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[caption id="attachment_10174" align="alignnone" width="497"] Pretty... cold. The sun blazed as a light through a block of ice today.[/caption]

As office workers in Fairview picked up their morning take-away they could be assured their steaming hot double-doubles would be closer to iced coffees by the time they sat down in their cubicles.

Vancouver is experiencing a novel patch of cold, dry, winter and Vacouverites appear to be enjoying it. They've certainly taken to wind chill like ducks to ice water.

Yesterday afternoon I was stopped with the rest of the traffic at the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Cambie Street and watched as a fellow triumphantly strode down the middle of the northbound lane of Cambie. He was preceded by a phalanx of Vancouver police on motorcycles and trailed by a gaggle of happy hangers-on, apparently celebrating his achievement.

[caption id="attachment_9785" align="alignnone" width="497"] Artist representation of unveiling with dignitaries and Harper government officials.[/caption]

The news on Friday that a giant slab of granite sits idle in a Gatineau Hills barn while Vancouver's new condo kitchen counter tops go begging was frankly irksome to me.

The granite was meant for a statue of the late Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. However the drive to memorialize the politician who repatriated the Canadian Constitution and gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms ran out of gas somewhere between now and the year 2000.

After his death that year, a "Trudeau Sculpture Committee" was formed, granted charitable status and duly commissioned sculptor John Batten. He in turn came up with a design approved by the Trudeau family and land was set aside in the former City of Nepean overlooking the Ottawa River at a spot that, according to the Ottawa Citizen, Justin Trudeau had described as perfect.

A 29-tonne slab of Canadian Shield granite was harvested deep in Vermont, then hauled to John Batten's barn in the Gatineau Hills area outside Ottawa, the capital of Canada in the province of Ontario.

All these many years later that slab is still sitting in the barn. It's disappointing.

[caption id="attachment_9652" align="alignnone" width="497"] Grumman delivery truck braces the camera for a long exposure.[/caption]

By the colour of the photo and the thickness of last night's fog I'd say someone opened up a can of Habitant pea soup on this Fairview neighbourhood (Mmm!). If you haven't the foggiest idea what I'm referring to then you might not be Canadian. And if you are Canadian and you still don't know then, well -- no offense -- but you might not be Canadian enough.

Habitant pea soup has been sold in big fat yellow cans all my life. It's available outside Canada only in specialty food stores. Habitant (both the soup and the word) is French-Canadian which means both that it comes from Quebec and they borrowed it from France over 400 years ago -- and France never asked for it back.

Can't get more Canadian than that.

Today, the world over, memorials commemorate the war dead of every country, every conflict; soldiers and civilians alike.

In Canada, Remembrance Day is a legal holiday. We pay our respects with two minutes of silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. The observance in Commonwealth countries officially began in 1919 after the end of the First World War in 1918. The two minutes of silence on the elevens symbolizes the armistice, effective at 11 a.m. on 11 November, 1918.

Next year the world will begin to mark all the centenaries of the First World War -- the terrible global conflict which took the lives of nearly 10 million soldiers and untold numbers of civilians, and, gave birth to some of the greatest political (read human) problems of the 20th Century.

[caption id="attachment_7313" align="alignnone" width="497"] Mayor Gregor Robertson. He's holding the beer but is he drinking it? Click to go to Pacific Western Brewing's Flickr page.[/caption]

So Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has admitted he smoked crack -- once -- well, actually, he was so drunk at the time he's not actually sure, but he sure is sorry. In fact, he might be the sorriest excuse for a politician I've ever seen, but he's still not sorry enough to resign.

This is absolutely guaranteed, the first time in my life I have felt sympathy for Toronto. Sitting all the way over here on the West Coast, I can only watch the Gong Show tragedy unfolding in central Canada, and shake my head as I do so. How is it that Toronto "The Good" can be so in the thrall of a... a... goof! Did Rob Ford and his band of cronies put something in the water supply? He's like your best girlfriend's bad boyfriend -- what does she possibly see in him?

