Boys and School: Ways to Help Them without Penalizing Girls

Lukas is working on his Ph.D now, which gives you some idea of how long ago he started elementary school. Even then it was very clear that boys were not doing as well as girls. I remember sitting in parents committee meetings during the late 1980s and early 1990s and saying, terrific! we've taken the lid off girls' aspirations and they're soaring, but what are we going to do about the boys who are turned off by school?

Since then not much has happened, except that girls are continuing to get better grades and suceeding in many academic fields. The situation has become so extreme that major media have noticed: last week's Globe and Mail series is just the most recent example. We can't tolerate failing boys, wailed the editorial on the weekend.

In no way should we start slamming doors now open to girls, but there are a few things that I think could make a big difference immediately in the rate of masculine school success.

1. The first is the chance to start school later. I have four cousins who are elementary school teachers and who have boys. Everyone held her sons back so they started school as one of the oldest kids in their first grade class. That gave them an advantage in terms of physical prowess and also in general maturity which seems to have helped them a lot. Malcolm Gladwell's interesting book The Outliers talks about the same phenomenon in hockey and other sports: the kids who are oldest do the best. His suggestion is to offer two cut off dates for sports eligibility, to make the playing field more equitable, literally and figuratively. The same might be done in larger elementary schools where there are at least two classes at each level.

2. Give everyone, but particularly boys, the chance to move. Recess should be active, and PE should be a daily affair. Get kids to walk or bike to school. Put more resources into after school activities where kids run around. All kids need to expend their energy positively, and the need is particularly acute in boys, in my observation.

3. Recruit more male teachers on the elementary level. This will mean promotional campaigns aimed at young men, but why not? In addition, offering an alternative (perhaps an intensive year course) to the three or four year teacher-training course now required by many states and provinces would make it easier to switch into education after a few years in science, language or whatever.

A debate to continue...

Saturday Photo: I am Curious Yellow and Blue, But Not Swedish

The maples in front have turned a gorgeous, buttery yellow colour which contrasts marvelously with blue sky. I took this photo off the balcony in front as the sun was just beginning to shine down the street. The trees, even without the sunlight, appeared to be glowing, as if they were somehow lit from within by the energy stored over a summer of bright skies.

The railing on the balcony was painted blue some time ago and has faded a bit, so that the combination of the colours reminded me of the Swedish flag. I Am Curious Yellow was one of the ground-breaking films of the 1960s which caused much controversy: it was seized by US customs officials in 1967 for being "pornographic." Times have changed, but the lovely combination of blue and yellow remain in the flag and in the October landscape here and, I presume, there.

A note, however, on my name: Soderstrom--which in Sweden is spelled Söderström, and means "south stream"--isn't the name I was born with. That was McGowan: despite getting married at a time when women were questioning all kinds of limits put on them, I didn't think twice about adopting Lee's name. In the 1970s women in Quebec could re-assume their birth names without any bureaucratic fuss, and many of my friends did just that. But I'd begun to make a small name for myself as Mary Soderstrom, so I decided not to. Besides, whether you take your husband's name or your father's name it's all patriarchy, isn't it?

There is no doubt about me being curious, though. That's what's led me to undertaking this blog, when you come right down to it.

Open Letter from Josée Blanchette to Pierre Karl Péladeau: The Importance of Independent Voices in the Media

For anyone who cares about how we are informed, Josée Blanchette's column--an open letter to Quebecor chief Pierre Karl Péladeau--in Le Devoir today is "must" reading, even if it means a struggle to read French. She's a long-time free lance writer who has chosen that rather precarious career in order to present an independent voice to the world. Le Devoir, respected as it is, is not a big circulation newspaper, but, faut de mieux, it is rapidly becoming one of the rare channels where journalistic excellence is combined with a way of looking at things that big media don't endorse.

Locked-out journalists at Péladeau's Journal de Montreal, you'll remember, recently massively rejected a settlement "offer" that would return most of them to work after 20 momnths on the picket line, but close down their very interesting Internet paper Rue Frontenac and prohibit them from working for the competition.

Blanchette writes that she had been impressed by Péladeau, the son of media magnate Pierre Péladeau, when they were students because he made a serious effort to learn how the other half lives, working in fast food restaurants and studying at the populist Unversité de Québec à Montréal. But it's obvious he has gone over to the dark side, which was always waiting for him, and we all are the poorer for it.

I walk by PKP's house nearly every morning, and frequently see his chauffeur waiting for him outside. Yesterday the car was not the only parked outside his elegant house: there were more than half a dozen high costs SUVs, sans driver, and two other costly sedans where a chauffeur was waiting for the boss. I wondered what was up: looked like a breakfast meeting about something important. Don't know what it was all about, but you can be sure that Blanchette wasn't among the guests.

No Leaf Bonfires Any More, But Lots of Polluting Vehicles: The Need for High Efficiency Stoves around the World

The street sweeper just passed, sucking up the leaves that have fallen so far. At the same moment, the CBC program Dispatches had Burkhard Bilger talking about the need for clean stoves in the developing world. His article in The New Yorker last winter raised a lot of questions about the search for a stove that will not only cook food where fuel is scarce, but do it in a non-polluting way.

Taken together, the incidents mark a big change in attitudes toward burning things. When I was a child eons ago, burning leaves in the fall was accepted, as was the burning of wheat stubble in open fields. Now you'd get fined if you tried either in most parts of North America, which is a small step forward.

One of my strongest first impressions if East Africa, on the other hand, was landing in Nairobi about this time of year and being greeted by wood smoke hanging heavily in the air. I asked the taxi driver on my way into the city from the airport if there were wild fires--it was the end of the dry season--but he seemed not to understand what I meant. Later I realized that in many places wood is used for cooking and fields are still set afire before planting, with consequences which can be bad for both the overall greenhouse gas situation, and for the health of the people immediately around.

You can't ask people to stop cooking their food, though. Hence the importance of low-pollution, highly efficient stoves. What about putting a surcharge on all sales of SUVs and light trucks with the money collected to go toward providing that kind of stove to everyone all over the world.

New Mothers Need Support to Breast Feed: Supplemental Home Visits, Not Supplemental Formula Feedings

The health advantages of human breast milk babies is well established, and most health systems are currently officially encouraging it. At the moment Héma-Québec, the provincial blood bank agency, is studying the possibility of creating a certified breast milk bank to help out when mothers have problem nursing. There are similar banks elsewhere in the world, and one already operational in British Columbia, it seems.

At practically the same time, Le Devoir launched a debate about the support for breast feeding that is given in the Québec health system. Nursing babies is strongly encouraged, but publicity campaigns are one thing, and successful breast feeding is another. Mothers and babies are sent home here after 48 hours under normal circumstances, which is before the milk really comes in. After that, there will be a visit from a public health nurse sometime in the first couple of weeks, but in those tempestuous first days, all too many mothers are left to their own devices. Faced with a baby who wants to nurse every couple of hours and breasts that are sore from the little mouth which may not be very efficient at sucking, who can blame a woman who says it's not worth it?

