Last summer, freed of the seemingly-interminable mounds of school assignments, our granddaughter focused her attention on doing the research required to make her as knowledgeable as possible about undergraduate university programs available at Canadian universities to decide which one would rank highest in her estimation to prepare her to pursue a law degree. She focused on a number of universities, foremost among them the University of Toronto, but felt it to be a long shot, for her.

Eventually she made application to Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, York University and University of Toronto both in Toronto, and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia. Dalhousie was the first to respond affirmatively, then came York, and finally U. of T. She hadn't completed her Simon Fraser application, deeming it much too far from home to venture there.

Last week she had another program acceptance from York University; she had applied to two different undergraduate courses there. But it was too late, she had already notified University of Toronto that she meant to accept their invitation to join their student body, since it was her first choice, to begin with.

Away back in the summer she would speak with me for hours about the details she had discovered; once having found most of the academic information she was seeking she set out to discover which of the residences she thought were most to her liking. Her appraisal turned up a converted hotel on Chestnut Street in downtown Toronto, as the ultimate creme de la creme of university residences and dreamed how wonderful it would be to both attend the university of her choice and do so living in residence at such a comfortably promising looking place.

As it happened the university directed her attention to three residences which she could select from and one of them was the residence on Chestnut Street, to her amazement. She chose it as her first choice, then ranked the other two. And last week she was advised by the university administration that she had been approved for residence at the very place she had daydreamed of. It is a two-bedroom suite, with a small bathroom and kitchenette, to be shared with someone the administration will take steps to pair her with who seems to reflect her personality and values.

When I was a very young child, much younger than our granddaughter by a decade, my father worked on Chestnut Street as a factory labourer at a company called Fashion Hat & Cap. He was a steamer, working on a device that steamed the hats and caps into their final finished shape. Some of his later health problems might have arisen from his constant exposure to his working atmosphere, some to the deprived conditions under which he was raised in extreme poverty, in a little shtetl in Poland accustomed to pogroms. His parents' ill health left  him an orphan at twelve.

How utterly amazed he would have been at the future, how pleased he would have been to know his children and his children's children and their children were able to attend university. All the more so as he valued education so highly and throughout his life made every effort to educate himself.

Two things, the confluence in the news of the Quebec election to take place on Monday, and the criticism levied at government for its move to amend the Elections Act to make it mandatory for legal and reliable personal identification to be presented at election time for voter qualification, and to phase out the vouching system which may be responsible for 25% of voter irregularities, top of the news in Canada.

The Bloc Quebecois, a federal political party with huge popularity in Quebec and Quebec only, once represented the official opposition in the House of Commons. Its mandate was to aid the Parti Quebecois, the provincial separatist party, to gain power and relevance, to enable enough Quebec voters to cast their vote for separation from Confederation. And the Canadian taxpayer, on top of handing over equalization payment roughly equivalent to 46% of the entire enterprise, with a handful of other provinces receiving far lesser amounts, also had to pony up financial support for the separatists in Parliament.

Now the Bloc barely has a presence in Parliament, and the Parti Quebecois's leader, Pauline Marois, having called an election because the opinion polls gave her party a whopping lead over the second-place Liberal party, has discovered her clever attempts at social engineering is not capable, after all, of leading her province to the Promised Land of Separation. In that it now looks very unlikely that the voters of Quebec will vote in sufficient numbers to give the Pequistes their majority enabling them to facilitate a referendum for secession.

And here's the really amusing part of it all. Looking back on the parliamentary record of decades ago, one finds this tidbit:

Canada Elections Act November 15th, 2007

Mr. Speaker, I think that the NDP's proposal, which would give voting rights to any person who swears an oath, is unacceptable. That proposal was rejected by the other three political parties last session during consideration of Bill C-31.

We believe it is reasonable to require photo identification, if available, to verify the identity of voters and ensure the integrity of the electoral system.

