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Jul. 20th, 2009
[LINK] "Home in the Chaco"
Jul. 20th, 2009 11:03 amThis Friday just past, the National Post's Polina Levina has a fascinating article on Canadian Mennonites who, displaced by anti-German sentiment in Canada, went and moved to Paraguay.
The Gran Chaco desert in Paraguay has for centuries been known as L'Inferno Verde, or "the Green Hell." With the temperature routinely reaching 42 C in the summer, no sources of water and gusts of dusty wind through the flat nothingness, it is no surprise that only 3% of Paraguay's population occupies an area that makes up 60% of the country. A Paraguayan diplomat once famously told a British traveller, "Doan go there, ees only esnakes an espiders."
Yet, this inhospitable terrain is home to a vibrant community of 30,000 Mennonites, around 9,000 of them Canadian citizens. Their story is one of endless wanderings, from Germany and Switzerland through Russia to Canada and finally to this desolate patch of terrain, where they were granted a special arrangement by the Paraguayan government to self-rule their land in relative isolation.
[. . .]
At that time, the Paraguayan government was desperate to settle the Chaco, and had already tried buying ships, all-expenses paid, to woo people from England, France and Australia.
"Few came, and those who did soon left," said Peter Dyck, author of Up from the Rubble, an account of Mennonite experiences trying to found new settlements in South America and Canada. "They were ready to give up, but then Canadian Mennonites needed a new home."
More than 70 years later, the Mennonites out-earn indigenous Paraguayans tenfold, supplying 80% of the country's milk and dairy products -- so successful that they now face the challenge of being employers, without being regarded as colonizers.
The Globe and Mail reported Saturday about some of the ethnic Nepali refugees from Bhutan who are being resettled in Canada.
Many of the refugees would like to return to their homeland, but the Bhutanese government has consistently refused, claiming that these refugees are not Bhutanese at all.
When the days in the refugee camp seemed to last forever, Bhim Lal Kattel prayed to the gods to let his family return home to Bhutan.
Nearly two decades passed. His children grew and his mother aged. Mr. Kattel gave up his dream of reclaiming his family's farm in southern Bhutan. The grinding boredom at the Goldhap refugee camp in the nearby Himalayan country of Nepal sapped his spirit.
So, at age 37, with an anxious heart, he decided to take his family to a strange, cold land on the other side of the globe.
Mr. Kattel arrived at Vancouver International Airport on Thursday afternoon, his eyes shining with excitement and fatigue. Despite the warm July weather, his wife, Bishnu Maya, and three children, Prakash, 14, Menuka, 12, and Ganesh, 8, were clad in thick sweaters. His 73-year-old mother was pushed through the international gates in a wheelchair.
This week, as Ottawa issued strict visa requirements for Czech and Mexican visitors, citing a raft of bogus refugee claimants from the two countries, the Kattels were part of another unfolding Canadian refugee saga. Five thousand Bhutanese refugees will be arriving in Canada over the next five years – one of the largest government-sponsored resettlement efforts in recent years.
Many of the refugees would like to return to their homeland, but the Bhutanese government has consistently refused, claiming that these refugees are not Bhutanese at all.
Kevin Donovan's article in the Friday Toronto Star makes for interesting if unsurprising reading.
A bank in Kazakhstan that a Canadian representative of Bazis cited as an available lender, BTA, is currently under investigation by Kazakhstan authorities for massive fraud. The firm has recently restated its commitment to the project but, well, that's open to question. The general meltdown in finances makes it unlikely that anyone else would buy up the land for another development soon, too.
Andrew Barton's suggestion that the site should be converted into a public space, a park or something looks more appealing than ever.
The gleaming 80-storey condominium tower that was to lead the revitalization of the Yonge-Bloor intersection in Toronto is teetering on the edge of extinction.
On Monday, the Toronto lender that advanced a $46 million loan is going to ask a court to put the Kazakhstan-backed project into receivership and sell off the now-vacant land its international developer boasts is the "best address in the world."
The lender, a consortium of Toronto businessmen, alleges in court documents that Kazakh developer Bazis International has defaulted on its land loan and the Kazakh bank backing the tower portion of the project is involved in a "massive financial scandal involving fake loans, racketeering and money laundering activities."
"The (land) loan has been in an almost constant state of default since December of 2008," said Toronto consortium leader Gary Berman, in a court affidavit supporting his group's bid to appoint receiver Ernst &Young.
[. . .]
Yesterday, the presentation suite at the southeast corner of Yonge and Bloor St. was locked tight. A sign noting its hours indicated it should have been open. The sign encouraged interested buyers – condo unit prices start at $500,000 to "over $8 million" – to book an appointment. The Star left a message, but did not get a call back.
A bank in Kazakhstan that a Canadian representative of Bazis cited as an available lender, BTA, is currently under investigation by Kazakhstan authorities for massive fraud. The firm has recently restated its commitment to the project but, well, that's open to question. The general meltdown in finances makes it unlikely that anyone else would buy up the land for another development soon, too.
Andrew Barton's suggestion that the site should be converted into a public space, a park or something looks more appealing than ever.