If we're serious about encouraging nursing it would a lot of sense to set up a system where there is a visit within a day of release from the hospital by a health professional who understands what nursing is all about, and is ready to give support and advice when it is really needed.

The milk bank feasibility study will cost $66,000, The Gazette reported. It probably will be money well spent, but I think a bigger effort in supporting mothers from the beginning deserves a far higher priority.

Taking a Lesson from Martin Luther: The Need for a Climate Change 'Narrative'

The New York Times blogger and environmental writer Andrew Revkin had an interesting piece yesterday about the need to create a coherent narrative framework for discussion of climate change. What he suggests is that the matter should be viewed "a challenge of generations, with today’s efforts focused on what’s feasible now, on rebuilding a culture of innovation in which energy matters and setting the stage for grander de-carbonization efforts down the line."

He'll get no argument from me there. What strikes me, though, is the way he concentrate on the need for "narrative:" the piece is actually titled "Is There an Effective Climate 'Narrative'?"

One of the cultural aspects that is found in every society is the habit of telling stories. Sometimes they are explanations of how the world came to be. Other times they pass on valuable information, as in cautionary tales about hunting, planting and the like, or comment on the ways that a group's members do, or do not, follow the group's rules.

Many others are designed to rally support for the group and the group's projects. That's called propaganda in some quarters, and it's obviously this kind of narrative that Revkin thinks we need. But should we shy away from creating an atmosphere designed to further serious consideration of real problems just because doing so will require pulling out all persuasive stops?

No. It's time to take a lesson from Martin Luther who wrote hymns because, he asked, "why should the Devil have all the good tunes?"

Going Down to Freezing! Time to Close Things Up

Just spent a couple of hours turning off the water outside, bringing in the lawn chairs, cutting some seed-laden flower stalks and otherwise preparing for the first night when the forecast is for freezing in Montreal.


At the moment the sun is shining with lovely October-intensity, but Saturday I ate breakfast for the last time on the back balcony. Usually I start in mid-April and end mid-October. Both ends of the season require bundling up, but I do enjoy the daily chance to read the newspaper headines while looking out on whatever is growing in the garden at that point. There comes a time--and Saturday was it this year--when enough is enough, and reluctantly I've closed things down.

Many trees still have their leaves, however, so I couldn't do the final garden clean-up. One good thing: it seems that tar spot disease which has afflicted the maples for the last three years is much less intense this year.

Saturday Photo: Getting Jump on the Season with Pumpkins Now!

Canadian Thanksgiving is barely over, but the kids in the neighborhood have started putting out Halloween things. I notice that it's the older kids who decorate earliest, as if they can allow themselves to be eager to do things for the "little kids" even though they may be very ambivalent about whether they're" little kids" themselves.

But I'm one to talk. I bought two big pumpkins and five little ones a week ago at the Jean Talon market. One of the large ones went into pumpkin pies for our feast last weekend, but the other one is ready to be made in a jack o'lantern in two weeks time, while the little ones are decorating the dining room table already.

Theatre That Entertains or Theatre That Makes You Think? The Threepenny Opera in Montreal

Interesting experience the other night when we went to see the Théatre de Nouveau monde's production of l'Opéra de quatre sous, or The Threepenny Opera by Bertoldt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

The show opened with a shortened, trilingual version of that Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald hit, Mac the Knife, performed in German, English and French which put us, at least, immediately in the mood for a musical and political evening that transcends borders. The production is bumped up in time from the late 1920s (the original production dates from 1928) to 1961 at the time of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. But the criticism of the police, the linking of corruption, poverty and crime, and the damning of ordinary charity remain very current.

I went back to read the reviews afterwards, to discover that the pointed humour was well-appreciated on opening night. This certainly was not the case the night we were there. Even though the Opéra was brilliantly staged with fine musicians and quite respectable singing, the audience didn't give the enthusiastic response it usually does to TNM productions.

It is as if those there were extremely uncomfortable with the resonances to life now. Perhaps they were remembering the man vending the magazine The Intinerant outside the entrance or the recent scandals about the appointment of judges or the inquiry into the shooting death of a street gang member a couple of years ago by police, or any of a number of other present day problems.

Why this was, I suspect, lies underneath the question asked by the man behind us as we shuffled our way out after the show: "Why didn't they sing Mac the Knife all the way through?" If you spend good money to go to the theatre, you may want only to be entertained. You may not want to be asked to make connections between what happens on the stage and real life.

But doing that is just what the politically-engaged Brecht and Weill wanted us to do.

Here's Ute Lemper's version of the original



And Bobby Darin's translation:


Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear
And it shows them pearly white
Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe
And he keeps it, ah, out of sight
Ya know when that shark bites with his teeth, babe
Scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, oh, wears old MacHeath, babe
So there’s never, never a trace of red

Now on the sidewalk, huh, huh, whoo sunny morning, un huh
Lies a body just oozin' life, eek
And someone’s sneakin' ‘round the corner
Could that someone be Mack the Knife?

There's a tugboat, huh, huh, down by the river dontcha know
Where a cement bag’s just a'drooppin' on down
Oh, that cement is just, it's there for the weight, dear
Five'll get ya ten old Macky’s back in town

Now d'ja hear ‘bout Louie Miller?
He disappeared, babe
After drawin' out all his hard-earned cash
And now MacHeath spends just like a sailor
Could it be our boy's done somethin' rash?

Now Jenny Diver, ho, ho, yeah, Sukey Tawdry
Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town
Look out Macky's back!

I said Jenny Diver, whoa, Sukey Tawdry
Look out to Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown
Yes, that line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town.....

Rue Frontenac and The New York Review of Books: When Labour Conflicts Lead to New Voices

Tuesday the 253 locked-out journalists at the Journal de Montréal turned down an offer from Quebecor that was touted as a possible resolution to the 20 month old conflict. Nearlly 90 per cent of the journalists voted against the proposed settlement which had been overseen by a provincial conciliator.

Spokespersons for the reporters' union said members were ready to compromise on points, but balked at a "no competition" requirement. Under it not only would journalists fired by the Journal in the future not be allowed to work for the other big French-language paper in Montreal for six months, but the union's outstanding web-newspaper Rue Frontenac would be shut down.

The web-paper, which plans to begin putting out a hard copy at the end of October, has published some excellent investigative reporting over its short existence. To cease publication would not only silence an interesting, informative voice, but remove a valuable source of employment for journalists.

The situation has resemblances with what happened in New York in 1963. Then strikes closed most New York newspapers for 114 days which meant, among other things, that no books were reviewed in the American cultural capital. Three figures in the New Yorke literary world, Jason Epstein, Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick started The New York Review of Books to fill the void. When the strike ended, they kept the biweekly going, publishing long and thoughtful articles of a depth found nowhere else. In a short time, it became one of the pillars of American intellectual life, and is still going strong.

There is room for many voices in this world. It would be wonderful if Rue Frontenac became as strong an independent voice in Quebec as TNYRB has become in English-speaking North America.

