Regina

Mrs. 500 Words and I are just back from a long weekend in Regina, Saskatchewan, attending the wedding of my cousin's son. We had a great time with a bunch of lovely people. But it was our first time in Regina – our first time west of Winnipeg in Canada, in fact – and I thought I'd share some of my impressions with you.

Yep, it's flat. Big sky flat. Rolling along a gravel highway toward a stop sign five kilometres ahead flat. Which you can see. Because the road is dead straight. If you come from the rolling countryside north of Toronto like I do, it takes a little getting used to. From the air, we could see fields of wheat and canola, dotted with sloughs, which are small ponds. And I was told all the trees we saw were planted, too.

And the main roads are wide. And full of pickup trucks and double-long transport trailers, which are pretty rare here in Ontario.

We drove out of Regina south to Rouleau, a small town about 40 kilometres away to see the place where the TV comedy Corner Gas was filmed. We toured the site of the Ruby Café and Brent's gas station, which now houses a gift shop, and I bought a coffee mug. And we drove around the town of about 450 and took a picture of Emma and Oscar's house.

Our last day in town, we visited the RCMP Depot Division, the force's cadet training facility and museum. We toured the museum, which is modern and has room to grow, attended the Sergeant Major's parade, and viewed a film on the 24-week training program completed by cadets. And my wife bought a Mountie T-shirt for our grandson to go with the Saskatchewan Roughriders hat I'd bought him our first day in town.

All in all, we had a great three days in Regina.

 

 

 

Duffy—gate (With Apologies)

It's time to abolish the Senate.

Until now, most Canadians would have been hard-pressed to even name one senator. But over the last several months, the names of Conservative senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau, and Liberal Mac Harb have become all too familiar to Canadians.

Duffy of course has taken centre stage. A long-time journalist with both the CBC and CTV networks, he was named to the Senate in December 2008 by Stephen Harper. Since then, Duffy has tirelessly performed his senatorial duties: campaigning for the Conservative Party while claiming to be too dumb to fill out housing allowance expense forms correctly.

And it was while he was being investigated for that that he's rumoured to have been tipped off and repaid over $90,000. And then we find out that this was a personal "gift" that came from Prime Minister Stephen Harper's chief of staff. And then we find out that Duffy claimed Senate expenses for business in Ottawa on days he was campaigning for fellow Conservatives across the county. Clearly he had to go. And he did, leaving the Conservative caucus on May 16.

Pamela Wallin, another former CBC and CTV journalist who was appointed to the Senate just days after Duffy in January 2009, has also been under investigation for claims of travel expenses. Over a two year period, she charged the Canadian people over $320,000 for "other" travel expenses, in addition to travel to her home province of Saskatchewan. She too resigned from the Conservative Party caucus one day after Duffy, via a news release.

Then two days later, on Sunday morning of the Victoria Day long weekend, Harper's chief of staff, Nigel Wright, resigned. This was the right thing to do, given what he'd done, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. For example, does Duffy have money problems? He makes over $132,000 a year as a senator, not to mention his various pensions, yet owes a $360,000 mortgage on his Ottawa home. And surely Stephen Harper must have approved the payment to Duffy.

Then there's Patrick Brazeau, before the courts on sexual and other assault charges and out of the Conservative caucus as well and refusing to repay his housing expenses, claiming as his permanent residence his father's home in Quebec. His neighbours claim to have never seen him there. Or Liberal Mac Harb, promising to fight the Senate committee's findings that he, too, improperly claimed living expenses.

On Tuesday morning Stephen Harper will speak to his caucus: MP's and Senators alike, and presumably lay down the ethics law to them (ahem). And then he flies off to South America for the rest of the week. MP's from other parties are going to keep asking the tough questions about what he knew and calling for investigations. Me, I'm with the NDP: abolish the Senate. We have enough politicians already.

Pittsburgh

Mrs. 500 Words and I are just back from a visit to Pittsburgh. It was our first trip there and we had a great time.

We arrived around 5:30 on a Monday afternoon, expecting to be caught up in rush hour traffic, but no: we drove directly to our hotel, the Residence Inn by Marriott, on the North Shore, directly across from the home plate entrance to PNC Ballpark.

And we noticed the same thing all week: traffic was very light and drivers were courteous. The only time we heard a horn was when a taxi driver tooted his to thank another driver for allowing him to make a U-turn. Several times drivers stopped to let us cross the street.

We parked our car in the hotel's lot and left it there for four days. The rest of the time we walked or took public transit. One time we took the hotel shuttle. Travel on Pittsburgh's subway system is free for the six stops in the downtown area and the near North Shore and we hopped on and off frequently. It was never crowded.

One of the sites we did have to pay for was one stop further south, the Monongahela Inclined Railway, which for nearly 200 metres climbs over 35 degrees and 113 metres up the side of Mount Washington. The views of the downtown and north over the three rivers are spectacular. It is operated by the Port Authority of Allegheny County, which runs the city's transit system.

Which brings me to Pittsburgh's nickname, Three Rivers: the Allegany, the Monongahela, and the Ohio Rivers all come together here. Pittsburgh claims to have more bridges than Venice.

Across the street from the base of the inclined railroad is Station Square, a retail and dining area anchored to a Sheraton hotel. We had lunch in the Gandy Dancer bar and saloon and toured the larger, attached Grand Concourse seafood restaurant. This is the restored Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad terminal building, opened in 1901. It features a breathtaking stain glass cathedral ceiling. We intended to go back later for dinner, but ran out of time.

