[PHOTO] The Eaton's lion

The Eaton's lion
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

This is one of the two copper lions guarding the entrance to the Eaton family's mausoleum. The Eaton's gave their name to Canada's Eaton's department store chain, founded by Northern Irish Protestant immigrant Timothy Eaton and famous for offering a set price for its goods and offering refunds to consumers. Once innovative, under later generations of the family the chain declined and finally went bankrupt, as described in Rod McQueen's scathing group biography, but the wealth and prestige--and the mausoleum--remained.

[DM] "Fertility rate boosted by immigrant women in rural South Jeolla county"

Over at Demography Matters I've a post up to an article in JoongAng Daily linking relatively high birth rates in a rural area of southwestern South Korea to an influx of foreign-born wives. Go, read.

[LINK] "It's Time for A Change. Again."

I agree entirely with blogger James Bow's reasons on the need for a federal election, in case you're curious.

have to say that I’m ready for it. It’s time for a change; time to throw the bastards out, as the saying goes. And I know I’m not alone. In recent weeks, there have been some interesting defections. Conservative-libertarian Jay Currie has jumped ship to the Liberals and the principled small-c conservative blogger Kateland is wavering about supporting Ignatieff, but doesn’t seem interested in sending her vote Harper’s way.

I don’t always (or, in Jay’s case, often) agree with these individuals on political matters, but on Harper it seems as though we have all come to the same conclusion. This is a man who governs by no principle but his own self-aggrandizement. This is a man who believes that every criticism, no matter how valid, is a political attack against his leadership. His government has, in three short years, developed a level of incompetence and arrogance that eclipses the final months of the previous Liberal government. Worse, his government has created nightmares for specific Canadian citizens, from Abousfian Abdelrazik to Suaad Mohamud and beyond, not just through the same incompetence that gave us a shortage in medical isotopes, but through active, mean-spirited stonewalling of any attempt to do right by these individuals.

It’s amazing: the Liberals took over ten years to slip to a point where the need to send them to the political wilderness to learn some humility and reinvent themselves overruled the wisdom of bringing an inexperienced opposition party to power, but the Conservatives passed that point in three.

Democracy might be complicated but, well, does anyone want the worst-case scenario of their country to be like Japan, under very recently under the rule of a Liberal Democratic Party that mismanaged the country?

Go read the rest of his post.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Coach House Press

Coach House Press (official site, Wikipedia) is one of the few independent book publishing companies left in Canada. Known for its publication of avant-garde works, it has lasted for 44 years. Murray Whyte at the Toronto Star recently wrote a feature article examining the press and centering upon founder Stan Bevington.

Consider: Coach House deals in tiny print runs, from 200 to 2,000, in a publishing climate where conventional wisdom suggests volume is central to survival. It prints all of its books on two ancient Heidelberg presses on the ground floor of its crammed-full print shop-cum-offices in an industry where printing is fully automated, and laser-guided mass production is the norm.

And Coach House publishes Canadian authors exclusively, many of them poets – no cash cows such as kids' books, cookbooks, romance or science fiction allowed.

There's a purity of mission here, reflected in its history, and Bevington's, too. On paper, at least, Coach House has never been more than a plucky, independent-minded business venture; in spirit as well as practice, it's been the unofficial clubhouse for at least two generations of Canadian authors, artists and cultural renegades.

As Bevington describes it, the book publication business slowly expanded, from silkscreen T-shirts to books to a fully-fledged firm. Charlotte Tombs at the University of Toronto's Varsity, with her article "Coach House makes it a home", notes that the press has recently puchased the buildings where it resides from the University of Toronto and now has a physically and economically secure place in the city as well as culturally.

Coach House helped launch the careers of such acclaimed authors as Michael Ondaatje and Anne Michaels, and every year it continues to choose unique and interesting writing by up-and-coming authors. In explaining the type of literature they seek, Wilcox mentions that they “try to do stuff that’s a little more unconventional, not straightforward historical fiction or something. We try to do stuff that’s a little more adventurous, experimental, avant-garde.”

“We look for novels that creatively use language to make a story that we would have never expected,” adds Bevington, “whereas many publishers accept the narrative as the way to do a novel.”

In addition to reprints and new literature, Coach House Press takes on special projects, such as publishing the Hart House Review and many of U of T’s literary journals. Furthermore, the press creates catalogues for the Fisher Rare Book library. “We do some beautiful work for the Fisher Rare Book Library,” notes Bevington. “They choose us because they want really prestigious work. We get to look at the finest books in the library and [make] catalogues of entire collections. Right now we’re doing a [catalogue] about Darwin—all of the books that Darwin ever published are going to be on display in the fall—and we’re going to do a catalogue that has an overview of all of [them].”

[LINK] "Labour Day '29"

Over at Torontoist, Jamie Bradburn's regular Historicist feature takes a look at 1929's Labour Day. What was it like?

The Toronto Tourist and Convention Association estimated that more than one hundred thousand people visited the city on Labour Day, a 25% increase over 1928. Package tours to Toronto filled hotels, with the largest being a group of three thousand who had paid ten dollars each for an excursion from Philadelphia packaged by the Reading Railroad and Canada Steamship Lines.

More than 240,000 people went to the Canadian National Exhibition on Labour Day, a slight decrease from the record set a year earlier that barely bothered fair officials. The Mail and Empire noted that on Labour Day “there were crowds everywhere, carefree crowds. Not a crowd that laughed heartily or chatted briskly—but a complacent group which made the most of Labour Day, without labour...a happy-go-lucky lot. No one made haste. No one seemed to have a destination in view. They simply glimpsed what could be seen without effort.” Nearby homeowners were happy to see relaxed crowds, partly due to the added income they brought into the neighbourhood. The Telegram reported that many homes in lower Parkdale sported cards advertising parking space. “In the area comprised within the bounds of Dunn and King Streets and Springhurst Avenue were about 3,000 cars parked on front lawns, generally not more than three each.” Some of those car owners may have made their way to the new Automotive Building, where a wide variety of 1930 models from North American car makers was on display.

[. . .]

The CNE grounds marked the end point for the annual Labour Day parade. Though organizers had hoped more than fourteen thousand union members would march in the procession, the number was closer to five thousand. One group not made welcome by parade officials were local Communists and their affiliated political groups, who had asked to carry banners championing free speech in the wake of police actions against them. Only accredited unions were allowed to participate in the procession and the athletic events that followed. For their part, Communist Party officials weren’t bothered—as one representative told the Star, “Labour Day doesn’t represent anything vital to us.”

Swimmers, crime, lost children, and bad food also feature in Bradburn's snapshot. Go, read the post in full.