During the emotional roller coaster that was the Intervention marathon Maria and I watched last night someone slipped in a trailer for the new movie Devil, out in theatres in a couple of weeks. It was a short trailer, I wasn’t even really paying attention, but we did both pause and take note when the name “M. Night Shyamalan” whipped across the screen.

Shyamalan is one of my favourite writers/directors working today and so, since I follow him pretty closely, I was totally surprised to find that he had a new film coming out. Well, not exactly. As it turns out, Shyamalan was involved in the film only as far as the story concept goes. He came up with the idea, but that’s about it. Still, I like the way he thinks and all of his films in the past, as far as I’m concerned, have had really interesting stories at the heart of them so I’m excited for Devil. But let me tell you why I’m a bit frustrated too.

The concept behind devil—the concept that Shyamalan came up with—is that a bunch of people are stuck in an elevator on their way to work. One by one, they begin dying, and someone in that elevator is responsible for killing them, one of them is the devil himself.

It sounds like an interesting concept, but of course Shyamalan is going to get some flack. Sometimes I wonder if he isn’t the (amateur) movie critics whipping boy..

As soon as trailers for Devil trickled out of the production house the press dug up that same tired old line, “It might be a good movie, but I bet it has a twist ending.”

Ah, the good old twist ending. That style of film-making and story-telling that M. Night Shyamalan is infamous for. Well, the press say, he better work hard to dig himself out of that whole, he better finally make a movie without a twist ending.

And I roll my eyes clear out of my head.

Now I don’t want to confuse being a Shyamalan fan with being a fanboy, a fanatic, or an apologist. I am none of those things but I am tired of hearing the poor guy get flack for widely help misconceptions and poorly-researched assertions.

It is incorrect to say that all M. Night Shyamalan films have twist endings. It’s incorrect to say that he really needs to redeem himself from that plot device and come up with something new.

A quick look at his film-making resume from the past ten or so years is revealing:

- The Sixth Sense (Twist; he’s dead)
- Stuart Little (No Twist; we knew he was a mouse all along)
- Unbreakable (Small twist; you’re a superhero and he’s your nemesis)
- Signs (No Twist; we knew they were aliens)
- The Village (Twist; it’s the 21st century, better buy a new wardrobe)
- Lady in the Water (No Twist)
- The Happening (No Twist)
- The Last Airbender (No Twist)

Basing our conclusions on actual research (i.e., I looked at a list of films he’s made) it’s clear that less than half of his movies feature twist endings. But why does he still receive so much negative attention over it? Why does he have to redeem himself with a film like Devil?

As far as I’m concerned Shyamalan does a great twist ending, he’s a clever writer and director, but it isn’t the only thing he can do. He’s proven himself as a competent film-maker time and time again. While I didn’t see The Last Airbender (I think it’s a film for kids) both The Happening (an intentionally-crafted B-movie) and Lady in the Water (a fairytale) were pulled off very well. And no twists.

From what I’ve seen so far Devil looks like it’ll be a pretty good film. It’s a cool concept. But all the buzz on whether or not we’ll be in for a big twist in the end is just foolishness. Although for a film about the devil, wouldn’t it be perfectly fitting?

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Moving Pictures, Silent Films

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In 2008, while Maria and I were still dating (we’re married now) she lived in South Africa and volunteered at a home for AIDS orphans. She stayed for six months. For six weeks I went to visit her. Now, a couple of years later, I think I can finally begin to process the experience and I figure while the memories are still fresh enough I may as well write them down.

Leaving the airport I was struck by both the familiar and the strange. Familiar was the Toyota Corolla that Maria and I piled into along with Ruth, the woman who owned and operated the home that Maria was working in. From what I’d been filled in on by Maria, I knew a bit about Ruth. She was a single-parent who had a sordid and difficult life in South Africa. She was Afrikaans which, outside of Africa, might mean very little but on the continent, it carried with it a lot of history. She struggled to work and manage the children’s home, she had big dreams but was having a difficult go of it.

