Category: Canada

Whoah. I had totally thought that things like this were a thing of the past. 😯 Don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining. It’s just that I was under the impression that this kind of wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee common sense had, at some time, fallen by the wayside in oh-so-progressive Ontario.

It’s nice to be wrong every now and then. It seems that there’s at least one county in my home province that isn’t falling for all the touchy-feely bullcrap that the would-be Dr. Spocks of the world are trying to foist on us…

Summer in Lambton County means sun, surf — and no kids out alone after midnight.

Underlining the point, Lambton OPP scooped up nine youths out past midnight this week for violating a public curfew after several reports of theft and vehicle break-ins.

The seasonal crackdown, to curb mischief, vandalism and theft, allows authorities to apprehend youths under 16.

“It does get the word out to youth that we mean business and there is zero tolerance for it,” Petrolia Mayor John McCharles said yesterday.

“Police are not out to get kids but to keep them safe,” he said. “It also sends the message to parents that if they don’t keep track of their kids, they’ll be picked up by police.”

Damn. Keep that kind of stuff up and your kids might just grow up right, if you’re not careful…

Holy crap, Batman! It seems that there actually is a Lefty someplace in this country that isn’t waiting on a brain donor. Mr. Cameron Campbell, apparently from somewhere in La Belle Province, is a regular commentor over at The Torch and a guy with a serious social pedigree, has gone and gotten utterly sick and tired of Jumpin’ Jack! Jerkweed. In a recent Torch post, he shares a letter that he recently sent the little smirkin’ gherkin and I gotta tell ya, this is one damn smart Lefty…

Mr. Jack Layton,

On your biography page it says that you believe in practical solutions for problems. And yet you keep saying things like “The strategy being followed by NATO right now is producing the precise opposite effect to the one that the promoters of this mission are suggesting should be the goal,” Layton said. “In other words, growth of support for the Taliban because of these air strikes.”

Only a comprehensive peace process — not armed conflict — can resolve the crisis in Afghanistan, he argued, noting that “students of history will know that all major conflicts are resolved ultimately through peace-oriented discussions.””

Actually history shows us that peace happens when several conditions exist, not the least of which being that one side feels like they’ve lost, so your argument, respectfully, is utter crap.

I’m being quite serious, “peace-oriented discussions” (also known as peace negotiations or talks – who writes for you? They should be fired.) require that 1) everyone wants peace 2) there is a central authority to negotiate with 3) that the end of conflict will not immediately be replaced with some new, different kind of conflict (like, say, a series of genocidal massacres based on, say, supporting democracy and western style ideals of same).

So your thesis fails on point one horribly, on point two it’s laughable, and on point three you’re displaying a callousness towards human life that makes me want to vomit.

The reality is that there is no peace to keep, no peace to negotiate for, no one to negotiate with and no secure area to negotiate within. Pretending that these conditions exist is a fantasy.

Once the left was populated by people like my Uncles who fought in WW2, by people like Orwell and Trumbo, who could tell wrong from right and could figure out that something had to be done about it.

Now it’s populated by people like you who believe in a pacifist unilateralism that appears to me to be suicidal. Certainly we don’t get to negotiate peace with allies, but suggesting that the way forward in Afghanistan is via a policy of unidimensional ” peace-oriented discussions” (still thinking that someone should loose their job over that..) ignores the reality and the complexity of the situation. This knee jerk reaction towards anything involving the US (and increasingly, NATO) is, frankly, childish and simplistic.

I think the current regime in the US are a pack of corrupt, right wing demagogues, most of whom need a good sending to bed without dinner (and/or jail time) but in my read, that has bugger all to do with the fact that the Canadian Forces presence in the reconstruction and (horrors) combat operations in Afghanistan is accomplishing good.

Additionally sir, the tying of Canadian troops, even tangentially, to what you seem to believe is a NATO policy of bombing civilians for sport is disgusting. It does your position utterly no good at all. It’s wrong.

