Weekend Pleasures

A beautiful weekend it has been. Friday night we had a violent thunderstorm again with high winds and many trees felled, strangely enough the very old and very large tree, it is at least 90 meters high, at the front of our building on Cartier Street which is full of holes where the squirrels have established homes, stands impervious. I always expect it to come crashing down one fine day and given the size of it, I do not want to be around to see it.

Our summer balcony on the Rideau Canal were we have our meals.

So I walked to Lansdowne Park named after Lord Lansdowne who was Governor General of Canada at the time. I wanted to see this great piece of land return to its park like state. It was originally some 120 years ago well outside the City of Ottawa, a racetrack for thoroughbred horses and a great park for agricultural fairs held every year. Major cities in Canada had them, to help farmers with new implements and show off the best in animal husbandry and farm produce, this included a big flower show. Toronto had the Canadian National Exhibition and Ottawa had the Central Canadian Exhibition. In the last 50 years Landsdowne had become a tawdry place where a carny show was held, the main buildings had become ruined shells even the football stadium was in a ruinous state, no one cared it was mediocre and every year it was a grotesque show to all that a National Capital should not be. A few years ago the City Council finally closed the park down cancelling the Ex which was no longer attracting anyone. It promoted the revival of the whole area, which was now well in the centre of he City a terrible eyesore on the Rideau Canal. This new redevelopment was not achieved without major opposition by the navel gazing gang in the Glebe, privileged upper middle class entitled yuppies who opposed the re-development for the simple reason that it might bring people from other parts of the city to their neighbourhood. The judicial wrangling was carried out to extraordinary length, at one point the media and the police were called out to protect bird nests and squirrels. Committees set up to adopt a squirrel and the CBC even had a campaign on it. For anyone who lives in Ottawa it is well known that squirrels are so numerous that they are a pest we tolerate.

After a multi-year fight the re-development went ahead and the final result is pretty impressive. A new stadium for the new football team called the Red Black, the old Horticultural building has been moved on rails from one end of the park to the other and completely renovated, it is built in the Prairie style school of architecture. A new apple orchard has been planted, there is a new underground garage, the Aberdeen Pavilion known as the Cow Palace has been restored to its former glory, to think that 25 years ago when the current Mayor Jim Watson was just a young councillor, he spear headed the fight to avoid its demolition, good thing he did. Where use to be the old asphalt parking lot is now an immense field of green the size of the one on Parliament Hill, hundreds of trees planted everywhere. There is a large play structure for kids, an artificial skating ring and a new Water Park Sculpture which will be ready in the fall.
It is truly beautiful, it is a real urban park, there are also new shops and 2 condo towers facing Bank street.

New Lansdowne Park 

 The green which use to be a massive parking lot

Modern light sculpture still under construction with the new Stadium behind it

Renovated and re-positioned Horticultural building at Lansdowne Park

The partial view of the apple orchard with the Aberdeen Pavilion in the background, the Farmer's market will be permanently relocated inside the Pavilion in a few weeks.

We also did a bit of cooking this weekend with squash, peaches and tomatoes, apparently Dr. Spo tells me that tomatoes do not grow in Arizona where he lives, poor things, living under the dictatorship of the Tea Party and bourgeois reactionaries. We went to Brewer Park which is located on the Rideau River next to Carleton University Campus, a very nice area of the city that I do not know well. There are lots of nice neighbourhoods in Ottawa, quiet and leafy and this is one of them.

 What would a Farmer's Market be without the bake goods including doughnuts freshly made

I thought of Dr. Spo who is a famous doughnut connaisseur from AZ. That picture is for him.
http://sporeflections.wordpress.com

The Farmer's Martket at Brewer Park is moving, it was only temporarily at this location while the whole of Landsdowne Park was being re-built and re-made into a green area.  In the coming weeks the Farmer's Market will return to Lansdowne Park and will be housed in the Aberdeen Pavilion, a giant place and much more convenient since it will be protected from the elements.

Will's creation an Ontario Peach Schnitz pie 

Some of the variety of tomatoes we bought at Brewer Park to be used in various recipes in the next few days, I think we have about 8 lbs or 4 Kilo in total. 

