Solutions made easy with Evil Beaver Armies.

I am little concerned for sovereignty at the moment, considering the fact that the US just bought a ghost town in BC. Kitseault, BC first went on the market in '92 and the asking price was $23.5 million. Here's an excert from Lena Sin's Province article.


"Located 139 kilometers north of Prince Rupert on
Alice Arm,the sale of Kitsault included 130 hectares of land,
2.4 km of oceanfront, 92 homes, 210 apartments, a shopping mall,
recreation centre, a gym, library, curling rink and paved roads.

The former mining town was built in the late 1970s, but when
molybdenum prices plunged in 1982, the Climax mine was closed.
Its last residents moved out in 1983, with a sign on the edge
of town asking the last person leaving Kitsault to "please turn
out the lights."

This September the asking price was $7 million and four months later it was sold for an "undisclosed amount" to Krishnan Suthanthiran, a US based property developer. Now, this whole "I'm not going to tell the public how much I paid" seems suspicious to me. I mean, $7 million should be parking change for this guy right?

And no one seems concerned that this guy just bought a town, an entire town. So far Suthanthiran hasn't decided what to do with the town but the options are practically endless. Suggestions have included a resort town, university or spa destination.

I suppose the one good thing to come out of this is that Suthanthiran and his new company Kitsualt Resort Ltd. are going to be working with Nisga'a First Nations as well as the government to decided what to do with the town.

This to me, completely devalues Canadian sovereignty. I mean, if we're just going to sell off pieces of Canada to other countries, why are we even here? What is the point of protecting our sovereignty if we're just going to sell it anyway?

This isn't the only sovereignty problem though.

A) The Danes sent the frigate Vaedderen to patrol the waters between Ellsmere Island and Greenland. They've been doing things like this for several years but this time, the frigate took it too far. They sailed in disputed waters and may have landed on Hans Island, an island that Canada has always claimed as Canadian. Apparently the Danes want it too, they even planted a flag on it. Am I insulted by this? Completely; I thought the Danes were our friends but you don't go planting flags on other people's islands, it's just not done. Now, you might ask, who the heck cares if the Danes want an island that usually doesn't show up on maps and is really of no value to Canada.

First, the waters around the island contain important fish stocks as well as turbot and shrimp stocks.

Second, Greenland Inuit have reportedly been crossing over to Baffin Island to participate in illegal polar bear hunts. Personally, if you want to come over, just phone. It's way nicer than coming home to find your neighbour just let himself inside and is now comfortably vegged out on your couch drinking the last beer.

Third, if we give/let them have the island, it will set a precedent. I'd rather keep our "territorial integrity" rather than just give up. Why can't we defend our northern border very well? It comes down to money and insufficient funding for the military.

B) The US still says that the Northwest Passage is an "international strait". That's like saying the Missouri river is open for business and hello, it's not. So what the hell do they think they're doing? Apparently it's far cheaper and quicker to sail through the Passage than to go around North America. Also, due to global warming, it's predicted that in about 50 years time, the Passage will be free of ice in the summer time. It's not just Americans gallivanting through here though, ships of all kinds, commercial and recreational are just zooming through, assuming that it's perfectly fine. Apparently, the Passage has also been renamed "Panama Canal North which just about makes me sick. Let me make this clear, our backyard is not a sidewalk.

And this story just about made me smack my computer screen. Writer, Usha Lee McFarling apparently doesn't think that the Northwest Passage belongs to us.


"So many American military personnel had flooded
into the Arctic to monitor Russian threats by air and sea
from stations at Eureka and Alert that the Canadians feared
losing control of their northern flank. The Inuit were human
flagpoles, dispatched north to establish Canadian sovereignty.

Since then, the Canadians have considered the frozen archipelago
of ocean, ice and islands to be their land and the Northwest
Passage to be their internal waterway. 'It's ours,' said Col.
Kevin McLeod, commander of the Canadian Northern Forces."


