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Origin stories and adjacent possibles

September 1, 2025 By Democracy, Music, Notes No Comments

Alberta populism has deep origins in a group of people who have long harboured a libertarian utopia for Alberta. Danielle Smith is the most recent manifestation of this wave of thought. The Jacobin traces her origin story.

My first connection to the internet was made using a second-hand IBM 386 through a dialup modem to the National Capital FreeNet in early 1994. I was an avid reader of several Usenet groups related to cooking, hiking and some of the social and political issues of the day. I was reminded of that great initiation to internet culture when reading this blog post which envisions a kind of barely adjacent, but now out of reach, timeline for how the internet might have developed if Salvador Allende had remained in power in Chile in 1973. Seriously.

While we are contemplating scenarios, how about one that places the crash of the US economy and political system in 2026. It’s a hastily constructed work of fiction, but it underscores how many things COULD go wrong to kick off an era of transformation. I found myself contemplating the position of lots of other people in this story, folks trying to scrape together rent, people who had just quit their jobs for a new opportunity or retirement, a new citizen…

This is the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and Rebecca Solnit is a good person to guide us through the stories and the spiritual meaning of what happened in New Orleans that week and afterwards.

It’s Labour Day. Be kind to those who have to work so you can have a holiday that was hard won by workers. And maybe listen to some great reinterpretations of Juan Carlos Caceres tango music from Le Collective Tango Negro Ensemble.

Up the Rise

August 31, 2025 By Football No Comments

A fun night last night at the Vancouver Rise match at Swangard Stadium. Coming into last night’s match against Montreal Roses, the Rise were undefeated in five matches and two points off Montreal for second place. Vancouver started bright but former TSS Rover Tanya Boychuk opened the scoring for Montreal. Vancouver responded on a Holly Ward goal, scored off a perfect pass from Quinn. Ward has been snake bitten all year and she needs to get her goals to efforts ratio up a bit. She’s tireless in attack and this goal was well deserved. She had a tough game against Hailey Whitaker at right back for Montreal but she’ll be happy with that goal.

Vancouver got their second in added time before the half when right winger Lisa Perchersky curled a sublime shot into the far top corner. The Rise protected the lead in the second half but pressed for more and could have scored two or three more. By the final ten minutes both teams were running out of gas and the Rise managed the match to a satisfying conclusion, winning 2-1 and climbing to second.

The Rise have nailed this moment in time I think. They seem to be outdrawing Vancouver FC, the Canadian Premier League team who play up the road in Langley. The atmosphere is marvellous and the conversation in the stands, especially between the young women and girls who are dressed in their own club shirts, is about WOMEN’S football specifically. The girls behind us were comparing their own style of play to Alex Morgan, and then finishing the conversation with “but she’s American, so whatever…”

Walking around at half-time, I had the persistent thought in my head, which many of us involved in women’s football have, said in a sarcastic and mocking tone “BuT NoOnE WAtChes WoMEn’S FooTBalL!” which is the objection raised against the sport. Truly, if you head out to Langley to watch Vancouver FC, they are drawing about half of what the Rise is drawing. There are lots of reasons why, having to do with Vancouver FC’s general incompetence in developing support for their club at the moment, but the Rise are still averaging more people at their matches (4296, which included 16,000 at their home opener at BC Place, to be fair) than the CPL average (4049). In fact only one CPL club has outdrawn the Rise on average.

The point is, people DO watch women’s football, and it’s not always the same people that watch men’s football. The Rise are doing great. Long may they continue to, well, rise.

One planet there, this one here, and what one are they on?

August 30, 2025 By Democracy, Notes, Uncategorized No Comments

An astonishing photograph from the Very Large Telescope this week of a planet being born. From the link:

At the center of this frame lies a young Sun-like star, hidden behind a coronagraph that blocks its bright glare. Surrounding the star is a bright, dusty protoplanetary disk— the raw material of planets. Gaps and concentric ringsmark where a newborn world is gathering gas and dust under its gravity, clearing the way as it orbits the star. Although astronomers have imaged disk-embedded planets before, this is the first-ever observation of an exoplanet actively carving a gap within a disk — the earliest direct glimpse of planetary sculpting in action.

Downhill mountain biking is huge here on the south coast of British Columbia. As a young rider for years my son built trails and maintained a few here on Bowen Island. His mentor and inspiration was our neighbour Dangerous Dan Cowan, an absolute legend of North Shore style trail building who built unreal structures here. The history of mountain bike trail development is a folk tradition here. Mountain Life lifts the cover on some that hidden history.

In this ongoing story about Alberta schools banning books, the Alberta premier today had this response to the list prepared by the Edmonton School Board:

“Edmonton Public is clearly doing a little vicious compliance over what the direction is,” Smith said during an unrelated news conference. If they need us to hold their hand through the process to identify what kind of materials are appropriate … we will more than happily work with them to work through their list, one by one, so we can be super clear about what it is we’re trying to do,” Smith said.

The term is “malicious compliance” and it is an excellent tactic. It will be good to see exactly how the premier wants her party’s bigotry expressed in public schools. Here’s the ministerial order, which makes pretty steamy reading on its own.

