Someone set up an art installation in the empty lot kitty corner to our apartment. It's actually quite funny, and slightly brilliant. The lot is surrounded by one of those wood barriers covered with advertisements they put around construction sites. It gives the impression that they are going to build something there, but really this site has been empty for a few years. People can't see inside very well from the street level, but we have a great view from our balcony, which makes me think that the art piece was created for our pleasure alone.




The chairs are growing out of the sand! Chairs can't be on stilts! That's just crazy!
I don't really know what it means, but does art have to have meaning for it to be significant?
Thank you whoever made it.

So apparently I haven't updated this blog in almost 4 months, I no longer live in Edmonton, and it is now Winter of the Blog, not Summer, but I don't think I'm able to change that title. I didn’t think too hard about that when I created this blog, now did I?
Everything in my life now is pretty much different, besides the fact that I am still reading the same book that's posted on the side, "At Home in the World", by Jennifer Welsh. Reading for pleasure unfortunately gets swiped to the side when I'm at university, but I hope to finish it during the Christmas break just to get the thing off my nightstand. I didn't really even attempt to update this thing throughout the semester, and god knows why I think I have time to do it now that I am in the middle of exam period, but here it goes...
I’ll post again soon but here are some updates in bullet form because it makes me feel efficient:
• I love my roommates! There are six of us with one bathroom and one fridge but I wouldn’t get rid of any one of them for more space and shelf room.
• I practically live at the architecture library cause I have a new goal to be a Super-Student and get a fancy American university to pay me to study at their institution for grad school.
• I eat a zatar pita EVERY day because it’s yummy and only sets me back $2.50.
• I went to a Liberal party last weekend in a pretentious loft in Old Montreal, met Bob Rae (before he lost the Liberal leadership campaign), and drank copious amounts of expensive white wine for free.
• I’m not a Liberal; I was there for the free wine.

Go and watch “Little Miss Sunshine” right now! It is the best movie I have seen all year, and one of the best I have ever seen. There is something incredibly honest about this family’s dysfunction. Somehow they manage to make the movie both hilarious and tragic and the little girl is a brilliant actress. She brought a tear to my eye no less than 4 times in the movie, which has never happened to me before. One minute I cried, and the next I was laughing so hard it hurt. Granted, yesterday was a really emotional day. Sando’s moving to Toronto tomorrow and we’ve spent the past few days crying sporadically. It’s funny how certain people can come into your life out of nowhere and influence it so significantly.

It’s my last week in Alberta too. I fly back to Montreal on Sunday and while it’s sad to leave friends and family, Alberta doesn’t feel like home to me anymore. I’m ready to leave and I feel a bit guilty admitting that, but it’s true. I won’t just miss the people though; there are things about Alberta that I will miss as well: Old Strathcona, saskatoons, wild roses, big blue Alberta sky, pedestrian rights, and people yelling “fag” as they drive by in their pickups (one time it happened twice in the same day, that really made me feel great). I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but I think it’s time for friends to start visiting me in Montreal. Apply soon: Meagan has reserved Christmas break.

I think this might be the last blog entry before I move. Thanks to all the Alberta peeps for making the past 8 months awesome. I couldn’t have done it without you… really… I couldn’t.

Well it’s official, I loved Vancouver! I had a great time, it’s a beautiful city and I definitely could see myself living and working there in the future. The city is much more relaxed than Montreal or Toronto, and at times we were wondering where the hell all the people were, but overall, Vancouver has plenty of things going on. I have to say that I didn’t love the university all that much. It’s pretty far from downtown and I think I’d get tired of making the trip out there everyday, but it’s pretty and I’d probably prefer that to Montreal’s winter. So overall, Vancouver lived up to its great reputation. Go see it!
Oh yeah, I meant to take lots of pictures, but I didn’t. All I really have is a picture of a porn theatre advertising discounts for seniors (gross) and for couples on dates (weird).
"Hey baby, what say I take you and Grandpa to the porn palace later for a cheap night out?..."

I'll post the picture later.


