Canadian Elections III

As I outlined in my previous posts on the subject (I & II), I have a new job as a Deputy Returning Officer in my Ottawa Centre riding. I went to the three-hour training session Monday morning, where I found out about the details of my job and even some of the mysterious inner workings of the Canadian electoral system. Spoiled ballots, rejected ballots, scrutineers, poll clerks, screens, deflections, oaths, and the difference between swearing and affirming.

Funny enough, despite my previous lack of enthusiasm for voting, or shall I say, my skepticism in the avowed benevolence of the State system, I'm leaning more towards voting than at any other time during this election cycle, mostly because the guilt of not voting is weighing heavily on me. I think it may have something to do with wanting to counter or respond to the trespasses done in my name. Before I hop onto any voting bandwagon though, there are a few key points sitting rather uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach.

Since my original post, I've had a number of conversations with friends about the importance of voting. A couple dear friends are steadfastly not voting, one choosing to write in her reasons why on the ballot itself, which basically amounts to a non-counted rejected ballot, the other staying at home to protest the state's inaction when it comes to a number of burning social issues, notably the result of War on Terror-like policies and laws on certain racialized groups. However, it seems the majority opinion is that voting for a social democratic party is voting for the betterment of our society, in other words, a more just society. To be clear, I've never doubted that a NDP government would make things better for a larger proportion of the population, economically, socially, etc. In fact, as I stated before, I have voted for the NDP before.

But, if we accept that certain governments will make things better for more people, let's say through universal child care or human rights legislation, how do we explain that for many groups living in Canada very little has changed in the course of the 140 years since Confederation? My question to those who are so keen to vote is how do we account for this discrepancy? Do we not risk participating in a system, one that rewards those who participate as being 'good' and 'ideal' citizens doing their proper duty, that in fact further solidifies inequalities in society?

Where does this idea that the government will do better for those most in need come from? I have received a flurry of emails and group invites urging me to vote, just vote for anybody but the Harper Conservatives. To be honest, I don't really see the difference between the Harper bunch or the Liberals, the only two parties with a chance of forming a government. Remember how the Liberals gutted most of the limited social programs that existed in the early 1990s? Thanks a lot Jean Chrétien, now sometimes nostalgically remembered as a socially-aware, if not casually inept, beacon of reason and fair-play.

The liberal, capitalist nation-state exists and has existed to marginalize, exploit, and manage certain groups of people (indigenous peoples, 'immigrants', people of colour, etc). After all, the Canadian version of the state is premised on the disavowal of indigenous sovereignty. In other words, our so-called freedom is premised on indigenous unfreedom. It is no small wonder that many indigenous nations/peoples refuse to participate in Canadian elections.

It's also no coincidence that such marginalization and exploitation occurs across national boundaries in eerily similar ways. Voting is meant to provide the mass of citizens, however this privileged group of people is selected in a given national community, the opportunity to enact citizenship, however inequitably citizenship is determined.

Besides the clear inequalities manifest in status, region, age, and many other notable social factors in the make-up of the electoral system, all tipped to the dominant race, gender and class hierarchies, election season brings on a number of platitudes about voting as a civic duty. My training session was chalk-full of such liberal doctrine.

What I'd like to suggest is that true change is not going to occur because of the benevolence of the state. This has never happened, the state after all has helped and continues to help constitute inequalities. It does not mitigate against inequalities, this is a central fallacy of liberal political theories. This is why those who vote with the hopes of making things better for a larger group of people will continue to be disappointed. It's a no sum game. Getting more water from your prison guard is something significant and no doubt needed, but it won't get you out of prison.

I think political action needs to continuously occur in relation to the state and its nefarious structures, after all, they continue to exert an extreme amount of pressure on certain groups of people, but I also think it's key to develop ideas and communities that have little to do with the state and its many structures. To articulate a vision of society that radically de-centers the state and builds capacity within various communities in society.

