Politics and Press » Canada

The CFL at 99 and counting, what Canadian football could teach the Yanks

Mackenzie Brothers — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:14:22 +0000

So the big game is over, the Grey Cup has been presented in its ninety-ninth year to aVancouver team that lost its first five games and won nine of its next ten, including today’s down to the wire victory at home against Winnipeg. 56, ooo people sold out its new half billion dollar upgraded stadium, to watch he best young quarterback in football (think Doug Flutie, Warren Moon, Joe Theisman if you want to recall the kind of players who preceded Travis Lulay in the CFL) lead the Lions to a deserved narrow victory . It’s true that for Canadian sports fans this can’t replace the loss by the Canucks in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup championship to Boston, but virtually the whole country watched it and it was a reminder, if one was needed, of how much more exciting Canadian 3-down football games are compared to US 4-down ones. With 4 minutes to go and the team with the ball leading by a touchdown in the US, the game is basically considered over as you can run out the clock with a steady diet of four-yard runs. Paint dries faster.

In Canada that game is just beginning at that point. Winnipeg scored two touchdown in the last three minutes to come within 8 points of Vancouver and were driving again as the game ended. Even more exciting was the Canadian university championship game played two days before the pro championship in the same stadium, during which the favoured rouge et or of Laval came back from 23-0 half-time deficit to pull ahead of McMaster by one point with a couple of minutes to go only to see themselves go ahead by a single, get tied by a rouge and apparently lose by one point when McMaster missed a field goal with no time left, but any ball that is kicked into or out of the end zone without it being returned or kicked back out results in one point in Canada, enough to win the game in this case. But the ball didn’t go over the end zone line as a Laval player caught it before it passed the line and made it back out to the one–yard line after faking a drop kick as a return. Eventually the winner was decided by an overtime that had everyone standing and defies explanation. These are rugby rules, and the NFL should send someone up to see how they add excitement in places where the NF L offers nothing but dead air – fair catches, no reward for kicking balls into or out of the end zone, no possibility of returning kicks with kicks, ridiculous ways ways of breaking ties, etc.

The Wild Ones make a comeback

Mackenzie Brothers — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 03:08:01 +0000

In a period of seemingly unending bad news about the state of the environment, it is time for some surprisingly upbeat developments: Some of the big guys in the animal kingdom are coming back to areas they had abandoned under constant human pressure scores of years ago, in some cases even centuries ago. It is true that almost all these cases are happening in the still somewhat wide-open spaces of northern North America and Euroasia, but still they are happening and there is quite suddenly some startling evidence that the often apparently hopeless attempt by some humans to undo the damage done by most humans is actually having some success. It seems that protected national parks actually work as something other than a tourist goal.

In southern British Columbia grizzly bears are definitely extending their range southward and even westward as the first sightings in a century of the giant carnivores within an hour of Vancouver lead to predictions that within twenty years a grizzly will be standing on the ski slopes of Vancouver looking at his encaged brethren at the top of Grouse Mountain. Four young male grizzlys are now being tracked on the west coast of Vancouver Island where the languages of the natives have no word for them, as there is no record of them having been there before. It can only be assumed they have made the almost unimaginable swim from the mainland by moving from island to island and are now considering whether they want to stay in a new land where they would be king of the wilderness. If the resident black bears run into them, they may regret getting to know this branch of th e family.

They would almost certainly also be meeting an ever-expanding cougar population, once seen only rarely and at a distance – my brother Doug claims to have almost hit one on the road to Zeballos – and now making thei presence felt in many places where they may be less than welcome. This summer a cougar jumped out of the bush and on to a little kid at popular Kennedy Lake in Pacific Rim National Park, only to be driven away by an irate mother. Cougars have also now been positively identified as roaming the woods of Quebec and will surely soon be back in th he Adirondacks. Wolf packs are spreading rapidly eastwards in Germany where they have been absent for a century. Tigers have been brought back from the brink of extinction in southeastern Russia through a decision in Moscow that a great country like Russia deserves a great wild animal. China may be thinking that one over at the moment, since they wiped out all their own tigers, but still get the occasional wanderer from north of the Amur River. In 2009 in British Columbia federal officials estimated that the salmon returning to the greatest free-flowinng salmon river on earth, the Fraser, which reaches the sea in Vancouver, would be reduced to a rump 1 million fish and might well be considered on the way to extinction. And then 30 million showed up from nowhere, the highest number in a century, and all bets of extinction were off. So take heart, you may yet run into a grizzly or a pack of wolves on your afternoon constitutional and never be the same again.