The mayor wrote me back an incredibly vague response about the Falun Gong issue I mentioned last week. Here was his response:
"By no means did we, as a City, want to infringe on anyone's right, including the Falun Gong, to freedom of speech. What you and others are not aware of are the many communications we had previous to August 2nd with a representative of this group and our attempts to work with them and inform that there was perhaps a better venue and way for them to hold their demonstration. Unfortunately, all of our attempts failed as they were insistent on doing it their way without any regard for some of our questions."
Besides the fact that “their way” is how its done millions of times over in other cities across the world, I think this is all bullshit and the only reason why they think there is a “better venue” is because they know this group can’t pay for a private venue or petition businesses to endorse them, and therefore won’t be able to have a protest. I wrote the mayor again and I may have offended him, cause he has yet to respond.
Sando told me that he thinks I work in the town from “Edward Scissorhands”… I think he’s right.

While at work today I overheard a discussion between city co-workers about the group Falun Gong wanting to hand out pamphlets in the City to raise awareness about human rights issues in China. For those who don’t know, Falun Gong is a religious group that has been persecuted in China and they allege that the Chinese Government is currently harvesting organs from prisoners and religious practitioners for surgeries. Someone at City Hall quickly made the decision to deny them permission to hold their demonstration before their representative even made it to our office to fill out the request form. This immediately struck me as odd. I didn’t even think groups needed permits to hold demonstrations. I understand that the City would want to have formal documentation of protests, but how can a municipality bar a group altogether from holding one on public land? There is absolutely no reasoning behind the decision. This is an infringement on one of the most fundamental democratic rights: the right to freedom of speech. If we deny access to this particular group, does that mean that all groups are never allowed to have a protest off of privately owned land? No group is ever allowed to hand out pamphlets in our city? I know that this most certainly is not the case, as many groups have handed out pamphlets in the past. Access to public land is fundamental for any group wanting to raise awareness for any cause, especially if that group does not have access to private land. Citizens in democracies hold protests outside of their City Halls every day. This doesn't mean that the City is endorsing what the group is saying. It says that the City values discourse and public debate. It doesn’t even matter if this group is correct in their allegations against the Chinese State. It shouldn't matter what the group is saying as long as it is not hurting other people. City Hall has no right to ‘filter’ what information the public has access. This is exactly the definition of freedom of expression and the purpose for public land. Needless to say, I sent an email to the mayor (with whom I am on first name basis) and I’m anxious to hear his response. I even showed restraint in my letter, deleting phrases like “quasi-fascism”, in the hopes that it would get a more productive response. As a young person concerned about our democratic process it is alarming to see a city staffmember searching for the "Denied" stamp even before the lady from Falun Gong finished filling out the form. Are citizens in this city so focused on living in their manicured suburban bubbles of ignorance that they are willing to infringe on the rights of others so they don’t have to hear about the problems of people on the other side of the world? I’ll let you know what the Mayor says in his reply.

I love the City of Montreal more than any other place I have ever lived. Most of my friends have either a) already heard my rant about why I love this place, b) equally share my passion for this city cause they love it too, or c) wish they could live there or at least visit so they could witness first hand what everyone seems to be talking about.

Somehow Montreal has managed to mould together a flattering combination of characteristics that gives it a clear distinction from other cities that I’ve seen. Bilingualism and multiculturalism are two qualities quintessentially linked to the Canadian identity, yet Montreal is pretty much the only place in Canada where one sees the two together (Ottawa does this to a much lesser extent), arguably making Montreal the ‘most Canadian’ city in the country. Streets regularly shut down for festivals and the city itself is a cultural magnet. It’s chock-full of history and old architecture, yet it is cosmopolitan and modern at the same time.

Montreal has attitude, which I think is derived from Quebec culture in general, and this attitude is perhaps my favourite thing about the city. It’s almost like Montreal doesn’t care what other people think about it. The people there do whatever the hell they want, they take risks, stand up for what they believe, and aren’t willing to be pushed around. You can find evidence of this all the time. Students in Quebec fight to keep tuition affordable. Quebec plans to implement Kyoto without the federal government. Montreal even decided to get rid of the Gay games and invent its own improved “OutGames” when the International Gay Games Committee got too pushy. Best of all, Montreal manages to pull it all off without trying to impress everyone in an attempt to be New York (a city that rhymes with Moronto comes to mind).