One important question then, becomes whether one can do this while at the same time voting, keeping an eye on the prize, a stateless, radically devolutionary society where groups of people form communities of affinity and organize their politics accordingly. Since I don't see this anywhere on the horizon, voting for a social democratic party like the NDP might just seem reasonable, after all, water when someone needs it is better than no water at all. Reasonable yes, if I can only get around the fact that the Canadian state and what it represents have been the harbinger of terror in the lives of so many people here and abroad. If only I can get around that.

Canadian Elections II

Some of you may have read my recent post about the upcoming Canadian Elections. At the fear of sounding bloody repetitive, I'll say only that in the post I articulate a very brief and general argument about why I'm thinking of NOT voting in the upcoming elections.

After this post, I went to a lovely dinner at my friend Tracey's place and she urged me to express my opinion, one she clearly didn't share, with the group. This basically led to a fairly heated debate about the importance of voting in a liberal democracy, one I won't get into here.

In any case, a few days after the debate, my friend Lindsey forwarded an Elections Canada online job application to a few of us, urging us to sign up and come see who actually votes on election day. I bit, and next thing you know I'm a Deputy Returning Officer in my Ottawa Centre riding. This basically means that I need to supervise an election site on election day for 14 hours, making sure everything goes smoothly and then overseeing the ballot count at the end of the evening. I have a three hour training session tomorrow morning, and then presumably I get to be an elections manager.

Not bad for someone who might not even vote. But what I will do is write about my training experience and then my experience being a DRO for all of you. Think of me as a correspondent gone to cover the inner-workings and corruptions of the liberal-capitalist elections system in Canada.

Stay tuned!

Counterpoints: Edward Said's Legacy

Click here for full schedule in pdf format.

Counterpoints: Edward Said's Legacy
October 31 to November 2, 2008

University of Ottawa and Carleton University

This bilingual English/French colloquium celebrates the works of one of the world's most compelling intellectuals, the Palestinian-American thinker Edward Said (November 1st 1935- September 23rd 2003), author of Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and Out of Place among other famous books.

The colloquium revolves around the theme of "Counterpoint," extensively used by Said as the interplay of diverse ideas and various "discrepant" cultural experiences. As Said writes in Culture and Imperialism: "As we look back at the cultural archive, we begin to reread it not univocally but contrapuntally, with a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts." Following Said's legacy, this colloquium envisions a polyphonic, interdisciplinary engagement from fields as broad as comparative literature, sociology, anthropology, history, postcolonial studies, Diaspora studies, musicology, and political science with a special focus on Middle Eastern politics.


FRIDAY 31 OCTOBER 2008, 6:00 pm.

UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA
Desmarais Building - Room 1160

OPENING WORDS

John Osborne
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Carleton University
George Lang
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

MARIAM SAID
Followed by the screening of the movie
Knowledge is the Beginning
Directed by Paul Smaczny
(English and Arabic with English subtitles, 90 minutes)

Reception will follow


Photo from Knowledge is the Beginning

SATURDAY 1ST NOVEMBER 2008
University of Ottawa, Desmarais Building

8:30 Registration

9:00 Coffee and breakfast

9:30 – 11:00 Session I

Panel 1: Edward Said en Théorie (Desmarais – 1120)
Moderator: May Telmissany (University of Ottawa)
Discussant: Rachad Antonius (UQAM)

• Cameron Bushnell (Clemson University), The Underlying Terrain of Said’s
Contrapuntalism.
• Jeff Sacks (University of California - Riverside), Disappearance.
• Kathleen Gyssels (Antwerp University), Saïd Among the Caribbeans: V.S. Naipaul, Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon.
• David Austin (The Alfie Roberts Institute, Montreal), Edward Said and the Caribbean Exile Tradition.

