April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Canada

Make it Seven Rally

by

While Bettman continues to insist that American communities with no interest in hockey should be the one receiving the teams, Jim Balsillie and the City of Hamilton haven’t given up on their bid to bring another team to Southern Ontario. Friday June 19th a rally was held near Copps Coliseum to show support for bringing the team to Hamilton. A side benefit of the rally was a large donation of goods to the food bank. The one drawback to this is that Hamilton my lose the Bulldogs. Bulldog supporters were at the rally too to draw attention to this fact.

Unfortunately the pics below don’t show just how large the crowd was. One of the drawbacks of being short. 🙂

SnitchTube

by

canada_revenue

The Canada Revenue Agency is getting all 2.0 on us, and they’ve decided to launch a contest that smacks of a Big Brother snitch-on-your-neighbour deal. CRA wants Canadians to make videos and post them on You Tube, explaining why the underground economy is a bad thing. And why Canadians should be wary of people and things that are part of it.

Contestants are asked to post something that either explains why barter and paying under-the-counter for things is bad or, what the risks are. It’s worth checking out at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/contest/index.html.

hmm isn’t it ironic that they are using unpaid, no contract, non-production people to create their spots against using unpaid, no contract, non-production people?

Source

h/t Toe Dancer @ breadnroses

O Canada We Hardly Knew Ye

by

I’m having a hard time blogging these days. Not because there isn’t plenty to be outraged about. Too much in fact!

It is more that I see so many of my fellow Canadians falling for the bullying, obfuscation and downright deceitful practises of the Right Wing Coalition Party. Rove/Cheney politics is alive and well and living in Canada. While Obama may be no saviour in the United States, Ignatieff is even less so in Canada.

Fed on a diet of Faux “News” and Amercian “reality” tv we end up with such ignoble quips as this
“First we lost saying the Lord’s Prayer in school, then the Pledge of Allegiance, and now the singing of O Canada…”
See Alison at the Galloping Beaver

And while “Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon will not even return phone calls from lawyers for Canadian Omar Khadr, the last Western detainee in Guantanamo Bay.” the Right Wing Coaltion Party does have time to decide that elementary school students should be required to be indoctrinated with jingoism patriotism through the forced listening of canned O Canada music because

“We have soldiers in Afghanistan on a continuous basis rotating in and out and the least we can do is show pride for our country and our flag,”

Yes it is the absolute least we can do. No doubt they want the kids to be rabidly partisan..er patriotic so they can support a war that most of their parents [and the rest of the country] don’t. Gotchya
[Helps to have rabid jingoist when you need cannon fodder.]

When Canadians are losing their jobs, 129,000 in January alone, calls for changes to EI and other social safety nets are met with “We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it” However, there is no problem using taxpayers dollars, the same soon to be jobless taxpayers, to make it lucrative for their corporate buddies to keep cutting jobs and moving plants offshore.

Racism in Keswick

by

A Keswick man has received 45 days in jail for a hate crime. He hung a black skeleton under a confederate flag. York Regional Police investigated a complaint and requested that the display be taken down, Luke Granados refused and the “decoration” stayed up until December when a warrant was received to have it removed.

Originally having taken the position it was simply a halloween decoration, Granados pled guilty to wilfully promoting hate.

What is even more frightening than the idea that a person with that level of hatred within lives among us, is the support he is receiving from some Canadians. If there was any doubt about what that symbolism was perhaps this cartoon might clear it up.

Story Source

Beavers Fight Climate Change

by

Finally getting the recognition they deserve Beavers have been shown to have a beneficial effect on the environment, says a study published in the Oct. issue of Western North American Naturalist. Long maligned for their damming ways, those dams have been found to provide habitat for song birds.

“We found that increasing density of beaver dams was associated with a diverse and abundant bird community and the wetland and streamside habitat these species depend on,” said Hilary Cooke, the study’s lead author who is now finishing her dissertation at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. “This habitat is critical to birds in semi-arid regions yet has been severely degraded or lost through much of the West. Our results suggest that management of beavers may be an important tool for restoring habitat and reversing bird declines.”

Beavers may also help as global warming depletes water tables;

“Beaver are an essential ecosystem engineer,” said co-author Steve Zack of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Beavers help repair degraded stream habitats and their dams and associated ponds recharge local water tables and create wetlands. With our changing climate likely to mean increasing droughts in the West, managing ways to allow watersheds to act more like sponges will be a challenge.

Beaver are a powerful tool to be considered for that, and the associated benefits to other wildlife add to their value.

Renew your love for the Beaver!

Story Source

Related articles by Zemanta
  • Good news: Beavers can help ease drought

Judge Not! Lest ye be shown to be an idiot!

by

Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
Claiming to represent one million plus nutbars Canadians, a group of no-lifers brought a complaint against Justice Beverley McLachlin.

Faced with an official complaint she be removed from office for revealing “bias” and a “political agenda,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin yesterday defended – and clarified – her role as head of a committee that recommended Dr. Henry Morgentaler receive the Order of Canada.

McLachlin said she doesn’t normally take part in the committee’s voting process – except to break a tie – and, “contrary to what has been reported,” doesn’t drive the closed-door debates over which nominees should be accorded the honour.

“Some idea was put out by – I don’t know who, some rumour or some source – that somehow the chair leads the discussion,” she told reporters at a news conference after a speech to the Canadian Bar Association’s governing council. “That’s just not the case.”

SOURCE

When will these people stop with their lies, obfuscations and slander? Well probably never. It is their modus operandi.

With no facts at hand and no basis in reality, they make up their own ‘facts’ and create their own ‘reality’ which they then try to foist on others.

This fundamentalist fetus fetishist freak out is getting old. Equally so their smearing spit speckled epistles and schmaltzy characterizations of every fertilized egg as perfectly white, pink cheeked, pudgy, progeny.

Your right to practice (and some of you could use the practice) religion ends at my right not to.

Related articles by Zemanta
  • Two-thirds back Morgentaler Order: poll
  • Canadians back Morgentaler prize