"Stop Harper." Has Brigette Marcelle DePape drafted the rallying cry of the next election?

C.E.S. (Ned) Franks, professor emeritus in political studies at Queens's University, says that Brigette Marcelle DePape set a bad precedent with her "Stop Harper" silent protest during the Governer General's throne speech last week. In an opinion published in The Star (Page’s protest sets poor precedent) he says that this should not be seen as a legitimate act of civil disobedience because, he says, she was not protesting a specific law or policy. "She was simply objecting to the results of a democratic nationwide election in which she, along with every other citizen 18 years or older, was entitled to vote."

Well, that last statement seems to me to be a leap of logic based on at least two, if not three, questionable premises.

Firstly, I am not alone in questioning how democratic a first-past-the-post election process can be when the winning party and leader is imposed upon the nearly 60% of the voters who voted against that party and leader. Being a professor of political studies, Ned Franks must be even more aware of that than I am, which makes his statement all the more puzzling to me. Certainly Marcelle believes, as do I, that Harper doesn't reflect the majority of Canadians.(Page with 'Stop Harper' sign fired from Senate)

Secondly, rather than protesting the outcome of an election, saying "Stop Harper" might simply be saying "Stop Harper"; simply objecting to what Harper is doing; simply saying, "Harper's agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation." She certainly concedes that Harper and the Conservatives have a majority parliament for the next four years and seems to be of the opinion that it is time for some kind of moral majority to stand up and protest in some kind of extra parliamentary way, even using civil disobedience.

Thirdly, language is something living and evolving. Maybe there is a narrow definition of "civil disobedience" accepted in the university halls of political science. But there is a wider understanding that is generally accepted in the broader population. That caring about social issues and the environment as principles of conscience can lead someone to civil disobedience does not violate any semantic understanding of the term "civil disobedience" in my mind nor, I suspect, in the minds of ordinary speakers of the English language.

From my personal point of view, this is the first time in my thirteen years in the country that I have seen any kind of passionate, political engagement on the part of university age young people in Canada. I don't think DePape is going to get her "Arab Spring" in the Canada of 2011. I do hope that she and her friends can be somewhat successful in raising the awareness of Canadians to the very serious issues facing our country and the world beyond our own pocket books and wallets.

I think that Brigette Marcelle DePape may well have drafted the rallying cry of the next election. Which will be more important for each of the opposition parties in the next election in four years time: to be the official opposition or to "Stop Harper?" There is a big difference. One is relevant to the important challenges facing our country and the world. The other is about party politics - and quite irrelevant.

Kayaking Claire - Jonty, the 'Canoe Kid'

On Monday Luisa sent this email:

Hello!  Hope you are well :)  We had a fabulous weekend.  We took Jonty canoeing for the first time.  He was not a fan of his life jacket, but he loved the trip none the less! We've been busy gardening and admiring the fence too!

Canoe Kid Jonty

Hanging out on the fence

More pics of Jonty the Canoe Kid and 'the fence' in the albums, Jonathan Tiago and Miscellaneous Family.







A little later we received this email from Miriam:


Hi All!
We have also just arrived back from a wonderful weekend, spent with Sherri and Paul and their twin boys at their family cottage. Claire enjoyed her first kayak in her new life jacket!
And she is now insisting on finger foods... she is not interested in being fed with a spoon ... hahaha ... good times :-)

Kayaking Claire

Watching chipmunks

More pics of Kayaking Claire in the album Claire Boothroyd.

Racing for cover, building a fence

Blue Door Shelters Race For Cover 2011
Last Sunday Team Khaya again won the Blue Door Shelters "Race for Cover" - the annual Blue Door Shelters fund-raiser. With nine teams of 5 members, each team member had to raise $120.00 to register; that's a minimum of $600.00 per team. This was the fourth such event and the McCann's and significant others have participated in each one.

The "race" comprises a number of bases or stations with a timed task for each team to complete. There were also a basket ball shoot challenge and hidden amulets as wild cards for deducting time off the team total. It was a lot of fun and a great time was had by all. The final tally of the amount raised has not been published yet.

The BDS Race for Cover can be viewed here.
Team Khaya's album is here.

Fencing the property in Peterborough
Mark invited Sean, Stephen and some friends to come and help him fence the bottom of his property. Oma and Grampa Mac were invited to come and do some baby-sitting and braai the meat for lunch and supper. Geoff, Miriam and Claire dropped in for an hour or two on their way home from Geoff's folks in Ottawa.