A wake up call for Tottenham this morning. After a season start with two clean sheets, we met a determined Bournemouth side who brought their high pressing game to North London. After they scored an early goal they kept on going and put Spurs into a slow, defensive, and reactionary torpor. It wasn’t until 77’ that Spurs found some life. Still, some slow decisions and poor passing compromised our ability to take advantage of Bournemouth’s fatigue. We only managed one shot on target, five overall. The Cherries saw out the match with grit and determination and raw belief ,holding on for the win. They played out of this world.

Nuance, populism and Pierre Poilievre’s limitations

August 29, 2025 By Democracy No Comments

Now that Pierre Poilievre is back in the public eye, it’s worth pointing out why his particular brand of populist politics will never make him a good prime minister.

There was recently a case in Canada in which a man has been charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon for defending himself from a home intruder. Predictably, this stirred Poilievre into a broad-based attack on the justice system as a whole and he is now vowing to introduce a private member’s bill that would broaden the conditions for using self-defense, including killing someone if someone enters your home without permission.

This is a populist tactic. You take an extreme case that is an outlier to the general application of the law, and you call the system broken and promise to “fix” it with a bill that would outlaw that very specific case without any consideration to the other consequences of the law, or to whether the law actually works at all.

In Canada self-defence is permitted by law, but under specific conditions. If the police think you have broken those conditions, you will be charged. It is then up to a judge to hear the case. But it is already legal to kill someone in self-defence. People have been acquitted in the past for even killing police officers who were either undercover, or who were acting illegally. So what Poilievre is advocating for is actually legal now, although I doubt that he is intending that this bill should result in more police deaths. That is certainly not the country I want to live in.

But that is the problem with pandering. You miss (or in this case just ignore) the nuances of cases and you can end up creating the conditions that make the world less safe and less secure, including for the people who support you and for whom you are claiming to champion, all to appear “stronger.”

When you are in opposition, you can do and say whatever you want, because you don’t have the power to make actual changes. A populist will always jump on the outrage train because stoking fear and providing simplistic solutions to problems, even before a court has ruled on the legality of a situation, gets you “points.” in some cases, it might even end up getting you elected, and then you have to govern. And you cannot govern that way. Populists make terrible governments, as we are seeing all around North America at the moment.

A more reasonable opposition leader might say “this case has the potential to erode the rights of Canadians to defend themselves. Let’s see how the trial goes and if we don’t like the result we will propose amendments to the Criminal Code that allow for more latitude in self-defence, but that provide reasonable safeguards for people like delivery drivers, police, paramedics, firefighters, canvassers, and social workers, who by the nature of their jobs, find themselves more likely to be in these situations where they are on the receiving end of self-defence.” That might be a position I would disagree with, because I’m not sure the law needs more latitude, but it is one I would be able to discuss. But how are citizens supposed to reason with a reactionary position based on a single unique case which may well be complicated by a number of mitigating factors? We cannot make laws like that, and Poilievre’s gamesmanship is not designed for deliberation. It is what I call “a drive by shouting” which is when a politician makes bold and brash statements with no regard for consequences simply to trigger emotional responses based in anger, fear, and perceived grievance. It forces a categorical response. And that erodes democratic process.

Poilievre is not a reasonable opposition leader, and his return to politics through his recent by-election has just reminded me why so many people refused to elect his party to govern the country back in the spring. Since returning to Parliament, many in his own party have advised him to change his tone. Many others, including me, are skeptical that he will be capable of that. Many are watching. We need a good opposition leader in Canada right now, even if that leader is the leader of the Conservative Party. Poilievre isn’t it.

ETA: More in depth coverage of this issue.

What if I wanted this?

August 28, 2025 By Being No Comments

The older I get the more I realize that as people get older they witness changes and pine for the good old days. It’s cliche for a reason, because it seems nearly universal. I get it. Things aren’t what they used to be. Younger generations than me (and they are plural at this point) have a language and experience that I cannot be a part of. I occasionally break through with folks where we are enjoined in common cause, like in our supporter-owned football club, or in some of the workshops and courses I deliver. But mostly, I can my peers living in increasingly agitated nostalgia. Things are not as good as they were before.

Is this the default setting? Nostalgia is practically a genre in art, culture, and fashion. But what is it called when a person of middle or advanced age writes or paints or composes about how THIS moment is amazing. How things that he or she wanted in the past have finally come to fruition and the new people in the world and teethings they are making and the places they are building or protecting are awesome? I remember when I got my first iPhone. It was like a childhood dream come true. Finally, the device of my dreams was here in my lifetime! I made the above image the lock screen. If you know, you know.

It’s not a pollyanna-ish sentiment I’m after. It’s not a carpe diem, or affirmation-based gratitude practice. There isn’t a word for it in English, which is why I’m reaching. Is there art to be made that features characters who grow old feeling like their experiences are the ones they have been hoping to have, that the demographics and the culture and the things that are happening are what they wanted all along?

There is a lack of this, eh? We all pine for a future we can’t have yet, an alternative we will never have, or a past that is gone. It’s hard to listen for the good things in the present in the monotonous moan of complaint in all that.

(Yes there is suffering. There always was. The “good old days” my generation pine for featured apartheid in South Africa, death squads in Central America, a hole burning in the ozone layer, residential schools in Canada, acid rain, and famine. I’m not naive.)