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Last time I asked for Canadian travel advice was 2008 - too long ago! That ended up as 16 days exploring Newfoundland . This trip is more modest, but I am very excited. We haven't had a good holiday in so long. In 2007, we spent our 20th anniversary at the Hotel de Glace , the Ice Hotel , which was then at the Auberge Duchesnay, about 30 minutes outside of Quebec City. (It's now built in Quebec City itself.) We didn't get to QC on that trip, and I've been talking about going ever since. 2012 marks 25 years of our domestic partnership, a stunning number that deserves a full-on celebration. So "a few days in Quebec City" grew into this: three nights at this B&B in QC , then dogsledding here , dinner and one night at Auberge Duchesnay , then three days in Montreal, staying at Le Petit Hotel . Then, if it's not snowing, we'll drive down to Vermont to visit some friends and family, spend the night there, then drive home. We've never been in Quebe...

Naomi Wolf in The Guardian : US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women – targeted seemingly for their gender – screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park. But just when Americans thought we had the picture – was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? – the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate pos...

The recent BC Supreme Court decision upholding Canadian laws criminalizing polygamy is disappointing and dangerous. The much-quoted summary paragraph of Chief Justice Robert Bauman's decision contained a surprising clause: the protection of marriage as an institution. I have concluded that this case is essentially about harm; more specifically, Parliament's reasoned apprehension of harm arising out of the practice of polygamy. This includes harm to women, to children, to society and to the institution of monogamous marriage. As we all know, harm to women and children has been the stated basis behind anti-polygamy laws, but in contemporary society, this makes no sense. Forced marriage, spousal abuse, child abuse, and child sexual abuse are already crimes, whether they occur in the context of legal marriage or any other context. Laws curtailing women's freedom have always been rationalized as necessary for women's protection. Women weren't allowed to work, vote, smok...

I decided to write about my experience with fibromyalgia, just to put it out there on the internet. I've met many people with fibromyalgia who don't actively try to reduce their symptoms, believing that there are no good treatments. While I have no idea if my experience is typical or common, I do know there are several things at least worth trying. The new blog is only about my own experience. I won't be updating it unless I discover something new that either works or doesn't work for me. It's here: my fibromyalgia info page .

I love it. I love being in the library. I love being part of the public library, helping to make it work. I've been placed in the children's department of Mississauga's Central Library. It's a huge department, and there's a surprising amount to learn. Unlike the general library, where materials would either be fiction or nonfiction, there are about 30 different areas where children's materials might be shelved - picture books, books adults read to children, then all the different reading levels, each with fiction and nonfiction, plus French materials (since all children learn some French here), serieses, graphic novels, "favourite characters" (Arthur, Berenstain Bears, and such) - on and on. In addition, a cart that might hold 50 adult books holds several hundred children's books, and the call numbers wrap around the book, since the spines are so thin. And there are little people running around, and noisy programs like storytimes and puppet shows a...

It's finally happened: I've been placed as a page! I begin my training this Thursday at the Central Library in Mississauga. This is a huge, beautiful library, a five-minute drive from our house, and right next door to YMCA that Allan and I belong to. I've been waiting for this job to open up for two years , as several branch libraries in the Mississauga system were closed for renovation. You may recall, over the summer I was practicing for a shelving test , which I then passed . That was in July, and since then I've continued to wait. This is a minimum-wage job - which in Ontario is $10.25 per hour - and I will probably work 8 to 12 hours per week. But since my goal upon graduating is to work in the Mississauga Library System, the job is crucial. Every hour I log will be one hour closer to joining the union and having access to internal job postings. Of course, the additional income will be welcome, too. I am somewhat anxious about adding another item to my crowded sc...

Shortly after the Occupy Movement began to make headlines, my friend and comrade Dr. J wrote this on his blog your heart's on the left : Is occupation a tactic or a principle? Should the focus be on the internal procedures of those actively occupying, or outreach to broader communities and struggles? How do we build a movement of the 99%? . . . As the temperature drops, it will become more unsustainable to maintain outdoor occupations, and prioritizing this over outreach beyond the occupation will cut the movement off from broader struggles. . . . As we’ve seen from Tahrir to Wisconsin, occupations are simply one tactic in a broader movement for change. The main strategy needs to be the active participation of masses of people—in the streets, campuses, and workplaces. Dr. J. was ahead of the curve. Right now, as the Occupy Movement becomes immersed in struggles with city governments and abusive police, there is the risk of the act of occupation being fetishized, an end in itself, ...