11:00 – 12:30 Session II

Panel 2: Discourse and Subjectivity (Desmarais – 1120)
Moderator: Daiva Stasiulis (Carleton University)

• Prasad Pannian (Avvaiyar Govt. College for Women), Edward Said and the Politics of Subjectivity.
• Ali Shehzad Zaidi (SUNY-Canton), The Notion of Discourse in Said’s Orientalism and Foucault’s History of Sex.
• Stefan Hoffmann (University of Berlin), Said's Incomplete Discursive Constructivism.
• Zainab Amery (Carleton University), Legitimizing Orientalism. The War on Terror and the Construction of the Enemy Other.

Panel 3: Teaching Orientalism (Desmarais – 1130)
Moderator: Carl Davila (SUNY – Brockport)

• Carl Davila (SUNY-Brockport), Teaching Said: Culture Discourse Meets Culture Critique.
• Michael Fickess (SUNY-Brockport), ‘America was founded to destroy Islam’: A Genealogy of Misguided Patriotic Fervor in ‘Post-9/11’ America.
• Alexander Morgan (SUNY-Brockport), Violence and Seduction: Orientalist Imagery in Digital Role-Playing Games.
• Catherine Snyder (SUNY-Brockport), Framing Torture: Photographs of Lynching and Abu Ghraib.

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch Break

1:30 – 3:00 Plenary Session
(Desmarais – 1120)

DEREK GREGORY
University of British Columbia
WAR, CULTURE AND IMPERIALISM
Introduced by Marc Brosseau
(Chair of the Department of Geography, University of Ottawa)

3:00 – 3:15 Coffee break

3:15 – 4:45 Session III

Panel 4: Visual Cultures and Contrapuntal Representations of Otherness
(Desmarais – 1120)
Moderator: Dorit Naaman (Queen’s University)

• Selma Zecevic (York University), Gruss aus Sarajevo: ‘Moorish’ Buildings and Fragmented Memories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
• Adel Iskandar (Georgetown University) & Aliaa Dakroury (Carleton University), Towards A Theory of Humanism in the Arab Cinema: The Intellectual Influence of Edward Said on Youssef Chahin’s Cinema.
• Walid El Khachab (York University), The Veils of Otherness: Cinema and the Contrapuntal Salome.
• Jessica Anne Pinto (Carleton University), Covering Dowry Violence: American Media and the Orientalization of Gendered Violence.

Panel 5: The Geo-Politics of Power (Desmarais – 1130)
Moderator: Simon Dalby (Carleton University)

• Christiane Wilke (Carleton University), Legal Orientalism, Counterpoints and Silences: Discourses of Legality after German Unification.
• Fiona Mackenzie (Carleton University), Taking Said Elsewhere: Community, Property and Nature in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.
• Omar Dewachi (Harvard University), Terra incognita: Epidemics, Technology and the Medical Imaginative Geography during the British Mandate in Iraq.
• Samer Abboud (Susquehanna University), Reclaiming ‘the global’ and ‘the
political’: Edward Said and International Relations.

SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2008
Carleton University

8:30 Conference shuttle from the Novotel to Carleton University

9:00 Coffee and breakfast

9:30 – 11:00 Session I

Panel 1: Literature and Beginnings (Dunton Tower - 2203)
Moderator: Nahla Abdo (Carleton University)

• Brenda Vellion (Carleton University), Poetry Reading from Mahmoud Darwish. Homage to Edward Said.
• Dorit Naaman (Queen’s University), From Beginnings to Culture and Imperialism.
• Badea Warwar (York University), Said, Poststructuralism, and the Question of (his) Beginnings.
• Himani Bannerji (York University), Two Faces of Postcolonialism: Modernism, Postmodernism in Theoretical and Political Projects of Edward Said and Dipesh Chakrabarty.

11:00 – 12:30 Session II

Panel 2: On Exile and Border Crossings (Dunton Tower - 2203)
Moderator: Justin Paulson (Carleton University)

• Smadar Lavie (Macalester College), South/South Feminist Coalitions and The Art of Staying Put: Crossing the Palestine/Israel Border with Gloria Anzaldua.
• Mark Ayyash (York University), Edward Said, Writing in Exile.
• Jason Mohaghegh (Northeastern Illinois University), Exile and the Post-Human: Literary and Existential Trajectories of the Outside.
• Sobhi al-Zobaidi (Simon Fraser University), Digital Nomads, between Homepages and Homelands: Or, Meeting Edward Said in the Future.

