Well, we're essentially looking at a status quo result for a $300-million dollar election that garnered the lowest voter turnout in history. My numbers were way off, especially since the Bloc won two-thirds of the seats in Quebec when I thought they'd take a deeper hit. For a while I was worried the Bloc might form the official opposition.
I also thought the Liberals would have fared much better, but they didn't. It's going to be a tense year for them now, as they face broke coffers and the need to once again deal with the issue of leadership. Dion is not liable to leave the post easily until his own debt from the leadership convention is paid off. His former challengers have also all been re-elected so they're still in the running, though I still secretly hope for a couple of new names to advance themselves for the job.
Harper missed winning his majority but it's not going to make much of a difference. Just as the last year seemed to go, no one is going to collapse his government for the foreseeable future - unless the Grits get a new leader by spring, and if the economy continues to tank, giving them an opportunity to shake Harper's growing support.
It's election night and not long before polls close here in Ontario. I hope you all got out to vote. Even if one doesn't like the choices, I think it's always important to at least show up, and then spoil your ballot with profanity directed toward the worst of them.
This time around I did mark an appropriately crafted "X" on the ticket though. I had my choice made a week ago and now it's a matter of waiting to see how it goes both locally and nationally. While I've never been one for watching sports on the television, a good election night will keep me glued to the set without fail.
I can't predict the outcome with any certainty, but I suspect Harper's going to gain another minority. Despite the losses to manufacturing, there's a big buzz about the tories here in Ontario and that'll likely balance losses expected in Quebec. At the final tally, I'll estimate the break down in seats to be something like:
Conservatives ..... 122 Liberals ................ 101 New Democrats ..... 53 Bloc Quebecois ...... 31 Green ....................... 1
How confident am I in those numbers? Not very. It's anyone's game this time.
UPDATE: It's going to be a Conservative minority, but I'm way off on those numbers.
It was a bit of a curiosity that the Canadian leaders debates were for scheduled the same night as the Vice Presidential debate in the States and folks are taking bets on which ones Canadians will be watching. On one hand, you have Sarah Palin while we will now get Elizabeth May. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, you say.
But if that's not enough competition for attention, how's this:
Anomaly Television has reported that October 14th is not just our planned Election Day in Canada, but worldwide, it's also the coming out party for our interstellar neighbours, the Pleiadians. Yes, it's First Contact Day. [HT: The Debris Field]
There are several videos on the Anomaly TV website so check out the link. No word yet on who they might be coming to endorse, and I'll hold my tongue as to any speculation.
I'm getting caught up on some reading over the weekend and made a comment on a friend of mine's blog, One-sided Argument. El Cid, the author, is bully on the Canadian banking system and despite my usual doom and gloom, I think he's probably right. The fact that Harper is not engaging in a bail out for the banks in Canada is a good sign that ours are stable. However, I'm still of the mind that this election call was rushed due to the knowledge that things are going to get pretty tight soon. Best try to get re-elected now.
One of the biggest hits to Canada may come when the U.S. dollar plunges, which is going to be inevitable now that Washington is absorbing the debt of Wall Street. However, according Reuters, we've been weening ourselves off reliance on the greenback in favour of Euros, while our exposure to Fannie May and Freddie Mac is limited to 6% of reserves.
On the upside, countries with greater exposure may lose big too, keeping things at least partly level. U.S. debt is everyone's debt these days. China has expressed concern over what amounts to the U.S. printing money to cover the losses (see a post on Piglipstick, for example.) If my meagre economic understanding is right, this would sink the dollar but theoretically home values would remain numerically constant. Your house would still be worth $250,000 U.S., but $250,000 U.S. would be worth a lot less.
There's a lot of fear that this situation would solidify China's dominance but I think they're going to have more problems when their major market implodes. More recalls of Chinese products isn't helping either. China needs to sustain a high rate of growth to keep its awakening citizens happy. On top of the prospect of decreased exports, they could be faced with an exodus of foreign firms soon. Not only is trade protectionism becoming an election issue in the U.S. but those Chinese who are demanding better lives for themselves will be buoyed when the government there forces the creation of labour unions in international corporations doing business in China. While their economy has been on fire for the past decade, this might start to starve the oxygen out of it.
