Soon after Shea came to join me in London when I started my Masters degree in January 2006, we rented a car and like the good tourists we were, headed for Niagara Falls.
Going to the falls in mid-winter seems strange but someone (a classmate?) had tipped us off that they’re actually really beautiful in the winter and that proved to be true. (Contrary to the photo below, they’re also very safe. The mist of the falls freezes on the rails and barriers but the walkways are fairly clean – I think they may even be heated?)
And actually, come to think of it – Niagara Falls wasn’t even our initial destination that day. We had rented a car for the weekend and were heading somewhere else closer but less well-known. So, on a spur-of-the-moment as we drove the opposite way of the Falls out of London, we decided to drive to the Falls which was something like a 2.5 hour drive, even if you were pointed in the right direction to begin with!
I still remember a lot of Ontario-based classmates being surprised that we’d do such a long drive but I explained that in Saskatchewan, where the nearest major city to Regina is 2.5 hours away, that’s not a big deal!
(We did end up having to buy toques at the Niagara Falls gift shop which I thought was pretty funny in terms of souvenirs!) to join
There are numerous ongoing issues with Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server from when she was Secretary of State including everything from how a number of Clinton e-mails had been deleted but then restored via a cloud backup that Clinton’s team wasn’t even aware of to questions of how many of these e-mails were meant to be classified to whether a foreign power had hacked her private server
Not technically “cyber-security” in the purest sense but the Clinton campaign has been slammed for virtual “astro-turfing” by paying people/companies/bots to post positive comments and stories about their campaign on sites across the web rather than relying on organic user-generated content (to be fair, all campaigns try to direct online conversations to different degrees – Clinton is just the most blatant.)
Even after controlling for other factors that may mean some people are more likely to read than others (education, gender, age, etc.), a recent study shows that people who read more are more likely to live longer…
Compared with those who did not read books, those who read for up to three and a half hours a week were 17 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, and those who read more than that were 23 percent less likely to die. Book readers lived an average of almost two years longer than those who did not read at all.
Here’s a few random thoughts on yesterday’s resignation (from Cabinet but not as a sitting MLA) of Don McMorris, who was Saskatchewan’s Deputy Premier and (ironically) Minister Responsible for Sask Government Insurance (SGI) and Sask Liquor & Gaming Authority (SLGA).
McMorris was apparently caught on his way back to Regina from Fort Qu’Appelle so unfortunately, it’s not just a matter of skipping a $20 cab ride which is at least an option for intoxicated drivers in a city, whether they take it or not.
I can see both sides of the argument – on one hand, McMorris made a mistake as numerous other people have (one person in my family received a 24-hour suspension and another lost their license. I’ve never had a DUI but had to blow once and blew under the limit after leaving a bar. But my blood alcohol level was definitely trending upwards and if the timing was different or the cop in a different frame of mind, who knows what could have happened?) On the other hand, the guy is (was) the Minister for SGI and even very recently promoted anti-drunk driving programs so yeah, this looks *really* bad on him compared to some 20-year old college kid who gets caught or even a 50-something yahoo who gets busted at Craven or whatever.
I also wonder if people’s reactions would be different if he’d not just been caught but if he’d been in an accident or, god forbid, killed someone.
On the question of whether he should lose his job or not, that usually depends on whether your job requires you to drive and/or if you have some company policy about not having DUI’s/criminal records and/or if your position is high profile/role model-type position. One comparable with another high profile case that comes to mind is Manfred Joeneck (sp?) who quit as Regina’s CTV supper news anchor after being caught drinking and driving although I think he had a couple other drinking and driving incidents that may have played a part in him leaving (being asked to leave?) as well?
I don’t know if he’s had any previous DUI-type infractions but if f I remember correctly, McMorris was visibly well into his cups on Election Night and given the size of the Sask Party victory, that might be expected. But in hindsight, that may have been another indication that he was making bad choices. I know many people (across the political spectrum) expressed disappointment at the time that McMorris was acting more like the rude drunk uncle who grabs the mic at a wedding than a politician at the highest level of government.
[Edit: More info has come to light. McMorris was driving back to Regina at *noon* on a Friday in a *government vehicle* and was caught in a *reduced speed construction zone*. None of those things should make his offense any worse than being caught at midnight in his own car on a regular highway. But the reality is that all three keep adding up to make this a *very* egregious violation, above and beyond his role as a high-profile Minister with responsibility for both safe driving and liquor sales.]