Panel 3: Contrapuntal Readings (Dunton Tower - 2017)
Moderator: Christiane Wilke (Carleton University)

• Cristina Perissinotto (University of Ottawa), Orientalizing Manuscripts: the
Relatione delle feste di Costantinopoli between Damnatio and Laudatio.
• Irina Mihalache (Carleton University), Narratives of the Postcolonial Dish: The Project of Authenticity in North African Restaurants in Paris.
• Lisa Brenner (Drew University in Madison), Like Poetry Without Words: The Galilee Multicultural Theatre.

12:30 – 1:30 Lunch Break (Senate room, Robertson – 608)

1:30 – 3:00 Plenary Session
(Senate Room, Robertson - 608)

JOSEPH MASSAD
Columbia University
FORGET (REMEMBER?) SEMITISM
Introduced by Blair Rutherford
(Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University)

3:15 – 4:45 Session III

Panel 4: Neo-Orientalism and the Cultural Politics of Representation (Dunton Tower- 2203)
Moderator: Erica See (University of Ottawa)

• Chris Richardson (University of Western Ontario), Orientalism at Home: The Case of “Canada’s Toughest Neighbourhood.”
• Shelina Kassam (OISE/ University of Toronto), How to be a Good Muslim 101: Creating Idealized Muslims on Little Mosque on the Prairie.
• Zahra F. Rasul (OISE/ University of Toronto), Racism in the Name of Feminism: Gendered Orientalisms, Cultural Politics, and Western Feminism post 9/11.
• May Alhassen (Columbia University), Planting Olive Trees, Zaatar Seeds, and Hip-Hop Beats: The Reclamation of History, National Consciousness, and Humanity Through Narratives as Cultural Art Forms.

Panel 5: Orientalist Knowledge (Dunton Tower - 2017)
Moderator: Cristina Perissinotto (University of Ottawa)

• Artur Lozano Méndez (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Techno-Orientalism: Reiteration, Change, Diversification.
• Jalal Dehzani (Carleton University), Ontological Crisis of Orientalist Knowledge and Misunderstanding Kurdistan.
• Bernhard Leistle (Carleton University), Ethnography, Possession and Otherness in Morocco.
• Ning Du (Carleton University), The Many Faces of Confucianism: Shadows of Self and Other in Modern Knowledge Production of the Past.

Closing Words: Nahla Abdo (Carleton University)

Some thoughts on the concept of racialization

Last week sometime I was listening to CBC radio, something I have done so many times, it has become pseudo-ritualistic. You know, the voices, the theme music, the topics all blur into one, it's almost soothing. Almost, except I find much of what I hear offensive in some way. I had a friend, who listens to the CEEB religiously, once tell me that the only show she didn't find hurt her regularly in some fundamental way was the weekly gardening show. Somehow they managed to never denigrate indigenous people on this one show, no small feat in a settler country built on such trespasses. And the CEEB, despite its liberal leanings, is there to express such nationalist visions.

There I was, middle of the day listening to the CEEB and the talk turns to the so-called Chinese dairy products scandal. You know, some chemical has been found in dairy products, both wet and dry, and there has been a mass recall in China, one that has affected a few products here in Canada. I'll remind people that this comes on the heels of the listeriosis debacle here in Canada, where none other than Maple Leaf Foods, probably the national meat brand, poisoned hundreds of people with contaminated cold meat cuts, leading to the death of nearly 20 people across the country.

Anyways, here I am listening to this show, and the type of crap people were saying was infuriating. Interviewer: "So, are you going to buy Chinese products?" Respondent(s): "Never, I don't trust Chinese products, I never have, I will not go to Chinatown."

