Being nationalistic on Canada Day

Is it dangerous to be nationalistic? Let me rephrase….is it dangerous to be nationalistic when you’re a Canadian? This morning I woke up with a patriotic grin on my face and the knowledge that this maple-saturated day was one that I was proud to be a part of. Indeed, I murmured out loud, Canada must be the best country in the world.

Whoops, eh?

I said it.

The best? Is this a dangerous concept? It’s certainly subjective and incredibly biased. It’s founded on my own values of adoring a country that has a relentless buoyancy for all things good (freedom, democracy, beer) and a passionate goal of helping others (we’re a nation of peacemakers, mediators, and rights defenders). But it doesn’t mean that I think other countries are worse for wear…it means that in my mind of what we should be striving for in this complicated era, Canada might be the best example of a country to build upon and learn from. Stop laughing – we are a mighty big country in more ways than one.

I grew up in Canada, and though rural Coldwater was a far cry from the hubs of international affairs that I would later grow into, from an early age I knew how unique our country was. We spiritualized traditions from Thanksgiving to Stanley Cups, and were open to whatever sacred or religious beliefs that were held by those around us. We had school trips to pick up litter in parks so that others could enjoy them, and spent Sundays willingly and happily scraping five feet of snow from fragments of lakes to make sure that any kid with skates could get some free ice time. When we went grocery shopping, we went to local farmers markets, Polish bakeries and German delis….all within a few blocks of each other.

Reading books from other countries, and watching television, differences popped out into my mind between Canadians and some of the other folks. I couldn’t understand people who were rude. Canadians are polite to the point of excess…we apologize to people who walk into us, we tip wait staff, busboys and bar tenders without thinking, take coffee out to the guys who plow our street and we talk to each other in the lines at grocery stores.

As I grew up, it became even more apparent to me just how lucky we were…we could say what we wanted in parliament and the media, had free 24/7 health coverage, always had fresh food in markets and stores, kept huge swaths of land as national parks, and, something that I only really appreciated later, we could drink water out of the tap.

Yes, we’re a country with scars of our own, from governmental scandals and rising homeless populations to botched commitments in international debates (climate change comes to mind). But we have the capacity to monitor ourselves, judge ourselves, speak up and apologize and learn to make ourselves better for the future. We are, and have always been, an optimistic nation.

While living abroad over the past years, I have always seen things through a Canadian lens. Witnessing negative practices which are ‘un-Canadian’, bribery, exploitation, child-labour, oppression of basic human rights, I become passionate about how we as a global community can change these ways. This is perhaps a dangerous trait in itself – the naivety that these practices can be curbed, that we are capable of striving for a utopist state of governance and respect for one another. I know that we might not get there, but the Canadian in me makes it so that I want to try. Perhaps this drive is echoed in the fact that we get our most precious product, maple syrup, after fighting for it from frozen trees in the bitter ends of winters.

It is also the Canadian in me that allows me to believe in the concept of ‘global community’. The multicultural foundations of our very nation demonstrate the strengths that come with diversity. Out of our population of over 34 million individuals, many speak our two official languages as well as the native tongues of our founding immigrant populations. We function harmoniously both internally and externally, for we have no international foes. We have the eighth largest economy on the planet and the drive to use it to better both ourselves and less fortunate nations.

To come back to my initial question, I don’t think it is dangerous to have pride for one’s country, as long as your country protects, respects and values both its own people as well as the interests and wellbeing of other nations. In fact, I believe that striving to make your country ‘the best’ is a goal that, if taken all together, betters all, leaving none for the worst. And that, is truly Canadian.

Happy Canada Day – CHEERS to being a positive, progressive and open nation for another 142 years.

Paine and Sri Lanka

“These are the times that try men’s souls”, said Thomas Paine, writing on the eve of the American Revolution.

His words are of consequence in this time of Sri Lanka’s history, with all parties turning to tactics shallow and inhumane in nature. As the war with the LTTE changes landscapes, civilians are trying to move out of rebel-controlled areas into Government-held regions. Yet the actions of militants, both Government and rebels, have left mothers choosing what children to run with…have turned trenches of frightened, hiding families into mass graves…have forced people to flee for their lives through water, moving as if in slow motion, while being shot from the back and shelled from above.

