It bothers me to hear our enlightened and benevolent dictator, one Stephen Harper, prattle on and on about the comparative strength of the Canadian economy vis-a-vis other G20 and G8 nations. He goes up in front of American TV cameras to remind Americans that the good neighbour up North hasn’t been affected by the worldwide recession, and further that we’re always a sound investment. It’s simultaneously economic-nationalist gloating and a somewhat undignified plea for additional capital investment. It’s unclear to me whether Mr. Harper actually believes we’re in a privileged economic position or whether he’s simply trying to feign confidence knowing full-well we’re about to bear the brunt of our own localized melt-down. If we entertain the notion that Stephen Harper is in fact an economic mastermind expertly steering Canada through a momentary fiscal storm, then we are still left with a far bigger problem, that of growing inequities in Canada. In sum, Canada’s good economic track record has only really been good for the richest 1% of our own population, and that our middle-class is in as perilous a position now as we were during the post-Cold War economic recession and re-adjustment. I really would like to know who is benefitting the most from our apparently robust national economy. I don’t see many opportunities, I know the dollar is as valueless today as it was ten years ago (despite actually being worth quite a bit more) and I know that the educated youth are almost all royally fucked, with too few opportunities and too many (subsequently) wasted minds. With no ‘economic stimulus’, young people are left to drift, wondering why they ‘invested in their futures’ with student loans so many years ago.
But perhaps I’m being overly pessimistic. Perhaps I lack faith.
What would rekindle my faith in my Prime Minister, my nation’s economic foundation, and the elites of my nation? A single massive act of charity.
Like this? Read the rest here. Scroll down to post no. 3
So what are we to do with our beloved and excessively expensive Big O?
I, for one, do not and have never supported any plans to demolish it, despite the popularity of such a flippant suggestion.
First of all, it’s paid for. If it had a regular tenant, such as a professional sports team that could guarantee high attendance, the costs of maintenance moving forward will pale in comparison to the revenue generated through use of the stadium. Use begets more use, and a return to the days when the Big O was also a prime location for rock concerts, conventions and congresses will come naturally as long as there is a primary draw. General usage was considerably higher when the Expos were popular and drawing large crowds. Moreover, we know with certainty that major league sports and concert venues can have a positive local influence and stimulate further economic growth in the area immediately surrounding the site. The area around the Montreal Forum has yet to recover from the loss of stimuli that went with the move to the Bell Centre, as has the area around the Big O. By contrast, the area around the Bell Centre is starting to show signs of improvement and may very well (for better or for worse) become a focal point for new development in the Central Business District (CBD).
This sector is lousy with old industrial spaces which no longer provide the societal anchor they once did. The industry can be consolidated in more opportune locations and the space better utilized to support a significant increase in the local population. Moreover, increasing the population while simultaneously diversifying social and cultural groups in the same area will help ‘even-out’ the neighbourhood, and provide numerous additional possibilities for small businesses and local services. So while old warehouses are turned into condo towers and elementary schools, additional social and civic services can be concentrated at the Olympic Site – there’s a lot of open space here, I can imagine space for a CLSC or library or a really kick-ass kindergarten can be worked into its master plan. The point is, build up the population significantly, and then focus that population’s attention on the Big O as a kind of meta civic centre.
To see a bird’s eye perspective of the Olympic Park and environs, click here.
Increasing population density isn’t enough by itself – types of residential housing must remain diverse and new opportunities for small businesses must be created. But on top of that, some key alterations to the urban tapestry will become necessary, specifically with regards to the quadrilaterals bounded by Pierre-de-Coubertin, Bennett, Ontario and Latourneaux in addition to the one bounded by Sherbrooke, Dickson, Hochelaga and Viau. Both of these areas are principally industrial. The former could be re-designed so as to allow for a new public plaza running between the Stadium and the Maisonneuve Market with large capacity residential and commercial buildings built along its edge. I would recommend a similar plan for the latter as well – after all, what’s centralization if it isn’t apparent to anyone that there’s a centre to speak of?
In any event, I think I covered all the bases – securing a proud and profitable future for the Big O is almost thoroughly dependent on a City plan to completely overhaul the HLM sector and instigate a kind of gentrification that would encourage a new socio-economic diversity in the area, provide better services for families and further turn it into an outward-facing urban focal point.
But if you want to get more people out there on the cheap, perhaps the short-term, inexpensive solution is simply to re-build Corridart in a new form, linking the CBD with the Olympic Park by means of an outdoor art-gallery erected along Sherbrooke Street.
Suffice it to say, this is more than just a potential election issue – the citizens must make their voices heard.