Ok, so yeah, the whole dairy product thing is sketchy. I agree. Luckily I don't eat dairy or meat products, partly because of these types of situations. But the way the respondents were racializing all things Chinese was stunning. It was like they were talking about aliens who eat their kids and love their rodents. God, it made me sick to my stomach.

Never in all of the endless discussions about the listeriosis outbreak did anyone ever invoke the moral or ethical will of the people behind the outbreak. Nor has there been any discussion of their race and/or ethnic make-up, even though many of those responsible for the outbreak have appeared regularly in the media to assuage the public. Can you imagine what would've been said if Maple Leaf Foods was run by any number of hyphenated-Canadians. Instead, I have to listen to some bullshit news report basically tarnishing the 'Chinese' with unsafe food handling practices, lower health standards, questionable moral way-points and worst of all and yet not surprising, an unhealthy disregard for human life, especially children, since many of those affected by the contamination have been children.

And this folks is how racialization works. Sure, we could talk about this in relation to racism, and it surely is an example of how the power of the racial order is upheld, but it also serves as a good example of how the process of racialization works. A whole series of values, beliefs, attitudes, and meanings are clearly being associated here with a group of people, one that is seen as racially outside the white norm. That's how it becomes possible to talk about never going to Chinatown, because the people in question are seen as untrustworthy and dirty. Of course, the meanings associated with being Chinese change and shift, they aren't static, but it is quite amazing how what was being said about the Chinese in Canada on the CEEB last week was so similar to what was being said in the early 20th century, most notably by the White Canada terrorists. Why do racial, and one could add gender and sexuality, codes have such staying power? They clearly get expressed differently, nobody interviewed on the CEEB was walking through Chinatown with a sign demanding the immediate deportation of all Chinese people in Canada and the cessation of all immigration from China, but the ideas about what it means to be Chinese, especially at times of crisis like the SARS outbreak in Toronto in 2003 and this more minor one around dairy products, are there, stubbornly clinging to life.

There was no reason to talk about so-called Chinese values and/or Chinatowns in this newscast. Just like there was no reason to talk about the dozens of grocery store chains that carry contaminated Maple Leaf meat products or who is, in the racial sense, behind that outbreak. But it happened and it happens all the time. That's racialization at work. Some, like the white executives and their representatives, are not racialized, race is not part of the story at Maple Leaf Foods, while others, in this case some apparently shady group of Chinese food producers are very clearly racialized. The dairy product outbreak occurs because of race, strange logic yes, but no coincidence.

An Encounter With the Past

I was hit hard in the gut yesterday. I was having a great day, you know the type of day where the sun is shining bright and the future looks ever-so-inviting. I was on my bike, heading to a union bargaining committee meeting with management, something I absolutely love doing.

There I was, stopped at a light, listening to Peter Gabriel, and I heard a honk over the din of Gabriel's scratchy voice. I've never been a big fan of his, partly due to this aural feature of his music, but on this day I had synched a version of 'City of Angels' onto my ipod, which incidentally I had heard on Radio Paradise the week before. If you haven't tuned into RP yet, I strongly recommend it.

But back to my story. I'm waiting at the light and at a particularly melancholic moment in the song I hear a honk, which I invariably think is aimed at me. I look to the left and straight back and nothing. I look to the right and a cute-looking woman drives by, rolling her right turn on the red. What I do care? I smile large. I peer over to the next car to pull up beside me, something I have trained myself to do over the years, whether stationary or in motion at 120km/h.

A large smile beams at me and my heart races a touch. "Hi, how are you?" I can read her lips over the lilting soundtrack on my ears. My heart races still more. I take my headphones off, I can feel myself melting into the pavement, but I resist it. I will not sink to that level.

"Good, enjoying the sun." I hear myself, confident, and it doesn't seem possible.

She retorts, very enthusiastically: "Man, I can't believe it, I was just thinking about you!" The way she draws out 'just', as if she was singing a folk song, has always been endearing. I think it may one of her favourite words.