I would like to point out that there have been serious fraud cases. The time when someone could pile a bunch of people onto a bus and have a voter swear an oath to identify them is over.

 And who was the speaker? Why, Pauline Picard, then a Member of Parliament for the Bloc Quebecois.

She alluded to a time-dishonoured method of enabling voter fraud, when an desperately enterprising political party might pay vagrants and alcoholics a certain sum to have them vote ... bus them to a polling station where they would disembark, do their civic duty, having been vouched for under oath by a pol, then off they would go to spend their hard-earned gains.

It reminded me of an event that my husband recounted to me when once, many years ago, he had gone to the bank to extract $900 in cash for a vacation trip we were about to embark on. He was downtown, walking in the LeBreton Flats area, which back then was a deserted and fairly forlorn place just across from Quebec on the Ottawa side. He was startled to be accosted by a large burly man shuffling toward him, hand extended, begging for money.

The man explained he had just been released from prison and needed money for food. My husband reached awkwardly into his pocket, trying to discreetly detach a $20 bill from the roll that bulged in his pocket, handed it to the man who, eyes wide, thanked him profusely for his generosity.  And then followed my husband, to continue expressing his gratitude by exhorting my husband to tell him how he would like him to vote in the next election.

Both newspapers we receive on a daily basis, local and national, are rife with articles about the upcoming provincial election in Quebec. It will be taking place on Monday and augers to produce a result that the current premier, leader of the Parti Quebecois, Pauline Marois, with her fixation for secession from Canada, will not much appreciate, if poll results are correct.

The Parti Quebecois won a minority government a mere year and a half ago. A minority government will not permit the Pequistes to launch their independence referendum. They have spent that year and a half preparing Quebecers to face a referendum, one that most people living in Quebec have no true interest in. Raising issues that create a social gulf between people; namely between the pur laine Quebecers and those of immigrant stock and religious groups, and pounding away on the language issue where French must have not only primacy but a monopoly and English remain meekly subservient in a majority-English-speaking nation, convinced Ms. Marois that the time was ripe to call an election. All the more so that polls taken before the writ was dropped placed her party in a majority position.

Aiming for a more successful election result that would lead her to a majority PQ government, she began the campaign boasting of her success, failing to mention even once what a parlous economic condition the province was in, with a massive debt and troubling deficit, the largest of all the provinces. And then she revealed her star candidate, Karl Peladeau, the billionaire media mogul union-basher prepared to be a candidate for the PQ, the very party that Quebec unions support.

When Mr. Peladeau proudly and confidently raised his fist to declare he was a determined separatist intent on making Quebec over into a 'nation' that his children could be proud of, he spelled the death knell for Madame Marois' ambitions for her future and that of her party. Pre-election campaigning was supposed to soft-peddle separation, if it was to be mentioned at all.

Post-election much of Quebec will celebrate, it now seems evident, giving thanks to how often it happens that arrogance leads to failure.

And the rest of Canada will breathe a sigh of relief that once again, Quebec is secure within Canada, though the usual complaints of restrictive federalist interference in the affairs of the province will continue as it always has.

To be Canadian is for most of the population a proud identity symbol. In Quebec, not so much. It might be interesting to know how many Canadians identify themselves first and foremost as Canadians, and then identify with their province. We're not known as a nationalist population, but we do appreciate the fact that we have the privilege of living in this country and being a citizen of it. There are so many benefits accruing to us from that simple, yet complex fact, whether by inheritance of birth or through immigration.

The country is waiting on the tenterhooks of suspense to see whether the Parti Quebecois, the ultimate separatist party, will prevail in achieving their goal to be transformed from their current status as a minority-governing party to another majority when the votes are enumerated on Monday. The province's politics of exclusion, division, resentment and entitlement has been a bleeding thorn in the side of Confederation since forever, adopted and adapted by the PQ in a strenuous effort to overturn the British victory over French forces at the decisive battle of the Plains of Abraham which designated later Canada as a majority English-speaking population to the outraged angst of francophones.