I know that journalists seek you out every time a Canadian is killed in Afghanistan and why not? You give good clip. But the constant sight of you scoring cheap political points with the deaths of our military personal? It wears sir. A suggestion, one that would ratchet up many peoples respect for you by something like 100%, would be to tell the journalists a variation on “There will be time to discuss the mission later, today our thoughts are with our brave soldiers and their families.” Trite? Maybe. Lacking in the fun oomph of scoring cheap shots? Oh yes. Respectful and classy? Indeed.

I come from a family who’s political views range from red Tory all the way to charter members of the CCF (my Great Aunt and Uncle were XXXX and XXXX), with stops along the way in trade unionism, full on communists and just about every other colour of the socially progressive rainbow. I’ve voted for your party in the past (and in the absence of your party running a viable candidate in my riding, for M. Duceppe), so it pains me to say this: I will never vote for the NDP while you are at it’s helm.

Never.

I’ll vote for a fringe party, the Monarchists, the Communist party, whatever local looney has managed to get together the deposit by borrowing the money from his friend, but never ever again the NDP.

I expect no response to this letter, I expect that you won’t even see it or have it read to you (Hello, by the way, to the intern reading this. I hope you’re having a great summer, my jobs always sucked and involved lifting boxes or digging holes, good on you for scoring a good one. Enjoy it, and good luck next semester. Stay in school.), I know that democracy no longer works that way but it felt like the least I could do.

With great regret,

Cameron Campbell

Now just how the hell am I supposed to convincingly explain to people what idiots socialists are, when one of them goes around saying stuff like that?? 😕

And a big ol’ top o’ the chapeau to Babbling Brooks, who is the one that I got word of this from. His own commentary was pretty damned good, too, so check it out.

This time from the Armpit Of The Universe®, as police announce that they are looking for a “16-year old male” in connection with a double homicide in which two men were gunned down sometime just before 04:00 this morning. The Ministry Of What You Should Think has some video here of the story.

So far, the cops haven’t yet released any name of photo of the “person of interest” (a fancypants, politically correct word for “suspect“) … yet …

Homicide detectives are trying to unravel a bizarre double murder after finding two men shot dead in Scarborough’s east end early Wednesday.

[…]

At the scene, Insp. Peter Yuen said police are looking for a teenage boy who’s a “person of interest” at this point.

The teen is described as about 16 years old with a shaved head, 5-foot-7, with a medium build and wearing dark clothes.

Yup, another little criminal bastard “youth offender” that you won’t be allowed to know anything at all about as soon as it’s politically correct to shove you back into the dark. As usual, I’ll have more on this as it comes up…

Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised by this. At all.

I may have been a little hesitant at first — and there were plenty of people emailing in to call me on it — but after the early revelations, my mind got changed in a hurry and what we have here now should surprise absolutely no one. I’ve gotten quite a few emails speculating about just how the murders of the Richardson family in Medicine hat were carried out, and most of them shared a common theory: Steinke killed the parents and Jasmine killed her 8-year old brother herself.

Well, so much for that being a wild theory:

MEDICINE HAT, Alta. – A 13-year-old girl accused of killing a Medicine Hat family broke down twice on the witness stand yesterday while admitting to stabbing an eight-year-old boy who was begging for his life.

Speaking in a barely audible voice, she admitted to stabbing eight-year-old Jacob Richardson in the upper part of his body.

“I’m scared, I’m too young to die,” the girl told the court, recalling what the boy said during the April 23, 2006, massacre.

There you have it. Sweet, innocent little Jasmine Richardson stuck a knife in her little brother while he begged for his life. Of course, she’s trying to hang it all on Steinke, but that’s not the way the evidence is piling up:

After three weeks of Crown evidence about the grisly crime scene and a rebellious adolescent who hated her parents and the rules they tried to impose, Tuesday’s testimony was the first time the jury heard full details of the murderous encounter.