"Oh yeah." I wasn't, but I thought that might not be the right thing to say. "Cool." It probably isn't, but it seemed like my turn to say something else, and 'cool' and 'interesting' are my two favourite things to say that mean pretty much nothing but sound ok.

"It's really nice to see you." She's still beaming, as if the sun is shining too bright in her eyes. She sounds sincere. "It's nice to see you too." And then for what feels like an eternity we both stare into each others' eyes, in a way I've rarely done with anyone, as if we're playing some infantile game of "who will blink first" with nothing at stake.

I look away. I feel happy to see her, but I wonder, almost cryptically, what does she want from me?

The conversation continues in this way, with her smiling larger than I have perhaps ever seen her smile and my mind wandering to her intentions, for the minute it takes the light to change. In that uncomfortable moment, there's a slight pause, before I say, rather matter-of-factly, "Well, it was nice seeing you. Have a good day." And I mean it. I don't want to pursue anything more.

Then I go about my day and I think back to that brief moment, the type of moment I used to obsess over (what will i say? what will she say? how will i feel?) and I feel a deep sense of satisfaction. I was nice and friendly to someone who treated me more or less like shit. I'm relieved. And feel stronger than I did before. I thought I'd fail the test, but I passed with flying colours. I wouldn't change a thing.

Visitor Overview

For regular visitors to Courir dans le vent rose, you may know that I track visitors to my blog. I haven't given an update since last December, so here's the latest news about visitors from the period that covers June 1st-September 10th, 2008 according to Google Analytics.

992 Visits
279 Absolute Unique Visitors
1,559 Pageviews
1.57 Average Pageviews
00:03:10 Time on Site per Visit
26.31% New Visits

My top content pages over that period as measured by percentage of page views were as follows:

1. Home page--> 77.4%
2. Rainbow Lake Trail Whistler--> 2.76%
3. Howe Sound Crest Trail--> 1.22%
4. Edisto Beach State Park--> 0.96%
5. Short Stories label--> 0.96%

My top traffic sources (referrals) as measured by percentage of page views were as follows:

1. Direct to blog--> 38.41%
2. Google--> 18.41%
3. Facebook--> 15.83%
4. maecallan.blogspot.com--> 15.52%
5. blogger.com--> 2.62%

My top search engine keywords as measured by percentage of page views were as follows:

1. Edisto Beach Campground--> 9.68%
2. Howe Sound Crest Trail--> 3.76%
3. Kilmainham Gaol--> 3.23%
4. leventrose--> 2.15%


Thanks to everyone who visited!

Canadian Elections

Those who know me could attest to the fact that I don't talk much about electoral politics. I don't see the state-based political system as a central space to engage in struggle over the meaning of living an ethical and just life. In fact, I think the electoral system, with its roots in liberal ideologies, has many built-in inequalities deeply structuring it. Because of this political analysis, one I'm admittedly not developing in this post, I'm a lukewarm voter at best. I've voted NDP a couple of times when I thought they might win, and Green once when my friend was running for them. Whatever the case, I don't believe that any of the parties would change much in society. And this isn't some narcissistic, relativist argument. I just think that anything other than a devolution/revolution, a mixed-bag of socialist and anarchist political theories if you will, can fundamentally change societies in a way I can support wholeheartedly.

As an example of the futility of the current system, I take none other than the current debate about the televised leadership debate. Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, was up in arms yesterday when she found out that the television consortium that decides who gets to sit in on the debates has decided not to include the Greens alongside the usual suspects: Conservatives, Liberals, NDP and Bloc. This decision came after the NDP, Conservatives and Bloc threatened to boycott the debate if the Greens were given a spot on the broadcasts.