Should the Parti Quebecois retain power with a majority government they will impose stronger regulations on language, where even at the present time English is being strangled out of existence in the province, and English Quebecers and allophones along with their francophone counterparts are poorer for it. Language discrimination that would never be countenanced elsewhere in the country, much less other Western democracies is rife, entrenched, very well institutionalized.

Priding itself on its secular governing character, the Pequistes have waged an underhanded war on religious minorities in the population. The new bill that Premier Pauline Marois, leader of the Parti Quebecois would bring into law on re-election would see all Quebec residents who wear what the PQ term 'conspicuous' religious symbols fired from their jobs in medicine, education, security, and the public service.

Quebec is a province notorious for its institutionalized corruption, existing at virtually very level of both private industry (particularly the construction trades) and at the municipal and provincial governmental agency levels. Its ultra socialist agenda provides perquisites for its population well beyond what other provinces can manage to do, and mostly because other provinces' tax receipts rendered to the federal government is redistributed to the "have-not" provinces, principally Quebec which views it as a cherished 'entitlement' that Quebec insists it requires as an exceptional 'nation'.

Yet despite the social, political, emotional blackmail that Quebec foists upon the rest of Canada, much has been tolerated as those in other provinces have pleaded repeatedly that Quebec remain within Confederation. Separatists envision complete sovereignty, proclaiming Quebec a nation unto itself, unique and beyond special.

According to Madame Marois, however, borders between Quebec and the rest of Canada can be loose but with separate passports, free trade unions that the federal government has signed with other countries should be open to a separated Quebec, and Canadian currency should be Quebec's as well, with Quebec given a seat on Treasury Board. The etceteras are too numerous and risible to list. As is the aggravation.

So Canadians can be forgiven for succumbing to the irritation of deja vu and wondering: Is it really worth the bother?

HERBS AND SPICES FOR YOUR DOG'S HEALTH

My daughter, with professional accreditation as a industrial designer, found she had to turn elsewhere, with government cut-backs to contracts, to make a living for herself and her daughter and her companion animals. She turned to her love of animals and their welfare, and her natural ability to connect and communicate with animals and for the last four years has leased out her talents as a dog trainer; more accurately someone who trains their owners to understand how to communicate with and give discipline to their lives living with their beloved pets.

She also operates a website and a blogsite. She spends countless hours doing research and writing articles relating to canine obedience, communication, well-being, nutrition and health issues at http://ottawavalleydogwhisperer.blogspot.ca. She often receives enquiries/requests from websites devoted to animal care and welfare for some of her articles to be re-published on their sites, and she agrees, as long as proper attribution is given, that she is the author of the article.

Yesterday she discovered that some of her articles have been lifted and used without her knowledge and without attributing their authorship to her by a commercial online, well-funded newsletter used by Westjet. This blatant act of literary piracy has infuriated her since this is pillaging her source of income, though she offers the educational material she writes and posts at no charge to those who follow her blogsite.

She has hopes of building her business to the point where she may become fully financially self-sufficient through both her endeavours; her discerning writing ability which attracts thousands of interested dog-lovers, and her professional capability as a dog trainer. This kind of plagiaristic looting of the fruit of her labours represents a sad commentary on the unscrupulous mindset of predatory pirates posing as legitimate, honest brokers.

She wrote to the media expert company associated with the airline to notify them of the situation, sending along a screenshot grabbed from the site at: http://www.pawsforthenews.tv/1news/2current-news/natural-care-for-your-dog-cat-herbs-spices-for-your-dogs-wellbeing/#comment-19765.

Along with her own blogsite where the original article appeared: http://ottawavalleydogwhisperer.blogspot.ca/2012/02/herbs-and-spices-for-your-dogs-health.html. 


Monday, 13 February 2012

HERBS AND SPICES FOR YOUR DOG'S HEALTH

And it remains to be seen whether she will realize any satisfaction from the response her alert may or may not result in.