The ruling Tories have dropped the ball in one domain they repeatedly claim to be almost exclusively their own – supporting the Canadian military.
Let me be more specific. Tories typically talk a good game around election time about how they, and in their minds they alone, support the Canadian Forces. Both Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney began their terms in office promising sweeping reforms, new equipment procurement plans, increases to personnel levels and a general ‘re-investment’ in ‘our men and women in uniform’. Typically, statements of this nature will be bookended with snide commentary about how ‘previous Liberal governments’ have ‘gutted’ the military, leaving Canadians hopelessly defenseless. It’s a good tactic because it works; it plays off of well-established though completely erroneous sentiments and pays off for the Tories during the election cycles. And true to form, though much is promised, almost nothing is provided.
And here’s the kicker; you don’t need to be a military historian to know that when it comes to defending Canada and using military spending to stimulate the economy, no party has a stronger reputation in this respect than the gold old Grits. The dirty little secret of the Conservative Party of Canada is their defense and strategic planning legacy, which has all too often fallen short. The fact that anyone in this great nation still believes the Tories know anything about defense only demonstrates the extent by which Canadian politics is framed by the American discourse, and worse still, American stereotypes.
Historically, Conservative military spending has been very much in-line with Conservative foreign policy, which stresses Canada’s ‘military obligations’ to NATO and the United States (because the Americans apparently need our assistance) and this in turn means we arm ourselves accordingly. Under Liberal governments, the stress is placed on national sovereignty and peacekeeping. Moreover, Conservatives historically tend to buying foreign-produced military hardware, whereas Liberals find ‘Made in Canada’ solutions. And don’t forget our last legitimately Progressive conservative Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, was so consumed with eliminating the fiscal excesses of St-Laurent era ‘big government’ he axed the Avro Arrow and retarded Canada’s aerospace industry permanently thereafter – we still have yet to recover the technical prowess and ingenuity of that firm, more than fifty years after the fact. Diefenbaker’s nuclear-missile replacement was ultimately what would cost him the 1963 federal election, not to mention that he would turn around and later acquire American-made jets in 1961. Similarly today the Harper Administration is procuring 65 highly-experimental and so-far unproven fighters incapable of fully replacing the capabilities of our current fleet of 103 strike-fighters. The Canadian taxpayers are being asked to shell out $30 billion to purchase aircraft that won’t have engines or weapons, and the aircraft won’t even be built here. When Pierre Trudeau signed the order to procure 138 Hornets in 1982, he made sure to acquire the licenses as well, so that the entire fleet was built locally, and further built to a better design than their American counterparts. Our aircraft were so well built they are still outperforming more recent models of the type, and as you can imagine, given that the money stayed in Canada, the indirect economic effects were considerable. And the Tories want you to think this is fiscally irresponsible. Using a search and rescue helicopter or government jet to go on vacation, by their standards, is not.
The Harper Administration has indicated that they consider national sovereignty and northern sovereignty to be synonymous, but aside from playing capture-the-flag with the Danes and Russians, the Tories have done nothing to further defend the Arctic. And defending the Arctic is much more than a routine sovereignty exercise for the Canadian Forces – its about ensuring our territorial waters aren’t used by American, Russian, British, French or Chinese ballistic missile submarines, about securing our resources from irresponsible foreign development and further ensuring that the Arctic ecosystem isn’t further damaged by international shipping and global warming. He said he would procure armed icebreakers – that was five years ago and nothing has happened since. Same thing with the proposed new joint support ships, amphibious assault ships and the upgrades to our existing fleet – lots of talk, little walk. What’s more distressing is that under Stephen Harper’s reign the Canadian Forces have been either selling off or otherwise shedding perfectly good military equipment; the common denominator being that the equipment was procured by ‘previous Liberal governments’. A case in point would be the sad fate of HMCS Huron, one of a class of four guided-missile destroyers with the potential to be used as a platform for a ballistic missile defense system, among other things. Extensively upgraded in the mid-1990s she was still fully serviceable when mothballed in 2000 due to personnel shortages. Instead of keeping the ship in such a static, still usable state, the decision was made by DND officials to tow her out to a Pacific Ocean weapons testing facility and sink her in 2007. Similarly, none of Canada’s four submarines are currently serviceable, and the Harper Administration purposely removed the long-range missile capabilities of these ships. The subs like the destroyers were procured by previous Liberal governments. So to were the reconnaissance vehicles used by the army, the coastal patrol boats used by naval reservists and most of our air defense equipment, all of which seems to have been ‘phased out’ by the Harper Administration. It seems these days that their only success has been to re-affirm our historically British military ties by denigrating our national sovereignty by re-affixing the Royal stamp to two out of three services. A great PR victory, but ultimately as useless as tits on a bull, to use a favoured Western Canadian expression. In sum it has come time for the citizenry to question this apparent Tory dominion on all things defense related. Time and time again they have proven themselves incompetent and fundamentally disinterested in using such large allocations of tax-payer revenue to better developing our high-technology and heavy-manufacturing sectors. It’s time to set the record straight on the Tory defense legacy.
