Oh dear, what can I do?

On November 1st all the near 2 000 Québec municipalities go to the polls to choose their administrators for the next 4 years.  We used to have independant candidates for most seats, including the mayor's.  Nowadays, most everywhere, we have party backed slates.
Our city of Longueuil has two municipal parties.  The one in place presently has been running the town for the last 27 years.  It has been tainted with quite a few seemingly conflicts of interests although all inquiries have concluded that even if some indiscretions had taken place no actual misdeeds had happen since all the officials involved, even if their companies or legal practice had profited by municipal actions, had their belongings  in blind trusts and they had no say in the goings on.  Still it makes me uneasy.
The other party is run by a former Bloc Québécois MP in Ottawa.  Now the Bloc was set up to help bring about Québec's sovereignty and be a watchdog in Ottawa.  It is now clear that soveriegnty is a most elusive goal and that the Bloc' deputation has achieved nothing but keeping Québec fron the decision making process in Ottawa irrespective of who governs.  Thus it has become irrelevant and remaining there is incoherent.  The lady resigned recently for family reasons (?) but soon emerged as a municipal pârty leader and mayoral candidate.  Can she be trusted to be a coherent mayor?  Is she part of a soveriegnist movement to take control of our city halls?  Several Bloc and PQ MPs or MPPs are running all over.
If the incumbent party is of dubious morals, if the rival one has, or could have, a hidden agenda, what then are the voters supposed to do?

Minority saga

We will not have a snap election...for now.  Harper who, in camera and sub secreto, ranted against the coalition of Liberals, Socialists and Separatists, has given just enough of what the Separatists asked for to be saved by them.  The Bloc Québécois will vote, Friday, with the Conservatives thus keeping them in power...for a few more weeks.  As the saying goes: "Politics make for strange bedfellows".

Speed limit

The Montreal Gazette has a column called "Squeaky Wheels" dedicated to public transportation woes.  Yesterday a writer complained about how drivers respecting the posted speed limits were impeding traffic and made him pass them either to the left or, on three lanes highways, by the right thus causing him to breach the law.  And he signed with his full name.
Now I must surmise that this guy is, in advance, pleading guilty to any speeeding ticket he could get.  If the driver ahead drives at the posted speed limit then anyone passing him is driving over the speed limit and is guilty of a trafic violation no matter from what side he passes the car ahead of him.
How weird can you get?

J'y vais? J'y vais pas? J'y...

Cette semaine, rentrée parlementaire à Ottawa.  Tout le monde menace de faire tomber le gouvernement Harper...sauf si M Harper se plie aux exigences des 3 autres chefs tout en affirmant que personne, les électeurs les premiers, ne veut aller en élection.  La grande question:  M. Harper fera-t-il lui même tomber son gouvernement dès vendredi en présentant une motion économique inacceptable aux 3 autres partis?
J'ai l'impression d'asssiter à un "chicken game".  Comme des paons, à tour de rôle, chacun vient faire la roue pour séduire la paonne.  Mon problème, en tant que paonne, c'est qu'aucun des paons ne m'attire.  Aucun n'est crédible.  Harper nous berne avec sa présumée ouverture comme l'a bien démontré une certaine vidéo clandestine tournée alors qu'il s'adressait à ses partisans et qu'il se croyait à huis-clos.  Ignatieff, depuis le début, clame qu'il va faire tomber le gouvernement...mais il ne l'a jamais fait et refuse de s'associer à ceux dont il a besoin pour le faire.  C'est un inconnu pour la plupart des canadiens qui s'en méfient.  Jack Layton est un beau parleur, bel homme et, même en tenue "casual", élégant.  Le vrai socialiste de salon.  Il ne fait pas le poids même auprès des syndicats, sa base naturelle pourtant.
Gilles Duceppe présente, c'est le moins qu'on en puisse dire, une belle constance,  mais il ne pourra jamais être ailleurs que dans l'opposition.  Quant à Mme May, ses verts sont si pâles qu'il ne se voient pas.  De plus, aux dernières élections elle ne voulait pas se présenter ailleurs qu'à Halifax pour ne pas déranger les études de sa fille...et la voilà à Vancouver pour le prochain scrutin????
Peut-être que le parti de la Lévitation à une chance de former le prochain gouvernement?

Socialist plot

This morning President Obama gives a pep talk to Wakefield High School students in Arlington, VA, and on national TV networks..  Conservatives all over the U.S. of A. have made a big hoopla about it.  The socialist was getting at the students to spread his hated agenda and corrupt their malleable minds.  Hitler and Stalin, they said, had done the same.  In Texas, parents were planning to keep their children home to shield them from that propaganda stunt.  Schools were planning to unplug their TVs.
As Shakespeare would have said: "Much ado about nothing".  This morning, the CNN website publishes, in PDF form, the prepared remarks of President Obama's back to school events.  I read and printed them.  They are just what our classic college superior, Father Allard, would have said in his welcome speech each September, and believe me he was no socialist.  The school principal in Arlington must have helped in writing this piece.
Come to think of it I would not be surprised if the paranoid right would now spin it as a devious machiavellian socialist softening approach for a more deleterious intervention when they will have lowered their guard.

Head in the clouds

I have always been fascinated by clouds. Not in any scientific or meteorological way but the sheer poetry and fantasy potential they have. Last week being a rather cloudy week where we were traveling I took some pictures of cloud formations that struck my fancy. I can't resist sharing them with you hoping they will wake your fancies also.

Hope you enjoy!

A trip in history.

The wife and I took a short trip last week. We drove down the St-Lawrence valley, to begin with. We stopped overnight in St-Jean-Port-Joli. The town is home to the Bourgault sculptors dynasty. The Three Bérets, as the 3 founding brothers were known, have been succeeded by their sons and daughters and the place is brimming with sculptors and sculptures, wood of course. A sculpture biennial is held there in a park named after the Three Bérets.

They also happen to have a beautiful 1779 church. It has been adorned, of course, since the 1930s with several Bourgaults and disciples sculptures. If you wonder about the way it is built, there is a reason to it. The building is parrallel with the river and rounded at the back to shelter the front from northearsterly winds blowing in from the river, the rounded back spreads the snow around acting as a plow. The river here is some 20 miles wide, it has sizable tides and the water is salted.

The town also boasts a reconstuction af Philippe Aubert de Gaspé's manor house. It is a museum celebrating the town's people and history. It is called le Musée de la mémoire vivante because people have contributed artifacts and live taped and videotaped testimonys of life in the region.

From there we drove to Rivière-du-Loup where we took the 60 minutes ferry crossing to St-Siméon. There the river has gone to 25 miles across.

Out there you see a small whale sightseeing boat. We saw several from our room's balcony in St-Siméon...and for free.

The sun rises over the sand bar halfway to Rivière-du-Loup. Clouds held us company much of the time. From St-Siméon, we drove to Tadoussac, one of the very first fur trading post in the colony. There is still a chapel there dating from 1687.

Tadoussac is at the confluence of the Saguenay Fjord and the St-Laurent river. Highway 138 is cut by the Saguenay and the province operates a free ferry crossing:

We then went to Lac St-Jean whence the Saguenay river takes it's source, the lake is almost a perfect circle 31 miles in diameter and is famous for the ouananniche fish and its swimming crossing competition.

You have here a view of the shore from our motel unit. we then headed home via the St-Maurice valley down to Trois-Rivière home of the first metal industry in New France. The federal governement maintains a park there: le Parc national des Forges du St-Maurice.

This is a view of what is left of the furnace. The mill was shut down in 1853 and it operated almost 200 years.

We then headed home...and the sun showed up.