I have created a new album called Claire and Jonty - Cousins Together
There are also some updates to the albums
Claire Boothroyd,
Jonathan Tiago and
Miscellaneous Family

Enjoy

Smoking tobacco… and gasoline

I used to be a smoker. At the time that I stopped smoking, somewhere around age 28, I was smoking a pack of 20 cigarettes a day. How and why I stopped smoking is another story for another day but once upon a time I used to smoke. There was nothing unusual about that since almost all my friends smoked as well. We smoked at home. We smoked at work, in one another's homes, in our parents' homes, in our friends' parents' homes, in bars, restaurants, movie houses, department stores; on the bus, the plane, the train, in our cars, in our friends' cars - without regard to whoever else was in the vicinity, least of all children. People who didn't smoke, like my mother, placed ash trays strategically in their homes so that their friends who smoked would use an ash tray and not their saucer or empty cup once they had finished their tea. One popular sign in toilets said, "Please do not throw your cigarette ends into the toilet. It makes them soggy and difficult to light." The only place that I can think of where we did not smoke was in church. I remember that some people went out during the sermon so that they could have a smoke.

Thinking back on those times I cringe when I think how selfish I was, I and all my fellow smokers.  There actually were people who did not smoke, like my mother. She hated the smell of stale smoke and cigarettes that hung around our house the morning after an evening  entertaining friends even more than the smell of the smoky pall while people were actually puffing away.  She hated emptying the ashtrays.  She particularly hated throwing away soggy cigarette butts that some idiot would put into the dregs of a tea or coffee cup. There  was a social presumption that smokers could smoke as they pleased and non-smokers simply had to put up with it and clean up behind them.

Of course we now know that it was far worse than simply being insensitive or even obnoxious.  We have now been educated to the hazards of second-hand smoke as a powerful carcinogen and are aware of the dangers to our children and employees as well as to the  higher cost of healthcare associated with cancers and breathing and cardiac disorders as a result of smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke. In short, we have come to understand that the cost of smoking is far higher than the mere cost of a pack of smokes at the corner store. That is simply the cost of putting a packet of cigarettes into your pocket. Once you light up and inhale you need to add the increase on your life insurance premiums, the increased burden on taxpayers in a system that has medicare or social health insurance, the loss in productivity from an ailing workforce, the resultant loss of tax revenue; the list goes on and on.

A failure to learn from our mistakes. 

What really gets me is the reluctance of society to see that we are repeating all of these mistakes, all this anti-social behaviour, by the cavalier way we "smoke" gasoline with our motor cars and jet planes or "smoke" coal and gas with our power generating plants.  We persist in believing that the cost of a liter or gallon of petroleum is what we pay at the pump to fill our cars; that the cost of travelling by plane from Toronto to Chicago is what we have to pay to be issued with a ticket.  That is simply the cost of putting gas into your tank, or of putting a ticket in your pocket.  Once you turn the engine on, once the plane takes off, a whole extra set of costs comes into play, including hospital emergency room intervention for asthma, heart complaints and other respiratory ailments, not to mention global warming and its social and environmental consequences. Here's the kicker: every individual on the planet has to bear the burden of these extra costs to the environment, including the poorest citizens in the poorest countries of the world who will never in their lifetime have any hope of ever owning a gas guzzling vehicle or flying in a plane.

Here in Ontario there has been a lot of complaining about the recent sharp rise in the cost of gasoline.  There have been accusations of gouging by oil companies and refiners.  I suspect that is true.  There have been calls to scrap the recently introduced Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) so that petrol can remain "affordable".  My take on it is that the cost of gasoline is too little.  Other than some states in the Middle East, North America still has the cheapest gas in the world - even after the recent sharp hikes in the cost of gas. Here in Canada, Healthcare and, therefore, the tax payer, is picking up the tab for the costs associated with driving cars and flying planes. I don't say that these are the only sources of air pollution which causes health problems, but they are major contributors. In other words, Healthcare tax dollars are being used to subsidize the cost of using gasoline. Isn't there something wrong with this picture? Isn't this reminiscent of where we used to be with smoking cigarettes?

Stephen's South Africa Trip

Congratulations, Ishara & Sean

Stephen has just returned from two weeks in South Africa, first in Durban for the wedding of his oldest buddy, Sean McKenna to Ishara. Stephen and Sean were play group play-mates even before they started nursery school. They cannot remember a time when they did not know each other. Congratulations, Sean and Ishara. By all accounts it was a wonderful wedding.

Buddies since play group

Umhlanga

After that Sean's parents, John and Sonja, hosted Stephen at their time-share in Umhlanga.

Kloof area

Valley of a Thousand Hills

This was followed by a few days in Jo'burg, staying with old family friend Pat Prinsloo, visitng Aunty Bessie...

Stephen & Aunty Bessie - 95 years

Marj, Ethel, Bessie - sisters - Christmas 1973

...and meeting up with two other old friends, Liora - Miriam's oldest friend from play-group days, and Carissa. Unfortunately, Stephen forgot to take pictures at Carissa's place.

Liora and Stephen

Enjoy the pics that Stephen brought back.