To me, South Africa had a very strange and compelling history as far as I understood it. The Dutch settlers, ancestors to the Afrikaans, set up trading posts and colonized the continent in a way that’s pretty unusual as far as colonies went. Strange because they did it pretty early on in the scheme of things, and strange again because they stayed and made South Africa more than just another trading port. The Dutch stayed amongst the Black Africans and developed an identity of their own, the Afrikaans. Their accent, a mix of Dutch and British, sounds a bit like Australian but is absolutely unique in the world, as is their language.

Apartheid, the separation of the Black Africans from the white Europeans (Afrikaans, British, etc.) was largely similar to Segregation in the Southern United States but lasted well into the late 20th century. Today, the Afrikaans and the Black Africans exist, along with Indians (who were brought into South Africa as domestic servants), in a kind of strange tandem. It’s a clear three-tier social system: Afrikaans, Indians, Black Africans with each ethnic group serving very specific purposes.

As a result of its interesting and unique history South Africa has a very particular feel to it: European, yet African. I immediately fell in love with the place.
But, from my perspective, South Africa had its problems too. It was violent. Car-jacking, as far as I could tell, happened pretty regularly and stabbings, shootings, and rapes were the kind of mundane things that the papers didn’t bother to even report on anymore. Like many African countries, the more wealthy (or, perhaps, the not poor) had gates around their houses or their communities and private security companies were in high demand. There was also the reason that Maria was there: AIDS. The country is crippled underneath a massive AIDS infection rate and beyond killing mothers, fathers, and caregivers, the epidemic is leaving babies and young children orphaned and abandoned. One of the children in the home that Maria worked in was left, newborn, underneath a tree.

But back to our ride from the airport.

Stinking like twenty hours on an airplane, I was, like I said, struck by the dichotomy. Here we were, Maria and I, inside of what would otherwise be a pretty familiar car. The ubiquitous Toyota Corolla, pretty popular in Canada. We were together, which was pretty ordinary, but then again we were driving on the wrong side of the road, being driven by a woman that Maria seemed pretty familiar with yet I had just met. It was another world.

The truly strange though struck me about twenty minutes outside of the airport maze when we hit traffic. Mind you, this was something like ten o’clock at night and a traffic jam at that hour seemed to me to be pretty remarkable. We soon learned that it was a kind of traffic stop situation—for those in Ontario imagine the R.I.D.E. program on the middle of the 401. For those unable to imagine it was all four or five lanes of the area’s largest highway blocked off for police to inspect cars, passengers, and cargo for anything illegal. As we slowly crawled forward, one car at a time, towards the road block, we witnessed police officers with automatic weapons pulling cars aside and loading passengers into large police vans. While we didn’t do, or have, anything illegal it was still unnerving to be so close to such a potentially violent situation. Several times in South Africa when we encountered heavily armed police or security outfits the first thought through my mind was, imagine how easy it would be for them to fire that weapon.

Still, we managed to slowly make out way closer and closer to the barricade and when we passed through and out the other side we were zooming. Another thing about South Africa is that fast always felt much faster. Maybe it was the fact that the highways were unfamiliar and unpredictable (to me at least). Maybe the mere idea of not knowing where we were going exactly made it seem like we were racing there faster than usual. Certainly in some cases when we didn’t have seatbelts—apparently not a huge hit in South Africa—this in itself lent a little edge to traveling. But, in any case, going places was always an adventure and I remember this first trip from the airport to the farm very clearly.

As we zoomed along the highway I tried to get a look out the windows as much as I could. Later the sights would become pretty familiar and even a bit mundane, but they were new and absolutely compelling in the dark of the night. I remember lights, tons of lights, from what turned out to be a very rich Durban suburb nestled against the coast of the Indian Ocean. We passed near the enormous Gateway Shopping Centre, the mall that would become all too familiar to Maria and I—a mall that easily rivals Toronto’s Eaton’s Centre. Imagine that.

Soon the paved roads began to degrade in quality as we passed outside of the city limits and eventually we found ourselves on a stretch of very, very dark dirt roads on our way to a tiny community called Oakford.

I wouldn’t call it an orphanage because that isn’t what it is. It’s an organization called Sinakekele, but it’s really too small to even call it an organization either. In a nutshell, it’s a woman, Ruth, who takes in children orphaned by AIDS. At the time of our visit the “family” consisted of Ruth, her two children (in their teens) and four children she took in, then legally adopted, who were orphaned by AIDS. In an interesting bit of scheduling I arrived for my six week stay on the same day of a major move. Ruth, Maria, and the children moved from a small house in the middle-income suburbs near Durban to a kind of farmhouse somewhere near the middle of nowhere.