I guess I’m first to catch the glaring flaw here. Yay for history majors!
To begin, I watched the interview and I agree in principle that men can sometimes get the shit end of the legal stick when it comes to custody issues following a divorce. This is partially a reaction to having a justice system which at one point in the past uniquely served the interests of caucasian heterosexual adult males. Times have changed and we’re better off for it.
But theres a huge problem here.
Ms. Titus’ argument is in part based on the idea that the media doesn’t report the male victims of crimes or injustices of a psycho-sexual nature, that the victims, from a mainstream media perspective, seem to tend towards almost exclusively being women. As for the aggressors, they almost always seem to be men. Ms. Titus, in an effort to bring her point home refers to the four un-named male victims of the Montreal Massacre (aka Polytechnique Shooting) on Dec. 6th 1989. Her credibility then nose-dives because…
It never happened.
There were no men killed at the Polytechnique, save for the lone gunman. The four men she refers to were killed, wait for it:
a) three years later
b) at a different university
c) with a different weapon
d) for a fundamentally different reason
e) from a different person (also a man, now in jail, likely not to be paroled)
Ms. Titus used a tactic which has been well-used by Sun TV, Sun News, CNN, Fox News etc etc etc for years. It’s called ‘conflation’. Since most people can’t remember what happened last week, most people simply smush events together for their own convenience. Ask a history prof how maddening this is.
There’s absolutely no debate when it comes to the victims list from the Polytech Shooting – they were all women killed for being women by a man who claimed feminists had ruined his life. He stated as such in his suicide note. He only shot at women, he only killed women.
I cannot stress this enough. But because the Polytechnique Massacre and Concordia Massacre happened relatively close together, Ms. Titus has decided to apply four senseless male deaths at Concordia University to a crime committed three years earlier in hopes of bolstering her weak position and lack of credible evidence.
*** Author’s Note – October 10th 2011***
I’ve been corresponding with Ms. Titus and she alleges that she had received the incorrect information from students she interviewed. There was a linguistic barrier, as Ms. Titus cannot speak French, and she further alleges that the students led her to believe several men had been killed in the incident, though they could not pinpoint precisely where they had heard this. Ms. Titus insists that she corrected these statements, though I’ve yet to ascertain where such a retraction would have been posted.
That said, I don’t have much too say, I think she’s already done a number on her own credibility by admitting to using less than satisfactory research methods. While I can understand there is a pressure of sorts while appearing on unscripted live television, there is no excuse to use such flawed ‘information’ to form a core component of your argument. Frankly, if more people working in the 24-hr cable news industry made more of an effort to censor themselves and try, sincerely, to only speak the truth, or, to ensure that points are based on demonstrable facts, our society would be considerably less polarized. Instead, such infotainment organizations (like Sun News Network) are driven by spurious scandals and invented controversies. Facts take a back seat because pundits have no interest in finding the truth. This is a distinction between ‘media personality’ and ‘journalist/reporter’ our society must recognize, but unfortunately we are still functionally illiterate when it comes to most media and communications issues. Too many of us still only trust the town crier, and we need to evolve past this. Ms. Titus should have refrained from using this example to build her argument, but ultimately my objection lies not chiefly with her, but rather with Sun News for their selective omission, selective fact-checking, and custom-fit misinformation they traffic in.
But to ensure the record is clear, she does acknowledge the mistake and has apologized for making the assertion, incorrect as it is.
***
It’s not like Fox News North is going to do a god damn thing to help her get her facts straight and this in turn weakens us. We can’t have random, opportunistic people like this being supported by equally opportunistic assholes like Michael Coren, Sun News, Quebecor etc.
This is hardly great stuff, but I suppose I wouldn’t nearly be as disappointed if it weren’t for the fact that men’s rights forums and other commentators are falling-in step behind this, calling it good stuff, a decent argument etc. No one has noticed this crucial fabrication.
As a proud man, I choose to honour my pride by ensuring I know the facts before I open my mouth, and certainly before I go on TV in front of the 20 or 30 people who may or may not be watching Sun News.
A friend of mine recently asked me what I’d like to see happen to Griffintown.