And if the seriousness of things still hasn't sunk in, the Marmot's Hole had a few choice quotes on the matter from the American press.
UPDATE: Maybe it's just me being at home alone tonight, but it sure feels like somethings up. The moon was deep red over Toronto when it came up, and now the CBC is showing "The Grapes of Wrath" as their midnight movie. Real funny, guys. We're doomed.
While this could be an elaborate marketing gimmick in advance of this year's Rita McNeil Christmas Special, I couldn't help but link to today's big revelation.
In the early 1970s, MacNeil was a married mother of two children, living in east-end Toronto, not yet embarked on her music career.
Every Tuesday night she'd attend downtown meetings with women from all walks of life, where MacNeil says they talked mostly about equal rights. [CP]
Sometimes it's just fun to know that while recent years have seen the RCMP involved in all sorts of problems, from tasering with wild abandon to the falsifying information about Canadians leading to their being tortured in far off lands, the R.C.M.P. never fail to come up with newly disclosed stories to entertain the Canadian public. Maybe they should host a Christmas special this year.
A Cape Breton songstress in Toronto one day, Was singing along in a feminist way, She ran a-foul of the law when she offered up tea, And was labelled a Maoist, by the RCMP. ... the RCMP, the RCMP...
[With apologies to the Brothers in Law: Alec Somerville, Howard Duffy, Larry Reaume, and Ken Clarke.]
Just in case you forget what Canada's fighting for in Afghanistan, a story on the CBC website has arisen to remind us.
An Afghan court on Tuesday sentenced a 23-year-old journalism student to death for distributing a paper he printed off the Internet that three judges said violated the tenets of Islam.
This is on the heals of John Manley's report that advocates sticking it out in Afghanistan until we're the next-to-last person to flee. So long as one more country in the world is foolish enough to waste time and lives on that useless sandbox (I assume that doesn't include the Afghanis themselves) the we should remain. Of course, the mission should slowly change over time to more reflect diplomacy and construction. That lofty goal assumes that there will ever be enough peace there to achieve such things. Jeffrey Simpson, in the Globe and Mail, likens it to playing a game of chicken with NATO.
It reminds me of when I went to see "The Aristocrats" and everyone in the theatre started getting up to leave one-by-one. All I could think of was, "This is a terrible movie; I paid my money so I'll watch it; But, please God, don't let me suffer the embarrassment of being the last one left in the audience." Yeah, Afghanistan has gotten like that.
Meanwhile, Stephan Dion has been making Obama-like utterances about invading Pakistan and thankfully getting called to task for it.
Pakistan has become the biggest misstep in the War on Terror. If you screw up in Iraq or Afghanistan then a lot of people die and you bankrupt your country, we learn, but screw up in Pakistan and you can get us nuked.
I've come out here in support of Musharraf before and I still support him. The man seized power because democratically-elected officials were set to plunge Pakistan into war with India. He staged a coup and stood down the troops, setting himself up as a person willing to force peace. Jump ahead to post-9/11 and he wisely opted to work with the West and not against them, in weeding out Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
So how do we reward him? Various persons have decided it's time to force democratic elections in Pakistan and the call went out for Musharraf to see that they happen. Now Musharraf knows, as do a few voices of reason in the west, that if you hold free elections in Pakistan, much like Palestine, the winner is going to be the first person to promise to rain down nuclear hell on all us Western infidels. (Is Abdul Qadeer Khan a card-carrying member of any parties there?)
Why democracy activists want this, I'll never know. Their ideals override their sanity. You can be assured that such will be the outcome. I'd still like to think that Musharraf was behind Benazir Bhutto's assassination as it would lead me to conclude he hasn't given up hope on us and is still working to stay in power, no matter what, and keep the nation safe from the hands of anti-occidental extremists. Bhutto may not be such an extremist, but honestly, she wasn't a proponent of democracy either, so much as wanting to be a nepotistic monarch.