Before this sad episode, I was thinking about voting for NDP candidate Paul Dewar, an NDPer who has a real chance of winning in my riding. The same NDP that continuously harkens about bringing in change, about being more equitable, about getting rid of the old parties, can't face up to some healthy challenge from the Greens. Not that the Greens are clean in the entire affair either: they made some deal with the Liberals where their leaders agreed to not run against each other, which apparently led to the Liberals supporting May's appearance in the debates. Whatever. The whole thing is political theatre at its worst. Whenever I follow the news about such items, I feel like I'm in a time machine 2,000 years in the future watching an episode of "The Lost Years: 1700-2100 AD," and it's so funny I want to cry. But then I remind myself that some of the talking heads on the podiums with the beautiful photo-ops in the background not only really believe they might be able to change certain things for those most in need, but many of them will actually have the ability to make decisions that affect the lives of millions of people, often, as is the case with liberal, capitalist societies, to the detriment of the majority of folks out there.

So I'll keep following the stories about how Stephen Harper is more masculine than Stéphane Dion, and how Jack Layton would make a better Prime Minister than Elizabeth May, but not without wondering who the fuck cares? What about the fact that we live in a society where the huge majority of people have accepted that a grossly disproportionate amount of indigenous people live in dire poverty? I could list off any number of issues that will not be discussed in any real, sustained manner during these elections, but I won't bother right now. Instead, I'll suggest that those who care about the issues that aren't going to be discussed address these issues in their own ways, amongst their own communities, and let those around them know that they are doing so. And if you want, tell them that you're disengaging from the elections, not because you don't believe in freedom or justice or the fuzzy principles of democracy, tell them it's precisely because you do care. About people, animals, birds, fish, trees, water, and all those other beings and things that animate our world.

No leaders' debates. No political attack ads. No commercials selling you a constructed image. No polite, parliamentary debate about what the definition of torture is. Or whether there are too many immigrants. Or welfare Moms. Or criminals in communities of colour. There are too many inequalities that go unmentioned every day. Because of this, I'm not voting, and this time I'm telling people why.

How to Fight Loneliness?

It's that creeping feeling deep in your gut, you could almost mistake it for anxiety or excitement, polar opposites of each other yes, but just a clever biological mirror image, similar to what Lacan called an imago. But this is oh so subtly different that it is difficult to grasp. Loneliness. Perhaps my worst fear, but with age and a little help from my friends, it passes almost unnoticed.

At the moment I'm feeling a little bout of it coming down the pipes. Bubbling deep in my abdomen, rising up in a chest-tightening grip. Deep breaths and calm mind; deep breaths and calm mind might just be my mantra for the evening.

I arrived back from my marvelous 18-day vacation, during which time I spent a significant amount of time with no less than six of my closest friends, and I suppose even more depending on how I calculate such intimately qualitative data. In any case, most of this time was spent on intensive back-country hikes in the Coast Mountains of BC and the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, where it was basically my friends, me and a few of our distant animal, bird and/or plant cousins. Caribou, ground squirrels, lichens, mosses, alpine wildflowers, hawks, eagles, elk, deer, Dall's sheep, rainbow trout, cutthroat trout, mosquitoes, midges, damselflies, etc, etc, you get the picture.

Even on the occasions where I went off on my own for the day, something I am more than prone to do, after all, taking in the bush on my own is a privilege I seldom enjoy these days, I knew someone was just around the proverbial corner, though it was more likely a 4km hike through alpine meadows, down steep precipices and back up mud-encrusted trails. It was that feeling of presence, knowing that someone was there in more than a metaphysical way, but in the sense of an ass warming a bench in a hut or boiling some tea or putting up a tent under the setting sun up ahead. Presence. At this moment, back at home in my large house by myself, I miss that presence. Though I remain confident that I can find it within me, I miss it, and right now feeling lonely is like a fine, serrated knife stabbing my heart. I've lost something dear to me that I should've savoured longer, like those Okanagan peaches I've been lusting over since I arrived in BC. But if there's something I've learned lately, 'shoulds' are a recipe for longing for a past that never was and never could be.

