[NON BLOG] Reporting for Work

There's something wrong when you show up at 7 o'clock for work when you find out that (surprise!) work actually begins at 8 o'clock, and something worse still when you find out that you're not on shift that day (surprise!).

Ah well. At least breakfast at the Coach House is good.

[BRIEF NOTE] Thoughts on Marion Boyd's Report

Yule Heibel's Post Studio, via angel_80, responding to Marion Boyd's recent report recommending the implementation of a limited version of shari'a law in Ontario:

I hope that progressive Muslims in Ontario and elsewhere in Canada, along with voices from the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, can convince the Ontario government to ditch Boyd's recommendations. [Tarek] Fatah [of the Muslim Canadian Congress] noted that this will immediately enter the rightwing Islamist propaganda mill: “Tomorrow in Tehran, in Jeddah, in Pakistan, in Kabul, in Sudan, every newspaper will say that Sharia has been approved by Canada,” predicted Fatah.

I find it frightening that equal rights and representation before the law could, in a modern democracy, be undermined in favour of medieval, misogynist "religious" exemptions. What happened? Women really are the niggers of the world, aren't they... Some men make her "paint her face and dance", but some others make her put bags over her head and body. Same f*ng difference.

I've blogrolled the Post Studio, incidentally.

[NON BLOG] Holiday Report

Thursday afternoon, I headed out with tudor_rose. First stop was the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, to see nire_nagaf. It was good to see her; we all should look so well after surgery. I'm afraid that I made her laugh (and to confirm, no, I am not getting a webcam). An hour later I left with tudor_rose for downtown Charlottetown, first to kill time at her rather nice apartment then to go out gift-shopping at the Charlottetown Mall (I should have done that in Toronto, but hey).

Later that evening, I met up with Stephen at the Timothy's on Kent Street for a chat, then walked over to tudor_rose's place. We were too early by far at seven o'clock, and neither of us had purchased any liquor; so, we left, picking up the requisite alcoholic beverages and mixer drinks, then heading to his place to watch the Angel episode "The Bachelor Party" off his Season 1 DVD.

The party itself was rather fun. It was good to meet up with everyone and to talk--lostmuskrat about the benefits of Gaullism, the ambiguities of Canadian defense policies, with teridian about jobs and the ongoing subversion of Upper Canada by Atlantic Canadian "migrants," G. about our respective writing enterprises, choreo_m and london_calling and and and about all matters possible. The party departed for St. James Gate, a bar opened in the past year on Kent Street in the shell of the former Home Hardware building. My fragment of the party ended up dissolving around 3:30, with my taxi return home.

I did my shopping, such as it was, in downtown Charlottetown after a successful visit to my bank Friday afternoon. The Confederation Court Mall seems, from my inexpert survey, to be going downhill; the hollowing-out of the downtown continues, it seems, despite the incentives it receives via summer tourism. I chatted for a half-hour with the owners-operators of The Book Emporium about my career plans and the Canadian bookselling industry before achieving the last of my purchases, for my parents and my sister and V. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't go to midnight mass at St. Dunstan's Cathedral that night, although only a bit since that let me stay up until one o'clock watching television. Have I mentioned that I've watched very little television since last August?

Christmas Day was enjoyable, between the giving and the getting and the visits paid by various relatives over Christmas Dinner. It was exhausting, though.

Departing the Island and Atlantic Canada the next day began easily enough, with a quick and easy car ride to the nice Greater Moncton International Airport. Most unfortunately, Canjet flight 551 ended up being five hours late. Granted that I managed to get some blogging work done in the interim, this was aggravating, as was the poor communication by the flight crew, as was the late arrival, as was the halting delivery of our luggage (and so on, and so forth). Don't fly Canjet.

And now I'm back.

[BRIEF NOTE] Thinking Like a Tourist About PEI

Would it be condescending to describe the Island as quétaine? It certainly would be if, as the glossaries suggest, it means something much more contemptuous and much less endearing that I thought it meant. At the very least, I should explain why I chose that word.

Moving to Upper Canada last August, I began to notice a variety of cultural differences between Atlantic and Upper Canada, quite apart from the visibly greater wealth of Kingston--nicer urban public infrastructure, wealthier-looking homes, more expensive shops. Two weeks in, I realized that most of the people surrounding me talked like the people on national television, in the stereotypical American-influenced dialect of Canadian English that is slowly making inroads in Atlantic Canada against the more conservative dialects imported by the initial settlers. The fanaticism displayed by Toronto Maple Leafs fans during the playoffs was interesting to observe, from the perspective of a neutral observer. Remembering that the Prince Edward Island National Park is little more than a half-hour from my home, the mania in Toronto for summer camps struck me as odd until I realized that in the half-year since my move, I've descended to the Lake Ontario shorefront only twice.

The most visible differences between Toronto and Charlottetown are, of course, the demographic ones. I discovered this Thanksgiving that the city of Charlottetown has barely more than half of the population of the city council district where I live (35 thousand versus 60 thousand). And, of course, Queen-Dufferin is embedded in a very large metropolis, and is itself exceptionally multicultural; Charlottetown is at the top of the Island's urban hierarchy, and is about as multicultural as Prince Edward Island gets. Toronto dominates its hinterland; in Charlottetown, the process of cultural urbanization described by Dasgupta is still ongoing.

Toronto is hardly foreign; rather, it is different. Returning to Prince Edward Island last week, I realized that I'd begun to operate according to Torontonian assumptions. Growing up, Charlottetown looked fairly large and bustling; returning, it looks small and somewhat quaint. The Island's relatively lower level of economic development makes itself subtly apparent in any number of little details. The overall effect, though, was hardly unattractive. Rather, the various signs of the Island's relative backwardness--an underpopulated and relatively poor and certainly monocultural urban landscape, a densely populated and cultivated rural landscape--were rather attractive, novelties almost.

Certainly I was well aware that the Island's tourism strategy depends heavily on exploiting the province's relatively low level of development. I did work three summers for the Department of Tourism, after all. Despite all that, though, I didn't understand the actual effect of this strategy until last week.