Parabéns Portugal; Shame, Shame Stephen Harper

Le Devoir calls the vote in the United Nations yesterday which saw Canada come in third in the contest for a two year seat on the Security Council, a "slap in the face." That's exactly what it was, and well deserved too.

Over the last seven years, the Harper government has systematically undercut many decades of excellent foreign policy by not caring about the rest of the world, except when it thought it could push things in a conservative, reactionary direction. As many commentators have said, why should a country whose prime minister missed the opening session in 2009 in order to open a Tim Horton's plant sit at the UN's highest instance?

That Portugal got the nod instead is also interesting. Thirty-five years ago--a time when Canada was making its name as a force for peace in the world--Portugal was coming out of five decades of dictatorship, recovering from a peaceful, but emotional regime change, and divesting itself of its colonial empire. Since then it has more than pulled its weight internationally, and its example of how to make a democracy from a near-fascist legacy has served the rest of the world well. The Portuguese deserve to be on the Security Council, but, alas!, Canada under Harper doesn't.

Time Flies When You're Having Fun: New Pix for New Book

Getting ready for the launch of Making Waves today. Meeting to talk PR with the folks at Véhicule this afternoon, and this morning I'm posting the new photo that Ron Diamond took of me a couple of weeks ago.

Ron, who does still photography for movies as well as portfolio pictures for actors, has been a stalwart of the Electronic Rights Defence Committee. More than six years ago, shortly before my novel After Surfing Ocean Beach was published, he took a studio portrait of me which I've used ever since for publicity releases.

But six years is six years. My hair--once fiery red--is whiter and my face is more, well "lived in" is perhaps the polite term. So we went to Parc Saint-Viateur, a few block away from where I live, one September Sunday to take some pix. This is the result. Not bad, I think.

Canadian Thanksgiving Day Special: Missing DVDs, Read Books and Played-with Lego, Plus Succulent Turkey

Just spent a half hour crawling around on hands and knees in the guest room, looking for a DVD that had gone astray. We had the augmented gang over yesterday for Thanksgiving dinner--35 adults and eight kids, ranging in age from six weeks (Jeanne, the tiny perfect baby) to our friends Sid and Doris Ingerman who will turn 82 this winter. It was great fun, but somewhere along the way one of the three DVDs I rented for the younger generation got kicked under the TV/DVD player.

I suspect that nobody actually watched anything since there also was a lot of Lego scattered around too, as well as a pile of books that had obvsiously been looked at. A lot more effort seemed to go into eating--I cooked two 5.5 kilo turkeys plus two turkey legs, and everyone brought something including desserts to die for. Emmanuel carved the birds with great panache, Jeanne got passed around so that everyone got a cuddle, and some of the problems of the world were settled. In short, it was a great occasion to enjoy friends and family and to remember how truly fortunate we are.

Here's the recipe for the turkey which involved brining it for 24 hours. Well worth the effort.

Adapted from Global Gourmet and inspired by the way that Alice Waters did it.

Good for one 18-20 pound turkey or two smaller ones.

3 cups water
2 cups kosher/rock salt
1 cup sugar
5-6 bay leaves, torn up
6 sprigs of fresh rosemary, or 2 tsp of dried
1 whole head of garlic, peeled
5 whole allspice berries, crushed
4 juniper berries, crushed
10 black peppercorns, crushed
4 or 5 dried chili peppers

Stir the ingredients together in a saucepan over heat until the salt and sugar dissolve.

Put the bird into a big container (I used a canning vat in which both turkeys fit well.) Fill the container about half full of water. Add brine, and more water until the bird/s is/are covered. Refrigerate for 24 hours turning if necessary to make sure that all surfaces have several hours of direct contact with the brine.

Stuff with dressing--I use my mother's old fashioned white bread, onion and sage one with a little lemon zest added.

Rub the skin with olive oil and sprinkle with fresh ground pepper. Do not salt. Cook uncovered in a 400-degree oven for a half hour per kilo/12 to 15 minutes per pound. If the skin browns too fast, place a piece of aluminum foil over the affected part.

The result is terrific, and the drippings make fantastic gravy.

You can also do this with chicken and pork roast, halving the brine recipe. For pork, increase the brining time to three days.

Saturday Photo: Fall Comes Creeping up the Walls

Today is a brilliant fall day. We're having a gang over for Canadian Thanksgiving tomorrow, and there's a lot to do so I had intended to go for only a short walk this morning. The light was so gorgeous, though, that I ended up spending more than an hour admiring the changing colours.

This picture was taken earlier in the week, and I think the Virginia creeper is a real feast for the eye. Fall is one of the advantages of living in this climate.

Republic and Religion: October Celebrations of Portuguese Events

Sunday, October 10, is the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the first republic in Portugal. Relatively short-lived--it died in 1926 with the conservative wave that brought António Salazar to power--it nevertheless is celebrated by many in Portugal today as a first step toward a democratic, progressive state.

There will be events marking the anniversary in Portugal itself and in Portuguese communities around the world. In Montreal, the weekly Portuguese language newspaper A Voz de Portugal is featuring this allegorical picture from the period on its front page, as well as a long story giving the history of the republic on the inside.

The same edition also carries a large ad for another celebration, this one commemorating the appearance of a vision of the Virgin Mary to three children in the poor Portuguese village of Fatima in October 1917. The Republic was militantly laic, authorizing divorce and taking control of much church property, so the vision certainly was a welcome one for forces in the society that wanted a return to strong religious values.

The juxtaposition of the two celebrations in Montreal are evidence of the continuing debate over the place of religion in society. No question where I come down: for separation of church and state. But isn't it an interesting irony that Fatima, that symbol of rock-hard Roman Catholicism, is also a common name among Muslim women? What does that say about cultural crossovers?

More "Don't Confuse Me with the Facts:" The Link between Prisons for Unreported Crime and Complaints That Never Were Made

More prisons for people who commit crimes that unreported: that's the latest folly from the Harper government. Earlier this week it announced 675 new cells in Kingston and Montreal as part of its crime "clean up" program.

But, according to The Globe and Mail: "The latest Statistics Canada data have the overall crime rate in 2009 down 3 per cent from the year before and 17 per cent from a decade ago. The Crime Severity Index, which measures the seriousness of reported crime, declined 4 per cent in 2009 and stood 22 per cent lower than in 1999."

Oh, that's because people aren't reporting crime as much, Public Safetey Minister Dick Toews said. And, it's true that other Stats Can figures show a decrease in reporting of minor crime over the last 10 years. Yet the figures for major crimes like murder are also declining, and they are unlikely to go unreported.

At the same time, the Harperites are standing firm on abolishing the long form census, and Maxim Bernier is caught out in his fabrication of "thousands of e-mails a day" protesting the census.

The bottom line here is the Stephen Harper and his government don't care about facts. They care about ideology and scaring people--and not just all people, but ones in certain swing ridings--into voting for them

Wednesday Wildflowers, Because It's Raining....

But it wasn't yesterday, and the billows of asters that have bloomed this year were stunning.