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is a toxic spill; he's a 50-car pile-up on the 401; he's a train wreck. Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, not so much. Until I found the above -- deeply shocking -- photo of Mayor Robertson quaffing a brew, I never even imagined him drinking beer. I could see him drinking some wine with a meal, and yes, maybe the occasional juice binge. I think Vancouverites, whether they like his city administration or not, see him as a straight arrow. at worst, a photogenic do-gooder who means well. Who could imagine him dragging Vancouver through the gutter like Rob Ford has dragged Toronto? Not Gregor. He's more likely to convert the gutter to a bike lane.

I personally believe Rob Ford shouldn't even be allowed to visit Toronto's City Hall, let alone be the mayor; not just because he -- the person who sets the Toronto Police Service's budget -- admittedly smoked crack, but because in the last 12 months he has repeatedly demonstrated amazingly bad judgement. I also believe the way he has dragged things out, stonewalled, and frankly, tried to cover up his bad conduct, demonstrates a total contempt for the city he says he loves. I think he just loves to  be in charge.

I read coverage of Rob Ford's "apology" and thought "he's trying to get away with it." I can only imagine what Ontario's Premier Kathleen Wynne thought as she watched Ford apologize on TV, but afterwards she was quoted as saying:

“There are laws in place around when municipal officials can be — must be — removed from office. That’s why I say the police service and the judicial system have to take action.”

As Rob Ford, the titanic Toronto Mayor, steams towards the iceberg called the "crack video," his handlers are spinning things this way and that, to keep his career from sinking.

If the video, now in police hands, turns out to actually show Rob Ford saving dolphins, or counseling his alleged drug dealing co-stars to give up their life of crime, then Rob Ford emerges triumphant. If, on the other hand, the reportedly brightly-lit video shows Ford puffing on a glass pipe, he still probably emerges triumphant. No one can prove, based on a video, what was in the pipe, can they? That's the technical argument Rob Ford's lawyer, and his brother Doug, have been trotting out before the media. They can still hide safely in the letter of the law, even after pissing all over the spirit.

Today the Toronto Star is reporting that Rob Ford may have paid the utility bills at the Etobicoke crack house where he is alleged to have been caught on cell phone video smoking a crack pipe.

If nothing else media coverage of Mayor Rob Ford has made me curious about his home turf of Etobicoke, the west Toronto neighbourhood, central to his rise, and possibly now, to his fall.

According to media reports, Toronto police today revealed they have acquired a digital video file containing images of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. Toronto Chief of Police Bill Blair explained the file was forensically recovered from a computer hard drive seized in connection with extortion charges laid against the mayor's friend, Alexander Lisi.

At a press conference today, in Toronto, Chief Blair said the video file was one of several deleted files which the Toronto Police Service intelligence unit computer technology section were able to identify, and recover.

"That file contains video images which appear to be those images which were previously reported in the press with respect to events that took place, we believe at a house on Windsor Road in Etobicoke."

Chief Blair appeared to all but confirm police had possession of the cell phone video alleged, back in May by gawker.com, to show Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine. While he did not actually describe the contents of the video. He was willing to describe his reaction. According to this CTV report, he told reporters:

"As a citizen of Toronto I'm disappointed. This is a traumatic issue for the citizens of this city and for the reputation of this city and that concerns me."

You think? Mayor Rob Ford apparently doesn't. He's repeatedly stated no video exists showing him smoking crack, and he has no plans to resign. His council has no legal power to force him to step down, and Toronto Police Chief Blair pointedly stated in his press conference that the recovered video does not support criminal charges against the mayor -- stupidity is definitely not illegal in Canada. If it was there's no telling how many of us would be in jail.

This is for the McDonald's Canada 2013 Monopoly contest. Someone redeemed the other one I posted, as part of my explanation of what the heck a Snapfish was. Go here to redeem the prize of a Snapfish photobook. Click the image to enlarge the teeny-tiny type.