Leave Pakistan alone and, hell, leave Afghanistan alone, too. Just pack up all the G-Wagons, LAVS IIIs and Leopard IIs. Fill in the foxholes and craters from deadly landmines. Wish good luck to the Afghanis who will take off their "army" clothes as soon as you leave and go back to farming opium, stoning women, and blowing up Buddha statues. Look upon the dusty wasteland of savagery, tribal warlords and spent ambition. Count your empty brass cartridges and shoulder your rifle. Walk out onto the tarmac at Kandahar, board the C-17, turn around and say, "The Aristocrats!"
The old Rhinoceros party ran under some famous platforms, such as filling in the Great Lakes with rock quarried from the Rocky Mountains (as a make-work project and a means to equalize both sides of the country.) This present incarnation seeks to create a Ministry of Laughter and pass a law to force Stephen Harper to go on a diet.
Changes in electoral law, which increased the fees needed to register as a candidate, made it impractical to field the 50 candidates that were needed for official federal party status, so the Rhinos shut down in 1988. Disappointingly for me, this was actually just a few years before I was able to vote for the first time.
Now, the law's been changed again. You only need one candidate to gain "official" status and while the higher registration fee stands, it's refunded after the candidate goes through with it and makes their run. Combined with the perceived disillusionment evident in the last election's voter turnout, wherein 40% of Canadians neglected to cast votes, the NeoRhinos, under leader François "Yo" Gourd, have resolved to rise again.
Gourd founded the new incarnation last year and actually ran in that by election in Outremont. He came in sixth, but ahead of the other fringe parties (unless you count the Liberals as a fringe party these days.) Now he's set up with a webpage (which seems to have terrible connectivity) and is doing interviews to proclaim that the NeoRhinos' time has come and they are officially beginning their election campaign.
There has been some question of late as to whether General Rick Hillier is towing the government line in Afghanistan of is he's set himself up as a Patton at best, or at worst a Colonel Kurt. The concern that the military and government are not working well together has come up often, especially as Minister Gordon O'Connor left the defence portfolio amidst well-publicized photos of him going out with the trash. (I can't find a version of the photo now, but the official shots of his final parade showed a prominent dumpster next to him as he took the salute.)
There's even been talk of Hillier being replaced, though it seems a media fabrication, as near as I can tell. The press was suggesting that Hillier's term at the top would not be renewed as a sort of punishment for his independent streak... but the fact is that he serves at the discretion of the government and could be removed at any time.
At any rate, I have to point out one way in that we can clearly see Hillier and the government working together and that's in the duration of the mission mandate. Though Hillier says they're "on the same sheet of paper" they seem to disagree on how long Canadian troops will be needed on the service. The tories say 2011. Hillier suggests longer than that.
Are they in conflict? Not really. I'd say they've worked together quite admirably to distract attention for the earlier proposed pullout of February 2009. Chances are, by the time that Afghani troops are ready to take over from Canadian soldiers, neither Harper nor Hillier will still be around.
It's been a battle of wills lately, in regard to party discipline and there are clearly two different approaches in play.
With the Liberals, Dion has solved his crisis over the position of national director and his Quebecois quota... he's completely caved now and the new national director and deputy national campaign director is Greg Fergus, of Montreal. He replaces Jamie Carroll, the Bluenoser who recently got pushed out for suggesting ethnic diversity should be extended to more than just people from Quebec.
With such a drastic drop in support for Liberals in Quebec, which shows no signs of a turnaround if news, rumour and talk radio callers have any truth to them, I wonder how wise it is to put all their eggs in one panier. I miss the days when there was a Liberal party for the rest of us.
Meanwhile with the Conservatives, there's another battle taking place in Nova Scotia over the matter of MP Bill Casey and his failure to support the federal Tory budget last time around. That led to Casey being ejected from the Tory caucus forthwith. Harper, unlike Dion, isn't being swayed, either.
