A Bit More Detail

• Acts of Minor Treason and Steve Munro are both very unhappy with the tendency to automatically equate streetcars with light rails. This is just not so.


• Derek Flack's photoessay, hosted at blogTO, showing the CPR tracks behind Dupont Street--i.e. my street of residence--was nice to see indeed. The photos provide nice, unexpected angles on the neighbourhoods I spend my time in.


• The Burgh Diaspora notes that a major problem for troubled American cities lies in the inability of many of their residents, tied down by real estate, to move to more promising environs. Some kind of process that could encourage people who left to return with their skills (and perhaps investments) might work.


• Eastern Approaches comments on the apparent end, but continuing tensions, in the name-spelling row between Poland and Lithuania.


• Far Outliers records a Japanese-trained Dutch bankers impressions of 1960s America as a place marked by open hospitality and a troubling guilelessness.


• Alex Harrowell, at A Fistful of Euros, thinks that the European Union has proven its worth by keeping Berlusconi from running Italy completely into the ground.


• The Global Sociology Blog traces the global migration of soccer players, finding that while their movements trace historic pathways and reflect established connections, their movement is actually the product of at least five sorts of micromovements.


• Passing Strangeness' pauldyre shows how the accidental release of mustard gas off the southern Italian coast in the Second World War, causing hundreds of dead, actually helped save millions of live through cancer treatments.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer argues that things look fairly bright for Portugal, with plausible projections suggesting renewed growth and the stabilization of the debt-to-GDP ratio, and impressive and potentially quite productive investments in infrastructure and new technologies, too.


• The Search's Douglas Todd writes about self-righteous greens. Ethics aside, that's just bad politics.


• Slap Upside the Head suggests that, with a resolution of the Québec segment of the New Democratic Party, Canadians are well on their way towards stripping organizations offering cures for homosexuality of charitable status, on the New Zealand model.


• Spacing Toronto applauds the well-designed, multi-use parking lots of Portland OR.

With the announcement that his country is ready to buy Portuguese debt, the president of East Timor, José Ramos-Horta, set a precedent in international economic relations that was universally praised in political and financial circles in this southern European country.

The president of one of the poorest countries on the planet, whose per capita income of 600 dollars ranks it 130th in the world, offered a hand to its former colonial power to help it weather the financial crisis.

"I don't see difficulties for East Timor, in terms of buying Portuguese debt," Ramos-Horta said Sunday on a visit to the former Portuguese enclave of Macao in China, where he announced that the government of Prime Minister José Alexandre Xanana Gusmão had decided to diversify investments by East Timor's petroleum fund.

The oil fund was established by the government in 2005 to receive and distribute billions of dollars in tax revenue from emerging oil and gas projects in the Timor Sea, with the aim of ensuring the proper distribution of the earnings.

The president added that other investments could be made in highly successful public or quasi-governmental enterprises that guarantee high returns, such as companies in telecoms or renewable energy, an area in which Portugal is a world leader.

On Monday, State Budget Secretary Emanuel dos Santos described Ramos-Horta's announcement as "a gesture of friendship."

According to initial projections, East Timor's investment in Portugal, slated for next year, could total one billion dollars.

However, the Diario Económico newspaper of Lisbon put the amount at 700 million dollars, because the East Timor oil fund is worth around seven billion dollars and by law, 90 percent of the assets must be invested in U.S. Treasury bonds.

ortugal is finally applying a long-delayed accord to standardise spelling in Portuguese-speaking countries, but in random fashion that has left most residents baffled about how to use their alphabet.

Ironically, Portugal's press has taken the lead in using the new spelling while the government -- via the schools -- continues its hesitation waltz over a reform approved by parliament in 2008 after a 20-year debate.

"It is absurd," said Nuno Pacheco, co-director of one daily, the Publico, which has so far refused to enact "a reform full of contradictions".

"Our children read newspapers that do not use the same spelling they are taught at school," he said.

The confusion has revived an old sore point over what some saw as a David vs. Goliath battle -- only this time David lost: under the 1990 accord, spelling in the world's eight Portuguese-speaking countries moves to the more phonetic form employed by Brazil.

As opponents point out, the English and Americans co-exist as neighbours ... or neighbors, so why can't Portuguese-speaking countries do likewise.

"It is a bad spelling reform and a political instrument for the expansion of Brazil," said linguist Antonio Emiliano.

He and other critics see the reform, already in place in Brazil, as tantamount to Portugal's "cultural abdication" to the commercial power of its vast former colony -- which claims 190 million of the world's 230 million Portuguese speakers.

[. . .]

The uniform spelling is aimed at making Internet searches easier, legal documents more standard and promote a bigger market for film and book productions in the Lusophone countries -- a world from the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, today's Portugal.