[caption id="attachment_6150" align="alignnone" width="497"] On our left, the flag of Canada. flanked by the flag of the Province of British Columbia.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_5041" align="alignright" width="260"] An iconic image to Canadians.[/caption]

The Tim Hortons coffee-slash-doughnuts restaurant chain is a big deal in Canada. So when Bryan Hansen, a long-time customer in Calgary wrote a letter to Tim's head office complaining about all the coffee spills, and plastic cuts he'd experienced because of the "inferior design" of the lids on their take-away paper cups, a lot of Canadians felt his pain.

Titled, "Re: Your Dreadful Coffee Lids, and addressed to the "Lid Manager," or "Product Containment Engineer," or "Liquid Suppression Expert," the letter, sent to Tim Hortons' head office in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, lays out Bryan's credentials as a diehard Tims fan -- before he lays into the poorly designed lid, and all the ways it's made him suffer:

“I end up with scalding hot coffee on my face and on my shirt because your lids do not open in a consistent manner which thereby makes it impossible for one’s lips to create an adequate seal around the edge of the coffee cup,” he writes. “This results in hot leakage. Very Hot Leakage (*rights reserved for a future Adult Film title.) So there I am in pain; shaking, burnt and bleeding. It’s at this time I ask myself ”is this coffee, or is this Fight Club?”

[caption id="attachment_4251" align="alignnone" width="497"] The military stealth snowmobile is exactly as maneuverable as a regular snowmobile. Apologies to photographer Jeff McIntosh, and Canadian Press.[/caption]

News reports, like this one, that the Canadian military has been conducting Arctic trials of a so-called hybrid, stealth snowmobile, electrified (the) defense analysts who closely follows The Canadian military's Northern posture. "Prone, and spread, for the most part," declared the desk general, "but now those Russian, and American, and British, nuclear submarines won't know what hit them, unless we're talking about all the parts of the Arctic which will be open water in ten years. I just jolly well hope they've got some hybrid, stealth Sea-doos up their gold-braided sleeves.

[caption id="attachment_2865" align="alignnone" width="497"] Chin up Mark! Photo: Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press. Click image to go to the source CBC page.[/caption]

Wow! Mark Carney seems too good to be true. Carney is the former Governor of the Bank of Canada who's just become the first ever non-Briton to head the Bank of England. He's only been on the job for one business week, and The Telegraph newspaper has already lauded his performance, saying an action he took together with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi "tore up the policy rule book" -- in a good way. All Governor Carney seems to have done was signal that interest rates would not be going up. Apparently, it was how he did it: plainly and transparently. Watever! The financial markets loved it. Earlier in the week the British people loved that Carney eschewed a chauffeur-driven ride to take the Tube to work in the City. It didn't hurt his "ooh wot a luverly man" rating when he missed his stop.

The 48-year-old Mark Joseph Carney was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada, but he seems to have grown up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He earned degrees in economics at Harvard, and then went to work for the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. He worked his way up company ranks for 13 years, and then, effectively, took a big pay cut to become a civil servant in the Canadian Government's Department of Finance. From 2003 to 2004, he joined the Bank of Canada as a deputy governor, but went back to Finance to serve as senior associate deputy minister of finance. By 2008 he had been a high-flyer in Finance under both Liberal, and Conservative governments.

From February, 2008 to June 2013, Mark Carney served as the eighth Governor of the Bank of Canada. He was credited with successfully steering Canada's economy through the global economic crisis which ran from 2007 through 2009 -- only a month into his term he issued an important rate cut, and later in 2009, used, what Wikipedia describes as a "nonstandard monetary tool: the 'conditional commitment.'" What I remember about his tenure as Gov' of the Bank of Canada was how direct, and plain-spoken he seemed, also, he was very young.

According to this interesting profile in the Star-Phoenix, Carney had been a managing director at Goldman for barely a year when he quit to become Canada's deputy bank governor in 2003. A bank director who knew the details, said Carney traded “at least $2 million a year,” for the governor,'s salary of $508,000 CAN. In the article, his friends describe him as being "obsessed with policy," a real policy wonk who believes in serving.