Since then, the Canadians have considered...the Northwest Passage to be their internal waterway? Excuse me? But what exactly does she know of Canadian history? The Northwest Passage has belonged to Canada for over 100 years. Any waterway that connects two oceans is considered international waters, but the passage impenetrable for most of the year and it's certainly not an open passage.

C) There's a dispute between the northern maritime border between Alaska and the Yukon. Within this disputed zone are oil and gas reserves so you can guess why we're fighting about. But if we had control of it, I'm sure that we wouldn't be drilling for oil and gas. Nobody on the West Coast seems to want to drill.

D) And let's not forget Machias Seal Island, a disputed island on the Canada/US border. It's claimed by both countries and the boundary has never fully been defined. Why do we have an interest in it? Well, it lies near the shipping lanes into Passamaquoddy Bay, the only shipping access for New Brunswick. This report says that 'Canada has been much more astute in creating the impression that it is sovereign over Machias Seal Island'. But the report suggests that because the island is of so little significance that the matter should just be left alone. Personally, I want the issue resolved. It's like having a loose thread on a sweater. It's always there, daring you to pull on it.

In conclusion it looks like we have a lot of problems with people wanting to move in or at least, bite off chunks of my country. It's disturbing and while I imagine that I should feel pleased in a perverse way that people would want parts of Canada, its not like that at all. They don't see it as a place of wildness, as a place of freedom for all. They simply see monetary value as the reward, something which I don't approve of. If I had my way, Canada would be defended by an Evil Beaver Army.

Diamonds in the NWT

Did you know the Northwest Territories is now the diamond capital of North America? Wait, it gets even better, do you know how much in royalties these guys get for this billion dollar natural resource? Nothing, or as my thesaurus says, "not a sausage" though I'm not sure sausages really apply when it comes to the NWT.

Guess who currently owns the rights to the royalties? That's right, it's the federal government. They own the resources and the revenues. Apparently Paul Martin is dedicated to resolving the resource issue but nothing seems to have actually happened that makes me think anything will actually happen. It's like waiting for Godot, except in this case, everyone in the Northwest Territories is waiting for Martin to return the family jewels that he just happened to "borrow".

Right now the PM is involved in something that he calls, "Northern Strategy". It gives the three northern territories $40 million each for them to put in their pockets for them to use on a rainy day. First of all, what is $40 million going to buy you? That's penny candy money. It's apparently supposed to help the territories "buy stuff" along with transfer payments they receive annually. It looks more like Martin tried to buy off the territories using whatever he happened to have in his pocket. (This happened to include meter change, bellybutton lint and a piece of paper with the word Iqaluit on it).

This is directly from the Western Premier's Conference that took place in Kelowna, BC, 2003. This is one of their recommendations.

"Northern devolution agreements with the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to arrange for the transfer of powers over northern lands, water and resources, including a fair share of resource revenues. Premiers agreed that the Territories, similar to provinces, should manage and control the scope and pace of development of their resources and must benefit from this development, in order to create strong, self-reliant territories that contribute to the benefit of all Canadians."

While that's a bit wordy, even the western premiers look like they support the transfer of natural resource control back to the territories.

But why wouldn't the government want to give control back to the Northwest Territories? They have a population of approximately 38 000 and every year they're given a transfer payment because they're deemed to be a "have-not" territory. If they were given back control of the diamonds mines, wouldn't the revenues be enough to make them a "have" province and therefore, the government would no longer have to make transfer payments to the territory? Sure the diamonds might be worth more than the transfer payments for one year but in the long run the diamonds aren't going to last forever and the Northwest sure isn't going anywhere.

What could they do with the royalties from the diamonds? Well, they might build some decent highways to replace the ones that seem to be crumbling due to increased traffic, mainly industrial traffic that I assume must be because of the diamonds. I did consider suggesting they build one of those large safes with a diving board like Scrooge McDuck but I think that diving into a pool of diamonds would be a one way trip.

Canadians moving to America

I don't really like famous Canadians moving to the US. The reason being because people soon forget where they came from and associate them with America. Can you say Matthew Perry? Did anyone know he was Canadian? Alex Trebek, Joshua Jackson, Michael J. Fox, Kim Cattrall. Does anyone know these people are Canadian or at least once were?