She was angry because her parents grounded her and took away her computer privileges in an attempt to cool her relationship with the 23-year-old Steinke. She told the jury she often “vented” to her boyfriend as they talked on the phone late at night after her family had gone to sleep and admitted she’d had several “hypothetical conversations” with him about killing her parents.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, little Jasmine isn’t ever going to be held really accountable, regardless of the verdict. Thanks to the piece-of-shit YCJA that the Shawinigan Strangler saddled us with, she can’t possibly be handed a sentence of more than 10 years. And thanks to other idiocies like statutory release, she won’t do any more than six years inside, likely living with more creature comforts while she’s in there than most of you do out in the working world. Tack onto that the fact that she’s going to get 2-for-1 credit for the “dead time” that she’s served before her final sentencing, and she’ll be back on the streets before she’s old enough to drink.

And here’s the kicker: all the social-worker/hug-a-thug shitheads out there that think the YCJA is so lovely are going to try to tell you that you have no right to know who she is!

That’s right. In the all-too-near future, Jasmine’s going to be out on the same streets as your kids. Maybe, like my boy, your kids are about Jasmine’s age. And those sanctimonious assholes have the gall to try and tell me that I can’t warn him about this future Squeaky Fromme that’s going to be prowling the streets.

Like hell I can’t. My kids and my grandkids (whenever they show up) have a right to know if there’s a murderer in their midst.

Your kids have that right, too.

Oh, yeah; last but not least:

MEDICINE HAT, Alta. – A 13-year-old girl says she showed little emotion after stabbing her terrified little brother – knowing her parents were also dead – because the enormity of the act was “too big to cry about.”

Just one more thing to chew on…

Canada Dominion Day is almost upon us once again, boys and girls and I figured that I’d put up a few funnybone ticklers here that I found while I was clunking around the net today.  It only seems fittin, given the time of year and the fact that I’m not likely to find time to put anything else up for a little while (yeah, I know; the last time I said that, I put up four posts that day…).  So, no more ado (or adon’t), here’s some stuff to read:

Ripped off from the Winterpeg Sun’s Ian Shanley, some ways to tell if you’re a Canuck or just a Yank who took a wrong turn:

• You’re Canadian if bring a portable TV on a camping trip so that you don’t miss the hockey game.
• You’re Canadian if you know that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) don’t always look like that.
• Maybe you can sing O Canada in French and actually know what the words mean.
• Perhaps you have sent angry letters to the CBC demanding the return of the Hinterland Who’s Who spots so you can finally find out what happens to the Arctic ptarmigan in winter.
• I’ll bet most of us have stood in line for hours for Tragically Hip tickets.
• We’re all bilingual to a point, too. I’ll bet you know the French equivalents of “free,” “prize” and “no sugar added,” thanks to your extensive education in bilingual cereal packaging.
• It is quite likely that you know more than three guys named Gordon. You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you?
• Here’s something every one of us has done in February; we hear it’s going up to -10 C, and we think it’s mild weather! Am I wrong? On the other hand we find -40C a little chilly.
• I’ll wager that at some time, someone has accidentally stepped on your foot, and you’ve turned around and apologized!
• We know that a pike is a type of fish, not part of a highway.
• And don’t even try to tell me that you don’t have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
• Remember, as kids, we’d have to design our Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit? Fast forward to now, and the odds are that you’ve taken your kids trick-or-treating in a blizzard. Know why? You’re Canadian! It’s what we do eh? There’s more.
• We all know that the last letter of the English alphabet is always pronounced “Zed,” not “Zee.”
• And during the winter, which lasts for like eight months, your local newspaper covers the national news on two pages, but requires six pages for hockey. Speaking of which, you sports fans all perk up when you hear the theme song from Hockey Night in Canada.
• You are truly Canadian if you have more kilometres on your snowblower than your car.
• You are truly Canadian if you know which leaves make for good toilet paper.
• And you are definitely Canadian through and through if the trunk of your car doubles as a freezer!

