Boxing Day

Happy holidays, everyone--including today. The post-holiday shopping season started today up here, but many people (including those who work at my gym) have today off. In fact, the gym was open until noon on the 24th but is closed all day today. Boxing Day is serious business north of 49.

We have had enough snow here in the past few days to repair damages from the rain that took out much of our previous snow. The skiing today was good. There's only one tree newly down (joining about ten others on various paths), and it doesn't completely block the way.

The turkey carcass has been cooked to within an inch of its life and is now resting comfortably in a garbage bag; the soup and stock is safely stowed in the fridge and freezer. Holiday treats have disappeared, for the most part. Those that aren't gone by the time I'm doing dishes tonight are outta here, too.

Sons and ex-husbands have headed home; babies have returned from their other households. Post-holiday trips, either home or for family visits, are underway.

In other words, the holidays are over (for the most part) and we all survived them.

In a year like this one, it just doesn't get much better than this. No matter what side of the border you're on.

"Newsmaker" of the Year

It's time for the "wrap-up" stories--the biggest newsmakers, biggest celebrity disasters, ten most important news stories you don't know about, etc. In the U.S., Time chose Vladimir Putin as its Person of the Year. Maclean's chose Conrad Black. Time Canada chose--the loonie.

Yep, thanks to the credit crunch in the U.S., the loonie had a banner year. Compared to the U.S. greenback, the loonie is worth more, although its actual purchasing power in international markets apparently isn't all that different. However, what has mattered (to me) in 2007 is that the loonie's rise and fall seems inversely related to where I need to have money. When I'm bringing money over to Canada, the loonie rises and I "lose" on the exchange rate. When I have money in Canada to use for bills in the U.S., the loonie falls.

Thank goodness it's hanging around close to par these days. The banks still have to get their share, and nothing that's "equal" really is so. Still, I have less mental arithmetic to do, and that's always good.

My Particular Location or All Over?

I've written about this phenomenon before: When you're in a foreign country, when you notice something different, you're not sure whether it's unique to your location or if it applies to the country as a whole.

Recently I've had Christmas on my mind. No surprise, right? In the U.S., it's quite the secular holiday as well as a religious one. Still, at each company where I worked (or with each client) in the U.S., we made the effort to talk about this as "the holiday season." I even had a caller wish me a Happy Kwanzaa once--not something you hear much about in the rural parts of highly Catholic northern New Mexico, but I appreciated the thought nonetheless.

Up here, the holiday seems much the same. Also no surprise, right? Two sides of the same coin, right?

Well, maybe. Here, the local TV station has created this "elf" called "Murray Christmas," who is our "guide to Christmas television specials." They've been playing all week and will continue through the 25th. And they're all Christmas. Nothing about "the religions of Abraham meeting at this holiday season" or some such.

The TV station did acknowledge Hannukah with little 15-second public service announcement-type spots showing a menorah with lit candles (one for each night of the holiday). Since Kwanzaa hasn't started, I don't yet know whether it will be part of the "holiday season" up here. I also haven't seen anything acknowledging Native traditions at this time of year--but perhaps I don't know where to look.

My point is that people here--in Thunder Bay--seem less squeamish about saying "Merry Christmas" upfront. There's less hoop-de-do about separating Church and State. There's less concern for offending someone by wishing them a happy specific holiday.

However, that may be just Thunder Bay. In southern Ontario, which is a far more diverse part of the country, companies still have "holiday parties" at this time of year. Perhaps there, people feel more pressure to acknowledge other traditions.

So again, it's not just the country itself--it's where in the country you live. People in New York City might be very surprised by the prevalence of "Jesus is the reason for the season" in the rural parts of the country or in the American South. And once again, generalizations often aren't valid--including that one.

Another brush with healthcare

I still think the Canadian healthcare system works well for people who tend to be healthy and for those who are very sick. I'm lucky enough to have little experience in between.

Last week, I developed an infection and decided to go to the walk-in clinic sooner rather than later. I don't have a family physician; they are in short supply in this area and I am one of those who tend to be healthy. After waiting for a couple of hours, I got in to see the physician. This was my third time to see him, all for sinus-infection-type ailments. It was speedy, but thorough. He talks quickly but also listens. He mentioned a few things to watch for if the antibiotics he was prescribing didn't help--and he talked with me at length about the type of antibiotic he was using and why, which is reassuring to those of us who are allergic to penicillin.

I had my prescription filled at the pharmacy in the same building. The pharmacist made sure I knew the instructions for the medication and told me some more about the type of antibiotic. He even mentioned the types of side effects that were normal.

So I was prepared for my mouth to taste a lot like dirty feet. Which it still does, because I'm still taking these honkin' big antibiotic pills. But my infection cleared almost as if by magic after 48 hours.

People on this side of the border (and south of it, as well) either beatify or vilify the Canadian healthcare system. (That's actually a misnomer--each province administers its own system, which must meet certain federal guidelines.) In any case, the truth about the healthcare system, of course, lies somewhere in between heaven and hell.