Sad News from Burundi: A Reminder of Bad Old Times Like Something Out of Novel

It's been a couple of montha since I checked to see what was happening in Burundi, the small country on Lake Tanganyika which also has been the scene of much ethnic violence in the last 20 years, although not as much as in its twin Rwanda. The sad news is that things are not going well: 14 bodies were discovered last week north of the capital Bujumbura and several opposition politicians have felt it necessary to flee the country after recent elections.

Nine years ago exactly I spent a short time in Bujumbura to research a novel, The Violets of Usambara. It was a moment when it appeared a power sharing arrangement could be worked out between Hutus and Tutsis. And, indeed, in the years following violence declined and a semblance of order returned. The round of elections this spring and summer appeared to augur well, in fact. But the UN's Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) reports that tensions have been high for the last months, even though thousands of Burundians who had taken refuge in Congo are being encouraged to return home, with a similar return of Congolese from Burundi underway.

Sadly, the news this week sounds much like the scenario I painted so long ago. In my story which takes place in 1997, a Canadian politician on a fact-finding mission goes missing outside Bujumbura in an area not far from the border with the Congo. It turns out that he and his driver were killed by persons unknown. What happened recently sound eerily similar. The IRIN story says: "Earlier this week, 14 bodies were discovered in marshes near the Rusizi river, about 10km northwest of the capital, Bujumbura.

“It is difficult to identify them or say where they came from or even whether they are the bodies of Burundians,” Police Director-General Fabien Ndayishimiye told a news conference.

He pointed out that the east of neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo “is home to the bases of various rebel groups, with skirmishes reported almost daily. Even yesterday we heard gunshots. So far no Burundian has told us about any missing family members. We see bodies but they are not identified.”

The following day, however, the head of a fishermen’s association told reporters four new bodies had been discovered in the river with Burundian identity papers in their pockets. "

How sad that so little has changed.

Anniversaries and Elections: War Measures in Canada, Dictatorship in Brazil 40 Years Later.

There's an excellent chance that a dissident from anti-dictatorship days in Brazil will become the country's next president. Dilma Rousseff, hand-picked by outgoing president Lula received more votes than any of her opponents in Sunday's elections, but did not get more than the 50 per cent needed to avoid a run-off at the end of the month.

Through an interesting twist of circumstance, the election coincides with the 40th anniversary of what is called here the October Crisis, a period in which a provincial cabinet minister and a British trade representative were kidnapped, and the former killed. The press here is full of stories about what happened then including the declaration of the War Measures Act, which did away with most judicial freedoms including habeas corpus. (Note to NDP: the only MP who protested it was Tommy Douglas, and the party would do well to remember that it's important to take stands on principles.)

Obviously people who are punished for protesting frequently go on to be inspirational figures in a country: Jomo Kenyatta and Vaclav Havel are two that come to mind. Dilma (which is what everyone calls her) probably is not of their stature, but it's encouraging to think that the three years in prison she suffered didn't rule her out of the game, once democracy was finally achieved.

Saturday Photo: Where Vasco da Gama Set Sail

Well, actually the Torre de Bélem didn't exist in July 1498 when the great Portuguese explorer left for India. It was built later as part of the fortifications guarding the entrance to the River Tagus and to Lisbon.

But the Praia das Lagrimas, the Shore of Sorrows, is just steps away. The great Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões memorialized da Gama's departure in his epic The Lusiads, and gave the name to othis stretch of shore where thousands of Portuguese set sail toward an unknown future over a period of several hundred years.

I took the picture when I was in Portugal 18 months ago, and I have beside me on my work table the final proofs of my book Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure. My editor Simon Dardick says it will go to the printer next Wednesday, and the first copies will be in my hands in three weeks--ready for another adventure!

Maybe Those Montreal Métro Cars Will Finally Arrive: Why You Should Be Up Front from the Beginning in Calling for Bids

When are we going to get new Métro cars? Reports are that an international call for bids on them has been delayed for a week, while the Société de transports de Montréal and the consortium Bombardier-Alstom negotiate a contract and the provincial government prepares legislation that will remove this transaction from requirements that the bidding process be opened,

The saga goes back four years when things looked ripe for Bombardier to get the whole contract, but Allstom protested in court. The upshot that the French firm was included in the deal which was enlarged, in part because it became clear that more cars were needed. Under existing legislation that meant a larger call for bids, and two other firms, one Chinese and the other Spanish, said they wanted in on the action and went to court to be included.

Four years later, the contracts have not been awarded and things are really mired down. This morning on Radio-Can, the transportation commentator said that the cars--some of which are more than 40 years old--are kept in use because of the skill of STM mechanics who have been masters at coming up with replacement parts.

The proposed special legislation would supposedly open the way to finally going ahead with the award of contracts: the two outsiders who want to bid would not have recourse to international courts because "free trade" treaties are not in effect with their home countries. Had one of them been US based, that would not be the case under NAFTA.

I'm not one to condone sweetheart deals--and the Bombardier bid had elements of that from the beginning--but we need those cars if we are to keep the Métro running. At the moment it's estimated to offer more than a million trips per day, and that figure should be encouraged to increase.

Tweets Don't Cut It in the Revolution: Gladwell on Social Change and the "Networked" World

In this week's New Yorker, that other revolutionary Malcolm--Malcolm Gladwell, not Malcolm X--analyses why Twitter and the other Social Media don't mean much when it comes social change.

His thesis is simple--to accomplish something important you need people who are committed, organized and usually part of a formal structure where goals and strategies have been thrashed out. Most of all you need people who are willing to put their time, energies and sometimes even their lives on the line. His example is the first anti-segregation lunch counter sit-in in 1960, started by four young men who have much in common in age, education and with-it-ness with the young today who are flocking to the social media. But it took far more than simply knowing that a sit-in was occuring to start the wave of demonstrations that have brought significant change in the US.

He compares this action with another young man who recently started quite a stir when a friend left a fancy phone some place, where it was picked up by a young woman. Multitudes tweeted and facebooked and raised general trouble about the incident with the upshot that the phone was returned and the young woman was charged with theft.

Does this matter? Not much, he suggests.

"The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause."

He ends by saying that what happens next in this social network ages is not "future waves of digital protesters..(but) more of the same. A networked, weak-tie world is good at things like helping Wall Streeters get phones back from teen-age girls. Viva la revolución."

Moral: Bling is no substitute for real political action.

(For more about Gladwell's truly interesting thoughts about how to really make social change see my review of his book Outliers.)

Loch Lomond, Because I'm Switching Gears Today

At the moment I'm working on a short non-fiction piece into which the lovely song, The Bonny, Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond has insinuated itself.

And for a complete change of pace, from the Scotland versus Ukraine game in 2007



Oh, and did I say that my parents were Ella Fraser McDonald and Donald Kirkland McGowan?

From SimCity to UrbanSim: Computer Games to Change How We Live

Probably the only computer game I ever played with pleasure was SimCity, which the kids acquired shortly after it came out in the Mac version. At the time, I checked out games as they came in the house, more or less the way I looked over the books the kids borrowed from the library--not to censor, but just to know what they were thinking about.