In the pitch dark it seemed like we’d arrived at the edge of the world. As the remote-controlled gate clanked open the car was immediately assaulted by a pack of children, two dogs, and a lot of noise. All I really remember from the first night is being overwhelmed by bouncy, excited children who spoke in an accent that I couldn’t even begin to decipher at the time, and boxes. I surely hadn’t come at a good time, in the middle of moving and trying to unpack. But I don’t think I really thought about how inconvenient my arrival might have been, I was exhausted and although everyone wanted to visit I just wanted to sleep. When I did find my bed it turned out to be a bunk bed with an impossibly thin mattress, a pillow to match, and an old comforter. After checking the room thoroughly for bugs (I would remain paranoid for the entire six weeks) I piled up my suitcases in the corner and collapsed to sleep. In hindsight, it didn’t matter how uncomfortable it might have been—in reality it wasn’t all that bad—I was far too tired to notice. That night, I knew, was just skimming the surface. When I woke up everything would be different.

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The only thing less impressive than Greg Long’s skills as a writer are his skills as an investigator.

In The Making of Bigfoot writer and self-professed journalist Greg Long sets out to uncover the truth about the famous Patterson-Gimlin film. The Bigfoot film. Captured in the late 1960’s the film features about forty seconds of an unknown bi-pedal creature walking across a creek in the middle of the woods. Allegedly filmed in Northern California by two amateur Bigfoot hunters (Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin) it has been the subject of much controversy since its release forty years ago. Greg Long decides to put all the questions and controversy to rest, once and for all and by the end of the book he is satisfied that he’s done exactly that.

Let me be clear though, if I handed in The Making of Bigfoot as a term paper in University I would receive it back to me, almost immediately, chalk-full of red pen.

Since the controversy surrounding the infamous film revolves around the question of whether or not it was a hoax, Long’s decided approach was to interview those close to the film’s creators, Patterson and Gimlin. Of course, lending to the film’s controversy is the fact that Roger Patterson died of cancer shortly after the film was made (in fact he was suffering from a remission during the period of time in which he filmed the “creature”) and Bob Gimlin, supposedly tired of the publicity, has refused interviews since shortly after Patterson died. With those who actually made the film not talking Long’s task was a decidedly difficult one, he had to gather material evidence and witness testimony from second-hand sources.

Indeed, written as a kind of road trip diary, much of the book is comprised of Greg and his wife Pat traveling up and down the Northwestern United States interviewing anyone with a connection to Roger Patterson and the Bigfoot film. Quickly, the book takes its fatal turn.

What separates Greg Long’s effort from real journalism is simple. Early on in the book, indeed in the first pages, Long has already made up his mind about Roger Patterson. He is a crook and a con-man. Based on character sketches from those that knew him, Long quickly concludes that, absent of any shred of a motive, Patterson faked the famous film.

The sketch painted by Long’s witnesses presents a Roger Patterson that can be interpreted, I would argue, in two different ways. Long’s interpretation largely ignores an overwhelming amount of the information that he himself gathered.

Long argues that because Patterson was bad with money—constantly borrowing from friends and not paying them back—he was a thief and a crook. He argues that because Patterson never had a job and instead bounced from invention to invention, money-making scheme to money-making scheme, often bringing along friends to help finance his adventures, that he was a con-man. These interpretations of the evidence, from a very early point in the book, colour Long’s entire endeavour.

Instead, I would interpret Patterson in an entirely different light. Based on the same witness statements that Long relies on, I see Patterson as an inventor, an entrepreneur, and an artist. Born into extreme poverty, Patterson never had a real handle on how to use and hold onto money. He was a rodeo cowboy, a performer, and was constantly thinking up new wild ideas and schemes but lacked the commitment and dedication to see them through. In his wake he left a trail of half-finished ideas, half-baked schemes, and a lot of debtors but he wasn’t a crook, he wasn’t a thief, he was a product of a very active imagination, with a bad grip on bookkeeping. Long, a working class man himself, takes an obvious affront to Patterson’s lifestyle, he points out several times that Patterson is somehow less reliable of a person because he never held down a job or because he didn’t use money wisely. The only evidence that Patterson ever intentionally cheated anybody is in Greg Long’s imagination. An assumption, from the evidence, that being raised in poverty damned Patterson to having a difficult time handling his finances is a far more reasonable conclusion to draw.

