/travel/canada/Another Sad Trainride
I was on the train back from Halifax when this happened. :-(
New Albums from the Gallery
/travel/canada/I love snow!
The way it billows and blusters. Hits the window and dies against the warm glass. Collects on window sills, and in troughs, and on pipes.
I have no idea why, but it's one of the few things that makes me respond with what can only be described as "glee."
There's about an inch on the ground now, enough to cover the horrible ice that necessarily underlies any southern Ontario snowfall.
In other news, things are well. I mostly work from home now, since I have no immediate coworkers in the office so there's not a lot of point in commuting.
I'm taking Hapkido, and enjoying it. They're making me be flexible and grow some muscles. Clare's into a photography course. I'm trying to figure out what to do with my upcoming leave. Our flat is great. Seeing people I haven't seen in a long time is good too.
We kitted out the flat from Freecycle, Craigslist, Ikea, a bit of Canadian Tire, and a finishing touch of Walmart. I'm pretty happy with the end result. I refinished a table that my landlord gave us, and it looks pretty good. Clare spraypainted a TV table she got for $2, and it looks good too. We've had two rides to grocery stores (from Josh & Katie the first time, for $675 of groceries, and Deirdre the second, at a measly $300.)
Clare and I went to a "GreenTOpia" book launch about greening up Toronto a couple weeks ago. There seems to be a tonne of work in that area, and the city council seems very supportive, which is great. I got a couple contacts and ideas there, and they ran two pretty good panels. I was surprised that in the discussion about the merits and effectiveness (or lack thereof) of individual actions like recycling, nobody even mentioned the potential for amplifying things at work -- maybe because the panelists all work in green organizations. To me, that's totally the biggest scope for making a difference as an individual. Leaning on your bosses to do things more greenly, and applying resistance (no matter how slight, if job security is at risk from it) to wasteful practices (even if they're cost-effective, though there's plenty of evidence that, not surprisingly, there's plent of scope for efficiency improvements that are both profitable and green) can be amplified by the millions of widgets a company makes, or the thousands of computers it runs, or the tonnes of carbon it emits. Especially once you've carved out the big things in your own life (i.e. household & transport efficiency) this seems to me to be what's left.
There was also a general confusion from the panel about sacrifice. Some people said we wouldn't have to sacrifice anything. Many people said anything predicated on individual sacrifice was doomed. Some people said "sacrificing stuff isn't bad, it's great, you'll love it. Therefore we won't be sacrificing anything." All are sentiments I agree with, to some degree. I think the problem is, as a society, we're going to have to sacrifice some things. But as individuals, I don't feel like I'm "sacrificing" a trip to Japan just because it's more than I want to pay for it. If "sacrifice" is higher prices to reflect the real costs of certain goes, it won't "feel" like personal sacrifice.
I also went to a forum at the St Lawrence Center on "The Politics of Food". It was pretty good, though a little lefty in general. One of the questioners from the Ontario Farmer's Association said that instead of international trade rules saying we shouldn't be able to export for more than selling locally, we should have it that we can't import for less than selling locally. Yeah, 'cause I want to pay $25 for a pineapple grown in a greenhouse. That's efficient. In general, it was surprising to me that nobody raised carbon fees ("taxes") as a way of fixing some of the efficiencies. He (or maybe another OFA guy) said that factory farming was the cleanest, safest, etc., kind of farming available, and got booed a bit. He didn't actually say anything about how humane it was -- I'm not sure if that's 'cause he got cut off, or 'cause he wasn't worried about it.
I'm working on a secret, slightly nerdy, slightly activist project. Hopefully it ends up pretty cool, and makes a teeny tiny difference in the world.
/travel/canada/Toronto to Halifax and Back
I'm sitting in a Greyhound bus, soon to depart for St. Catherines. It's much cooler than the train I was just on, for the Montreal-Toronto leg, and much warmer than the train I was on from Halifax to Toronto. In fact, it's just right.
There were no unseemly events on the rest of the train journey there, or back. I finished "Blink" and it was pretty crap, but not as crap as Tipping Point. Or maybe I was just braced for it. It had interesting stories and anecdotes and studies, but it was desparately trying to be rigorous when it wasn't. And, unless my recollection of Aeron chairs is incorrect, the author doesn't seem to know the difference between "dependent" and "independent". His word-choice is frustratingly lax, and the way he draws parallels if often dubious. I guess that's why it's called Pop Psychology, and not Psychology literature, but I wish he'd find a slightly more rigorous middle ground.
On the way there, I met an Irish girl from Galway, but who now lives and teaches in Dublin. We chatted about our various countries and their stereotypes, pros, and cons. I was surprised to find someone like that on the train. In fact, I'm surprised to find a lot of people on the train. There were single people, high-school aged couples, old couples, families. Most of the way I was sitting solo, but for the last leg of the journey, I spoke at length with a Kuwaiti-born of Indian descent studying in Canada. He had interesting -- if somewhat pessimistic -- views on the Middle East Conflict, and seemed to strongly concur when I mused about my utter lack of understanding the strategy of provocation involved in the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. We talked about oil, Iraq, Canada, I gave him a brief overview of the (largely defunct) Northern Ireland conflict, and the current status quo. There was also a fellow who could only be described as a pimp; he wore matching bright sports top and bottoms, two big gold chains with pendants, and some kind of brass knuckles with what appeared to be lion head engravings. He talked quietly on the cell phone, admonishing the other participant not to share news of his arrival. At least one other person was taking the train for environmental reasons -- her Nalgene bottle announced that "environmentalists do it for future generations."