SimCity seemed an order of magnitude more interesting than the other games, which were mostly about eliminating creatures of one sort of another. (We did refuse to buy war games until Lukas got hooked on World War II and saved his money for a whole series like A Bridge Too Far.) You could create an alternate world with SimCity though, you could do experiments with cities like you could do in real life.

My books Green City and The Walkable City may owe their existence to the possibilities that SimCity suggested, I think now on reflection. And so I should not have been surprised this morning when I followed through on a link from our friend and former neighbor Zvi Leve to a series of articles in the Journal of Transport and Land Use on modeling of transportation and other systems called UrbanSim. Interesting stuff, although some of it looks more technical than I can deal with comfortably. But maybe that means I'm just ready to go to the next level!

Note: I've just come across an article in The Atlantic that claims that UrbanSim ws developed to practice counterinsurgency in Baghdad. Not sure yet how this computes.

Who's Going to Defend Canada's System of Universally Accessible Health Care?

What politicians say about Canada's system of universally accessible health care varies a lot. Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Liberals, has flip-flopped a bit in the last few months. During two weeks in April, following the presentation of the Quebec budget that would have instituted user fees he first said:

“In our opinion, what counts is maintaining universality of access to the system. We believe, and it’s a question of details, that Quebec’s propositions conform to the Canada Health Act.” Michael Ignatieff, quoted by Norman Spector in the Globe and Mail, April 1, 2010

But two weeks later he thought better of himself.

“I want to make it very clear that our party and I personally, am a passionate defender of the Canada Health Act. If the government of any province were to introduce user fees, it is our belief that that would be in contravention to the Canada Health Act and we would oppose it.”National Post, April 14, 2010. (Thanks to Graham Carpenter for bringing the quotes to my attention.)

Better late than never, one might say, although I haven't heard Iggy talking about health since. But a bigger question is what the NDP is going to do to defend the system.

In his April 2 column Spector, of whom I am no fan, went on to write: "It will be interesting to see where Jack Layton and his Québec lieutenant Tom Mulcair come down on the issue — particularly with a Leger poll published this morning indicating that Quebeckers are overwhelmingly opposed to the measures. While the NDP presents itself in English-speaking Canada as the chief defender of public health care, it is seeking to make inroads in Québec and...criticizing the provincial government comes at a high cost, even when you are right."

Five months later it seems that neither Layton nor Mulcair are going to do much on this one for reasons that Spector outlined. The NDP's new health critic Megan Leslie mentioned the importance of Canada Health Act once during the summer. Speaking about comments made by the President of the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine, Jean-Luc Urbain, accusing the Conservative government of failing to provide all Canadians equal access to cancer diagnostic technology, she said: “It’s absurd we have a law to ensure equal care for all Canadians but the government does nothing to enforce it." Since then: silence.

The strongest voices against the continual erosion of the health system come from the edges of the political spectrum. For example, Amir Khadir, Québec Solidaire's only deputy in the Quebec National Assembly, has been fighting the good fight for a long time now. He introduced a bill into the National Assembly in April to reaffirm the universality of the health system and to prohibit user fees. He also was front and center last week, congratulating the Quebec Liberal government's retreat when it comes to user fees, but condemning the imposiiton of an annual one-time fee for all Quebeckers.

Such steadfastness is to be congratualated--and rewarded at the polls. Canadians and Quebeckers care a great deal about their health system, and it's about time that the left/centre politicos recognized this.

(For more news about the fight to save Canada's health care system, check out this blog.)

Saturday Photo: Sunflowers and the End of Summer

Sunflowers seem, at first glance, to be the emblematic flower of summer. They stand tall, face the world, and reflect the sun which is the origin of life, in many respects. Gustave Caillebotte's Sunflowers on the Banks of the Seine successfully conveys their energy on a midsummer mid-day.

But in this part of the world, summer is brief, and the sunflower's time is limited. One of the loveliest and most haunting scenes of the end of the season is The Tangled Garden by the Canadian artist J.E.H. MacDonald. When I first saw it, I found it troubling in the extreme. After living here for a long while, however, I understand the mixture of satisfaction and regret that comes at the end of summer.

The photo is mine, taken without the artistry of Caillebotte or MacDonald. But the way the heavy flowers lean away from each other, and begin their long swoon toward the earth evokes for me, at least, some of the emotions of the beginning of fall.

Friday Folly: The 17th Count Vasco da Gama Stumps What's My Line

"What's My Line"--a program I loved when I was a kid--in 1958 had the 17th Count Vasco da Gama, the direct descendant of legendary Portuguese explorer. The panel tried to guess his occupation which is selling and services pool tables.

Great thing to look at as I try to make a map of the Portuguese adventure.

More tomorrow....

Flash: Quebec Will Not Charge User Fees for Medicare...At Least for Now

Quebec's Finance Minister Raymond Bachand announced Wednesday that his government will not go ahead with a controversial proposal included last spring's provincial budget to charge user fees for medical visits.

Still insisting that the fees are a "good idea," Bachand said the "culture" of Quebec is against the idea. But the government will stick to its guns and charge an annual flat rate fee to everyone that will go up to $200 in two years.

At the same time, the agency which manages Quebec's health care system, the Régie de assurance médicale du Québec RAMQ, announced that it is opening inquiries into membership fees charged by three health care coops and one private clinic. Three other private clinics are already under investigation for possible violations of the Canada Health Act. Under it, the health care system is supposed to be universally accessible and fees are not allowed to limit access.

This seems to be good news, but it may be only the opening salvos in a campaign to change the CHA itself. Stay tuned...

(And for more information and rants about threats to the health care system, check out: Saving Canada's Health Care System.)

Mark Laxer's The Monkey Bible: A Hybrid Book about a Hybrid That's Worth Reading

"But you've been looking for Truth in a work of fiction," one of the characters wails near the end of The Monkey Bible, a "modern allegory" by Mark Laxer.

Well, why not? the reader might ask about this novel, full of truth about science, evolution, biology, human hearts, and the relation between all creatures on Earth, particularly those in the great family of apes. Quite fittingly, this book that is a hybrid containing story, theory and much information, has its center a character who is a hybrid too--or appears to be.

Emmanuel is a young man from Indonesia, who discovers shortly before he's scheduled to go to the US for college that he may be the result of a genetics experiment. It seems that during a dark, violent period in Indonesian history, scientists introduced chimpanzee genes into fetuses which women captured in armed conflict were carrying. Emmanuel is shocked to learn that he may be one of them, and what begins as the usual youthful search for identity leads him around the world to find out if this is true, and, if so, if he, as a "manimal," can have a spiritual life and be beloved by God.

The book can be read as science fiction or fable, or as way of presenting complicated, controversial ideas in an engaging fashion that will reach more than an academic audience. Certainly, Laxer has gone all out to attract not-just-your-ordinary reader. The book's website has great flash, the launch in Washington DC last week featured music written with Eric Maring (a CD of the songs are included in the hard cover edition of the book,) and Laxer is doing a book tour that will take him across the US and into Canada. Friday he'll read at the Baltimore Book Festival and Sunday he's at Southern Independent Book Sellers meeting in Daytona, FL.