We also toured the Andy Warhol Museum, which has seven floors full of his work including an entire floor of archival material, and the Carnegie Science Center where we took in the planetarium and an IMAX show on the Hubble Space Telescope.

And we had great seats at PNC Park to watch the Pirates defeat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-0 on a gorgeous evening. PNC Park has to be the most beautiful ballpark in the majors and everyone we met treated us royally. We even had the "golden tickets", which entitled us to a pair of T-shirts.

The weather was great and the staff at the hotel courteous. And at a second hotel, the Holiday Inn Express in Meadville, where we stayed on our way home, after some outlet shopping in Grove City, PA, we were treated even better. There's much more we'd still like to see and do here, but all and all, a fun five days.

Quite a Day

Quite a day, wasn't it?

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 certainly was a newsworthy day for Canadians. Astronaut Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to command the International Space Station. The 53 year old has quite a media presence, with over half a million Twitter followers. Since arriving at the I.S.S. last December 21, he has been sending out photographs, writing songs, and conducting interviews, all raising awareness among Canadians of the immensity and beauty of space.

And there was the memorial service in Peterborough for the late Stompin' Tom Connors, Canadian singer/songwriter, which was attended by thousands. It was broadcast live on CPAC and Tom's hat, order of Canada medal, guitar, and piece of plywood were all there. Adrienne Clarkson read a letter sent by Romeo Dallaire, commander of the U.N. forces during the Rwandan genocide, who told the story of playing Stompin' Tom's We Are the Blue Berets when his forces were under fire and how it raised their spirits. "We shall stand between the mighty and the frail."

And of course, habemus papam.

Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina was elected pope on the fifth ballot. He took the name Francis I, after the late 12^th/early 13^th century Italian saint from Assisi, Italy, who renounced his privileged existence for a life of service and poverty. This was taken as a good sign, by not only the large crowd in St. Peter's Square, but also by the international commentariat. His humbly asking for the crowd's prayers and blessing was also positively received. So far, so good.

But Pope Francis has a lot on his plate. He's a Jesuit, another first, and is concerned with taking the gospel to the poor and broken. He must try to bridge the gap between liberal and conservative Catholics globally, but keep in mind that the Church is growing more quickly in Africa, Asia, and to a lesser extent, South America. He also has Church administration to clean up.

That brings up the cliques within the Curia. Pope Benedict commissioned a panel of cardinals to investigate the theft of documents from his desk a year ago. Of course, his butler did it, but rumour has it that their investigation uncovered a homosexual ring within the Curia, among other things. That report was kept from the conclave until the new pope was elected. And of course there are still the issues of pedophile priests and other sexual abusers, divorce, contraception, abortion, gay marriage, priestly celibacy, and female priests. Not to say that Francis has to deal with all of these issues, but some of them do require attention sooner rather than later.

I predict that Pope Benedict will have one lasting effect on the Church: his decision to resign at age 85. The cardinals who chose 76 year old Cardinal Bergoglio must relinquish that right at age 80. Pope Francis has eight, maybe nine years to fulfill his mission.

Are the Conservatives in Trouble?

A recently completed EKOS poll released this week shows the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) down to its traditional base halfway through its first majority term in office.

In power now for six and half years (the first four and a half years were in minority governments), a series of bad decisions on everything from F-35 fighter jets, aboriginal issues, the environment, the Senate, and a sputtering economy have Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government reaching into the bottom of their bag of tricks to pull out – wait for it – legislation on crime by new Canadians. Yep, the Tories want to repeal the citizenship of those whose maintain dual citizenship who are convicted of crimes.

Anyway, the EKOS poll has some interesting findings. It surveyed nearly 5,000 Canadians, so it was a large sampling, and found that CPC support was down below 30% to 29.3% (and only 33.7% for "likely" voters). Furthermore, Harper's job approval rating nearly mirrored that of his government, at 28%, while 47% of the populace disapproved. More than half of Canadians – 51.2% -- thought that his government was taking the country in the wrong direction.

Other parties fared better. The New Democratic Party (NDP) was down 4.3% from the 2011 election, 30.6% to 26.3%, but in "likely" voters, only .5%, to 30.1%. Thomas Mulcair had a job approval rating of 28% as well, but a "Didn't Know/No Response" rating of 48%, showing he's still got a long way to go to get his message out there.

The Liberal Party of Canada (LPC) was up a whopping 5.7% from the 2011 election, from 18.9% to 24.6%, but strangely less than half that, 2.3%, to 21.2% amongst "likely" voters, suggesting many voters may be "parking" their votes with the Liberals. The putative future leader of the Liberals, Justin Trudeau, had the highest approval rating, at 33%.

There's a great deal more data in the report, which runs to 20 pages, and is available here. Information such as that more than 10% more men than women support the Conservatives. Or that nearly 1/3 of NDP voters use only a cell phone, not a land line. Or that the Liberal Party is still in first place in Atlantic Canada. Or that the Green Party has surged from 3.9% in the 2011 election to 9.5% now, largely based on a 15% return in B.C.

The next federal election is still more than two years away, which means the Conservatives still have just over a year to make amends. Because, once Canadians have decided to change their governments, and this occurs by the beginning of their fourth year in office, they don't change their minds.