Outside Portugal and Brazil, these include Angola, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea Buissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe. Portuguese is also spoken in some Asian pockets, including the special Chinese administrative region of Macau and India's Goa state.

Under the reform, the consonants P and C -- which can sound very different in Rio, Lisbon or Maputo -- are removed where they are silent, as in Brazilian Portuguese. Words like "optimo" (great) or "direccao" (direction), as they have been spelled in Portugal, will become "otimo" and "direcao".

The reform also expands the Portuguese alphabet to 26 letters by adding K, W and Y, and includes some new rules for accents.

George Paul Overee, a sprightly 78-year-old museum guide, greets newcomers with a cheerful "Bom dia" and listens to Portuguese folk music as he sits in his village square.

But like most of the Malaysian Portuguese community in the port city of Malacca, a living legacy of long-gone colonial days, he has never set foot in the country from whence his forefathers journeyed some 500 years ago.

As one of the oldest members of the community, he is intent on preserving this fascinating enclave, with its unique language and traditions, against the pressures of modernisation.

"My children have long left this place. I see my grandchildren every once in a while," Overee said as he guided a group of Chinese tourists through the tiny museum at Malacca's Portuguese settlement.

"But I will never accept that the people in this village will ever forget their culture. It should begin in the family, start speaking the language at home to the young and cultivate the culture," he said.

The Portuguese village, a strip of coastal land overlooking the Malacca Strait, is a hive of activity as community members mingle in the central square, and entertain scores of tourists during the holiday season.

"Tourists are curious about us and there are also many Portuguese who come by to visit and keep in touch with us," Overee said proudly as he played folk music from a CD sent by a tourist from Lisbon.

[. . .]

"Only the very old and the very young remain here and the working people are mostly away seeking better paid jobs in big cities like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and even in Australia," said the village headman Peter Gomez.

"We make it a point to keep the festivals every year so that they have an opportunity to get recharged with their culture and the language," he said.

"We are afraid that the culture and the heritage may disappear altogether."

• Over at Alpha Sources, Claus Vistesen argues that Brazil may be coming into its own as a global economic power.


• Amused Cynicism's Phil Hunt tells us that British terrorists, like their Canadian counterparts, can be almost laughably stupid.


• angel80 points out that the recently discovered uncontacted tribe in the Brazilian Amazon may be doomed given the rate of deforestation.


• 'Aqoul's The Lounsbury links to Gideon Rachmann's Financial Times column "On Israel and the campaign bus", which points out that the Untied States has played an increasingly unproductive and self-destructive role in the Middle East thanks in part to the unconditional support lent by evangelical Christians to hard-right Israelis.


• blogTO covers the recent cyclists' protest on the Gardiner Expressway that managed to shut down much of that west-east coastal traffic artery for hours, as does Torontoist.


• Edward Hugh argues that much of the recent surge in Vietnamese inflation can be traced to impending labour shortages caused by the country's rapid demographic transition.


• Crooked Timber's John Quiggin started a very interesting discussion on the United States' historical memory, or lack thereof, of the First World War. Many of the commenters suggest that ethnic divisions at home may have made the conflict too painful to remember for most.


• Daniel Drezner tackles the Sharon Stone issue with decidedly good (or at least snarky) humour.


• In another excerpt from Michael Burleigh's Sacred Causes, Far Outliers explores the anticlericalism of the Second Spanish Republic and the surprisingly sharp decline in religious observance that had been ongoing since at least the late 19th century.


• Otto Spejkers at The Invisible College provides coverage of the Mothers of Srebrenica's lawsuit against the United Nations, demanding reparations for the United Nations' unwillingness to stop the genocide there.


• Language Hat features coverage of the reaction to the decision to standardize the Portuguese language according to Brazilian norms, regardless of Portuguese protests.


• Spacing Toronto coverage of the recent proposal to tear down a good chunk of the Gardiner Expressway, opening up direct line-of-sight connections between Toronto and Lake Ontario for the first time in decades.


• Strange Maps features a map of Europe's goblin distribution.
  

Four decades after their first arrival in Canada, the Portuguese have communities from coast to coast. In 1991 most lived in Ontario (202,395), Quebec (42,975), British Columbia (23,380), Alberta (9,755), and Manitoba (9,530). Though many came to work on farms or railways, most settled in cities. In 1991 Toronto had 124,325 residents of Portuguese origin; Montreal, 32,330; Kitchener, Ontario, 13,755; Hamilton, 9,625; Vancouver, 9,255; Winnipeg, 7,970; Ottawa-Hull, 6,580; London, 6,330; and Edmonton, 4,685.

The pioneers lived in deteriorated, low-income, working-class neighbourhoods in the heart of the cities, on the margins of emerging central business districts, near jobs and transportation. The majority were single individuals who resided in low-rental flats, tenements, and rooming-houses – often with relatives or friends from the same village/region of Portugal – in order to save to buy a house and to bring over relatives from Portugal.