This is not bad for guy who makes his living as a computer programmer and devotes his spare time to such causes as safeguarding African habitat and the chimps who live there. There's much of him in many of his characters, and the major female one, Lucy, is just as smart and pretty as his own wife, biologist Sara Lourie. (Conflict of interest notice: both of them are friends of Elin, and Sara cycled by with a copy of the book for me to review a couple of weeks ago.)

The book is handsomely produced with full-colour, glossy photos near the end which reproduce the "Monkey Bible" that Lucy writes. It would have been nice to have a "suggested reading" section at the back so the reader can learn more about the scientific rsearch. The beginning of the story also stutters a bit as we're flipped from one character to another. But this is a good read for anyone who likes to be entertained and introduced to some serious ideas at the same time.

Flaherty Talks Election, Failing to Note That It was Pressure from the "Coalition" That Resulted in Canada's Recovery Program

Are we headed for a fall election? The chattering classes seem to think that Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's speech yesterday laid down the gauntlet.

"They're off," Manon Corneiller writes in Le Devoir.

The Globe and Mail begins its story: "Its campaign promise to kill the long-gun registry almost certain to be thwarted Wednesday, the Harper government has begun laying the groundwork for the next election – casting political rivals as a threat to Canada’s economic recovery."

But as Corneiller noted this morning on Radio-Can, it's interesting that Flaherty's 2008 budget speech, delivered just before the financial meltdown, had nothing about approaching doom, nor about how to save the farm. It took the threat of a coalition from the Libs, NDP and BQ before he and Harper realized that economic action had to be taken.

It was, thank goodness, and Canada has done better than many other countries. Our social safety net, tattered as it is, has helped since it contributes to maintaining purchasing power. So has the relative health of the banking system. But for Flaherty and the Cons to take credit for the recovery program is nonsense--and also dishonest.

But then what do you expect from the people who want to do with the long form census, in large part because they don't want to be confused by the facts.

Peter Stoffer Listens to His Constituents: Bravo!

It was with great delight last night that I heard the news that Peter Stoffer had announced he would vote against the private member's bill which would do away with the long gun registry. A large majority of his constituents are opposed to the abolition, he said, and so, even though he still is not in favour of it, he will follow their wishes.

Bravo for him!

A couple of weeks ago I tried to get an email writing campaign going to the 12 NDP MPs who had voted in favour of abolition in the spring. Stoffer, alone among the dozen, took the time to call me, and explained his long-standing opposition. It was a nice gesture, but I thanked him and told him that I thought he was wrong. In subsequent waves of emails, I didn't even contact him, so adamant had he been.

But obviously this is a man who listens to the people in his riding, and they didn't agree with him. Takes courage to change your position in a case like this, and I congratulate him.

Ain't We Got Fun? Paul Krugman Aska

Just a bit of the famous 1920s hit "Ain't We Got Fun" that figured in Robert Redford's version of The Great Gatsby, made from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel about the excess and rot in the US of the Jazz Age. It seems to me to go very well with Paul Krugman's column today. In it he talks about the great wave of anger that is sweeping part of America--the anger of the rich.

"These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can’t find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they’ll never work again," he writes.

"Yet if you want to find real political rage — the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason — you won’t find it among these suffering Americans. You’ll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don’t have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes."

This might be amusing, if it weren't so dangerous. As Krugman notes (with a wink to the supposed exchange between Fitzgerald and Hemingway*:) "You see, the rich are different from you and me: they have more influence." And, as they did in the 1920s when this song was written, they are going to try to write the agenda for the US, and for the world. Here are part of the lyrics:

"Bill collectors gather 'round and rather
Haunt the cottage next door
Men the grocer and butcher sent
Men who call for the rent
But within a happy chappy
And his bride of only a year
Seem to be so cheerful, here's an earful
Of the chatter you hear

Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening
Ain't we got fun?
Not much money, Oh, but honey
Ain't we got fun?
The rent's unpaid dear
We haven't a bus
But smiles were made dear
For people like us

In the winter in the Summer
Don't we have fun
Times are bum and getting bummer
Still we have fun
There's nothing surer
The rich get rich and the poor get children
In the meantime, in between time
Ain't we got fun?"

* Fitzgerald reportedly said that "the rich are different from you and me," and Hemingway replied, "yes, they have more money." But the story is more complicated: it's what they thought, but never put in those words in one conversation, it seems.

Saturday Photo: Country Lane in the Middle of Montreal

It looks like a country lane, doesn't it? A green path between fences, with flowers and vegetables growing on the other side.Yet this is not some quaint village in England or Ireland, some out of the way corner of the Continent, but the middle of the very urban Montreal district of Villeray-Saint Michel-Parc Extension, two blocks from a Metro station and, in the other direction, three blocks from the Metropolitain expressway.

We were introduced to these agreeable laneways a few years ago when Elin began going out with Emmanuel. He invited us for dinner at his place one summer night, and in between the courses of the feast (as his meals always are) we went for a walk down the lanes that cut through the blocks in that neighborhood. It was a warm evening and people were sitting out, finishing a meal, puttering in the gardens, enjoying the relative coolness. What was amazing was the the space which ordinarily is given over to public utility easements had been transformed into a linear greeway that had obviously been frequently mowed.

Emmanuel, who was renting, did not know who was responsible, but wanted to share the charm with us. When I went back a few weeks ago, hoping to get more information, found the same pleasure. A man in his 30s was walking a dog in front of me, and then turned into one of the gardens. When I stopped to compliment him on the laneway, he said that "an old gentlemen who lives about three blocks away" tended to the mowing but knew little more than that.

The houses are modest ones, built in the 1950s. That means that the young couples who first moved in and added on and cultivated their gardens are now in their late 70s and 80s, and frequently are looking to sell. Friends of Elin and Emmanuel, in fact, have just bought one of the houses on this lane. They're looking forward to enjoying the green laneway and to learning about gardening from their elderly neighbors. As one of their friends says: "They have big plans for you next year.... I bet you are the project of the block.... you too will have tomatoes to die for!"

The Voyage Home: Page Proofs of Making Waves Arrive

Reading page proofs for Making Waves: The Continuing Portuguese Adventure, so no time for a real post.

Back to work....

(The image is of a caravel from an early map.)

The Days are Dwindling Down to a Precious Few: Write NDP MPs Who Are Waving about the Long Gun Registrery

Seven NDP MPs are wavering about voting for Bill 391, the private member's bill which would abolish the long gun registry. The crucial vote is scheduled for next Wednesday. Please write them immediately to tell them this is a terrible idea, and also that the NDP will suffer from its vacillating stance on this issue.