Casey had withdrawn his support because the budget sought to overturn the establish (and signed) Atlantic Accord which would have guaranteed Nova Scotia significant revenue from offshore oil and gas exploration. In the budget, the accord was dismissed and the feds replaced it with an option to either have tens of milions of dollars clawed back, or get nothing at all. In this past week, premier Rodney MacDonald, Nova Scotia MP Peter MacKay and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have announced some new, mythical deal, that is supposedly a compromise. Nova Scotia gets less now, but will get more at some point in the distant future. Of course, the ansence of a firm, written deal makes it hard to verify the figures. Many, including Newfoundland's premier Danny Williams, believe Rodney MacDonald has been played for a sucker.
It's all made Bill Casey look like a strong champion for Nova Scotia. So much, that his old riding association are now falling on their swords for refusing to seek a successor to run in his riding and head office is stepping in. But, so is Danny Williams. He's promised to come over from the Rock and campaign for the independant Casey.
Governor General Michaelle Jean has delivered the speech from the Throne and overall, it doesn't seem to be as confrontational as many had suspected it would be. With the Dion's Liberals suffering from even more internal divisions, now would have been the time for Harper's Conservatives to force an election and quite possibly gain a majority. However, what we received was a basic, almost textbook conservative plan that doesn't leave a great deal open to controversy or to justify the opposition parties collapsing the government.
With that said, the N.D.P and the Bloc Quebecois have already stated their their intention to vote it down, but their votes are irrelevant. It all boils down to the Liberals. Rumour has it that key grit leaders will vote against it while backbenchers and the majority of the caucus will abstain or be absent, allowing the vote to go through and the speech be passed.
To that point, Dion is not taking interviews tonight, but Michael Ignatieff was quick to get on CBC and implied that the Liberals didn't have to vote against it to be unaccepting.
Specifically, the throne speech has a number of basic conservative pledges. Cutting taxes is a big one, including the reduction of a further 1% off the GST. There are also promises to help families and young people. This was pretty much assumed after the government posted its recent surplus.
Dealing with increasing crime is also a major component to the throne speech, including the challenge to pass the conservative anti-crime bill. The plan includes harsher mandatory sentences for gun crimes but will also address the useless and money-sucking gun registry.
Culturally, there are a couple of very noticeable inclusions. One is a commitment to address remaining issues around the Chinese Head Tax. Another, is a significant promise to support Quebec's desire for international representation by involving them more greatly in Canada's dealings with UNESCO. I think this might be more serious than it will likely be played. This goes beyond any domestic acknowledgements of Quebec's "nationhood" and brings such a perceived stance to an international stage. It could, dangerously, shift the debate to where the nations of the world will seize the right to arbitrate separation, rather than having it remain primarily an internal conflict that we deal with ourselves, within Canada. Meanwhile, the rest of us are to improve our relations with the United States.
Afghanistan could remain on the table past the 2009 deadline, and into 2011. There are calls to increase the strength of the forces and promote freedom and human rights around the word.
Kyoto now has an official time of death (77 days from now, I guess.) There is no way to achieve the goals set out in the Kyoto Accord by the 2008 deadline, obviously. Somehow, this doesn't seem like an argument against Kyoto's virtues, so much as an acknowledgement that the conservatives have dragged their feet to a point of no return. Take that up a level and it's an end-of-the-world realizing policy. On the upswing, there's a promise for a world-class Arctic research facility to be built. That way we can better watch as our north melts around us.
Nothing in this throne speech is designed to really push that button that wil result in an election, and with the state of the Liberals right now, it would be astounding if Stephane Dion collapses the government in a confidence vote over it.
On the flipside, it's not necessarily a good election lead in for the Conservatives if it does go that way. It's generally quite vague and ambiguous. It hardly convinces Canadians that the Tory government is indispensable to our future. A lot will depend on whether the house can be brought together to support government policies, as is hoped for in the speech.