Portuguese colonies began taking shape in the 1960s. The steady increase in immigration and the constant arrival of entire families, through chain sponsorship, consolidated immigrant neighbourhoods. Often two or three families shared the same house or apartment/flat. The majority of these immigrants came from rural areas of Portugal, particularly in the Azores, and lacked knowledge of English or French, skills, and money. These districts functioned as reception areas, offering information and security, but also tended to isolate Portuguese from the host society.

Portuguese communities in Canada tend to be self-contained and self-sufficient. Their remarkable level of institutional completeness is demonstrated by the number of social and cultural institutions (198, including 111 in Ontario), religious institutions (thirty-eight churches), and ethnic businesses (over forty-six hundred, with some thirty-five hundred in Ontario), most located within the core of the communities. In 1981 Portuguese Canadians were among the most segregated groups in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.

“As a community, we’re proud of our ability to preserve our culture — but this is Canada! We have to nail down English! We have to create an environment that expects children to succeed at school,” said [Melissa] Arruda, 22, the youngest member of the new Portuguese-Canadian Education Network.

“Only four out of my 40 Portuguese classmates from grade school went on to university. Not that everyone has to go, but more of us should feel we at least have that choice.”

This is the new face of Portuguese Canada; seeking to rewrite the future by understanding how its children fell behind, and focusing on parents and schools to close the gap.

Fifty years after the first major wave of Portuguese immigrants landed in Canada — from one of the few countries where attending high school had not been mandatory for most of the 20th century — they remain to this day the least likely new Canadians to go to college or university. About 12 per cent of Toronto’s Portuguese community now earn a university degree — a far cry from only 1 per cent in 1971, but about one-third as many as in the population at large, according to a study this year by York University professor Michael Ornstein.

Some Portuguese community leaders admit that a culture with deep roots in skilled labour, which often has prized home ownership above higher education, may make it too easy for weak students — especially boys — to quit school for the heady $25 to $30 an hour to be made in construction.

But with more than 70 per cent of new jobs in Canada predicted to need some post-secondary training, many Portuguese-Canadians want to break that blue-collar cycle.

“We helped build this city. We help clean this city. Now we’d like to help run this city,” said lawyer Cidalia Faria, an assistant Crown attorney, at a recent standing-room-only conference for Portuguese parents run by the education network.

“Don’t think we’re asleep at the wheel — the Portuguese community has got its eyes wide open,” said Marcie Ponte, executive director of the Working Women’s Community Centre, which runs a free tutoring program called On Your Mark. But why do Portuguese Canadians still drop out in such numbers? It doesn’t help that some teachers and principals seem to have given up on the community, said high school English teacher Ana Fernandes, chair of the Portuguese Canadian Education Network.

“I hear that a lot: `Oh, he’s a Portuguese student; what can you expect?’ or `He’s Portuguese? Better give him just five pages to read instead of 10,’.” said Fernandes, who is working on her PhD in literature. Fernandes said Portuguese students need more role models.

Others say schools could do more to reach out to Portuguese parents and include material of interest to Portuguese Canadians in the curriculum.

“We’re still a massively working class community and a lot of parents don’t know where to go for help for their children, between the education barrier and the language barrier and shift work,” said professor Fernando Nunes, vice-president of the Portuguese-Canadian National Congress.

He added the curriculum makes very little mention of the Portuguese community’s contributions to Canada.

Some admit its tight-knit nature — in which it is possible to live and shop in Portuguese neighbourhoods and work on predominantly Portuguese job sites without ever needing to speak much English — plays a role in keeping children in the same footsteps as their parents.

At St. Helen Catholic School in Little Portugal, for example, 89 per cent of students were born in Canada, yet for 61 per cent, the first language they learned at home was not English.

Emigration on a massive scale began in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued into the 1980s. Between 1886 and 1966, Portugal lost an estimated 2.6 million people to emigration, more than any West European country except Ireland. Emigration remained high until 1973 and the first oil shock that slowed the economies of West European nations and reduced employment opportunities for Portuguese workers. Since then, emigration has been moderate, ranging between 12,000 and 17,000 a year in the 1980s, a fraction of the emigration that occurred during the 1960s and early 1970s.

The main motive for emigration, at least in modern times, was economic. Portugal was long among the poorest countries in Europe. With the countryside able to support only a portion of farmers' offspring and few opportunities in the manufacturing sector, many Portuguese had to go abroad to find work. In northern Portugal, for example, many young men emigrated because the land was divided into "handkerchief-sized" plots. In some periods, Portuguese emigrated to avoid military service. Thus, emigration increased during World War I and during the 1960s and early 1970s, when Portugal waged a series of wars in an attempt to retain its African colonies.