no hybrids for canada

I was looking to perhaps rent a hybrid for a longish business trip. My company’s preferred supplier, National, doesn’t do them in Canada, but does in the US:

no hybrids for canada

Why do they get them, and we don’t? Don’t say there’s no demand; I‘d rent one …

a landmark day in Ontario

Tim Hortons finally got Interac in Ontario. Western Canadians will no longer be frustrated with their eastern siblings. (well, I’m sure there will be some other bones of contention ….)

Oh, and we technically implement Kyoto today.

your vote counts – or does it?

I was a little bemused about Ontario wanting 21 extra MPs, so I did some sums to see how many MPs each province/territory should have:


2005 Population ‘Fair’ Ridings Actual Ridings %age over/under represented
Canada (total) 32,270,500 308 308  
Newfoundland and Labrador 516,000 5 7 +42%
Prince Edward Island 138,100 1 4 +203%
Nova Scotia 937,900 9 11 +23%
New Brunswick 752,000 7 10 +39%
Quebec 7,598,100 73 75 +3%
Ontario 12,541,400 120 106 -11%
Manitoba 1,177,600 11 14 +25%
Saskatchewan 994,100 9 14 +48%
Alberta 3,256,800 31 28 -10%
British Columbia 4,254,500 41 36 -11%
Yukon Territory 31,000 0 1 +238%
Northwest Territories 43,000 0 1 +144%
Nunavut 30,000 0 1 +249%

The population data is from StatsCan for 2005, and the riding counts from Wikipedia, and checked on CBC’s election 2006 site. My analysis is a bit simplistic; everyone counted as population gets the same federal representation.

Ontario, BC and Alberta are getting stiffed. Quebec is the fairest of them all. But if you really want your vote to count, and you can’t handle the Territories, move to PEI.

worse than no map at all

I’ve been using my GPS to track roads around the wind farm. I’m most disappointed with the coverage that Garmin’s MetroGuide Canada gives. Sure, Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh might not be Canada’s most vibrant metropolis, but it seems that much of the MetroGuide routing is screwy around the Huron shores. A couple of frinstances:

  • Hwy 21 around Goderich is about 100-300m of its location, and the junction from Hwy 8 is almost a kilometre out. The GPS does an amusing “Hey, make a turn … whoa, how’d you get here?” kind of thing as you come into Goderich.
  • According to MetroGuide Canada, you are “Arriving at Lucknow” when you’re on Hwy 21. Lucknow’s almost 20km from Hwy 21. It also doesn’t seem to know about routing along Hwy 86, and also tries to route you across an entirely imaginary road near Belgrave Road.
  • Visiting friends near Wingham last night, the GPS suggested I should go back to Goderich via Clinton, a detour of 20km.

I know I didn’t really need to use the GPS for this (except I now know how to navigate the backroads of Wingham), but some of the map choices it was giving me were downright useless.

Helps if you load the right map …

économisez les baleines! <beep>

Greenpeace Canada decided I’m francophone, and so sent me their French welcome package. I don’t particularly mind, but I don’t remember being given a language option.

I’m not proud of being monolingual (in fact, round these parts I’m sometimes considered nihilingual). At school, if you wanted to take science, you dropped the arts by about age 15. It didn’t help that our school used minging old readers like Aux Pays des Flamantes Roses and used genuine 1960s reel-to-reels with écoutez et répétez <beep>!

audible minority

Everyone says I don’t have a very strong accent, but I’m sick of being misunderstood. I have been offered Wild Turkey when I asked for water, and my house number – 36 – is a constant source of confusion. Bell got it wrong for a couple of hours when we first got our phone in 2002, and so the poor folks at 56 have been getting our junk mail ever since.

Last straw came during the last power outage. Toronto Hydro has an automated voice recognition system which first asks your postal code, then your street name, then the house number. It got the code and the street right, then assumed I was saying big ol’ 56 again. It took me right back to the postal code question, even after confirming it and the street name before.

Rather than going postal, I ended up having to slur out my mooshiest “thihrdheesihx” before it took it. C’mon people, consonants, consonants!

Hate to think what it’d have made of the Glaswegian ‘thehrty’, which my Gran always decried as “common” …

ack bleah

I picked up a pack of Wrigley’s Doublemint Kona Creme Coffee Flavored (as they say) Gum in Missouri last week. I strongly advise that you don’t.

To use the crude but apt expression coined by Jay Primeau to describe a badly-mixed Kahlua cocktail, it tastes like coffee flavoured ass. While chewing, it causes the gorge to rise (I think it’s the slightly minty edge of the gum base), and has an aftertaste akin to latte barf.

Canada’s own Thrills Gum may still taste like soap (as it says on the package, and they’re not lying), but this is just … eww.

in the running

Almost ‘Best of The Year’ time. In the running are:

A Hawk and a Hacksaw – The Way the Wind Blows
A.C. Newman – Souvenir of Canada – EP
Beck – The Information
Calexico – Garden Ruin
Casper & the Cookies – The Optimist’s Club
Colin Meloy – Colin Meloy Sings Shirley Collins
Eels with Strings – Live At Town Hall
Elf Power – Back To The Web
Erynn Marshall – Calico
Faun Fables – The Transit Rider
Grandaddy – Just Like The Fambly Cat
Grant-Lee Phillips – nineteeneighties
Hidden Cameras – Awoo
Joanna Newsom – Ys
Jolie Holland – Springtime Can Kill You
King Biscuit Time – Black Gold
Mayor McCa – Cue Are Es Tea You
Peter Stampfel – The Jig Is Up
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 РOl̩! Tarantula
Sufjan Stevens – Songs For Christmas – Volume V: Peace
Sufjan Stevens – The Avalanche – Outtakes And Extras From The Illinois Album
The Be Good Tanyas – Hello Love
The Decemberists – The Crane Wife
The Essex Green – Cannibal Sea
The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics
The Handsome Family – Last Days of Wonder
The Instruments – Cast A Half Shadow
The Sadies – In Concert Vol. 1
The Wailin’ Jennys – Firecracker
Thom Yorke – The Eraser
Thomas Dolby – The Sole Inhabitant
Wendy Arrowsmith – Crying Out
Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass

Miraculously, all of them fit on my iPod Nano, so they’ll be in heavy rotation over the next week or so while I decide.

providing cannon fodder for empire since 1867

Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the toll of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan is the price Canada is paying for playing a leadership role in world affairs.

I reckon that if I took a random street poll anywhere (anywhere outside Canada, that is), no more than 3 out of 10 people would consider Canada as having a leadership role. I do not wish to make light of the soldiers’ plight; I just don’t want them there in my name.

(I was going to make a comment about the nearest thing to a role to most Canadians would be a Swiss Chalet 1/4 chicken dinner, but that doesn’t work in a written context, and barely works when spoken.)