For the most part the Ottawa River remains frozen and snow-covered. There is the exception closer to the water filtration plant opposite the Western Parkway, where the river is open, and hosting a flock of returned geese. All the ice-fishing huts have been removed. Viewing Gatineau across the river into Quebec, it always appears as though one has moved a century back in time, looking out on a small village. We passed the Governor General's residence, the gates at 24 Sussex Drive, home to Canada's prime ministers. It was a quiet, peaceful drive, but then it always is, there, as we headed uptown to the Byward Market, on one of our irregular jaunts.

The turn into a new month always signals to my husband that his favourite magazines will be available to him at the market's magazine shop. It's owned and operated now by a family from Somalia, the most friendly and informed people we'd ever recalled operating the shop. The range of magazines addressing every topic under the sun is staggering. My husband's field of interest runs to art, antiques and architecture; we don't often get past those basic A's. Yesterday, for the first time, we noted that the owner's daughter was behind the cash register. She is likely a university student, and so beautiful in appearance, helpful in her attitude that she is certain to conquer many hearts during her lifetime.

No trip to the market could possibly be complete without popping into our favourite cheese shop, and there we indulged in a variety of cheese purchases, vastly different from what most supermarket shelves hold, and at a far more congenial price. On then to the Rideau Bakery to stock up on rye breads, French bread, and matzoh.

Driving through the market to Rideau Street we saw a man leading a tightly compact little pony along the street, out for a walk in the cool, damp and windy air.

Noting, on our return trip, that though spring is tardily returning, winter's chill on this overcast, damp day bearing no resemblance to spring, the willow trees obviously feel differently for their appearance has taken on that tell-tale yellow appearance.

 

It had occurred to me on a number of occasions that it seemed unusual that I had not yet received the Canadian Cancer Society canvass kit for the month of April. My long-time area captain is usually ahead of the month, delivering canvass kits to those in her area who have agreed to participate in the door-to-door neighbourhood canvass for charitable donations at least halfway through March.

But, truth be told, the thought that niggled in my mind was drowned by the greater thought that there's no hurry, it isn't yet April, and procrastination being an affliction that is sometimes helpful, I preferred not to take possession of the canvass kit too soon. Perhaps in the daft idea that if I didn't have the thing hanging around I wouldn't think those disagreeable thoughts of trudging up and down the street I live on, knocking on neighbours doors, importuning them for donations.

For though I've done this kind of thing for decades and decades, it's a routine and a ritual that I detest. Irrespective of which charitable medical/health group I canvassed for, I've always hated doing it, but have found it well-nigh impossible to deny my responsibility to my society, for someone has to do these things that nobody wants to be involved in. To raise needed funds for public education into heart and stroke, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, multiple sclerosis, blindness, and any other charities I've canvassed for over the years -- as well as support for those afflicted, and research funding for medical science that always hopes a cure may some day be discovered, and if not that, then better management protocols for chronic conditions.

And then, on the last day of March, Kaye called, and I cheerily greeted her, in reflection of her own usual cheery voice. The cheeriness on her part was somewhat subdued, but there in evidence. She explained the reason for her tardiness in distributing the canvass kits; she had been rushed to hospital, to stay there for several days, after the discovery of a bleeding ulcer that had taken its toll on her iron and haemoglobin count. She's better, recovering from the ordeal. Four years earlier she had been diagnosed with age-acquired haemophilia. She's an energetic 86-year-old. She had been cooking up a batch of jam for a church sale, when she was suddenly struck with feeling very ill.

So, once again, we discussed that it was time for us to reconsider our commitments in favour of conserving our energy and endurance for life itself. For her, it certainly is a grave consideration, for me perhaps less so, but I am tired of doing things that more people in our society should be committed to. And, I said to Kaye, this will surely be the last year. Curiously enough, we said the same thing to one another last year.