The details of this tragedy are beyond shocking – they are the very definition of hell.

For what have these people run to? ‘Safe zones’ where hospitals explode around them. Waiting lines and checkpoints where suicide bombers stand between civilians before detonating themselves into a pink haze. Purgatory camps without medical care for their phosphorus burns, without enough food or basic supplies to feed the tens of thousands of refugees who have been able to survive this long.

Tens of thousands…a figure that will swell to upwards of 100,000 people, depending on how many survive not only the gauntlet they escape through, but the Government-established 2-year in-camp waiting period that they now face.

We have waited too long to intervene in these barbarous actions. The world seems to have forgotten how to have courage in the face of tyranny, that in the protection of the rights of the weak and the powerless, there must be a limit to how ‘neutral’ we can be, for there is nothing neutral about what is going on in Sri Lanka.

This is a test of our power as a civilized globe – for no civilized being sees freedom as a privilege of few, sees the right to life as something not worthy to protect, or turns their head at the suffering of those being publicly and violently ravaged by others.

Paine went on to write: “The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy”.

Being developed, being civilized, is not about being neutral, or holding course – it is about intervening without delay, in manners suitable to the threat at hand, to avoid the violation of the rights of others, and the catastrophes of war. Mothers, with the fear of being shot in the back or shelled from above, are choosing what children to run with…what more do we have to hear?

This little piggy goes to Kabul…

Khanzir is a celebrity. He’s the only pig in Afghanistan, and he has lived at the Kabul zoo after being donated by China in 2002.
Khanzir romps around at the zoo with deer and goats, but his keepers have been thinking of getting him some more ‘intimate’ company for some time. As the BBC and Qutar Living recently reported, Khanzir was hoping on being introduced to a female companion in the near future, but due to swine flu panic, he’s recently been put into isolation.
As such, Khanzir will have to wait a bit longer for that special someone, until the passing of what the director of the zoo calls ‘A dangerous and difficult time’.
As if a lonely pig living in Kabul didn’t have enough to worry about.

Swine Flu .... how to get piggy with it.

Sensationalist journalism involving swine? When pigs fly! Ah yes, the swine has 'flu' indeed. Swine Flu's here, and so is panic...the ironic thing is, when we panic, our immunity actually decreases. So what should we do?

Simple.

Be calm, breathe, and wash your hands. Alot.

Eat bacon if you want to (because you can't catch swine flu from pork meat, as the dreadful choice of a name might suggest), but also eat your oranges, drink lots of water, and go for nice long walks, preferably not along the beaches of Mexico.

This is the flu we're talking about...as common as, yes, the common cold, and while we are hearing some very disturbing messages coming out of Mexico (and I am not at all making light of the severity of the situation, and the frustration, sadness and concern of those infected and their families), we need to clearly understand the risks involved. I'm not an expert, and I'm not a doctor, so I'll turn the rest of this post over to those who can actually offer some accessible advice.

The first post, '16 Ways to Avoid Swine Flu and Why Not to Freak Out' is written by a Doctor who normally focuses on woman's health. It's a straight-forward realistic piece that we can use to understand how to react to what is going on.

The second and third links are both from the Guardian website. The first is to the Guardian's interactive map of affected nations (because I am a geographer at the end of the day). It's useful but remember, media takes to take a sensationalist posture to these things. The second Guardian link focuses on these share tactics, and is about what a Guardian columnist himself refers to as the Mad Journalism Disease. Here, here!

Finally, for those out there who just want to give a kind word in support of these oinky pink pretties, check out Groink -- which is the official website in support of National Pig Day. It ranges from stories (the Three Little Pigs) and photos to recipes, for those of us who also love good Canadian bacon.

The right to fly a kite.

The latest push by the SLA in taking area controlled by the LTTE has a new twist – civilians in the conflict regions are no longer allowed to fly kites. The army claims that they might be used for surveillance purposes…or even worse, obscure the view of a nickel-sized portion of blue vulnerable to aerial attacks. Some hardline government supporters might be shocked that they were even allowed to fly before, liberated as they might be, in bopping over front lines.

In a region where a child can view clouds almost solely through buildings gorged with barbed wire, and watch the sea only from a distance over mined beaches, it’s almost unthinkable that a few free spirits would still have the hope that a piece of cloth tossed into the sky could dance. Almost unthinkable, but what an image…an individual who themselves, as well as their parents and grandparents, have not known what life was like without war, still able to have the creative mind to perceive air as powerful enough to offer joy.