I said: the Plateau.
How’s that saying go, brevity is the soul of wit?
A-yuk-yuk-yuk…
But seriously now. We were talking about looking for apartments and she was wondering what I thought about the area currently being marketed as ‘Griffintown’ along Notre Dame West. Admittedly, this would have been the northernmost extensions of Griffintown, and would likely have been considered a part of Little Burgundy that last time there was a stable local population. Keep in mind, a good stretch of this area around the new ETS building was once a CN stockyard; this is why the buildings on the northern side of Notre Dame are all new construction, whereas those on the southern side tend to be renovated industrial buildings. I’ve had the chance to pass through the area a few times recently, and will be going back soon to document the street-side ballet of this new urban neighbourhood. It strikes me that this area may one day soon become a vibrant community, but as it stands right now, there is something palpably missing. There are people here, it is defining itself, but it has yet to acquire all that is needed to be considered an actual community, a neighbourhood.
Part of the problem lies in what kind of living arrangements are currently available here. Its almost exclusively condos, and these tend to be rented almost exclusively by students, young couples etc. There seem to be very few families around here, and scarcely any family-oriented services, such as schools, libraries, cultural centres, clinics etc. While a stretch of Notre Dame West in Little Burgundy has enjoyed recent success developing into a chic strip for night owls and the socially-inclined, other parts of the new Griffintown are eerily quiet and devoid of life between certain hours on most nights. Public transit doesn’t seem to have kept pace with developments here, and at times it seems to suffer from the same fundamental deficiencies as the Quartier des Multimedias further East.
Clark Street looking South, 1976 - not the work of the author.
The plan for Griffintown seems to be more of the same – large condo buildings and renovated former industrial sites. It’s market-driven development with only the bare minimum of municipal involvement. So the question I asked my friend, as I would ask anyone thinking of moving into Griffintown and potentially considering purchasing a condo, is whether or not they think someone else is going to want to live there at some point in the future, in short, what is the re-sale potential of the unit?
Stalled Redevelopment at the Dow Brewery - not the work of the author.
Now, the Berri Square area suffers from other problems as well, but the Ilot Voyageur isn’t helping. Griffintown has a stalled project along Peel with the plan to redevelop the old Dow Brewery – the area can’t afford to let this continue, as it places an unfortunate obstacle for further development – consider the negative effects the abandoned art store across from the former abandoned hulk of the Seville Theatre on Ste-Catherine’s near the old Forum. One abandoned building can have a detrimental effect on the land-value of adjacent buildings. A good portion of Griffintown remains abandoned or underused, and unless the city plans on moving in and directing urban residential redevelopment, the market may not be stable enough to guarantee long-term investment. Ergo, the city needs to stimulate investment by demonstrating to developers their intention to craft a viable urban community.
The Halcyon Days of Victoria Street; the Eaton's Centre now sits in its place.
In order to accomplish this, the City’s going to have to take a good look at what makes our best urban communities work so well. What makes the Plateau what it is, what makes it so desirable, and can knowledge of these key characteristics be successfully applied to a new cooperative development scheme, where the City leads developers into a sustainable development model? The City should use its resources and contacts to develop the services that will stimulate the creation and growth of society, and not just a collection of places where people eat, sleep (and maybe build little forts!) The question I’ve been asked is why use the Plateau design model? In sum, residential housing design in Montreal from the Victorian and Edwardian eras, though by no means perfect, has some particularly interesting advantages, namely: the orientation of homes onto shared spaces (streets, alleys and parks), medium-sized housing density which allows for enough sunlight to penetrate shared spaces and stimulate local flora, and the availability of rental units for small-scale businesses, which are in turn oriented towards the needs of local residents. Moreover, areas of neighbourhood designed based on these concepts have proven themselves to be popular and developmentally malleable throughout the generations. It’s tried, tested and true and leaves enough breathing room to be highly adaptable. I can imagine an ideally designed Griffintown which blends this model with the industrial lofts and new condominiums.
Old Port Living - not the work of the author.
I’ve identified an area roughly bounded by Sherbrooke, St-Antoine, Mountain and Bleury wherein we find almost all new high-capacity residential development. Its this same area that happens to have a large quantity of open spaces for development, most of which are surface parking lots. This same area has no public schools, no libraries, no grocery stores as far as I’ve seen, and pathetically few options when it comes to affordable fine dining, especially after regular business hours. What’s especially maddening is that this same area is the very core of our city. It is a societal wasteland, and I would know – I’ve been told for some time I come from one.