Indeed, Long wields dangerous prejudices against Roger Patterson and, I would strongly argue, his conclusions, made hastily at an early stage in the investigation, clearly taint the rest of his research.

But, if it were down to mere prejudice against the lead figure in his investigation perhaps I could look past that. After all, we all bring biases and prejudices into our work. It’s difficult to have a perfectly open mind. But Long is guilty of far more than simple bias against one of the actors in the Bigfoot drama.

Greg Long is arrogant and his kind of self-righteous, crusader mentality appears, like his thick bias, in the very early pages of The Making of Bigfoot. In a mere breath Long accuses the entire “Bigfoot community” of a vast global conspiracy to cover up the truth about Roger Patterson and his Bigfoot film. Without even a whiff evidence Long repeats this claim several times over throughout the book. Supposedly ignorant of the numerous books, films, and lectures that have been presented on the subject of debunking the film and the person, Long repeats his claim over and over that he is the single person to uncover the truth that he is providing us with the “inside story”.

More so, Long’s real folly is his claim to have found the “man in the suit”. In the course of his research Long runs into Bob Heironimus, an associate of Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin and the man that claims to have worn the ape suit in the famous Bigfoot film. Realizing that he may finally have the nail to put into the film’s coffin, Long jumps head-long into Heironimus’ story.

Now let me just say, as an aside, that Greg Long does some excellent investigative work. I truly don’t want to take away from all of the hours and the effort that he put into his book. What I take offense with, and indeed what spoils the whole thing, is his incredible bias and arrogance. I could write a great essay on the Boer War in South Africa but if I take the opinion, before I’ve barely begun, that the British were in the right then I’m obviously going to neglect a lot of the facts that lend themselves to the Dutch.

In the case of Bob Heironimus’ story, Long makes up his mind far too soon and ignores some crucial pieces of information. Between the film and the interviews with Long, Heironimus has had thirty years to tell his story and he hasn’t. Long ignores the fact that in this huge span of time Heironimus has had ample opportunity to do his research, to look into the facts and figures of the Patterson film, and to invent a plausible story of his own. Heironimus, Long argues, can walk just like Bigfoot. But Long again neglects the fact that he’s had thirty years to study and perfect the walk. Heironimus tells a convincing tale of how he was roped into playing the Bigfoot character but, on a map, cannot even provide the location of where the film was made.

To understand the extend to which Long’s bias clouds his investigation it’s important to realize that, despite being accused of a global conspiracy, less than a decade after the film was released Rene Dahinden, a famous Bigfoot enthusiast, comments on his own investigation into the film in his book Sasquatch. Dahinden, who did extremely extensive ground research immediately following the film, concluded that there were a number of people claiming to have worn the suit—Heironimus included—and that Bob himself, even immediately after the filming, couldn’t nail down the film site’s location. Instead, Long is acting as if he has just discovered these claims. Ignorance of facts like these, in my opinion, is inexcusable journalism.

As The Making of Bigfoot proceeds Long’s argument develops around his two main pieces of evidence. First, that Roger Patterson was a liar, a cheat, and a crook. He wanted to make money with his Bigfoot scheme and that was reason enough to fake a film. Second, Long believed that he had proof that someone, Bob Heironimus, wore the Bigfoot suit. For him it was case closed.

But enter Phillip Morris. Morris, now an industry leader in costume manufacturing, was at the time of the Patterson film an amateur television personality and part-time costume designer, creating ape costumes from a shop in his basement. Morris explains to Long that Patterson contacted him in the late 1960’s looking for an ape costume to “have some fun” with. In the course of Long’s thorough interview Morris explains how he made the costumes, how they were worn, and how he’s positive that the Bigfoot in Patterson’s film was a man wearing one of his costumes. While Long passes off this interview, near the end of his book, as a relatively mundane occurrence and frames it as the final nail in the Patterson film’s coffin, there are a number of concerns—large ones—that he merely glosses over.

