plates and bowls), I would like to be able to customize the design.

This raises whole new sets of copyright/etc issues. Please, please, please let design be free. If I have a 3-D photo of my favorite Phillip Hoffman chair and I "print" it for my personal use, will I be breaking the law? What about a Calder mobile? A new roof for my Smartcar? A full-size bust of someone living? (I hate this Brave New World where I'm a criminal for possessing digital copies of things, even though I don't make money off of them. It's an affront to personal freedom and democracy.)

Not that I have a 3-D printer... yet. But the price has dropped to $1200 and they seem destined to be household appliances soon. It's pretty cool that we will all have replicators, but unfortunate that they are restricted to replicating plastic. (That reminds me of a bit from Charles Stross' Singularity Sky: an alien race called The Festival disrupts planetary civilizations by giving the people replicators that require no input, but The Festival is like a genie that never gives you quite what you want: one group gets a replicator that makes nothing but plastic cutlery, and the cutlery endlessly gushes out.) Of course one day 3-D printers may move beyond plastic... maybe soon.

Back in the bad old days we used to be restricted to whatever the local retailer wanted to sell us, be it books or music or clothing or whatever. Nowadays I have a far, far wider choice on the internet. But with 3-D printers the choices will expand again: if I want a little clip to attach my orchids to a stem, I will be able to search for exactly the one I want, and possibly also customize it. This seems like a Very Good Thing.

But as the need for local brick-and-mortar retailers diminishes, urban form will change and new business models will need to be developed. Is anyone ready for that?

• When there are less trucks delivering manufactured goods, we'll need less roads.
• My town continues to build endless strips of big box stores that all sell the same old sad junk. (If I could print whatever design of ceiling fan I wanted, why would I ever go to Home Depot to buy their tasteless crap?) What will we do with all the space we'll save?
• Will municipalities have to change the way they collect taxes? Plan downtowns?
• If I pay import duties on the Italian ceiling fan that I have delivered ready-made, will I pay import duties when I print the same fan?
  

I'm only ever-so-lightly scratching the surface of change to come.

Hail, Isolde

After Richard Wagner had been working on the Ring Cycle for about ten years, he took a break for two years to write Tristan und Isolde. With Tristan, he did something that seems unbelievable: he took the plot of his unfinished magnum opus (the libretto of the Ring Cycle was finished, but it would take him 15 more years to complete the music) and he ripped it off.

What he repeated was the love story between Siegfried and Brunnhilde. In both operas, the man is a great hero, and the woman is equally heroic: Brunnhilde the goddess warrior queen, Isolde the Irish healer princess. Both women are proud and regal, with high status. Yet in both stories the hero gives the woman to another man, with the result that the woman is humiliated and brought to the brink of sexual subjugation. In both stories, a love potion deprives the hero of free will. In both stories, the hero is slain and the woman chooses to follow him in death.

In the Ring Cycle Wagner wrote a libretto that is the equal of the best of Shakespeare, and it is an enormous, complicated epic. Tristan und Isolde is the opposite: a splendid opera, but despite its length it is a very simple story. It has just two of themes, and they are hammered home with a heavy hand. Those themes are light/day (worldly ambition, falsity) and night (sex, death, the womb). The two extremes suggest (but don't quite admit to having) religious overtones.

In a libretto that is barely 10,000 words (in the English translation), there is a heavy repetition of the day/night themes. “Day” appears 63 times; for example, envious day, importunate daylight, spiteful day, the noonday sun of worldly fame, slave of day, day’s false glare, day’s deceiving light, spiteful day, the lies of daylight honour and fame, day’s empty fancies, lying day, phantoms of day, accursed day, night casts me back to day so that the sun can forever feast its sight upon my suffering.

Senator Assange

Julian Assange is running for Australian senator for the Wikileaks Party. Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK, but Australian law allows non-residents to run for office. Whether he can actually win in those circumstances is unknown. What interests me is the effect of a possible win.

In Sweden, Pirate Bay was knocked off the internet by legal attacks on the ISPs that hosted it. Pirate Bay is still on the air because the Swedish Pirate Party won two seats in the European Parliament. The Pirate Party registered an ISP and agreed to host Pirate Bay. As a political party with representatives, it was untouchable. Wikileaks also used the Pirate Party ISP to host its site.

As an elected Australian senator, the US might have a more difficult time persecuting, er, prosecuting Assange. Or would it?

As an official party with representation, would Wikileaks have more freedom? You would think it would have to.

In a system of proportional representation, it doesn't take a huge number of voters to change the game for the entire world. These are interesting times.

Too Many Goblins...

...Orcs, whatever. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. Otherwise, quite good.

Remembering the massacre

On December 6, 1989, I was on holiday in Arizona, spending a week by myself driving around the Navajo and Hopi reservations. I kept the car radio on a local Navajo station and I didn't understand much of it, but when I started to hear Montreal mentioned in newscasts I flipped to an English channel.

My first thought, given the general ignorance of Canada in the US, was that the news stories were mistaken. Back in 1989 there weren't a lot of these types of shootings, and there were certainly none in Canada. The idea of men being told to leave the room so the women could be lined up and shot, the idea of the shooter resenting educated women so much that he murdered female engineering students en masse, the idea that he could legally obtain the fire arm in Canada... it was all too much to comprehend. I didn't believe the story till I landed back in Toronto and saw the Canadian papers.

Women have come a long way since 1989: you could say that what Marc Lepine feared has come to pass. But let's not kid ourselves that women are equal yet. I don't want to make a long list so I'll mention just one small example of the real state of our world: Women's names don't appear in phone books. In most families, the man's name is listed but not the woman's. For single women, it's too dangerous to print more than an initial. We have a ways to go.

Leadership, leadership, leadership

I'm leaning towards Justin Trudeau for federal leader and Sandra Pupatello for Ontario provincial leader. But I don't claim to be engaged enough to make an informed decision this time. I argued for Bob Rae when he lost to Dion and then lost to Ignatieff and then lost to party politics. I think Dalton McGuinty was a great premier but all I ever hear in local media is that he sucks. Apparently my opinion doesn't go very far.

On the federal front, we keep putting someone up there, watch the Harper attack ads undermine their credibility, and then turf them out.

On the provincial front, it's hard to get excited about electing our version of Kim Campbell - someone who, according to reports, will fight an election that results in a drastic reduction in party support. The party's modus operandi is that whoever oversees a poor election will get turfed out (or forced to resign): what's the point of getting excited about that scenario?

If I thought our party would actually get behind a leader and help them succeed in the long term, I'd be more interested. As it is: meh.