In Praise of rugby

Mackenzie Brothers — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 06:01:12 +0000

There is a world championship going on in New Zealand that can recall the golden days of sport when amateurs could play against professionals in team sports and have a chance, when small countries could field teams that could beat meganapoleanic big sports factory countries and where the best national teams in the world would nonetheless end up vying for a cup that promises honour more than money as a reward.

And look at the favourites: New Zealand, the all Blacks who seem likely to win it all at home; Australia, their bitter rivals who lost bitterly to Ireland in the first round games; South Africa, the Springbocks, who could be the All Blacks spoilers but were lucky to beat Wales; England, and France, which had its hands full for most of the match against mainly amateur Canada, also Wales, punching above its weight, Argentina, the Latino outsider, and any one of three small Polynesian islands, where very big men push and push and push. Russia and the US are also there, and try just as hard or harder to hold on to their middle-of-the-pack role than do the professional sports teams running for the cash. As is the case with the world’s second most popular sport, cricket, following soccer, it is mostly a Commonwealth gathering but profits greatly from the fact that it isn’t only that, as is the cricket world championships, but also a gathering of very tough guys, playing a very hard game without protection and doing it mainly for the glory. You won’t be seeing these lads at the Olympics.

Canada – King of Asbestos

Mackenzie Brothers — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:00:39 +0000

Virtually every one knows that asbestos is a very dangerous product that has to be handled with extreme care. At the very least, it has to be labelled as dangerous and in need of special handling – if not simply banned – because it will kill you if you breathe it in any kind of quantities. There was a time when this was not so clear, and mining communities around the world – especially in Quebec – made a decent if hard living mining it, until the workers began dying of lung congestion. Now, decades later, billions are being spent removing asbestos from buildings in Canada. It can only be done safely with great caution by workers dressed in protective clothing, and it must be done if any building with asbestos in it is torn down, renovated or if the asbestos has been stirred up in some way. It’s the law.
And now even the lumbering the United Nations bureaucracy has concluded that at the very least asbestos must be labelled as a dangerous material needing special handling, in particular when it is exported. But that decree did not pass, since the vote required unanimity, and, despite the fact that even a rising economic power like India unexpectedly decided to vote in favour and take the economic hit, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Canada turned it down. Yes, shamefully, Canada, which knows all too well how dangerous this material is, decided it would rather protect the jobs of the 500 asbestos miners still working in Quebec rather than act with any decency. It is a good question of what the newly elected conservative majority would not do for money, or votes. The leader of the opposition socialist party called this vote the height of hypocrisy. He was being too generous

Canada and the USA: Two Countries, Two Elections

Jeff — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 03:57:44 +0000

Canada recently completed a national election campaign that lasted all of 6 weeks. While the results were disappointing to many and the campaign was as nasty as some of the U.S.’s, at least the pain was short-lived. Canada’s winner, incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper sat in the driver’s seat as Canadians tried to determine if Michael Ignatieff was “Canadian enough” (he wasn’t) and not an American in sealskin clothing (apparently he was – and lost very badly).

The U.S. faces a similar campaign in tone but not in length. Is Obama a real American? Is he a Muslim in Christian clothing? The campaign will focus in subtle ways on those issues but the real issues may well be his lackluster handling of the economy and his seeming willingness to give away the ranch to the Republicans without a fight. We shall see.

But the real point of all of this is to wonder why we need 20 months of increasingly idiotic campaigning for the American people to make a semi-informed judgment. At the end of the day many – perhaps most – people will vote based on minimal understanding of how we got to where we are and what is in the best interest of the country. Why not do it in six weeks rather than drive a portion of the country insane with a campaign based on moronic slogans, outright lies and subtle racism.

Canada did it in 6 weeks and retained a Prime Minister as mediocre as what we are likely to end up with after 20 months and literally billions of wasted dollars.

a southern and northern intellectual analyze the Stanley Cup

Mackenzie Brothers — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 02:23:32 +0000

#1 – a southerner: Ok i propose 2 loonies pergame and a 5 loonie bonus for winning the series. I understand you might be nervous and not want to bet. That is ok. Let me know.

#2 – a northerner: I doubt that you can afford loonies, so I suspect a trick. But nevertheless I accept. I’ll be travelling south for a couple of days to see how the other half lives, and spend some toonies in the banana belt. Will be back on Wednesday in time to see the first loonie go my way.

#1Some trick… The loonie costs me $1.2. Damn. That harper guy must know his stuff.. Playoff hockey is unbelievable.