This bus driver is doing the semi-standard announcments. He seems a bit eccentric: he's talked about the weather, the fact that we can't chat with him about the World Cup since it's over, and the interior temperature -- "Which is set to 22 degrees Celsius, for you Canadians you know what that means," he said with a light brogue, "for you Americans, that's...'nice'." Apparently 22 is the guideline from the Ontario Ministry of Transport. And traffic is light. And you can use the washroom in an emergency, but you're better off to wait until we get to St. Catherines.
I had a good time in Halifax, saw all my family, hung out on a nearby beach, each day building a more grandiose sand castle with my nieces and nephews, each day hoping the tide was coming in to provide a classic struggle of Man vs. Nature, each day being disappointed by the tide heading out. On my last evening, we went back to the beach hoping the tide would be coming up, to watch the destruction of all our efforts. We were greeted, instead, with a lively lightning storm, and eventually with rain, which probably won the race to destroy the rock-reinforced castle, and the nearby forest of sand-trees.
I played Scrabble, Boggle, and Trivial Pursuit aplenty. Two years of reading the economist have helped my history immensely, which my Econ 102 prof ("The history of economics is the history of society.") would no doubt be delighted by. I was also bested by my 8 year old neice at Boggle. Just once, mind you, but beaten nonetheless!
Tonight I'm visiting my aunt on my mother's side, and hopefully tomorrow my aunt, uncle, and cousins on my dad's side. The future beyond that is fuzzy. I fly back Wednesday night, arrive Thursday morning, and proceed directly to a wedding. Do not pass go, do not collect $100. (I played Monopoly, too, and was beaten by my sister, as expected.)
/travel/canada/Morbid Delays
The Via Rail train #60 from Toronto to Montreal is stopped. The view from my window hasn't changed for nearly two hours, and it will apparently be another 45 minutes before we're on our way.
Just after Brockville, I was roused from my sleepy reading to the train slowing, then to the smells of overheated engines. I cursed, remembering the time a bad engine made us creep into Ottawa, past whizzing cars and busses, at about 8km/h.
A minute or two passed before one of the train's flight attendants announced that she didn't know why we were stopped, but that she'd keep us apprised. A few minutes later, she kept her promise, vaguely mentioning a railway accident "ahead of us", and that the engineers would need to be relieved. It was all very underspecified, but it was going to take between two and three hours to get things sorted out.
I kept reading for a while, and then eventually started walking the length of the train, heading backwards first. When I reached the back, the vagueness became clear -- about 300m back, there was a crossing, with a couple of cars and some pilons. A few others gathered around the window filled me in on the rumour mill: we'd hit someone, maybe two, it might have been a child, they threw themselves in front of the train, that red car has been there since before anyone else got there. Why were we waiting at all; they're already dead? Why would someone do that? Why does it take so long to get going again? I put in my two cents -- procedures, trauma to the engineers, waiting for the coroner, and replacement conductors. Most people seemed pretty understanding about the whole thing. Some lamented that they continued to charge for the coffee and tea. The capitalist in me knew that was the best way to distribute what was no doubt an inadequate supply, though it did seem rather cutthroat.
I paced my way through to the front of the train, squeezing by the emptying snack carts, chatting with people as I passed. Each car seemed to have a different personality. Some had people up, standing, chatting, others had a good few glasses of wine going around. Several were quiet, some had children playing games, or irritating their impatient parents.
In the stuffy section between two cars, a fellow from Toronto had his guitar, and was strumming away quietly. He had gelled up hair, and a guitar that was well-worn, with a bit of stuff stuck to the body. Marshmallows from a recent campfire singalong, he explained without sheepishness. Just a part of his guitar's character. I encouraged him to play for one of the cars, but he declined. A young man whose seat was across the aisle from mine came into the compartment. The guitarist asked him if he knew how to sing, and the young, freckled, fluently bilingual Quebecker suggested "You Are My Sunshine," and upped the ante: He wanted to sing it to his girlfriend. Strike that, fianceé; not being romantic, he'd proposed to her last year, in a parking lot. The musician said that this was "the good stuff", true love, and all that, in that mellow, sincere way only an artist can.
I went and sat back down, to the last dregs of work that needed to be done before my vacation can begin in ernest. A few minutes later, the freckled Quebecker surreptitiously handed me his camera, and asked me to take a few photos. He and the guitarist returned a couple minutes later, and I ducked behind to take some photos. The car joined in a little, with a few claps, but not as much as I sorta hoped.
After this interlude, I started pacing back and forth, visiting the back of the train. Eventually, the morbid interest got the best of me: I had been refusing to take photos, but when some police officers were walking back towards the accident, I used it as an excuse to take a photo of the scene.
It's physically the closest I've ever been to death, and no doubt it was a fairly gruesome one as these things go. There were certainly a lot of disrupted plans, my own included, but perspective must be maintained on those lives were interrupted, or halted, far more than ours: the conductors, the victim, and their friends and family.
We're moving again now, full tilt toward Cornwall.