A lot will come down to crunching the numbers for those tax cuts. The remnants of our manufacturing sector might be lamenting dolar parity these days, but for the rest of us who are seeing our spending power rise, having more of those soaring dollars in our pocket with each paycheque could stimulate a lot of consumer spending and juice up the economy.
Before it even got a chance to register a blip on the radar, it seems that the secret media centre that Stephen Harper was planning, is no more. The Toronto Star is reporting the centre's demise, after also initially breaking the news of the government's plans.
Termed the "Shoe Store Project", after its proposed location in a former Sparks Street mall shoe store, the $2-million media complex would have provided full government control over what was filmed, recorded, and transcribed... as well as by whom (Hat tip to Stageleft.)
"The new briefing centre would supplant the 47-year-old National Press Theatre, a venue where government news conferences are moderated by the executive members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery Association, a group of newspapers, broadcasters and other media outlets who report on Parliament Hill." [CBC]
Harper's policy has been distinctly media-unfriendly since taking office. He surprised everyone by staging his first and only press conference in the National Gallery this past October 3.
It is well known that the press and the prime minister aren't exactly the closest of friends, but to miss the annual dinner is a mighty snub indeed. Notice came in an e-mail to the press gallery president, Richard Brennan... 'Richard, the Prime Minister will be unable to attend the upcoming Press Gallery Dinner.' It was signed with 'kind regards, Sandra.' Sandra Buckler is the director of communications in the prime minister's office. [CBC]
It seems the lesson learned is that if you really want to scare the pants off them at 24 Sussex Drive this Hallowe'en, skip the vampire and mummy costumes. Try showing up to Trick-or-Treat, dressed in a fedora with a camera and notepad.
It looks like Stephane Dion is going to buckle to the pressure of his Quebecois caucus afterall and sack Jamie Carroll. CTV is predicting his replacement will be Quebec Liberal Johanne Senecal, a former adviser to Robert Bourassa.
No word yet on Dion's replacement, however, for when the inevitable comes to pass. Apparently the Liberal party constitution forbids a leadership review until after an election, so this could be long, drawn out, and painful to watch.
One wouldn't normally accuse the Liberal party of having too few Quebecois in the top ranks... unless of course, you're Quebecois.
So one can understand when the Grits' national director, Jamie Carroll, reportedly shot back with, "Do we also have to hire people from the Chinese community to represent the Chinese community?" -- which is probably not a bad idea what with changing demographics.
Still, it seems like the Quebec members of the party have it in for Dion and are now calling for Carroll's resignation for daring to challenge their right to dominate the party. Well, Dion stands by his man and says the statement was misinterpreted.
After the recent rumours surrounding the Quebec byelections however, this is yet another indication that the Liberal party is hemorrhaging in that province. Keep Carroll on staff? Sure. If Dion needs to clean house anywhere, he'd better start hunting and killing off these challenges to his leadership in la Belle Province.
If we are looking at a fall election, Dion's got a heck of an uphill climb.
There's now talk of a fall election, after Gilles Duceppe has threatened to pull Bloc Quebecois support for the government when they present their throne speech on October 16th. It's mostly seen as a bluff to save some face after the Bloc failed to do well in the recent Quebec byelections. Harper was seen to have gained the most ground (besides the N.D.P.) and this may be Duceppe's attempt to take him down a notch.
It all hinges, the Bloc say, on the Conservative government's acceptance of five key demands.
1. Elimination of all federal spending powers in provincial jurisdictions.
2. Assistance for workers in the ailing forest industry.
3. Continuation of supply management in the agricultural sector.
4. Kyoto Protocol to be respected by the Tories.
5. Harper government to make a clear commitment to pull out Canadian soldiers from Afghanistan when the current mission ends in February 2009.
Demanding that Kyoto be respected is probably a deal breaker right there for the Tories, but Afghanistan may prove to be the biggest sticking point. Recently Peter MacKay had suggested to NATO members that Canada may not be in Afghanistan after 2009 but that's been tossed off by many as an attempt to keep the conflict open that long, while public support drops and calls to pull out earlier come more often.