I’m bringing all this up because I’m going to Vancouver this weekend. While I’ve never been to Vancouver before, in a way I’m hoping that I will be able to love it as much as I love Montreal. I’ve heard and read incredible things about this city, I’ve met tons of great people from BC and I am interested in BC politics as well. Vancouver recently passed Manhattan as the downtown with the highest density in North America. It is well on its way to producing one of the most liveable communities in the world, and I somehow trust Vancouver politicians when they use words like sustainable. There is also the natural setting to consider. Everyone raves about how it is tucked between the mountains and the ocean and who couldn’t love that?

The University of British Columbia is high on my list of places to see considering I might go there after McGill. We also plan to check out Vancouver’s Pride Festival since it is on this weekend. I’m sure that I will have tons of fun, but I’m worried that I won’t LOVE it. I’m a bit nervous out about the whole trip because I have very high expectations for Vancouver. Somehow I feel that this weekend will not only determine where I will go to school (assuming I have a choice) but where I will eventually settle down and get a real job… and thinking about that is even scarier.

I’ve noticed that the media, businesses, politicians and even city planners have certain words that they like to throw around to make their ideas and projects sound more appealing to the public. While working in a city planning office this summer two of these euphemisms in particular are starting to drive me mad.

The first and my least favourite of the two words is “Sustainable”. People love hearing that projects and developments are sustainable. It somehow relieves everyone’s conscience so they can drive home their SUV’s and get to sleep at night. Be careful anytime you hear this word, especially if you hear that X makes Y ‘more’ sustainable. Sustainability is meeting your needs and expressing your greatest potential without compromising the needs of future generations. You can’t be ‘more’ or ‘less’ sustainable. Either you are compromising your kid’s future or you aren’t. That’s what we call sustainabullshit. People throw around this word to make others think that we are doing great things, when really we could be doing more. Just because you recycle doesn’t mean that you can say you leading a sustainable lifestyle. It means that you have less garbage. There’s a difference so tell it like it is.

The second word that I encounter almost everyday here is “Revitalization”. Everyone seems to talk about how the downtown should get ‘revitalized’. The city is planning ‘revitalization efforts’. Council really wants the centre to be ‘revitalized’. Wouldn’t it be great if there was widespread ‘revitalization’? It’s as if they think that by using the word a lot, then it will happen by itself. The planning department is either detached from the neighbourhood and doesn’t care what happens to it, they believe it is already dead and doesn’t merit the attention to try to save it, they don’t realize that the actions they take everyday in other parts of the city are directly hurting the downtown (encouraging highway big box development), or they are so busy and caught up with suburban growth to give this project the attention it deserves. I think the answer is a bit of all of these things. Council decided to pay thousands of dollars to attach the name of a prestigious university professor to the ‘revitalization’ project, and while I have gained a lot of respect for this particular Prof, I don’t think his ideas will be put to their full potential. I’ve become a bit jaded about the whole project because I don’t think this city is willing to make some sacrifices and change old habits. They aren’t going to save anything unless they get more people living downtown and make it less convenient to live on the fringe. Yet they are doing the opposite by facilitating development along the highway, not increasing densities and marketing the downtown, and not wanting to pay for things like underground parking.

I just reread all that I wrote and I sound particularly negative today. I shouldn’t publish this post because I could get fired if they read it. But I’m done with this job in a month, and I think they are too busy helping developers pour concrete over prime farmland to check what I’m doing with my time. I don’t claim to be all-knowing, or even that my lifestyle is ‘sustainable’, but a friend of mine said something to me last summer that has stuck in my mind over the past year and has certainly changed my behaviour. People have this idea in their head that living in a democracy is about going to vote every four years for some distant representative who may, or may not, understand your values and the kind of society that you want. But what most of us don’t realize is that we vote everyday with the money we spend. We invest everyday with our consumer dollars and that shapes the system that we have. Just like elections, every vote can count for something, and every dollar that we spend we should think of it as a vote representing our values. If you think factory farming is cruel and pumping cows full of hormones is wrong, then change your habits, buy from a farmer’s market, or reduce your consumption. Whether you realize it or not, you are casting a vote.