After taking our swim, we had noodles for lunch and then made our way to Main Street where we listened to some live music and played a round of mini golf. Appetites returning, we strolled back to the cottage for a massive barbecue of meat. We'd brought galbi and our hosts treated us to pork chops, chicken and shrimp scewers as well as vegetables that they'd picked from their garden in Mississauga.
While the first of two mammoth grills cooked (there were only five of us until later after supper), I took a second trip to the water and snatched a few more shots of the sunset over Lake Erie. Returning, we ate until full and then more on top, as our hosts treated us to halo-halo, a Filipino dessert of crushed ice with fruit, red beans and sweeteners - very similar to Korean patbingsu.
We were exhausted by the time we drove home, but with it only being about an hour and a half outside the GTA, it was a great day trip destination and a fantastic close out to summer.
For a couple of homebodies, we actually managed to score a second day trip for the summer this Labour Day weekend. Without much delay at all, I've got the photos from Saturday's trip to Sherkston Shores.
A coworker of my wife gave the invitation and treated us to a day on the shores of Fort Erie. Sherkston Shores is a beach resort along the lake. People can park their RVs or longer term residents can purchase one of the mobile homes set up as small cottages, paying their lot fees annually. The homes are beautiful, with large decks built onto the side to enjoy the summer. We were managed to come on one of the most perfect days of the summer. The one we visited was actually inside a second secured zone, closest to the beach. The site also has an area called Main Street with a restaurant, disco, mini golf and a small water park amongst other attractions.
Since it was warm, we didn't waste much time going down to the beach and plunging into Lake Erie for a swim. The water was clear and warm and many were out to enjoy it.
Now that September has arrived, the weather is getting colder. I suppose I was lucky to have gotten out to see the flowers at the Gardens when I did. It seems like we had about one week of hot weather and the rest was rain. Now, I've already spotted leaves changing colour from off my balcony, here in Mississauga.
Nonetheless, autumn is an industrious time and I've been making a few changes around here. I hope that I may be able to update the blog more often than once per season from here on in. For now, however, I hope you like the pictures.
It was a treat to finally have something fresh to take photos of. The day alternated rapidly between cloud and sun, then back to cloud again. Nonetheless, it's only an hour outside of town and a great break from the city.
I have a bit of time on my hands for the next little while so what better use than an end of summer photo dump? These shots were all taken around the Canada Day weekend, although I know it's taken me until September to post them.
We had taken a trip to Burlington and visited the Royal Botanical Gardens. I've selected a number of the better photos and, since I've been terribly amiss at blogging this past year, I'll offer these up to change the ol' blog landscape a bit.
Canadian Heritage, unveiled 2009's Culture Capitals of Canada. They will be Trois-Rivières, Quebec; Coquitlam and Whistler, British Columbia; and Fredericton and Caraquet, New Brunswick. Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages made the speech in Trois-Rivières, yesterday.
The municipalities selected are eligible to receive funding to support and boost culture in their area. In total, $4.25 million is awarded. Trois-Rivières, which was chosen in the "municipality with a population over 125 000" could receive $2 million, while Coquitlam (with its population between 50,000 and 125,000) could get $750,000 in funding. The other municipalities, with populations under 50,000, could get a half-million dollars each.
The current title-holders, for 2008, include Surrey and Nanaimo, British Columbia; Morden, Manitoba; and Sackville, New Brunswick.
Robert Dziekanski's name is all over the media and blogosphere tonight - a victim of unbelievably shameful actions by Vancouver RCMP officers. The video above shows clearly what happened.
A forty-year-old Polish immigrant, Dziekanski was en route to meet up with family when he landed in Vancouver Airport, mid-afternoon on October 13. For some reason, it took ten hours before he cleared customs. Dziekanski did not speak English and was acting disoriented. Airport staff called security. Four RCMP officers arrived and in less than 25 seconds, tasered him into submission. Handcuffed, he was shot with a taser four times in all. The last two occurring at the same time and resulting in his heart stopping. On the video, one of the officers calls out "Code Red" but it's too late. Dzienkanski was dead.
Now it's been a month since his death but the release of this new video (there had been an earlier cell phone video) has caused a stir. Originally surrendered to investigators who promised to return it within 48 hours, they changed their minds once they got their hands on it. The owner of the video then initiated a law suit and that seems to have convinced them to turn it over. Now, it's made the media.
The video above basically flies against many of the assertions made my the police. Fraudulent reports such as there being only one or two taser shots, or that Dziekanski was violent, or that there were only three officers, all add up to betray a sickening coverup by negligent, lying police officers. Even now, spin doctors for the RCMP have been shuffling into interviews to demand that the public "not jump to conclusions" and to circle the wagons around their questionable comrades.
You can watch the video yourself. It's of surprisingly high resolution (YouTube does not fully capture the quality that television viewers were gifted with this morning on the news.) You can make your own determination but it's hard to consider the scene, as depicted, as being in the line of duty.
The first immediate result is that taser use will now be reviewed in Canada. In the past four years, there have been 18 deaths related to tasers. Of those, six were in British Columbia.
Batten down the hatches, ration the Ritalin and lock up your M.L.A.s: the infamous New Brunswick blogger, Charles Leblanc, is traveling West on the TransCanada, roadbloggin' as he goes.
Having posted on Sunday that he was leaving New Brunswick for Ontario, he's been a bit cryptic as to what reasons are behind it or for how long he's going. Nonetheless this is clearly a matter of national importance and dire concern, especially if he reaches Parliament Hill and Ottawa, which by all estimations, he could be expected to do within the next 24 hours.
Charles may be the most well known blogger to hail from the Picture Province. He's well noted for his almost guerilla-style ambushes of provincial politicians, his much publicized grudges with bureaucrats, and his six-month-long campout on the grounds of the New Brunswick Legislature to protest Ritalin and demand a study into its effects on children. Also, in 2006, he was arrested during a protest at a conference for Atlantica being held in Saint John. Police aggressively took him into custody and deleted photos from his camera, despite Leblanc being separate from the protesters (clearly shown by CBC footage of the event) and vocally identifying himself as a "Blogger" and not a protester. His trial for obstruction ended in an acquittal and made for a significant stepping stone in establishing the rights of bloggers as credible media sources.
Leblanc has numerous fans and foes who read his blog, Old Maison, each day. No word on if Ottawa is the destination of his travels, but it should be quite a blogging event if he takes his provincial act and goes federal for the fall.
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.