Noteworthy is that the Afghanistan issue took another hit this week with accusations by the N.D.P. that the Canadian military had provided the words for Hamid Karzai's speech in Parliament last year though it's been been denied by the Afghanis. Karzai is also under pressure at home and could use a bit of help, it seems. Afghanis are apparently blaming Canadians for their part in killings there, and shouting "Death to Canada", presumably not under guidance from Canadian military speechwriters.
Also, it's been suggested Karzai may seek Canadian help in convincing the U.S. to refrain from spraying Afghan poppy fields. Who better to help than Canada, a country going through it's own problems related to past defoliant spraying, in our case with Agent Orange in Gagetown.
When the vote comes down in October however, the pressure will be on the Liberals to collapse the government and they might be a bit gun shy after getting shut out in Quebec. Even with both the Bloc and the N.D.P. calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops, the Liberals probably won't seize the chance to topple Harper over this increasingly unpopular war. Doing so would surely give the Tories a majority, and then we'd never be out of Afghanistan.
Yesterday's byelections in Quebec caused a stir with the Grits being shut out and receiving only a fraction of the vote they'd hoped for. The Tories and NDippers are happy, though, having each picked up a seat. Especially, however, the NDP victory in Outremont has sent shockwaves, being only the second time they've been elected in Quebec and only the second time that the Liberals have lost that riding, long considered a stronghold, since 1935.
It's such an upset, that charges of conspiracy are now floating around the Liberals, to the effect that party members loyal to former leadership contender Michael "wants to hide his crap like a Puffin" Ignatieff may have sabotaged the byelection in that riding to call Stephane Dion's leadership credibility into question. Of course, more than Dion's leadership it ended up calling the credibility of the whole Liberal party's cohesiveness into question and has led to denials all around. They didn't lose on purpose; they really are just a bunch of idiots, sorry.
Attached to this scandal and deepening the mystery, is a strange email that made it's way around the Liberal national executive. On the surface, it was a resignation from Denise Brundson, VP Organization for the Young Liberals, which suggested that she had been in contact with reporter Stephen Maher, of the Chronicle Herald's Ottawa Bureau and that it had undermined "the unity of the party." It followed with the text of an exchange between Brundson and Maher. The problem, was that it was entirely faked.
Some mischievous imp was trying to imply that Ms. Brunsdon and Jamie Carroll were the source for my story and that they were in trouble with Mr. Dion's chief of staff, Andrew Bevan.
They were not the source for my story and soon a senior Liberal sent out a real e-mail praising Ms. Brunsdon.
This is an unusually nasty piece of business. Someone went to the trouble of setting up a fake e-mail account and sending out this fake e-mail to smear Ms. Brunsdon, an idealistic young Liberal.
It all leads to a rather peculiar state of affairs amongst the Liberals. Maybe it's time for the normally mild and demure Dion to show a little teeth.
The Biography department at your local Chapters-Indigo is sure heating up this season. Fast on the heels of ex-PM Brian Mulroney's "Memoirs", Jean Chretien has released "My Years as Prime Minister", his second volume of memoirs.
Frankly, were they not already both retired, this could play up as excitingly as the feud between Kanye and Fiddy. Maybe we could call bill it as Fiddy (per)Cent (plus one) vs. Mulronye? It seems that your choice could fall along how much venom you like in your tea. Mulroney's tome is being touted as a score-settler while Chretien promises "just the facts" albeit his interpretation of "fact" might be just as cutting. Where they both agree, apparently, is in their unflattering depiction of that abominably rotten scoundrel, Lucien Bouchard
... and who knows? We could be overdue for a new book by Lucien. With three months left before Christmas, this could turn into a three-way fight yet.
Rather removed from the public eye during Chretien's reign, Brian has been in the news more and more lately. The Airbus scandal is one major reason, though commenters say he's still not come fully clean on his connection to the affair. He's more intent to criticize his predecessor, Pierre Trudeau and just generally talk up his role in shaping Canada.