The Government of Canada doesn't knowingly headhunt fools, and neither does the United Kingdom. Mark Carney clearly knows his stuff. Great Britain is clearly hoping his made-in-Canada reputation is justified. England is part of Europe, after all, and can be dragged under by a wreck in the EU, or by some of it's own weak economic fundamentals. They need a decisive, sure hand on the economic tiller.

Mark Carney may even be a kind of game-changer; his skill and competence is trusted by both his peers, and by the financial markets. Couple that with his known ability to successfully apply unorthodox solutions, and you have a kind of mainstream radical who isn't afraid to break the rules when he thinks they need breaking. It seems a high-stakes gamble on the part of Great Britain, but that's what makes it all so interesting.

How Mark Carney spent his first day deciding whom to put on the new £5 note ►

[caption id="attachment_1968" align="alignnone" width="497"] The recently revealed Prism program has civil rights advocates up in arms, and conspiracy wingnuts hunkering in their tinfoil hats. Click image to enlarge.[/caption]

The United States' National Security Agency, tasked with gathering, and assessing signal intelligence from, well, everywhere on Earth, is once again looking all Big brother-y, with revelations about a massive, ongoing domestic surveillance program, targeting cell phone users. by the millions. the unofficial Czar of all US counter-terrorism activities, since 9-11, Nicola Machiavelli, has been unavailable for comment. However, he has previously been quoted thus:

"In actions of all men, especially princes, where there is no recourse to justice, the end is all that counts. A prince should only be concerned with conquering or maintaining a state, for the means will always be judged to be honourable and praiseworthy by each and every person, because the masses always follow appearances and the outcomes of affairs, and the world is nothing other than the masses. The few do not find a place wherever the masses are supported." ►

The US, intelligence apparatus doesn't bother too much with friendlies, and un-friendlies -- every other country is a competitor, and economics is war by a different name -- Canada too follows this model. Don't ask how Canada is involved in Prism; history suggests we'll be both a signal intelligence target, and collection asset. Where Canada is concerned (Woof!), the US doesn't respect -- it expects.

Privacy and civil right groups see Prism as more erosion of the American citizen's rights; the FBI will see it as more erosion of their rights -- they are the agency officially constituted to deal with crimes on US soil, but, the 9-11 terrorists toppled their rep also.

I think people protest too much. The Hoi Polloi, is givin' away what the NSA is supposedly taking. The Social Media business model is all but built on privacy violation.

And, how many of the cell phone conversations, particularly those containing embarrassingly personal information, will have been yelled out in public places -- people don't mind if everyone in a two-kilometre radius hears their side of a painful argument -- but it's a violation of their privacy if it make that extra effort, and reaches Langley, Virginia, and the NSA.

I could've just used this wallpaper as illustration, but that's cheating. ►

[caption id="attachment_1328" align="alignnone" width="497"] Put that in your pipe and smoke it Mayor Ford! -- Photo: Vince Talotta/Toronto Star. Collage by SQW. Click the image to enlarge.[/caption]

I believe Rob Ford's a punk. Okay, alleged punk; I don't have video. I base this belief on what I understand he's done as Mayor of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and how he's done it -- loudly, abusively, and divisively. That he may-or-may-not have smoked crack is just so much gilding on the lily.

Just left on top of a container bin. Unopened. Security seal intact. It's not American, but, I've never seen it before, neither in a supermarket, nor in my wildest dreams. What a weird combination ... "not so weird," a voice tells me. childhood memories of slabs of bread glistening with bacon drippings from a frying pan, come unbidden. I'll have to get some bread and try it later. Shame they added mayonnaise.

Suprise! Baconnaise has a homepage, and, not so surprising, a Wikipedia entry, which explains it's bacon flavoured, but vegetarian, and Kosher, and it's selling like hotcakes (so, why not just a hotcakes-flavoured spread?). I'm still going to try it, but my ardour has waned. Click the image to enlarge.