The first huge concern is the description of the costume itself and how it was worn. The in-depth description provided by Morris, who claims to have made the costume, differs significantly from the description of Bob Heironimus, who claims to have worn it. Differences involving whether or not there was a zipper and how the arms, hands, and feet were attached are substantial. Incredibly, Long makes absolutely no mention of these gross differences instead settling for the fact that since he found someone who claims, without any material evidence, to have made the costume for Patterson, he must be telling the truth. Nor does Long bother to question or revisit Heironimus’ claims about how the suit fit or was worn in light of the new ostensibly damning evidence from Morris.

What’s more, Long ignores substantial evidence which arose in the aftermath of the Bigfoot film. Despite claiming that an international conspiracy was covering up the truth of the Patterson film, comments to Bigfoot investigators (investigating the veracity of the film!) from major production outfits like Disney and Universal Studios were unanimous in the fact that such a costume—the Bigfoot costume—could not have been produced commercially at that time (the late 1960’s). Interestingly, despite the world’s leading motion picture companies claiming that it would be impossible to create Bigfoot, Long is ready and willing to believe that an amateur costume maker created the suit in his basement.

The tipping point in The Making of Bigfoot came for me near the closing pages of the book. Long, in a video-cassette-fueled tirade, rails against just about everybody in the Bigfoot field, people who have “let themselves be persuaded” to believe in Bigfoot. Truly, this isn’t Greg Long the journalist or Greg Long the investigator, enter Greg Long the scientist!

Egged on by his ever submissive wife, Pat, Greg fast-forwards, pauses, and slow-motions his way to his own seemingly plausible conclusions about Patterson’s Bigfoot. Ignoring all of his collected evidence and hard-earned interviews he goes on to mock and shame professionals who have attempted to recreate the Bigfoot walk, and professors who have come out in supportive of the ape-like behaviour Patterson’s creature exhibits. Long, who in this scene knows better than all of these experts and career academics, methodically proves to his wife and, in turn the reader, why they are all wrong.

Despite tenured academics, following intense motion-tracking gait analysis, claiming that the Bigfoot walk could not be replicated by humans Long assures us that even he can walk just like Bigfoot. Despite tenured academics, using high-powered microscopes in University labs to analyze the original film footage for minute facial details, Long claims that he can see the eyes of Heironimus behind the Bigfoot mask. Despite experiments which have proven, conclusively, the approximate weight a person or creature would have to be to leave footprints at the depth of those found at the film site (they’d have to be very heavy), Long claims that anyone could just stomp really hard and leave those marks.

It’s an episode indicative of the pages that came before it. It’s inexcusable, absolute arrogance. It’s a simmering to the surface of long-held beliefs and tensions that Long kept buried down inside throughout his interviews and throughout his research which, as I’ve argued, effected his perspective from the start. It’s Long’s extreme bias.

Whether or not there is such a thing as Bigfoot, whether the Patterson-Gimlin film is a hoax or an authentic piece of evidence, Greg Long has, unfortunately, proved nothing.

While I commend Long for his tireless work, his biases, his prejudices, and his arrogance get in the way of any real conclusions. Instead, Long’s conclusions are based on his gut feelings, his opinions, and tainted by his bias against the character of Roger Patterson, and towards the seemingly truthful nature of his Bigfoot, Bob Heironimus. Long ignores key pieces of information, he draws hasty conclusions, and he makes vast unsubstantiated claims. In the end, while getting some of the detective work right, Greg Long fails to produce anything resembling a reasonable conclusion and, from me, receives a failing grade.

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What I love about both of these tracks is that, first of all, they sound even more epic live. The New Pornographers put together such incredible songs, building instrument upon instrument and building them together in such a seamless way. That sound is made even more incredible live, especially when you can see all the pieces performed and see how they all fit. It’s neat. Second, I love the incredible energy in these performances. You can tell that they’re having fun, you can see just how much they love making music, and it’s awesome. David Letterman’s little, “Ooo-wee,” at the end of the second video says it all.

It’s a two-for-one because I can possibly pick which video I prefer more.