#2 – after game 1: Why not just pay me now and relax? Even Obama is refusing to make a bet with Harper – perhaps he never heard of hockey (or Harper), or perhaps he doesn’t want to fork over anything to a functioning economy – but you can’t back out now just because this is so one-sided. Estimates here are 7-0 for the first gameif theAmurcan goalie didn’t have a good evening, of course not as good as the Canuck one, one but still. But can’t you find a power play coach down there? How about double or nothing? It won’t be a sweep however since we want a couple of more home games and have promised to donate the proceeds to Winnipeg.

#1Between the ref missing the very obvious offside on the goal and the canucks resorting to biting the opponents, it does not look good for the Boston men. I will pass on the double or nothing but note that by betting in loonies I have already given you an extra 2%. Generous to a fault, I am, in despair, almost.
I watched much of the game in a barroom where everyone was asking the same question you ask RE: what is with the power play? Where is it and why is it hiding?
Am i ever glad i cancelled the bet.

#2 That’s not funny. A guy sticks a finger in your mouth and then they complain when you bite it! What else can you do with it? My cat does the same thing and doesn’t get a penalty! And these guys and the coaches are all pure laine and it’s an old tradition in maple syrup country to stick your finger in trees and things without being spied upon.
As for off side, that was only off sides if you think that off sides happens when your skate blade doesn’t quite make it back over the blue line, even though you try your very best! I don’t think so in this day and age. It’s not winning that counts. It’s giving it the old college try!!

#1 can your cat skate? does it know how to stay onside? is it a Canadian cat or an Amurcan cat? These are the relevant questions to ask.

Where you want to live – - the Commonwealth by Jove

Mackenzie Brothers — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:59:33 +0000

The British magazine The Economist has come out with its annual ranking of most livable cities, and the results, controversial though they may be in the particulars, do indicate in their overall findings a remapping of the desired urban world which would have seemed frivolous only a decade ago. For the fifth straight year, Vancouver is ranked first, which is no surprise. But that 3 of the first 5 cities are in Canada – Toronto (4) and Calgary (5) join Vancouver in this group – and that 7 of the first 10 – Melbourne (2) , Sydney (7), Perth (8), Adelaide (9) and Auckland (10)- are from the British Commonwealth must give the Brits a rare sense of pride in the old colonial empire and the feeling that it did bear some fruit. After all, London itself is only ranked in the mid 50s, just after New York, and only 2 European cities – Vienna (3) and Helsinki (6) make the top ten. In its analysis of this surprising shifting pattern of livability, the Economist find a common denominator: the most livable cities are mid-sized and in wealthy countries with a low population density – Canada and Australia -and are splendidly situated, usually on the coast.

Whatever happened to nuclear power plants?

Mackenzie Brothers — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:19:16 +0000

They haven’t been much in the headlines of late. The deadly explosion at Tschernobyl happened almost twenty-five years and the blame can easily be put on an antiquated design and negligent maintenance typical of the old Soviet Union. Nothing like that could happen in technically advanced western Europe or North America, could it. Or rather could it? There are countries in those areas that have waffled for so long about whether they can live with nuclear power on their territory that the very plants that they were waffling over have become ancient in nuclear power-plant time, and should be deactivated before they begin to seriously threaten the environment with shaky turbines and leaky pipes and containers. Instead as governments change and attitudes towards nuclear power change with the economic difficulties facing power-short lands anywhere, official positions change with regard to the fate of the old used-up plants. A country like France, which is very dependant on nuclear power plants, has of course a large number of engineers and designers who have had steady employment and lots of experience and know how to build them. But what about the nuclear plant planners in countries like Germany, the USA or Canada, which have not built any new plants for decades, and are now faced with the dilemma of returning to the largely unpopular idea of getting back in the nuclear race? With few experienced experts around to build new plants wouldn’t it make sense to refurbish the old ones.
For a lot of nuclear engineers the answer to that is a clear ‘no’. It is much cheaper, of course, to try to spiff up an old Volvo model than to design and build a new one. But the a “best before” date makes that way of saving money no longer either reasonable or safe with regard to nuclear power plants, and those engineers are hoping that the Swedish government figures that out before it is too late. For of all western countries it is rich Sweden that seems most willing to run the biggest risks by taking the cheap spiff-up solution to its nuclear dilemma. A couple of decades the Swedes voted to show their moral backbone by announcing that all Swedish nuclear power plants would be closed down within a couple of decades from then. Namely now. But governments change in democracies and that original stance by the Social Democrats in defence of safety and the environment has been reversed by the now-ruling conservatives, who maintain (probably with some justification) that Swedish industry cannot run without nuclear power. So thirty to forty-year-old nuclear power plants in Sweden some of which have already had dangerous breakdowns, but have never been decommissioned as they were supposed to have been years ago, are now supposed to be reused after modernization. (Canada has some similar plans.) For many nuclear engineers this is a recipe for disaster since these plants were never designed to be overhauled like this. Many think Sweden will be trying to put a Porsche engine into an old truck and that an accident is just waiting to happen. At least they haven’t yet asked Volvo to provide the engineers for this.