See my taste-test here.

[caption id="attachment_589" align="alignnone" width="497"] Bobo doesn't have a leg to stand on! -- Credit: Les Bazso/PNG[/caption]

Used to be that that phrases like, "it's a dog's life," and, "working like a dog," stood for a hard life. We might want to consider "working like an under-paid Filipino in Canada on a limited work visa," instead, because, a "dog's life" is pretty cushy these days. My morning paper wanted me to know the sad plight of Bobo. Under the headline: SPCA hopes public can help save poodle's leg, Cheryl Chan reported how the British Columbia SPCA is appealing to the public to raise $2000 to save Bobo's leg from the chopping block. It might have been covered in your paper also. The story really had legs.

I know two fellows, one formerly homeless gent who, I'm told, probably will have a leg amputated, and another, who is homeless, who has one good leg, and one which has been a growing disaster from below the knee down, for a few years. In the latter fellow's case, it's always been"treat-then-on-the-street," though his care providers have known his leg couldn't really heal in his living conditions. A more common scenario -- which I've heard of many times --  is typified by the case, a few years ago, of homeless dumpster diver Bradley, who came down with an ugly-looking spreading rash. I strongly urged him to get to a hospital, which wrote him out a prescription for antibiotics and told him to go find a way to pay for them. That's what happened with my Bell's Palsy diagnosis. The pharmacist said the four medications in my prescription "were covered," so I was lucky, particularly as I kind of think they really weren't.

So what point could i possibly have? I'm not saying Bobo should be put down, as would've certainly been the case 20 years ago, but also I don't believe, in this day and age, anyone is going to the public to raise even a dime to improve the chances that a homeless person's leg can be saved from amputation, whereas, I believe that 20 years ago the health care system would've given him a better level of care in the first place so his leg never got so bad as to potentially require amputation.

Conservative Free Traders used to say a strong tide floats all boats, and it seems now, that Bobo and my homeless friend Limpy (soon-maybe--to-be Stumpy), are in the same boat, only Bobo's in First Class, and Limpy's in Steerage.

Budgets are tight, and attitudes, and priorities have changed. It's just one of my pet peeves, I guess.

Today Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield, aboard the International Space Station, showed off one of the new space-themed plastic $5 bills, proving that the Bank of Canada will go to any lengths to prove it's new polymer bank notes are out of this world. Hadfield, who is the Commander of the ISS, is four-months into his current space mission, also unveiled the new $10. Who knows why he needed the money up there. -- Astronaut Chris Hadfield helps unveil new Canadian $5 and $10 bills

[caption id="attachment_372" align="alignnone" width="497"] Hot on the heels of eliminating the penny, the Bank of Canada introduces it's replacement: The new, waterproof, stick-together, plastic $5 -- like the money you'd imagine the Jetsons used.[/caption]

Former B.C. Conservative candidate Mischa Popoff was dumped by the party ahead of the upcoming May vote, so his ranting against the Conservatives, and their Leader John Cummins, wouldn't be too surprising, except he's done it on You Tube ... Okay, still not so surprising, just funny.

The Boundary-Similkameen MLA hopeful Mischa Popoff was turfed by Cummins last week for comments he made to a newspaper criticizing single moms for having children “without a man by their side,” and calling the Missing Women’s Inquiry a “waste of time.”

I wonder about all of us who "act local and post global." According to WikiAnswers, less than one half of one percent of the world lives in Canada, and, according to another Website, only 13.2 per cent of Canadians live in British Columbia, so B.C.'s population probably fits comfortably within the margin of error for the estimated world population. It's amazing that people in Upper Slovonica can take an interest in local affairs in my Lower Mainland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UFj6musCO4

Estee is a "morning person." She is effervescent at a time of day when most are still trying to wake up, and she has worked the breakfast shift at the McDonalds at Broadway and Granville for as long as I can remember -- which is nothing compared to how she can remember every regular customer's order!