Here are the emails:


Ms. Niki Ashton, Ashton.N@parl.gc.ca
Jim Maloway, Maloway.J@parl.gc.ca
Dennis Bevington, Bevington.D@parl.gc.ca
Nathan Cullen, Cullen.N@parl.gc.ca
Bruce Hyer, Hyer.B@parl.gc.ca
John Rafferty, Rafferty.J@parl.gc.ca
Peter Stoffer, Stoffer.P@parl.gc.ca

And while you're at it, why not write to the five who've already changed their minds, and congratulate them:

Charlie Angus, Angus.C@parl.gc.ca
Glenn Thibeault, Thibeault.G@parl.gc.ca
Malcolm Allen, Allen.Ma@parl.gc.ca
Claude Gravelle, Gravelle.C@parl.gc.ca
Carol Hughes, Hughes.C@parl.gc.ca

World Energy Conference: A Lot of Gas, But Not Much Else

Those who thought that the World Energy Conference now going on in Montreal was going to be ground-breaking, world-shaking or a just step in the right direction when it comes to energy must be shaking their heads. It's quite clear that the view being presented is of today's energy's czars, not of the future. Here are headlines of the press releases from the first two days:

Monday: Traditional energy sources will remain key as alternatives developed

and

Tuesday: Search for right energy mix includes ongoing conventional sources as well as alternatives.


This comes as Quebec starts pushing for shale gas exploration, with one of the ministers actually saying we need the income to pay for day care. Not a good thing. Even though Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute was feted at the conference, it clearly seems headed for endorsing a steady-as-go policy. And that's not what's needed now.

Under Attack: Action Needed to Save Canada's Universally Accessible Health Care System

I haven't had a chance to look at this closely, but I have grave doubts about the OECD report that apparently calls for user fees in Canada's health care system. This has got to be idealogically driven conclusions, and should be carefully considered and discredited.

The whole thing--coupled with yesterday's report on the benefits of pharmacare and an incident in our own family where user fees might have dissuaded a timely visit to a hospital emergency room--have got me thinking about ways to set up a coalition of people who want to gets some action on saving Canada's health care system from the constant, neo-Con attack it has been under for some time. So I've started another blog, and will set up a Face Book page. There's nothing on the blog now, but I plan on posting links to interesting documents and commenting frequently. May also set one up in French with much the same content. Check it out, and if you'd like to get involved, let me know.

Public Pharmacare Would Save Money, New Report Says

Who says that private is better when it comes to health care? Nobody who thinks the matter through. The latest evidence comes in a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives which shows that Canadian expenses on medication could be cut by between 10 and 42 per cent, if a universal, single-payer pharmacare program were instituted.

Marc-André Gagnon and Guillaume Hébert, the report's authors, write that "a universal drug plan providing first-dollar coverage, established alongside a rigorous drug assessment process, would not only ensure greater fairness in accessing medication and improve drug safety, but would also help contain the inflationary costs of drugs, regardless of the industrial policy Canada may choose."

That was what health economists in Quebec--including Lee--said several years ago when a drug insurance plan was instituted. Costs have been more than expected, because of administration of a multitude of plans, and because central bargaining on drug prices was not instituted.

Our health care system is something that Canadians are proud of. Publicly funded pharmacare is way to improve it. At the same time, it's essential that we be vigilant in safeguarding what we already have. More about that later....

Saturday Photo: Alfred Joyce's Garden 100 Years Ago

A few weeks ago I featured Parc Joyce in the Saturday Photo, a lovely little park in Outremont. At the time I said I'd have more about the property which the garden suburb acquired in 1926.

Now I've dug out a photo of what it looked like seen from the south about the turn of the 20th century It appeared in the Autumn 1991 number of a classy publication, called Continuité put out by the Conseil des monuments et sites du Québec. The original apparently is in the archives of the McCord Museum.

The house itself was built about 1830 by John Clarke, a fur trader who liked Italian villas. When Alfred Joyce acquired the property in 1883, he added a number of new wings and transformed it along Elizabethan lines. He lived in it until his death in 1931: members of his family still live on a smaller house on the property, apparently having the right to remain there under the terms of acquistion.

Rue Ainslie leads toward the property from Côte Sainte Catherine on the south, but I'm not sure if it was cut through at the time the picture above was taken. The one below I took a few weeks ago from the point where Ainslie makes a dog-leg to curve around the park. The building on the left is the club house for the tennis courts which take up part of the park now: it's got fake half-timbering in the Elizabethan style and probably was one of Joyce's follies.

A Campaign for Libraries by a Young Quebec Politician, the Legacy of Claude Bechard

Liberal politicians, provincial or federal, never get my vote--I always go to left of them--and if they're not from a riding around me, I don't pay too much attention to individuals. So I didn't know very much about Claude Bechard, the young star of the Jean Charest Liberals who died on the weekend of pancreatic cancer. A great loss, those who knew him said. And certainly to be snuffed out by that particular form of the disease at 41 is a great sadness.

Then among the appreciations of him and his work, I heard people from his district on the lower St. Lawrence talk about his passionate campaign to bring libraries to small towns. It seems that 20 were planned, and 10 have been opened. The picture above was taken in March 2009 at the opening of a new library in the town of Mont-Carmel, population 1,226 in 2006 in Kamouraska region. Bechard and Yvon Soucy, a member of the city council, were checking out the children's section. (Photo from Le Placoteux, the local newspaper.)

Okay, I thought, as I heard the story of his involvement: whatever else he might stand for, Bechard certainly had his priorities right in supporting libraries. Quebec lagged far behind the rest of North America when it came to libraries until the 1970s, but has played a pretty decent catch-up game, particularly in Montreal. What a shame that Bechard won't be around to help in the future, particularly in rural areas. Perhaps his example will inspire other champions of libraries, though.

More Evidence that We Need to Cut Down Our Energy Requirements: Gas from Shale Pollutes

The problems with "green" forms of energy keep piling up. There are outcries against wind turbines, protests against solar farms, and this morning Le Devoir's Louis-Gilles Francoeur reports that gas from shale is as polluting as coal, if its production is taken into account.

The moral here is clear: we have to cut down on our energy requirements.

More about this later. I think I'll go shut off a few lights....

NDP Big Loser in Latest Nanos Polls: A Little More Backbone Is Needed, My Friends

It was with considerable disappointment, but no great surprise that I read the results of the latest Nanos poll yesterday. They show the Cons and the Libs with nearly equal numbers, around 33 per cent of decided voters. This means that the Cons lost about three points since June, but the big loser was the NDP which saw its support drop from 20.7 to 15.6.

The Globe and Mail reported pollster Nik Nanos as saying, “I think what we’re seeing is an accumulation effect, a series of issues that in themselves are not significant, but that as they accumulate start to move the numbers.”

Unfortunately there was little rapid response from Jack Layton and the boys on the issues which obviously annoyed voters this summer like the census long form fiasco. Nor was there vigorous support of continued stimulus money either, nothing about eroding health care, and now the horrendous dithering over support for the long gun registry.

A very large majority of Canadians are fed up with the Stephen Harper Conservatives: the Nanos numbers add up to more than 66.2 per cent of all voters preferring a party other than the Harperites. The number of undecideds are going down too. This means that in the coming election the party that shows leadership has a good chance of pushing the Cons aside...and unless the NDP changes its strategy its going to be left out in the cold.