Is America going Third World?

Mackenzie Brothers — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:11:15 +0000

“Is America going Third World? Bridges crumbling, schools and firehalls closed, streetlights turned off. The U.S. decline goes far beyond job losses and public debt.” That’s the cover story in this week’s edition of Canada’s national magazine, Maclean’s. My goodness. When exactly did that happen, that Canada looks south and is startled to see a country in threatening disarray, fighting fruitless wars it cannot afford or win while letting many of its urban centres turn into wastelands as hundreds of thousands of its citizens lose their homes due to the greed and lack of control of financial institutions. Not to mention a medical system that is great for the rich and non-existent for the poor.

Not very long ago, Canada would have been a laughing stock if it had given the impression that it considered itself to have designed a superior society to the superpower to its south, but that’s no longer the case. All the UN rankings of national liveability rate Canada at or near the top as the US sinks down into the mid-teens. It used to be that Seattle would have been considered a far more interesting city than its northern neighbour Vancouver, and Detroit more cosmopolitan than dull Toronto, but now those are laughable propositions. It used to be that Canadians moved south for better wages and job opportunities (and climate), and of course many still do, but now over a million Americans live in Canada, for the first time since the Vietnam War when Trudeau’s Canada became the refuge for Americans who felt disinherited, many of whom stayed on, making it the fourth-largest immigrant group in one of the major immigration lands.

It is of course perfectly legitimate to point out the hypocrisy of these kinds of articles, as Canada has its own third world problem that has failed to solve: the miserable conditions of far too many First Nations reserves, a true disgrace if the country is as wonderful and rich as this article suggests, the miserable performance of the current government on environmental issues like climate change, a drug problem that is out of control. Not to mention that if the US economy really tanks as many fear it will if it doesn’t stop fighting awful wars soon (what ever happened to you Barack Obama?) it will take Canada down with it part of the way. But the main point is still worth pondering. Has the US so mismanaged its economic and social affairs that its closest neighbour and best friend is right to have legitimate concerns in seeing how it can steady a wallowing ship of state? Let’s hope the hosers are wrong.

In Praise of Prose

Mackenzie Brothers — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 03:16:38 +0000

Here are four antidotes to the endless announcements of the death of books and reading. These are prose works written in the last couple of years in four different languages that can hold their own in any discussion of reading material that will keep you glued to the written page.

1: Per Petterson (Norway) – “Kjøllvannet” – In English “In the Wake”. Following up “Out Stealing Horses” with an equally convincing meditation on the power of memory and the importance of appreciating the potential of life before “the axe blow from within”, to quote one of his favourite authors Tomas Tranströmer, strikes home. The narrator talks about the grand perception of memory in another of his favourites, Alice Munro, and his two latest novels show that he has learned from the masters.

2. Daniel Kehlmann (Germany) “Die Vermessung der Welt” – in English, “Measuring the World”.
In his hugely successful novel about genius, Kehlmann juxtaposes the lives and adventures of two German geniuses who met in older age. One, Alexander von Humboldt, let his genius unfold through great exploratory journeys to the ends of the world; the other, Johann Gauss, explored the wonders of mathematics from a solitary room. Kehlmann’s work is also surprisingly funny.

3. Sofi Oksanen (Finland/Estonia) “Puhdistus” in English “Purge”
Oksanen takes on nothing less than the epic of the small Baltic state of Estonia from the Nazi occupation through the Soviet counter-attack and takeover followed by the establishment of an independent state after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the current situation. In a stunning display of narrative control, Oksanen delivers a grand epic through the fates of individuals. Written in Finnish, it may well become the national epic of linguistically-related Estonia.

4. John Vaillant (Canada) “The Tiger”.
Vaillant’s just-published epic of the Russian Far East as seen through the eyes of the last wild tigers in the world and the people who live with them talks the talk and walks the walk. On its way to a climax that will knock your socks off, it tells the extraordinary tale of a world that hasn’t changed much in the last century and whose inhabitants still live in awe and on occasion deadly fear of the tremendously powerful animal who wanders through their mutually-shared taiga.