It's like having someone borrow your car for a week and then everyone in the neighbourhood forgets that it's actually yours. Now, Canada doesn't "own" anybody but it kind of hurts when it seems almost embarrassing to admit you're from Canada.

Yes, I know, you can't make it big unless you make it in the US because we're just a puny little country with nothing to offer people who want to be famous. It's the truth and people move there, of there own volition, and some become American citizens. I mean, they spend all there time down there anyway so why would they want to be Canadian any longer? Ouch that stings.

Deep down inside it feels like a betrayal. They went for the big fish and left the small pond behind. I can understand why they would want to move up in the world but it makes me feel bad when they just don't want to be Canadian any longer. I think it's also jealousy. The US seems to have everything. They're big, they're rich and they had this big revolution that everyone knows about.

I suppose it's just an insecurity about being a Canadian and not really having an identity or at least, feeling as if you don't have one. I feel lost all the time but it's made worse by these neighbours who have this great sense of pride about their country, with flags and symbols everywhere. I totally don't begrudge them that; I'm happy that they have that, at least they know who they are. But it seems as if we're always trying to measure up to them, we're always in their shadow. They're Apollo goldenboy and we're not.

I mean, what the heck does it mean to be Canadian? We didn't have a big war to establish our country. Many people think Canadian history's boring because it's not as flashy as US history. We're like a teenager that's trying to find themselves, a problem I readily identify with. And I'm sure that anyone over the age of 12 can understand the problems associated with not knowing who you are.

Again it comes down to why do we care? Why do we care if a Cal-State student doesn't think about Canada? Why do we care if stars leave for brighter futures down south? Well, I suppose we want Americans to be obsessed about us as we are about them. Disgusting isn't it? We hang on every little word they say about us because we're so closely tied to them we might as well be strapped to the back of an eagle. (Well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say like a beaver in the talons of an eagle but can you really see an eagle carrying off a 60 pound beaver?) But I think one of the reasons we look to them is because we don't know who we are and have to define ourselves through them. This is one of the rare instances when Canada just pisses me off. We all have to suffer because there is no conscious identity. I have enough problems trying to figure out who I am without trying to figure out what my country is.


Quotes:

"With or without the Royals, we are not Americans. Nor are we British. Or French. Or Void. We are something else. And the sooner we define this, the better."
~Will Ferguson

"Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.
~Marshall McLuhan

"I guess Canada is a nice country. I've never thought much about it."
~Anon. Cal-State student

"Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren't British, and to the British that we aren't Americans that we haven't had time to become Canadians."
~Helen Gordon McPherson

Wayne Gretzky = The Greatest Canadian?

Well, let's just get this straight, I don't think he's the Greatest Canadian but I do think that he's the Greatest Hockey Player. And to Canada, hockey is pretty big (possibly everything) so I guess he's the equivalent of a national hero.

Now, unfortunately, I was too young to actually see him play and by the time I finally became interested in hockey enough to watch it, he had retired. I've never seen a game he played in but I'm sure that ESPN shows old games once in a while. I did grow up knowing about him and how great he was. I would always know when the playoffs were because my parents would hog the tv.

I can say that he has had a profound effect on the young children of Canada. There are a lot of kids out there who want to be the next "Great One". He inspires them to go for their dreams, something I completely support.

But at the same time, he's not a politician, he's not an activist or environmentalist; he's a spokesperson for Ford and once upon a time, a pro hockey player. I mean, have his achievements made the world a better place?

It's possible that he was on the list because we have so few people in the limelight that we picked whoever we could. Or it could be that we put our sports personalities on higher pedestals than others because they mean more to us. While this may sound horrible and I agree, it does, Canadians probably pay more attention to a flashy hockey game than a new scientific discovery. While one may be more important than the other, I'm not sure we, as a people, know which one it is.

By the way, does anyone else see an eerie connection between Gretzky's jersey number 99 and the year he retired (1999)? Maybe I'm just paranoid.