Aubergines and Patty Pan Squash which will be used in recipes also in the coming days.

A whole pot of fresh garlic about 2 lbs or 1 Kilo of it in total, very fragrant 

Will's famous roasted tomatoes a recipe by Marcella Hazan, wonderful with any meal.

 portion of BC Red Snapper and Rosemary accompanied by Yellow Spaghetti Squash dressed with tomatoes, parsley, Basil, yellow pepper and walnuts

More tomatoes for the spicy tomato soup

Dinner of Shrimp Tempura with roasted tomatoes

We also attended the last lecture of the Gustave Doré Exhibit at the National Gallery of Canada. The lecturer was Dr. Eric M. Zafran the Curator of the Susan Morse Hilles European Art collection at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut,  a well known authority on art from Doré to Calder. His lecture was on Doré and the Bible, the artist Gustave Doré illustrated the stories of the Bible and it became a worldwide best-seller in the 19th century. The Bible Society of New York has a large library with many wonderful examples of those bibles which were translated in many languages.
The lecture was as well attended as my own Mercredis Culturels program at the NGC.

I also purchased a few other books on Doré and his illustrations, I also got a book of posters of the First World War 1914-1918, entitled the Art of selling War and a book of Charles Perrault (1628-1703) with comments and notes on his fairy tales with illustrations by Doré. The NGC shop also has a wonderful collection of calendars for 2015 and thinking of how Van Gogh was influenced by Japanese wood block paintings got a calendar on that topic.

War is heck, Prosit!

another quiet revolution in Canada

The term quiet revolution in Canada refers to events in the province of Quebec between 1960 and 1969 when the province through a change in Government quietly abandoned the old mode of governance and society changed radically from being dominated by the R.C. Church who up to 1960 had controlled education, health care, book publishing, and other social programs. The government had until that time been a conservative led affair with little interest in the lives of the governed. The people in general who did not belong to the educated elite felt left out completely and disparity between rich and poor were important.
Great changes amounting to a revolution took place, the left wing politicians stepped in and the Church lost all the influence it had enjoyed becoming a marginalized institution and disappearing from people's lives.

This week in Ontario several municipal elections took place, in Ottawa an incompetent mayor was tossed out after just one term and a former mayor who is a good guy with no vision and thinks of the National Capital as a small town, was elected, steady as she goes politics in Ottawa. The big change came in Toronto, Canada's largest city at 4.5 million in population.

The City elite who in Toronto is educated, liberal and left wing had decided that their candidate George Smitherman would win and the other candidate Toronto City Councillor Rob Ford would loose.
The newspapers endorsed Smitherman and dismissed Ford, however what was not reported and largely ignored by the press was the amount of anger at the level of the common man at high taxes and no services and incompetent big city management.  Also the common man is sick and tired of being told by the elite and by the newspapers in this case The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star what to think and what is good for him. All the common man sees is that he has to pay for it all while he does not get invited to the party.  The Toronto left wing or liberal elite suffers from the Marie-Antoinette syndrome, let them eat cake and forget about it.  What is interesting in the weekend papers is how pages after pages are filled with Cassandra like warnings that the common man by electing Rob Ford, the raw populist, has made a terrible mistake.

One article tells us that the morning after the victory of Rob Ford, the CBC National radio show As It Happens with Carol Off interviewed Mr. Ford. He, at that moment, was coaching his football team all the while answering Carol Off's questions.  The interview did not go well, Mr. Ford was busy with the team, a practice was on, he showed that he did not care much for the CBC, the national broadcaster, and he hung-up on her abruptly. Next morning Mr. Ford gave another interview this time with Talk Radio AM 640 and it went very well, why, well the ordinary man listens to AM radio and not to the CBC.
The elite is offended how can this man ignore us and give more attention to a local station then the National Broadcaster.
Predictions by the press are that Mr. Ford will be a terrible mayor and papers like the Globe have turned their backs on him. Mr. Ford it turns out was elected by immigrants and the ethnic vote in Toronto who are more conservative and are now the new common man. They are the new majority displacing the old traditional elite of the city, we knew this was coming, Canada is changing rapidly and is far more multi-ethnic now than it ever was, the majority of our immigrants come from the Asian sub-continent. Ford represented Ward 2, Etobicoke with a 48% immigrant and ethnic population, as a City Councillor Ford has been re-elected in the past with very large majorities.