[Edit 2: Oh, and he was apparently a high school driver’s ed teacher before entering politics. Of course…]
Usually Throwback Thursday is for a photo from the old days but I’ve got a collection of obituaries I’ve come across recently that I thought I’d discuss instead since all three send me down memory lane in different ways…
Author, publisher, businessman and activist, Mel Hurtig, passed away yesterday. I never got to meet him in person but did speak with him on the phone once when I worked for the Writers Guild of Alberta. One year, I had the enjoyable job of calling authors who were shortlisted for an Alberta Book Award and was especially looking forward to calling Mr. Hurtig whose books I’d read in undergrad political science classes and whose reputation definitely preceded him. I explained why I was calling and he replied “Well, Jason, do I have to be there?” I’m a bit slow on the uptake so I repeated that he’d been shortlisted for an award and if he attended, the Awards Gala would comp him a ticket. “Yes, I know that. But do I have to be there? Is there a good reason for me to make sure I attend this ceremony?” Realisation dawned and I quickly consulted my cheat sheet of juror selections. “Uhm, no, you don’t have to be there.” “Thank-you, have a good day. Good luck with your awards.” 😉
I was sad to read in a my FIMS alumni newsletter about the passing of Dr. David Spencer. In library school, I ended up taking a History of Information class with Dr. Spencer that was jointly offered to students in the Faculty of Library Science and the Faculty of Journalism. Dr. Spencer was a great prof, I totally loved the class and it ended up being my highest mark in the program (not counting our joke of a Management class where everybody in the class got 90%+) and which always left me wondering if I should’ve gone into journalism instead of librarianship? Part of the reason I got such a good mark was because I gave what I felt was possibly my best presentation of library school as my final assignment in the class. I was the final speaker on the final day of presentations and I still remember Dr. Spencer saying “I can’t think of a better note to end this class on than that presentation. The class was about the history of information but you’ve given us a glimpse of the future.”
The third and final obituary I’ve seen recently is also the one that hits closest to home – that of my dad’s sister, Verna Buechler. My dad is from a family of ten kids and it almost feels like a statistically improbability that all ten managed to make it to their late 60’s, most are in their 70’s and four are now in their 80’s. But no one lives forever and unfortunately, Aunt Verna, who’s been on dialysis for over a decade and has also been battling cancer for quite a while, was the first to pass away even though she’s the sixth oldest. Very sad for the family.
We’re back from a week and a half of camping – one week at Greenwater Provincial Park and then, after a quick night in Regina, another few days at Shea’s parents’ seasonal site in Weyburn.
Both parts were great but Shea and I agreed that the week in Greenwater was maybe our best camping trip ever.
Why?
We were able to change our reservation to arrive a day earlier than planned which meant this was probably also our longest uninterrupted camping trip ever.
We had amazing weather all week – not too hot, not too cold, no rain except briefly in the early morning of our first night. The mosquitos weren’t that bad either which was a pleasant surprise.
We had two other groups camping with us – my parents camped at the next site down the road plus a family we know who have a boy in Pace’s grade and another boy who’s a couple years older than Sasha ended up camping right across the road from us. (We had planned which campground to be in and roughly which area but given the “first-come, first-serve” booking system that Saskatchewan uses, it was pure luck that they ended up so close to us!)
We had a week that was a perfect mix of relaxation (sitting drinking coffee with Bailey’s in the morning waiting for the kids to wake up, campfire every night) and activities (playing football in front of our sites, stand-up paddle boarding, going on a pontoon boat ride.)
My family had gone to Greenwater numerous times when I was a kid and I had fond memories of the park but hadn’t been back in years. So it was cool to be there with both my parents and my kids to experience it again.
We had a variety of great meals but most memorable was our “Appy Hour” pot luck where everyone brought a couple different appetizers and all were delicious!
Moving beyond “smorts” (as we still call “s’mores” after a mis-pronounciation of Pace’s when he was little), we learned how to make “Campfire Eclairs” (and had some R-rated humour joking about how the whipped cream got injected into the roasted dough!) 😉
We did a homemade “Campground Bingo” scavenger hunt (example here) with the kids and it was both great fun and great exercise. As with the “Campfire Eclairs”, we re-did this in Weyburn and both were big hits each time.
Instead of pulling the rPod with our van, we borrowed Shea’s dad’s truck for the trip and although our van pulls fine most of the time, my main takeaway was that I had no times where I felt nervous pulling with a truck. When I pull with the van, I still get nervous going up and down bigger hills, pulling in rain (or sometimes pulling up and down hills *in the rain*!), if there’s wind, etc. With the truck, there was none of that. As well, having a truck allowed us to pack a lot heavier than we normally do including all three of our bikes plus Sasha’s pull behind carrier which we enjoyed using to explore the park, both as a family and also so Pace and his buddy could explore at will.
Pace and his friend also got to have a “Movie Night” where they showed a few of the videos they’d created at the home-based babysitter they both go to which was pretty fun too!
We’re off camping for the next couple weeks so posts will likely be few and far between…unless the kids end up building a really cute fort out of firewood and I have to post a picture! 😉
to join