If you like men, and you like libraries, you're sure to love Men of the Stacks . Proceeds from calendar sales support It Gets Better . Here's a good story on Men of the Stacks in The Guardian . Plus I'm pretty sure Mr. June was my TA in Intro to Reference last year!

Message from Occupy Toronto: OCCUPY TORONTO IS BEING EVICTED. Mayor Rob Ford has angrily taken to television, even gritting his teeth, to say he wants protesters "gone NOW". City Manager says by midnight force will be used, but mayor is pressing for even faster. Ford and the judge point to upset neighbors as the ultimate cause of the eviction, but only eleven people in the neighborhood came out to a meeting to discuss plans to get rid of us, numerous neighbors and local businesses are in support (some because we brought them business, and some because they support our message). In the meantime, Rob Ford has been our primary target because for Occupy Toronto, he is the local face of austerity, his cutback and privatization agenda are systematically destroying our city and we have been incredibly vocal in challenging him on it. So, why are we being evicted? Because 11 neighbors are unhappy with us? Or because we've been a thorn in the side of Ford and he's attacking us ...

I meant to include this in my recent library-related post , but I misplaced the link. So now this lovely little library has a post of its own. Please go here to see a beautiful old UK "phone box" recycled into a tiny lending library. More and better photos of it here.

London, Ontario , that's who! Team president and general manager David Martin says the name "The London Rippers", this logo , and cute marketing phrases like "Lurking in Labatt Park..." have nothing to do with Jack the Ripper. "Everybody has to be a little less sensitive," says Martin . Yes, everyone has to be less sensitive. How about a team in Picton, Ontario called the Hog Butchers ? And hey, doesn't Montreal need a baseball team? Maybe we can announce the formation of Les Lepines on December 6. But those mass femicides are different, of course. They're more recent. Plus they happened to Canadians. If it happened more than 100 years ago, somewhere else, mass murder and mutilation are just "edgy" .

This and many others courtesy of BoingBoing , via the OWS Library blog .

Further to an older post " the definition of a police state depends on where you live - what country, and what postal code ", I present these without comment, because what is there to say? Police drag OWS protester by her hair Police officer calmly and methodically uses chemical agent on nonviolent protesters Video and commentary on above here. Democracy Now!: Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street: Excessive Use of Force amidst the New Military Urbanism That'll learn 'em to exercise their First Amendment rights. And " pepper spray " is a bit of a misnomer. It's not the pepper you sprinkle on your scrambled eggs. Thanks to James.

A little slice of the internet that irks me are Q&A websites like Wiki Answers and Yahoo! Answers, where people ask questions and any registered user can post an answer. A list of such sites is here. (That list includes Ask MetaFilter, which seems different, in that it encourages lengthy answers and discussion.) You know I love the spirit of information-sharing that the internet has fostered. "Love" doesn't really describe it. Since I was in my 30s when the internet became widely used, I am both fully internet fluent and fully amazed by it. I adore that you can learn how to create, repair, cook, build, play - and a million other verbs - almost anything online. And I look up facts and jog my shoddy memory with Google and Wikipedia several times a day. But these Q&A websites strike me as some of the worst the internet has to offer. Not only are the answers found there ridiculously unreliable, but it appears that people follow the sites without understanding how du...

Please enjoy these library-related thoughts and links. I love these Little Free Libraries , which I discovered thanks to M@ . These birdhouse-like structures sheltering books are like the domesticated version of Book Crossing , which wants books released "into the wild". Here are some libraries changing lives on a scale Andrew Carnegie never dreamed of. Nicholas Kristof: One of the legendary triumphs of philanthropy was Andrew Carnegie’s construction of more than 2,500 libraries around the world. It’s renowned as a stimulus to learning that can never be matched — except that, numerically, it has already been surpassed several times over by an American man you’ve probably never heard of. I came here to Vietnam to see John Wood hand out his 10 millionth book at a library that his team founded in this village in the Mekong Delta — as hundreds of local children cheered and embraced the books he brought as if they were the rarest of treasures. Wood’s charity, Room to Read , has...