Margaret Wente in her column put it best when she writes about the masses revolting, with good reason.
She describes the elite in Toronto who did not see the Tsunami Ford coming as people who live and work in downtown Toronto and rarely leave it. Few have ever met a person who voted for Rob Ford.
The editors of the Toronto Star describe people who voted for Ford as people with pointless rage, who are deluded, to explain why the common man ignored editorials telling them who to vote for, in this case George Smitherman, the darling of the left wing elite and the Liberal Party of Canada. The problem as she explains is simple the Toronto elite believes it knows what is best for the masses, even if the masses massively disagree. The problem is simple, people have a lot more government than they can or will pay for, Mr. Ford knows that and he promised to scale down city government in Toronto.
We will see now what actually happens, stay tuned. His brother Doug Ford replaces him in Ward 2 as the new City Councillor.

What is wrong with this picture

by John Cole, Scranton Times Tribune.


Today in Washington DC, on the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where 47 years ago the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech, I have a dream, what is being described in European news broadcast as extreme right wing activist who wish for a White Christian America and a whiter White House gathered to protest and listen to speeches.

Fascist leaders 70 years ago made similar speeches in Europe, offering simple solutions to anyone and everyone's problems or perceived problems, always invoking tyranny of Government, freedom and liberty under siege, endangered birth rights. In the USA the Religious Right wing which forms a good 40% of the Republican Party, if not more and the new extremists the Tea Party are the same people who in the past have been against desegregation of schools in the USA, voter registration for blacks, against the abolition of the death penalty, abortions, women's rights, sex education in schools, against all who are not white nor Christians, against other religions, Gay rights, in other words against the advancement of society in general because it attacks, according to them, their rights as White Christians to dominate the political agenda in the USA and control all leavers of society.

It is strange to see a country which loves to tell everyone that it is the land of the Free and the home of the Brave holding such a rally. The message here being delivered by persons like Beck and Palin is simple, we want to deny basic citizens rights to other American citizens we do not like and who in our minds offend us. Beck and Palin and others are not Civil Rights activists and did nothing now or back then, if they were alive in the 1950's and 1960's to support such rights. The extremist Republicans, Abraham Lincoln aside, are not in favor of Civil Rights. Unfortunately the level headed and moderate Republicans are swept aside here as the latest primary results showed.

How can this be in a democracy that one part of the citizens can deny other citizens their rights as citizens. It is not about controlling government excess or stopping tyranny. You have a freely elected Congress and Senate representing the people, that's their job. The extremists would like to deny basic health care to other citizens because they are unable to afford decent care, or deny some citizens the right to marry because the extremists have a fantasy view of marriage inherited from the Victorian era, or deny due process to people who entered the USA without legal means and the list goes on.

To me this is nothing more than the Klu Klux Klan modern version minus the bed sheets. All this opposition to President Obama is simply because he is not white, racism is well and alive in the USA and embraced by scores of White Christian Americans as a virtue.

The debate about the Islamic cultural centre in Manhattan near ground zero is based on ignorance, racism and hate. What if a Mosque is built on ground zero incorporated into the design of the new Freedom tower, it is a place of worship, of prayer to God, the same God of the Old Testament. You do have freedom of religion in the USA, not just freedom to worship Christian values, which by the way are the same as Jewish and Muslim values, as anyone who studied these 3 religions know. No it seems that the White Christians, politicians and commentators on FOX and in other media outlet feel it is OK to vent their ignorance in public if it brings in notoriety, votes, etc...

In the end it is very dangerous for the USA as a democracy and a society, a country deeply in debt to the People's Republic of China, a country which has lost much of its prestige by loosing both in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, a great power on the decline with many of its citizens unable to face reality and what is happening within their own borders.

It is all very sad to see, I only wish that reason prevail in the end, but that is probably wishing for too much.