Now, if pharmaceutical companies could just develop antibiotics that don't leave that godawful aftertaste...

Uncle Sam, Meet...Uh

That's a close-up of part of the World War II memorial in Washington, DC. (Its motto: Nothing exceeds like excess.) (OK, I stole that from my sister, but it's true of that memorial, too.)

Over the weekend, my sister and I were chatting about the U.S. government (specifically about lying to the government, in a purely hypothetical way, of course, but that's another story). It occurred to me that Americans routinely refer to their federal government as "Uncle Sam." On April 15, income tax day, they talk about "paying Uncle Sam." And, of course, Uncle Sam "wants you" to join the military.

But there's no equivalent north of the 49th parallel. People don't talk about paying the Prime Minister or the Queen. Most political cartoons about Canada point a finger at a specific politician or other public figure instead of personifying the entire country.

How significant is this lack of persona? Is it part of an ongoing discussion of identity? Does it signify a country too diverse to be embodied in one figure? Does it show the position of Canada on the world stage--and is that position "blocked by Uncle Sam"?

Just thinking. Not trying to imply anything. Really.

Calamities

I generally don't write or say much about incidents like the shooting at the Nebraska mall. Really, what is there to say?

Of course incidents like that affect me. I lived in Colorado during the shootings at Columbine high school; I had left Arkansas by the time the students were shot in Jonesboro, but I still felt a connection to that world. The Oklahoma City bombing also hit close to home--I had left Oklahoma, but my brother worked (still does) at a hospital there. At the time, I myself worked at a federal institution, and that was back in the days when physical security in public areas was minimal.

But in each case, I felt I really had nothing to offer to the discussion. The September 11 attacks in 2001 were just another instance where I felt no desire to say anything.

Similarly, I don't really know what to make of the Nebraska shooting, especially at this geographical and cultural distance. Nobody I see "out and about" has mentioned it to me personally. Some ladies at the gym alluded to it in a sort of "isn't that terrible way." However, they didn't know each other well enough to offer a statement that could be controversial--like "those Americans and their guns" or even "kids today."

Although Thunder Bay has its share of people who support the Canadian national gun registry, a few people also come from frontier stock just a generation or two back. The United Church as an institution generally favo(u)rs more gun restrictions; the congregation I go to supports that position but includes people who own a gun, wouldn't dream of getting rid of it, and think the registry is a waste of time and money.

Still, "all Americans love guns" is one of the less-often-spoken assumptions I come up against up here. I have a sense that Canadians assume that an American who doesn't own a gun would get one but just hasn't gotten around to it.

It's puzzling to me, all of it--the desire to own a gun, the assumption that Americans are gun-happy, the whole situation. Guns just aren't on my radar. I've never owned a gun--for all the swim meets I went to, I've never even shot a starting pistol. I'm not comfortable with it. I don't understand the desire to own a gun--what the hell would I do with a gun? Still, I don't think all people who do own them are horrible people just asking for trouble.

If anything, the local response to the shooting in Nebraska--and other shootings in other spots across the U.S.--may have been colo(u)red by an incident in Thunder Bay last spring. May 1, a local high school student threatened harm and caused the high schools to be locked down until he was found and arrested. At the time, I was just home from my father's illness and funeral, so I wasn't out in the community much. But I do know that there was some of the "how could that happen here?" surprise.

I wrote about the Nebraska shooting today because it's hard to allow large stories like that to pass without comment. But this is all I really have to say: I would hope, especially since that incident in May, that locals now see the Nebraska shooting in a different way--that the incident is not about guns per se, but instead is about desperate, unhappy young people in pain whose only tool for handling that pain is a gun.

And we, in our societies of plenty on both sides of the border, should be able to give everyone better tools than that.

A Head-Scratcher

Kurt Browning, one of Canada's most famous and accomplished figure skaters, is currently starring in a Toronto stage production of Peter Pan.

For those who know the figure skating world only through the U.S. skater Scott Hamilton, well, Kurt looks a whole lot like Scott. Especially near the top of the head. Which brings me to just a little problem I have with this whole thing.

Setting aside the whole tiresome concept (not to mention the even more tiresome reality) of "boys who refuse to grow up," Peter Pan is a charming and slightly eerie story. In the story, Peter is a boy. Not a balding man of middle age, no matter how puckish and winsome.

I know that the role of Peter Pan is often played by a woman, which I don't really understand, either. And I'm not "against" balding men. I enjoy seeing people perform in roles that weren't necessarily written to their physical specifications (such as Denzel Washington as Gray Grantham in The Pelican Brief). Furthermore, I'm sure Kurt brings a great deal of joy and energy to this role.

The visual, however, is something I can't quite wrap my mind around.

Woe is Weather

(We've had about 8 inches of snow since this photo was taken from the deck--plus lots of wind, which has created bigger drifts.) I suppose it's not surprising that weather is a big topic of discussion in a country this large, especially because the country reaches "from sea to sea to sea," as they say.