Revised Project for Griffintown Is Smaller, But Is It Greener?

Le Devoir reported last weekend on plans to construct "ecoquartiers' on the edged of Quebec City, the provincial capital. The Montreal Gazette wrote about green development in Cologne. And real estate developer Devimco presented plans last week for a revised development in the Griffintown neighborhood of Montreal.

The latter will be much smaller than the earlier commercial/residential project which was in part a victim of the 2008 financial meltdown, but also the target of much criticism. It would have fundamentally changed an old, grid-based area that had begun to be redeveloped in a piece-meal way with a huge shopping center-based area filled with apartment towers.

Have the developers and the city of Montreal learned the lesson that small, green development is better? It's not clear. But take a look at the video that Devimco has posted on its website. It's a big contrast with what I've posted above, and you'll see that they are trying to talk the talk. It remains to be seen whether they'll walk the walk.

Telling an Intimate Story That Is History Too: Yasmina Khadra's What the Day Owes the Night

The New York Times ended its lukewarm review of Yasmina Khadra's The Attack four years ago with this proviso: "if he is to instruct us at the deepest level, he cannot afford to leave so much of himself and the lessons of his country's history out of his fiction."

Since then the former Algerian military officer turned novelist has published two more novels, one which completes a trilogy about Islamic fundamentalists, called The Sirens of Baghdad. The second, What the Day Owes the Night, could be seen as his answer to the NY Times' criticism. It tells the story of a man from a wealthy Arab family who grows up in Oran and Rio Salado, a nearby village, during the 1930s and 1940s. He experiences the turmoil of the 1960s which saw Algeria become an independent country, and he loves deeply and despairingly a childhood friend from a French family who returns to France.

This is the book that won the Prix des Durochères last December, the "prize" given annually by a book group of friends to the best book they've read in the previous year. I had read part of it, been impressed, but not finished it because of a thousand other things demanding to be read. But I put it on the list of the book discussion group I lead at the Outremont library for September, so last week I began to read it again.

This is one good book! Khadra (who took a pseudonym originally to avoid Algerian army censorship) does that rare thing of bringing world-shaking events into a human scale. The reader will learn much about what happened in Northern Africa in the 20th century, but he or she will also be invited into the world of a man about whom one quickly cares a lot.

The only problem for North American English readers is that the book appears not available here. Published originally in French two years ago, it was published last May by the UK house William Heineman, but doesn't show up on any internet book seller in a North American edition. Amazon.com says it will be available in Kindle at some point, but it isn't now.

At any rate, keep your eyes open for it. It definitely is worth reading.

Saturday Photo: Garlic Returns!

One of the mysteries of life is the way garlic from around here disappears about the end of January. Oh, there's garlic in the supermarkets, but it comes from China or Argentina. Why their varieties should last/ship longer than ours, I have yet to learn.

But it is harvest time here now, and the Jean Talon Market is full of skeins of garlic. Usually I buy a couple which will last until December--I always underestimate how much I'll use.

And this from a woman who never ate garlic--and onions rarely--until she left home at 18! They stand among the grand discoveries of my life.

Seeing Is Believing Department: Bees and Flowers and the Impression That Is Larger Than Reality

The air seemed to be full of the buzzing of bees the other morning when I was out. Another hot, hazy day was shaping up, and obviously these lavendar plants had attracted a wonder of bees. They flitted around, going from flower to flower as they collected nectar and spread pollen. It seemed to me to be the epitome of a summer day.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I downloaded the photos and discovered that I couldn't see a bee anywhere. It took playing around with Photoshop, enlarging the image by a factor of three, and then carefully going over it, centimeter by centimeter, before I saw the busy little honey-makers. Yet the impression I had, as my delighted eyes flitted from flower to flower, was that the air was full of bees.

There's a lesson here: what we see depends upon where we look and what we register can be greater than what one individual glance can contain. It's something to consider when trying to make sense of the world.

The Unlamented Death of Le Corbusier: Forty-Five Years After the "Genius" of Bad Urban Planning

One of the things that got lost in the last week is the anniversary of the death of Swiss architect Le Corbusier.
I had intended to write about his legacy on August 27, 45 years after he died. His ideas about building new cities with apartment towers had repercussions around the world.

The idea, of course, was to make things better for people. Getting rid of substandard, unhealthy housing, and separating industry from residential areas was supposed to reform both cities and the people who lived in them. Nine decades after he began to expound his ideas, it is clear that the "tower in the park" he advocated has been a failure nearly everywhere except under special conditions.

Apartment towers for rich or upper middle class people seem to work reasonably well, but where corners were cut in construction and the poor were isolated in them, urban disaster has been nearly universal. Many such projects in the US--the picture on the left is of the Robert Taylor Houses in Chicago which have almost all been torn down--lasted only a few decades before they were demolished.

The picture on the right was taken in 2005 in Shanghai, which then was razing low rise traditional housing in order to build towers. The jury is still out on how well they will succeed, but recent rumbles of dissatisfaction have been heard as far away as North America.



The photo at bottom is of Singapore, which is probably the one successful, large scale exception. There people were able (or strongly encouraged, or maybe even coerced, depending on your point of view) into buying apartments in buildings where care was taken to mix income and ethnic groups. Good public transit and nearby jobs were also part of the planning.

The fact that I've seen no other mention of Le Corbusier's legacy in the last week is a measure, I think, of the just disrepute his ideas have fallen into.

Moral: bad ideas are sometimes dangerously popular. Better not to destroy but add to what is already working, as Jane Jacobs advised.

Noise: The Beast in the City Jungle

As I've said before, noise is the elephant in the room that people avoid talking about when it comes to living in a densely-populated city. The irritant is not traffic noise, nor the noise of kids playing, or even of neighbors talking outside, but amplified noise, be it music or speech. Since it is now possible to create incredible levels of sound with relatively inexpensive speakers, excessive noise has become a tremendous problem in urban areas.

La Presse has two stories today on the subject. The first is about efforts by police and borough administrators in Montreal's Plateau district to crack down on noisy events by levying fines. Apparently decibel levels haven't been stipulated, and Commandant Stéphane Bélanger, in charge of the NOISE project, says that nobody will be fined if the doors are shut and the level of sound is reasonable. But 3000 noise complaints have been recorded in the Plateau district over the last five months. Seems to me that it's reasonable to ask that music from bars not be heard a block over, and that care is taken in outside events not to disturb the surroundings, particularly after 11 p.m.

The second story is about residents of St. Lambert, a suburb on the south shore of the St. Lawrence who are bothered by rock shows in Parc Jean-Drapeau on an island in the middle of the river. Some activities have used an acoustic barrier to direct sound away from the residential communities, but other don't. The city of Montreal says it will study whether the noise really is excessive and if so what can be done about it.

No one has mentioned what these noise levels are doing to people's hearing. Nevertheless, the Journal of the American Medical Association just published a report showing that one in five American teenagers has suffered hearing loss, up dramatically from a study done 20 years ago.

Maybe noise is not the elephant in the room that no one talks about, but rather the trumpeting beast that nobody hears...