I understand that there are larger wars to wage against the violation of human rights in Sri Lanka…I see that set against the right to life, to justice, this is a small, almost shadow-like claim. But just for a moment, if we set aside the fact that the battles fought in the past few months have been set in areas not yet cleared of civilians. If we continue to turn a blind eye to the realization that families attempting to flee these regions have not been given any form of evacuation routes by the SLA or LTTE. Even if we note that no international presence has been allowed to witness any of the ‘liberating’ techniques used on the front lines of the army... Setting aside for just a moment all of these facts we are still left with the truth that the only liberty a small being might have found in this shattered portion of a country is now denied.

From my desk in another part of Asia far away from the daily raids, shelling, and shootings in the streets, I can picture the children of Jaffna just as I remember them, incredibly tenacious and proud. I daydream of them staging their own revolution against this most personal violation, running to the end of the main street with their kites and, one by one, slicing them free with a razor blade. A dozen eyes would follow their journey upwards and out to the ocean, silently urging them to go farther, faster, dust streaming off them, as they fade into freedom.

Verge shortlisted photos

I'm happy to share the news that three of my images recently made the shortlist of Verge Magazine's Global competition...the point of the challenge was to present images in the category of 'Travel With Purpose'.

Later this fall they'll all be available to view online, but for now, if you're based in Vancouver or Toronto, you can go to the Verge Go Abroad Fair, and see the exhibition up close and personal.

The dates for the fair are:
* Vancouver
Saturday, September 13, 2008 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday, September 14, 2008 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
* Toronto
Saturday, September 20, 2008 from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday, September 21, 2008 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information on the fair, and Verge, check out their Go Abroad Fair page.

If you end up seeing the pics in the magazine this fall, online (i'll post a link once it's available), or at the fairs, and you like them, you can vote for them in the Reader's Choice category (whoohoo!).

Will the world end on Wednesday?

See what happens when we mess with science? Science messes back. As reported today on the Guardian, CERN, a renowned laboratory in Geneva specializing in work on particle physics will, on this Wednesday, switch on its Large Hadron Collider. The Collider, is meant to help scientists develop a ‘theory of everything’…however, like most of us when we attempt to mentally grapple with questions on creation and the universe, the meaning of life, and all that jazz, the Collider can also have a brain freeze.

This might be no big issue…except for the fact that, while humans are generally left with a headache and glass of wine when faced with queries of the structure of matter, the Collider has the capacity to create small black holes. Small black holes here on earth. Small black holes which some scientists argue can actually “survive, grow and eat the planet from the inside”. Yet some scientists actually want the holes to develop, proving the existence of dimensions other than the three we already know about – and then hopefully – the holes will literally go back to where they came from. However, one scientists has gone so far as to file a case against the Collider, noting that if the holes do in fact devour our fabulous little planet, this would violate our right to life, as secured in the European Convention on Human Rights. Indeed.

I don’t know about you, but I already feel a tad violated, knowing that there’s someone out there who is actually trying to re-create the big bang….we don’t really know what happened the first time, so why should we use the world’s largest particle accelerator (which is actually a 27 kilometer cannon) to try to do it again? Do we really want to create the same type of conditions of matter that were present when the earth was less than one trillionth -- ONE TRILLIONTH -- of a second old? CERN has done their best to put fears to rest; releasing multiple reports on the safety of the Collider, and we can be assured that the type of learning curve these little protons might offer us, as they smash into each other through caverns of steel, is fairly epic in nature. Talk of ‘god particles’, ‘dark matter’, and ‘secrets of the universe’ have many people in the world anticipating leaps of science from the Collider…I’m just hoping that at the end of all this spin, the matter will, well, matter.

For an excellent write-up on the project, including videos, more pics and graphics, check out this New York Times article. To watch a webcast from CERN, including when the push the big button to get the particles spinning, click here. However, since we might have only 2 days left to enjoy this big squishy world of ours, I’d recommend instead watching alpinekat’s video rap on the project….it’s definitely worth 4 of the 2880 minutes that we (might) have left to play.

**Photo of Collider from NY Times Online.