Crash Years (on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”)

Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk (on “Late Show with David Letterman”)

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I’ve been a big fan of Montreal-based Stars since a friend of mine played them for one afternoon up in his room. It was 2004 and I must’ve been back from university for the summer. I remember it so clearly because I was so impressed. The album was the band’s break-out recording Set Yourself on Fire. If you’ve heard it then you must know the gripping power of the strings on the opening track, “My Ex-Lover is Dead.” It’s an incredible album and features some of the best songs written of the last decade.

Sadly, Stars follow up to their wildly successful 2004 album was 2007’s In Our Bedroom After the War and as much as I dedicated myself to this album—as hard as I listened to it—I couldn’t get into it. It was a bit of a let down. Following the interesting and original 2004 release, this new record seemed a bit too boring and contrived. It didn’t feel very organic and the tracks seemed like a bit of a hodge podge—incoherent—and that was my biggest concern: it didn’t feel like a complete record.

Well, I’m happy to report that if Stars last album was disjointed, 2010’s The Five Ghosts is the complete opposite—and I like it.

The Five Ghosts is a wonderful record because, first and foremost, it feels like a complete work. Without feeling too much like a concept album themes of ghosts, hauntings, and disembodiment are weaved through The Five Ghosts tying the whole thing together nicely. The problem, in my opinion, with Stars 2007 release was that the songs didn’t fit. One track was an up-beat dancehall song, the next was down-tempo with only guitar and voice. As a bunch of one-off singles it might’ve made sense but for a record, it didn’t work for me. The Five Ghosts avoids that problem while still leaving lots of room for the band to play with different kinds of music and sounds. Haunting vocals singing about death and dying, over top of whatever kind of song it is, really brings this record together.

Overall, The Five Ghosts is a winning record. There aren’t any tracks that particularly stand out but then again I don’t think this was ever intended to be a singles album. It’s a cohesive and complete work. The production, with layers of creepy instruments and vocal tracks, gives the whole album exactly the feel I think the band was going for. And the song themselves are well-written and interesting. Stars, who ordinarily can muster up a pretty other-worldly sound for themselves, have done a great job putting together a whole album in that vein. While it might not be a favourite for people who aren’t already fans of the band, it’s certainly another great record in a collection of those who like them.

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When Ben Folds Five released their break-through album, Whatever and Ever Amen, I was in Grade 7. At the time, my friends and I were largely into the kind of music that was popular at the time. I won’t even name names because it’s too embarrassing, but suffice to say, we were not cool enough to listen to Ben Folds Five. Not really, except one friend. Sure, he liked a lot of the same kind of music that we did but somehow he lived slightly outside of the headspace of the rest of us preteen boys. He loved Ben Folds Five and, of course, we teased the heck out of him for it. We thought it was boring piano music, nothing like the raging guitars and screaming vocals that filled up the rest of the music that we liked.

In hindsight, it was music like Ben Folds Five that’s endured. Politics and religion aside, Brick is a story, for better or for worse, and it’s a great story. Ben Folds has always been a masterful songwriter and I’m glad that even though it took some time and some growing up that I’ve come to appreciate his music. He’s a talented guy and Bob, you were right.

Brick (1997)

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My wife, Maria, and I got together with some friends over the weekend to enjoy a meal, some games, and to chat. The chats were enlightening—except for my contributions, of course—and, like conversations all across this country, the topic of the long-form census came up. Now I know everyone who’s been writing about the census keeps bringing up the fact that it’s so dog-gone strange to be talking about such an obscure topic in the heat of the summer but, really, it is worth saying. Here we are, in the middle of the summer, talking about our national survey. Who would’ve thought. But the fact that the topic is still so talked about—that it isn’t going away—is particularly interesting to me.

My friends and I are from a particular segment of society. We’re young. We are, as one of my friends pointed out, “highly-educated” compared to most standards. Some of us were raised in a conservative tradition, others more liberal, and all of us are involved in the life of our local communities in some way. All of us agreed that scraping the long-form census was a very bad idea but beyond that, as the conversation evolved, it became clear that we also harboured a deep-seeded worry as well.

The worry that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives might one day win a majority.

This is the worry, and I know we’re not alone.

“What would he do with a majority?” a friend asked, “look what he’s doing under a minority government when his power is restricted.”