EVICT FORD. OCCUPY TORONTO! Rally and march Saturday, November 19 at 2:00 p.m. Assemble at St. James Park, King Street east between Church and Jarvis In just a few weeks, the Occupy movement has become a global phenomenon, with over 1,400 protests worldwide. In Toronto, a peaceful occupation has been underway at St. James Park, raising demands for economic and social justice for everyone. Polls in Canada show that a clear majority of people support the protests. But now Mayor Rob Ford is trying to evict the protesters. We think it's time to evict Rob Ford instead. Ford's attacks on good jobs, public transit and city services has turned public opinion against him - and in every ward of the city. While the millionaire mayor spends millions on high-priced consultants, he's trying to make ordinary people pay for the economic crisis. We won't let him do it. Please join us this Saturday to be part of a city-wide rally and march. Show your support for the Occupy movement, and ...

Today, if you can, join an Occupy site for however long you are able. Today, if you cannot physically join an Occupy site, do something to stand in solidarity with the Occupy Movement: blog, Tweet*, Facebook, write a letter to a media outlet, put a sign in your window, put a sign in the rear window of your car, wear a button, make a donation. Do something to show that you stand with the 99% and you stand for justice. * #occupymap for actions #N17 is the tag of the day

Our tax dollars at work. The head of an agency that provides services to First Nations children and families accuses the government of discrminating against that community. The agency head is then the subject of a spy campaign, as the Harper government monitors her Facebook page, digs up data on her past and her family, bars her from meetings. Her Access to Information request to see her own file was honoured... after 18 months. No one who knows this government could possibly be surprised by this. But these incidents deserve more than a sarcastic "So what else is new." We should not become numb to the fact that the present Canadian government is a band of ideological and political bullies. Tim Harper, Toronto Star : Why is the federal government spying on Cindy Blackstock? When does a life-long advocate for aboriginal children become an enemy of the state? The answer, it would seem, is when you file a human rights complaint accusing your government of willfully underfunding c...

A while back, wmtc had a discussion about the supposed controversy of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, after I read the book Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare , by James Shapiro. Now a movie is out, telling a fictional, imaginative story of how Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, wrote the plays. For those of us who care about literature and history, this is frustrating, as much of the movie-going public is likely to receive the movie's story as fact. Here's a better take on the whole thing, by none other than Eric Idle. Or maybe Michael Palin. Who Wrote Shakespeare by Eric Idle* While it is perfectly obvious to everyone that Ben Jonson wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays, it is less known that Ben Jonson’s plays were written by a teen-age girl in Sunderland, who mysteriously disappeared, leaving no trace of her existence, which is clear proof that she wrote them. The plays of Marlowe were actually written by a chambermaid named Marlene, who faked her own orgasm, and t...

This is a message from Sid Ryan, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour. Dear Sisters and Brothers, We have just learned that the Toronto Police have served eviction notices to Occupy Toronto protesters at St. James Park (Jarvis St. and King St.), ordering them to vacate the park between 12 midnight tonight and 5 a.m. tomorrow and threatening to remove them. It is important that labour come out in big numbers to support this camp. I encourage you to coordinate an urgent phone around to your activists and members, calling on them to begin rotational support at the occupation site as soon as possible and that every activist available join the camp tonight before 11pm and be prepared to stay as long as possible and even over night. In London, Police officers waited for labour leaders to leave and the crowd to thin out before they executed the eviction between 12:30 and 1:30 a.m. It is important that the labour movement link arms in solidarity with the occupiers to defend their righ...

If you can make it to any Occupy site today, please try. Your physical show of support and solidarity is needed. From the Occupy Wall Street Library: Tonight at 6:00 writers and readers from across New York City will gather in Liberty Plaza to reoccupy the space and rebuild the People's Library. Authors will bring their books, readers will bring their favorite books to donate and together we will rebuild to create the revolution this country needs. I invite those not in NYC to gather at their occupations, campuses, squares, and parks to read poetry and prose in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the 99%. Literature is a revolutionary force. Let's unleash it against the forces who would divide and conquer us. Let's make the sound of democracy heard across this whole country. Share your poems, your dreams, and your stories with each other. Stand in solidarity together. Join us in NYC and across the world for a night of readings, poetry, and revolutionary ideas. Together ...