However, people in central Canada seem to have mixed feelings about the country's weather. For the past few weeks, Canada AM has run features about preparing for the traditional wintry weather. Last weekend's tri-part storm is still making the news, in part because the aftereffects (flooding and continued rain) are so devastating in the "Pacific Southwest." Do they dread it? Are they proud of it? I can't always tell.

When I moved here, people loved to tell me how difficult I would find their winters. Even when I said I'd lived in Colorado for nearly 10 years, they rolled their eyes and told me horror stories about how much worse it would be here. It's as if they didn't want me to succeed at (a) learning to live with the winters here or (b) enjoying myself during winters. For a nation that has a reputation for being polite, these diatribes seemed awfully unfriendly.

I've since decided talking about the weather with locals is like talking about your extended in-laws. Only family members can say bad things about their own family. You are not allowed to do more than agree with some statements--and it's better if your response is "mmm" instead of an enthusiastic "yeah, I hate it when she...."

And I can understand that attitude. After all, I chose to live here, so I really can't complain. Plus, I actually knew full well what I could be getting into. All during my growing-up years, my mother (much like the Canadians I met here three years ago) made dark and dire comments about "snow on the ground from Thanksgiving till Memorial Day--and that's Canadian Thanksgiving!" She never really caught on that the development of fleece and windproof outerwear would make it fun to play in the snow.

Still, I was plenty nervous about moving here, and I was glad for my five years in the New Mexico mountains, plus ten years (give or take) in Colorado. In New Mexico, I learned to drive a manual transmission car in snow in a hilly town. (Driving in snow is possible; driving in the ice of my native Oklahoma is something else again.) In Colorado, I learned the differences between ranges of cold temperatures--after a few days of zero to ten F, "freezing" weather feels substantially warmer because it is some 30 degrees warmer (duh). In both places, I learned that a little snow doesn't necessarily bring life to a halt.

Mostly, in three autumns here and plenty of years before those, I've learned that my attitude makes all the difference in how I experience winter. The snow this year came earlier than I anticipated it would. I wasn't very well prepared in some ways. However, I have adjusted. It helps to have the right accessories--boots, scarves, mittens, socks.

But mostly, I have only to see the beauty in the falling snow and in the crisp sunny days, look out my window to watch the buck gnawing at the sticks of the lilac bush, and remember that today's snow slush and muck becomes next summer's lake. And that makes all the scraping of windshields well worth it.

Scandal, Outrage Part Deux

The whole purpose for this post is this photo, from the Korean War memorial in Washington, DC. I could have exchanged it for the woodpile photo in the previous post but I like that picture, too. So you get to see both.

Anyway, COINS STAIN seems like a pretty good motto for life as a whole. Certainly it's an excellent basic principle for politicians to keep in mind--even politicians other than Brian Mulroney.

It's a Scandal, It's an Outrage

That's part of the woodpile--some of the new wood from this past summer. Over the weekend, three separate storm systems hit Canada. A "pineapple express" from Hawaii dumped snow and rain in BC. A Colorado something-or-other brought central Canada snow and wind. And something else ended up in southern Ontario and Atlantic Canada. "Pineapple express" wins in the naming department, obviously.

Finally, the weather has changed the news cycle. All we've been hearing recently is allegations from a soon-to-be-deported German national that he has information to spill about former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Apparently Mr. Mulroney is bribe-able, to the tune of $300,000 (down from the original deal for $500,000 when Mr. Mulroney didn't deliver on his promise). Furthermore, it was delivered in cash in restaurants--the very stuff of movies. And Mr. Mulroney won a $2 million libel lawsuit a few years ago when similar allegations surfaced but couldn't be proven--and the government paid him that $2 million.

Pretty nifty, getting money from foreign business interests to influence policy AND from the government when they said so but couldn't prove it.

So there's been a lot of yapping back and forth about these allegations and what should happen about this potential deportee. Friday was a big meeting: the House of Commons ethics committee interviewed this German national, who bears an unfortunate resemblance to Colonel Klink but has a lot more media savvy. According to the Maclean's National Editor, Andrew Coyne, Friday's session produced some interesting allegations.

However, a few weeks ago, Coyne, in an opinion piece in the print version of the magazine that I can't find online (sorry), also said that if a former U.S. President were alleged to have accepted a bribe, an thorough investigation into the matter would have been launched.

I had to laugh. Investigations are important south of 49 only to pursue the public's prurient interest in cigars (in the 1990s) and secret identities of agents (in this millennium). When the nation's leaders send troops to kill people, based on lies insisted upon and promulgated by a sitting president, nobody cares.

Maybe Andrew Coyne should move south of the border and try to interest the public in that story. Certainly this scandal--and I'm not making light of it, though I don't think it involves the current government and Prime Minister as much as the Liberal opposition wishes it did--is getting plenty of coverage. Is it a candidate for Absurd-istan? Not yet. (Again: it's my world; I get to decide.)

Still: Thank God for La Nina and the Pineapple Express!!