Indeed, it’s something to be concerned about.

Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have a long history of ignoring the facts, bypassing expert testimony and opinion, and going it their way (or the highway). There are lots of examples of this kind of behaviour and the elimination of the long-form census is only the most recent. If Harper sees fit to ignore the opinions of those that have the knowledge to give advice now, in a minority government position, what would he do if he held all of the power?

It’s come out, in recent days, that the government did little to no consultation with Statistics Canada before deciding to scrap the mandatory long-form census. The decision was made and it was only in the days after the announcement that the Conservatives scrambled to get the facts, and to explain themselves. Industry Minister Tony Clement—who as far as I can tell is a very decent guy—lied to the public, out-right lied, when he discussed the level and the timeline of consultation with StatsCan. And all of this from a government who’s position is tenuous and fragile. Imagine if they had nothing to lose.

To date, hundreds of respected organizations have lined up in support of the long-form census, against the Conservative decision. Municipalities across the country, provinces, and countless individuals have added their voices to that chorus, too. Yet the Conservatives don’t budge. In response to a Constitutional challenge from French language speakers, Tony Clement added two new questions to the mandatory short-form census, but his so-called compromise is really anything but. Our Constitution affords protections to all minorities so what about those new immigrants who will no longer receive services in the languages they speak because the government won’t know where they live?

If the Conservatives, in a minority government situation, won’t bend to widespread public discourse, what will they do with a majority?

I am not anti-Conservative, nor am I pro-Liberal or pro-New Democrat, I am pro-good government. Good government. It’s in our Constitution, it’s our right, so how about a Constitutional challenge on that point?

I’m in support of a government that responds to the people that elected it. A government that doesn’t think it has it all figured out without checking first. As a relatively educated person, I value a government that consults with the educated professionals in areas where it may be making important decisions. I value a government that listens, and that talks openly and honestly. The state of our government today, in Canada, seems shameful. They do not respond. They do not consult. They do not value the opinion of educated professionals. They don’t listen. Instead, even in a tenuous minority situation, they go their own way, they do their own thing, they act like they own the country that we gave them temporary custody of. Right now, Stephen Harper is holding only some the decision-making power. He is restricted. The worry is that he might access to everything.

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Watson is an immensely talented and creative performer who’s music is just nothing short of enchanting. This song is no different, but on track lists full of lots of other incredible music, it surely stands out. It’s simple, super-simple, but Watson’s voice over the gentle ebb and flow of the piano creates some kind of other-worldly bliss. With overly complicating things he captures some kind of raw emotion and, for me at least, it resonates big time. Performed live, as you’ll hear, this song is just breath-taking.

The Great Escape

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I am in no way affiliated with the Petcetera chain of pet stores but I must say, their Petcetera Plus membership is something I swear by.

The Petcetera chain of stores went under a while back. They had all kinds of going-out-of-business sales, which were pretty good, and then closed shop. To my surprised, our location in Kitchener opened up again a few months later. As it turns out, a bunch of the retail stores were bought back out of bankruptcy and opened up again. Same stores, same logo, but new Petcetera, they say.

I signed up for a Petcetera Plus membership when I first got Lewis, my cat. At the time, it didn’t seem to really be worth anything. I got “points,” I think, and that was about it. I never heard about any exclusive membership deals and I didn’t shop their very much since their prices, for food and litter, were considerably higher than a department or grocery store. But when the chain closed and then reopened their stores they also relaunched the membership program, in a serious way. The number of really good sales and coupons that the Petcetera Plus membership has been giving out since the chain’s reopening has been incredible. One week it’s all cat and dog toys, half-price. The next week it’s half off all carriers and crates. And this week, I got a $20 off coupon just for being a member, good for anything in the store as long as you spend $50. That meant that a bag of dog food for Penny, normally $55, was only $35. That’s like free money, people!

Truly, I’m not an advert for Petcetera but if you’ve got a pet, and live close to a Petcetera, it’s worth checking out. If you become a member you receive maximum 2 e-mails per week and those e-mails only serve to tip you off to the great sales that they seem to always have. I’m not a member of a lot of things, but being a Petcetera Plus member is something that I genuinely swear by!

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