[BRIEF NOTE] Canada, Apollo, and space
Jul. 20th, 2009 07:20 pmToday is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
I appreciate fully the Tin Man's observation that even though the technology available to us all is vastly more advanced than that which NASA enjoyed in the 1960s, the fact that our world--the United States, of course, but with extensive foreign contributions, von Braun et al for instance--sent people to the Moon and brought them back is impressive. I agree entirely with Andrew Barton's argument that the moon landings were premature and uneconomic one-off expeditions which happened only because of Cold War rivalries, and that future lunar expeditions will probably be driven by a pragmatic interest in the Moon, presumably more open to cooperation between nations.
This would suit Canada just fine, actually. Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, "Canada's broken dream" as the CBC archives calls it and the event surrounding it, was supposed to be the military aircraft that would have made Canada a top aerospace power. When the project was mysteriously canceled, the skilled professionals gathered together for the project spread out in a diaspora. NASA took advantage of this and recruited skilled Canadians who, as Sheryl Ubelacker wrote, made critical contributions to the Apollo project.
Canada's role in space arguably hasn't changed that much from the 1960s. A Canadian Space Agency certainly exists, the space shuttle's Canadarm is reasonably high profile, and a fair number of Canadians have gone into space from Marc Garneau in 1984 to Julie Payette and Robert Thirsk who are orbiting the Earth on the space shuttle even as I type. The Canadian space program, though, is dependent on the existence of partners who'll allow Canada to contribute, not least since we don't have anything like the United States' space shuttle or the ESA's Ariane series or Russia's Soyuz or China's Shenzhou capsules and rockets. Quietly, carefully, in measured fashion, Canada and Canadians will continue to play the role pioneered by the Avro Arrow engineers, contributing useful details but not doing much more.
That's fine with me, actually--a Canadian space program remotely comparable to the four I named above would be disproportionately expensive, and rather pointless. If the space programs of the future are driven more by pragmatism than anything else, though, that added openness might well make Canadian contributions more visible. Who knows? Perhaps the Canadian contributions to the first Mars missions will be that much more widely known.
I appreciate fully the Tin Man's observation that even though the technology available to us all is vastly more advanced than that which NASA enjoyed in the 1960s, the fact that our world--the United States, of course, but with extensive foreign contributions, von Braun et al for instance--sent people to the Moon and brought them back is impressive. I agree entirely with Andrew Barton's argument that the moon landings were premature and uneconomic one-off expeditions which happened only because of Cold War rivalries, and that future lunar expeditions will probably be driven by a pragmatic interest in the Moon, presumably more open to cooperation between nations.
This would suit Canada just fine, actually. Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, "Canada's broken dream" as the CBC archives calls it and the event surrounding it, was supposed to be the military aircraft that would have made Canada a top aerospace power. When the project was mysteriously canceled, the skilled professionals gathered together for the project spread out in a diaspora. NASA took advantage of this and recruited skilled Canadians who, as Sheryl Ubelacker wrote, made critical contributions to the Apollo project.
When the world marks the 40th anniversary Monday of man's first landing on the moon, it will be paying tribute to American ingenuity and what arguably is one of that country's finest moments. But it was one of Canada's proudest moments, too.
Many Canadians are unaware that a group of their countrymen working at NASA was instrumental in delivering the Apollo 11 astronauts to the lunar surface on July 20, 1969 - and getting them safely back home to Earth.
In fact, even before Neil Armstrong's booted feet stepped onto the rocky, crater-pocked surface of the moon, Canadian-made legs on the lunar landing module had settled into the satellite's dust first. The splayed legs were produced from light-weight aluminum using a compressible honeycomb design by Quebec's Heroux-DEVTEK, which won the NASA contract.
The landing module was primarily designed by Sarnia, Ont.-born Owen Maynard, an engineer who worked on the famed Avro Arrow before the federal government under Diefenbaker abruptly canceled the supersonic jet program in February 1959.
Maynard and about 25 others laid off from Toronto's A.V. Roe aircraft on what was dubbed Black Friday were quickly snapped up by the Americans to help them fulfill President John F. Kennedy's 1961 edict that the country land a man on the moon within the decade.
"Canadians contributed a massive amount to the space race and Apollo," says Robert Godwin, a curator for the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto that houses a full-scale replica of the Arrow.
"Not meaning it to be a derogatory remark, but the Americans benefited greatly from the demise of the Arrow," he says. "All of these genius engineers ended up going to help put men on the moon."
Canada's role in space arguably hasn't changed that much from the 1960s. A Canadian Space Agency certainly exists, the space shuttle's Canadarm is reasonably high profile, and a fair number of Canadians have gone into space from Marc Garneau in 1984 to Julie Payette and Robert Thirsk who are orbiting the Earth on the space shuttle even as I type. The Canadian space program, though, is dependent on the existence of partners who'll allow Canada to contribute, not least since we don't have anything like the United States' space shuttle or the ESA's Ariane series or Russia's Soyuz or China's Shenzhou capsules and rockets. Quietly, carefully, in measured fashion, Canada and Canadians will continue to play the role pioneered by the Avro Arrow engineers, contributing useful details but not doing much more.
That's fine with me, actually--a Canadian space program remotely comparable to the four I named above would be disproportionately expensive, and rather pointless. If the space programs of the future are driven more by pragmatism than anything else, though, that added openness might well make Canadian contributions more visible. Who knows? Perhaps the Canadian contributions to the first Mars missions will be that much more widely known.