As I'm sure you know, city governments and police forces around the continent have been moving against Occupy camps, along with the accompanying unnecessary and expected police violence used against peaceful citizens. This overkill and intolerance will only strengthen the movement in the long run, but meanwhile, it's a tough road to go. I've been finding it heartening to follow the Occupy Wall Street through the People's Library blog. Recent posts: Raid of Occupy Wall Street, including much video footage: URGENT CALL FOR ACTION: The Occupation and the People’s Library are being destroyed right now by the NYPD. The Library and all the tents and equipment from the camp are being thrown in dumpsters. Eviction Notice & Property Removal: Here is a photo of the eviction notice from a photograph posted by twitter user @harrysiegel . Note that it says the property will be stored at the Department of Sanitation parking garage at 650 West 57th St. However, it was clear from...

Dear Mozilla, First you tell me I need an upgrade. You nag and nag. Upgrade this, upgrade that. Finally, I can't stand your pleading, and I give in. I upgrade. As soon as I do, you tell me the upgrade is outdated! You say I need to install a whole new version. And you won't speak to me until I do. Not wanting to deal with any more of your immature tantrums, I quickly give in. I install your new version of Firefox. There. Happy now? No! You're not happy! You're never happy! After I install the new version, then you tell me that the new version is not compatible with the Google Toolbar!! You wait until after we've moved in together to tell me you're unemployed and can't pay the rent? Look Mozilla, I use my Google Toolbar about a million times a day. It's the only way I Google anything. Google Toolbar is a non-negotiable. If Google Toolbar isn't compatible with the new version of Firefox, you should have told me first , and given me a choice of whether...

Roy Blount contemplates the original Winnie-the-Pooh I have one last snippet to share from our recent, brief trip to New York City. My friend NN, who writes this blog , surprised me with a wonderful gift. To celebrate its centennial, the New York Public Library has published a free book, Know the Past, Find the Future . A few thousand paper copies were distributed, and NN snagged one for me. (Lucky me!) The book is also available here, also free , in ebook form. Know the Past, Find the Future features people in all different fields writing about, and photographed with, their favourite item from the NYPL collection. As much as I enjoy "famous people choose a book" lists, this list takes the concept further, because the NYPL collection is so multifaceted and extensive. Maps, manuscripts, musical scores, first editions, photographs, letters - a massive amount of history lives in the NYPL vaults. Zadie Smith gazes at the first folio edition of Mr. William Shakespeare, Histories...

Every time I'm in New York, I see my dear friend NN. NN and I go back a long way, one of the most enduring friendships of my life. One of the many things we share is our mutual love of books - and bookstores, libraries, words, writers, and everything else associated with them. At dinner last week, NN surprised me by telling me she's been blogging! About books! NN has been supporting herself as as writer since we graduated university together - no small accomplishment. But like many people who write for a living, NN's work leaves some part of her writerly self unfulfilled. This blog about books is some work in that direction. Allow me to introduce: Stacked NYC: A blog about books, bookstores, and libraries . So far I've learned that St. Mark's Bookshop is not closing , at least not yet. (Yay!) And now I'm going back to the beginning to get caught up.

I have to write something about Aimee Mann. While I'm working that out, please listen to a song of hers that I love. Red Vines by Aimee Mann on Grooveshark If you enjoyed that, perhaps you will listen to another favourite of mine, also from Mann's excellent "Bachelor No. 2". Susan by Aimee Mann on Grooveshark

Yesterday I received an update from the office of Senator Mac Harb , sponsor of the Harb Seal Bill. Here is the English-language portion. It's short, and I hope you will read the whole thing. Dear Friend, The Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans has recently begun a study that could result in the killing of 70,000 grey seals off Canada’s East Coast. The Fisheries Minister is pushing federal scientists to justify the slaughter of seals through contrived studies and one-sided hearings for political reasons. He has decided to ignore factors such as the impact of uncontrolled foreign overfishing in the waters off our coast and the total lack of scientific proof that seals are affecting the cod's recovery. The committee is considering an irresponsible cull that could, in my view, have serious negative impact on the Atlantic ecosystem and the long term health of many species, including cod. This slaughter would also result in untold costs to taxpayers and to Canada’s ...