Dr. David Bernans is an unassuming man with more than a decade’s worth of involvement in student activism and student politics in general. A few years back he wrote a book, North of 9/11, a piece of historical fiction recounting some of his personal experiences dealing with Concordia University security practices in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and all the irrationality, absurdity and insanity that has manifested itself in countless ways over the past decade.
The rallying cry of “9/11 Changed Everythingâ€, typical of the Tea Party penchant for minimalist deepities (thanks to Daniel Dennett for nailing that idea) is unfortunately not so merely a befuddled expression, but also a kind of sick state-of-mind. Perennial fear, and every John Q middle-manager and white-collar schlock finding a newfound purpose in life by making security and anti-terrorism their personal affair. Perhaps we were spared the brunt of the 9/11 tidal wave, but at the very least on campuses here at home and across the nation, a new mood was established, and Concordia would become a Made-in-Canada example-sans-pareil of the new corporate university’s response to student politics and activism in the post-9/11 world. I can imagine another expression, “the gloves are coming off†repeated with renewed vigour in university boardrooms. One of the pillars of our liberal democracy, a ‘free’ and public post-secondary education, renown as bastions of free thought and expression, would become a new ground-zero for illegal, unethical and ultimately state-sponsored political terrorism and suppression. The new corporate university, at arm’s length of the titans of industry, finance and government, would do its part in stamping out internal dissent and anyone, though students in particular, who threatened the corporate image of the institution. All of a sudden Mr. Bernans found himself persona non-grata in the institution he worked so hard to improve. There’s nothing like altruism and the open-support of potentially unpopular causes to get the attention of corporate PR hacks and university lawyers.
I had the chance to speak with the now Dr. Bernans at the book-launch of the new electronic (e-book) version of North of 9/11, originally published in 2006. The reading to a small group was held at Concordia’s cooperative bookstore, an initiative of progressive students that goes back quite a ways. Though I’ve now graduated from the institution, I can remember the Co-op, as its commonly known, was typically the host of anti-frosh activities designed to get the focus back on learning and away from mind-crushing alcohol-fueled hangovers. So I was surprised to see Dr. Bernans’ book reading was part of the regular Concordia Student Union frosh-week roster. Inside, I met up with the new CSU President Lex Gill and then put two-and-two together. I had forgotten about the progressive victory on campus from earlier this year, when the students finally de-throned the university-approved political dynasty they had created in the wake of the Netanyahu Riots of 2002. Thus, the reading made a lot more sense, though its venue – the Co-op – is apparently still considered to be ‘outside’ Concordia territory, and this in turn is a residual effect of the university’s attempt to ‘accommodate student activists’ in the same way ‘free-speech cages’ accommodated dissenters at any political gathering in the United States over the last decade.
North of 9/11 was to be read publically for the first time in 2006. The book does not portray Concordia University in a positive light – and for good reason. The Netanyahu Riot was entirely preventable, and instead of making an example of it to act as a catalyst for better relations and a renewed effort at political dialogue on campus, it was instead ‘utilized’ by the university administration as a casus belli to instigate an unwinnable low-intensity conflict against student activists. Bernans was spied on by goons hired by university administrator Michael di Grappa, and elements of the administration conspired to buy themselves an election and a means to direct control of student activities through the CSU. I would know, I saw it happen in the Spring of 2005, 2006 etc. As Bernans puts it, the administration found ‘ass-kissing CV-padders’ to become the new face of the student body, and then systematically went after every potential threat.
The book documents the expulsions and suspensions of students for illegitimate reasons, the overt corruption of university administrators and security personnel, and the actions of secret committees with odd-sounding names. It’s the story of deep personal bonds forged during these exceptionally hard times, and the fundamental insecurity of the modern corporate university, which seems to be thoroughly incapable of dealing with a politically active student body. Maybe things are going to change this year with the ‘left’ side of Concordia student politics back in the saddle, holding the reigns of power, or whatever power’s left. We’ll have to wait and see about that one.
In the meantime I’d highly recommend checking out the book if you’re not familiar with Concordia history post-9/11. It’s a fascinating subject, and Dr. Bernans has been able to weave a good story together with scenes inspired by his own experiences, into a solid representation of that troublesome time. Unfortunately, as Dr. Bernans was quick to point out, in many ways the student body of today is still dealing with the shadow of 9/11 and the Netanyahu Riots, the implications of which have manifested themselves with heightened campus (in)security, interference in student governance and an aggressive administration. The victory for campus progressives and activists a few months ago was a major upset, but this doubtless means the university administration will take an overtly hostile tone with the students.
Why does it always feel like we’re taking one step forward and two steps back?