List of Achievements:

Hart Memorial Trophy (10 times)
Lady Byng Trophy ('80,'91,'92,'94,'99)
Art Ross Trophy (seven consecutive times,'81-'94)
Stanley Cup ('84,'85,'87,'88)
Canada Cup ('84,'87,'91)
Conn Smythe Trophy ('85,'88)
Lester Patrick Trohphy ('94)
Lester B. Pearson Award ('82,'83,'84,'85,'87)
Inducted into Hockey Hall of Fame ('99)
NHL All-Star Game MVP ('83,'89,'99)
NHL First All-Star Team ('81-87,'91)
NHL Second All-Star Team ('80,'88,'89,'90,'94,'97,'98)
IOC Olympic Order 2002
Executive Director of Team Canada, World Cup Champions 2004

Britain sold us down the river, literally

Have you ever been seriously stabbed in the back? I learned some disturbing information about my country. Bear with me, I know this was a long time ago but way back when Canada was just a baby, we got screwed over by, well, I guess, the mother country.

Britain was watching the Franco-Prussian War from the sidelines and I suppose they believed they would have to get involved or that someone would involve them in it. In any case, they supposedly didn't want to worry about having the US at their backs. It seems as if they believed the US would attack but I don't see why the Americans would. I suppose I can see that whole 'eye for an eye' thing, but I've never been attacked by an eagle before so I wouldn't know. Here again, back-stabbing comes into play but I think it's more like, backclawing. Anyway, Britain wanted to be pals with the US and so, when problems arose between Canada and their southern neighbours, Britain stepped in and a conference was called in Washington, 1871.

The reason for the conference was because the Americans wanted compensation for damage done by the ship "Alabama" during the war. They said the "Alabama
", a Confederate ship, had caused a lot of damage to Union ships. British shipyards had been contracted by Confederates to build a lot of warships and the "Alabama" was one of them. In compensation, the US suggested Britain hand over Canada, a Dominion country. (Boy do I want to smack someone with a pipe for suggesting that. Compensation my ass.)

Meanwhile, John A. (our Prime Minister) is also at the Conference and wanted compensation for Fenian raids (a bunch of Irish guys who came up from the US and burned down houses and barns because they wanted to free Ireland from Britain). He also wanted a new reciprocity treaty. The old one had ended in 1866 and with it, the US no longer had rights to fish in Canadian waters. Anyone want to guess what the Americans actually did? That's right, they wouldn't stop fishing in our waters or sailing up and down the St. Lawrence.

So, you might wonder, what happened at this conference? Remember how I was talking about back-stabbing? Well, here is where it comes into play. Normally, one would expect Britain to support Canada because, well, hey, the US broke away and had this huge war of independence. But because Britain was freaked out about 'eagle attacks', she sides with the US, firmly cutting through flesh and muscle, to lodge a really sharp knife into Canada's back.

They gave the US pretty much everything they wanted, except the country. They gave the US access to Canadian fisheries for 10 years (for this the US gave us $5 million, ooooh). The US also got free navigation on the St. Lawrence, never mind the fees. The western border is also finalized. There were three plans for how the San Juan islands would be divided up but the US ended up getting all of them and Canada got the Gulf Islands.

What exactly did Canada get in return for all of this? The right to navigate some obscure rivers in Alaska. Alaska? What the heck?

Britain kind of bad about screwing us over so they give us 2.5 million pounds. Well, that just makes everything better, including that whole fear about sovereignty.

So, let's recap. Canada gets stabbed by parent, US comes to fish in our pond, we get pocket change and a free pass to river rafting in some place we can't even find on the map.

By the way, I couldn't find any information on eagle attacks so if anyone has any information on this, please let me know.

101 Books to Read

Well, I've always considered myself to be a well-read person but I believe this list completely destroys that illusion.

My excuse? Note that the bolded books (the ones I've read) mean I've read the ENTIRE book. There are a lot of books here that I started and never finished for various reasons. My goal? To finish reading these books by New Years next year. My safety net? I'll probably have forgotten about this later. My score as of now is 13/101 which is pretty pathetic. I challenge any of you to claim that you've read fewer.


Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie.
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son