"History will judge me and the record of my government," Mulroney said. "It's not a verdict I fear because the truth is we tried, we stumbled, we failed and we triumphed -- all in the cause of seeking to build a more united and prosperous Canada."
Not entirely self glorifying, it's said that he makes respectable mention of his challenge with alcoholism. The rumour has always persisted that he was thrown out of Dalhousie Law School, here in Halifax, for that reason. There are also anecdotes of his own frustrations in keeping Canada united through presumably there's less mention of his own lasting legacy of integrating us more substantially with the United States through Free Trade, with significant loss to our own powers to exercise sovereignty over our domestic markets. To be fair however, Free Trade and the expanded NAFTA that came later, would have been a lot less unfair had it been applied and enforced equally with each country, rather than becoming a toy to open our market while bullying us with tariffs on such exported commodities as softwood lumber.
I can't personally admit to influencing the Amazon sales ranking, myself. I grew up under Mulroney and remember Free Trade and Meech Lake reasonably well enough to hold my own opinion of what his memoirs are worth to me (though I should be more accommodating for someone who went to high school in the same town as I.) I did attempt to enter a contest at CTV to win one, but it seems I missed the deadline by about an hour. As can be expected from the CTV Toryvision network, they have ongoing coverage of the Mulroney popularity fest circulating around the launch of this book. You can read about his interview with Lloyd Robertson or see the CTV production of "Triumph and Treachery: The Brian Mulroney Story" which you can watch online.
Either way, it's great that a new discussion is being opened on this era in Canadian Politics. I expect that as people sift through this book, there will be quite a few interesting margin notes offered by major players of the day.
My first blog initially began as the Kyungnam
Journal in April of 2001, six months after I first landed in South Korea
to teach English. Upon moving to Seoul in January of 2002, it became the
Kyungnam to Kyunggi Journal (K2K) and upon returning to Canada and the
establishment of Latenight.ca, it's been archived here for posterity.
I hope
you enjoy the photos and anecdotes of my time working in hagwons as
an EFL instructor in the South Korean cities of Changwon and
Seoul. I especially hope that prospective English teachers
heading overseas can benefit from this journal.
A few updates may still materialize however,
as Korea retains its connection to me through memory, habit and, now,
matrimony.
My first Latenight blog was begun in March of
2004, when I repatriated to my hometown of Miramichi, NB.
Some of the posts are a bit sparse of concrete
personal information, compared to my other blogs. At the time, I'd
begun a small publishing company and most of my life was consumed by that,
while the competitive nature of my business situation demanded I keep my
work-related posts a bit vague.
Nonetheless, even after moving away (again),
it is still my hometown and I hope to continue to contribute posts from
time to time. Miramichi is a town in transition and deserves a blog
of its own, so while I am not presently residing in the city, perhaps I
can still cast my gaze back home periodically.
Halifax was my home for a time when I was a
child. It's the city of my alma mater, Dalhousie. It's also where
I've spent the bulk of my working life in the publishing industry.
I returned to Halifax, the City of Trees,
in September of 2005. By then a seasoned blogger, I set up the Latenight Halifax section of this site then
and retrofitted the other blogs to match.
This blog covers my life in Halifax through
writeups and photos, and also the steps leading up to myr marriage in June
of 2007.
We eventually decided not to settle here
though, despite the years I've enjoyed in Halifax, and as of June 2008, we
followed the ol' Maritime tradition and left to hang our hats in Toronto.
Well, we're essentially looking at a status quo result for a $300-million dollar election that garnered the lowest voter turnout in history. My numbers were way off, especially since the Bloc won two-thirds of the seats in Quebec when I thought they'd take a deeper hit. For a while I was worried the Bloc might form the official opposition.
The Biography department at your local Chapters-Indigo is sure heating up this season. Fast on the heels of ex-PM Brian Mulroney's 
Frankly, were they not already both retired, this could play up as excitingly as the feud between 