Press conference with David Heap and Ehab Lotayef, on their abduction, kidnapping and detention by Israeli forces: here . And a message from the Irish boat:

It's 11.11.11 !!! And I'm posting this at 11:11, of course. 10.10.10 was cool, and 12.12.12 will be cool, too. And I love palindromes, so 12.22.21, if I'm around for it, will be totally kickass. But 11.11.11 is the best . What can I say? This is the kind of thing you either like or you don't. I like!

There's only one thing wrong with this cartoon: it shows an actual sticker, rather than a magnet. These folks usually don't "support the troops" enough to glue a piece of plastic to their vehicles.

It's that time of year again, the week when no one dares show their face on Canadian television, or indeed in any public place in Canada, without a red poppy symbol dutifully stuck on his or her lapel. What was once (supposedly) a remembrance of the horrors of war drifted first into a celebration of war and finally into obligatory, reflexive display. Many of my friends are wearing a white poppy today, and I wish them good luck with their campaign. I myself have no wish to display a physical comment on a symbol that is meaningless to me. It would feel like wearing a Star of David to show that I am not Christian. There is only one symbol that can express my feelings about the war dead - the Canadians, the Americans, the Germans, the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the Guatemalans, the Africans, the Native Americans, the Iraqis, all my fellow human creatures - and the wounded, and the ruined, and the heartbroken, and the shattered witnesses - the millions of lives wasted - for conquest, fo...

Three pieces worth reading: Frank Rich: The Class War Has Begun . Bill Moyers: How Wall Street Occupied America . Chris Hedges: A Master Class in Occupation .

In case you haven't seen these yet: Through Avaaz, a letter to the premiers of all provinces to oppose the wrong-headed Conservative crime bill: here . Through the David Suzuki Foundation, a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest, demanding an end to federal and Quebec subsidies of the asbestos industry with loan guarantees: here .

Three days ago, I posted that David Heap, a Canadian professor and activist who was on the Tahrir , which was attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, was being held in an Israeli prison. Stephanie, his partner, writes with great news: DAVID IS COMING HOME! FINALLY, we are able to confirm that David will be released from GIVON prison this evening!! He should arrive in Toronto at 6:40 a.m. Thursday November 10th.

While in New York last week, I finally made it to The High Line . The High Line is a unique city park that opened in 2009. I've been meaning to go there ever since, but now I'm glad I waited: the second stage is open, so we were able to get the full effect. And it is spectacular. The High Line, in its original form, was an elevated freight railway on the west side of Manhattan. As transportation shifted from train to truck, it gradually fell out of use, and into a state of disrepair. By the 1970s, it was rarely used, and the last train ran on the High Line tracks in 1980. The rusting hulk of the High Line stood on the west side of Manhattan for decades. Every once in a while, you'd read about urban adventurers who had climbed up to the tracks. They'd report that grasses, wildflowers and trees were flourishing, that nature was reclaiming the space. As the far west side of Manhattan began to be gentrified, real estate developers wanted the structure torn down. Preservatio...

Guest post: Allan reports on "An Evening with S. Brian Willson", a benefit for the War Resisters Support Campaign, Monday, November 7, 2011. (Willson speaking at a church in San Francisco, July 2011) Brian Willson's life changed forever on one afternoon in mid-April 1969. Willson was a US Air Force captain in Vietnam. He had been instructed to visit some recently-bombed targets and assess how successful the South Vietnamese pilots (trained by the US) had been at hitting those targets. The first target they visited, in the Vinh Long Province, had been bombed only an hour or two before they arrived. Writing in his 2011 memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson : My first thought was that I was witnessing an egregious, horrendous mistake. The "target" was no more than a small fishing and rice farming community. The "village" was smaller than a baseball playing field. . . . As with most settlements, this one was undefended – we s...