I enjoyed myself when I was away. And now I'm back and I miss my friends and I'm alone and it hurts. They're far away and even if I was surrounded by some of my favourite local people right now, and there are many of them, I'd feel dreadfully alone, because the ones I miss are not going to appear. I'll ride the feeling out on my own and be happy I did when it passes. Otherwise, loneliness turns into fear that it never will.

Tonquin Valley

Last week several of my friends and I headed to the Tonquin Valley in Jasper National Park for a five-day hiking trip in the backcountry. Our last multi-day foray into the wilderness was two years ago in Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario, a far cry from the spectacular Rocky Mountains. While Killarney had its own particular charm, partly due to its proximity to my place of birth, the Tonquin Valley is without a doubt in a league of its own.

On our first night we stayed at the Edith Cavell hostel underneath the mammoth Edith Cavell peak. This gave us a small taste of things to come. The hostel was well-maintained and the price was right. A great option for anyone needing a place to stay before heading out to the Tonquin.

The Tonquin Valley trailhead begins at the parking lot just outside the hostel, an ideal location to start a day-long hike. On our second day we set out on the trail to our final destination, the Wates-Gibson Memorial Hut, operated by the Alpine Club of Canada. The trail wanders along the Astoria River until it veers south towards Chrome Lake and the Eremite Valley. It is a moderate-difficult trail, nearly 18kms to the hut. I'd say pack as light as possible and expect rain, lots of it. The trail is often wet and muddy in most spots.

Once we arrived at the hut, we made a quick dinner and went to bed early to prepare for our next four days of day hikes through the Tonquin and Eremite Valleys. The most stunning landscape around the area was the marvelous Amethyst Lake, surrounded by the Ramparts to the west, Clitheroe Mountain to the east and the impressive Raptor Meadows on the lakeshore.



The other major highlight was our last day hike up to the Fraser Glacier, home to BC's Fraser River. Climbing up to the Continental Divide in the driving wind and stinging snow was well worth the privilege of playing underneath the glacier at nearly 2,500 metres.



The one major disappointment of our trip was that I didn't get to see the elusive grizzly bear. We did spot a large caribou, a moose and some elk on our trip, along with a number of circling birds of prey. I'd recommend the Tonquin Valley to anyone who wants relatively easy access to glaciers with little human traffic and good chances to view the endangered woodland caribou. Stay at the ACC hut if you have the money, the valley is rainy and cold almost all the time, though the three Parks Canada campgrounds around Amethyst Lake are nice and comfortable, and the warden cabin is just above the lake on the main trail in case of emergencies.

Vancouver

I've had a love affair with Vancouver for ten years now, in fact, our diamond anniversary is in two months. I've traveled there seven of those years on at least fifteen different occasions, for reasons as diverse as love, work, and play. There's no city I feel quite the same bond with, something I chalk up to the distance. Yes, my heart does grow fonder.

This past trip I stayed with a friend in Kitsilano near Blenheim & Third. Lavender was wafting on the sea breeze and blackberries grew like massive weeds throughout the neighbourhood. There are several small parks around here -- the type of parks that drive me crazy in other cities because they serve solely as doggy outhouses -- but in Vancouver, they are lined with benches that look out over the ocean towards downtown to the east and West Vancouver and the mountains to the north.



It's true that the city is getting a serious facelift for the 2010 Olympics and cranes are almost as prominent on the landscape as those famous Coast Mountains. While I was chatting with friends who work in the social services sector both on the coast and in the interior, they spoke of how some service providers in the city have been giving people in the Downtown Eastside one-way tickets to the interior, in this case, Vernon, in order to 'clean-up' the city. Besides this gross Olympic-ification, the battle over Insite -- the needle exchange facility -- and the uber-gentrification of the eastside are longstanding battles that are simmering nearly out of control. The Olympics seem to have provided politicians and developers with all the right excuses to bulldoze the residents of the eastside out of existence.



Despite these extravagant transgressions, I'll no doubt be returning to Vancouver, my heart in hand.