And some more stuff:

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA…
1. 2010 Winter Olympics – champagne tastes on a beer belly budget.
2. Vancouver: 1.5 million people and two bridges.
3. The local Whistler hero is a pot-smoking snowboarder.
4. The local wine doesn’t taste like malt vinegar.
5. Your $400,000 Vancouver home is just 5 hours from downtown.
6. A university with a nude beach.
7. You can throw a rock and hit three Starbucks locations.
8. Great place for avalanche training.
9. There’s always some sort of deforestation protest going on.
10. A drunk driving premier – setting a good example for all British Columbians… a Ralph Klein wannabe.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN ALBERTA…
1. Big Rock between you and B.C.
2. Ottawa who?
3. Tax is 7 percent instead of approximately 200 percent for the rest of the country.
4. The Premier is a fat, alcoholic who is easy to make fun of.
5. Flames vs. Oilers.
6. Stamps vs. Eskies.
7. You can exploit almost any natural resource you can think of.
8. You live in the only province that could actually afford to be it’s own country.
9. The Americans below you are all in anti-government militia groups.
10. You can attempt to murder your rich oil tycoon husband and get away with it.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN SASKATCHEWAN…
1. You never run out of wheat.
2.There are no curves or hills on the highway.
3. Cruise control takes on a whole new meaning.
4. Your province is really easy to draw.
5. You never have to worry about roll-back if you have a standard stick shift.
6. It takes you two weeks to walk to your neighbour’s house.
7. YOUR Roughriders survived.
8. You can watch the dog run away from home for hours.
9. People will assume you live on a farm.
10. Buying a huge John Deere mower makes sense.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN MANITOBA…
1. You wake up one morning to find you suddenly have beachfront property.
2. Amusing town names like “Flin Flon” and “Winnipeg”.
3. All your local bands make it big and move to Toronto.
4. The only province to ever violently rebel against the federal government.
5. Hundreds of huge, horribly frigid lakes.
6. Nothing compares to a wicked Winnipeg winter.
7. You don’t need a car – just take the canoe to work.
8. You can be an Easterner or a Westerner depending on your mood.
9. Because of your licence plate, you are still friendly even when you cut someone off.
10. Pass the time watching trucks and barns float by.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN ONTARIO…
1. You live in the center of the universe.
2. Your $400,000 Toronto home is actually a dump.
3. You and you alone decide who will win the federal election.
4. There’s no such thing as an Ontario Separatist. Separate from what? You are the centre of the universe.
5. Your grandparents sold booze to the States during Prohibition.
6. Lots of tourists come to Toronto because they mistakenly believe it’s a cool city.
7. The only province with hard-core American-style crime.
8. Much Music’s Speaker’s Corner – rant and rave on national TV for a dollar.
9. Baseball fans park on your front lawn and pee on the side of your house.
10. Mike Harris: basically a sober Ralph Klein.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN QUEBEC…
1. Everybody assumes you’re from a different planet.
2. Racism is socially acceptable.
3. The only province to ever kidnap federal politicians.
4. You can take bets with your friends on which English neighbour will move out next.
5. Other provinces basically bribe you to stay in Canada.
6. The FLQ.
7. Your hockey team is made up entirely of French guys who can’t skate.
8. The province with the oldest, nastiest hookers.
9. NON-smokers are the outcasts.
10. You can blame all your problems on the “Anglo bastards”.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN NEW BRUNSWICK…
1. You are sandwiched between French morons and drunken Celtic fiddlers.
2. One way or another, the government gets 98 percent of your income.
3. You’re poor, but not as poor as the Newfies.
4. When listing the provinces, everyone forgets to mention yours.
5. The economy is based on fish, cows, and ferrying Ontario motorists to Boston.
6. No one ever blames anything on New Brunswick.
7. You have French people, but they don’t want to kill you.
8. Everybody has a Grandfather who runs a lighthouse.
9. Just as charming as Maine, but with more unemployed fishermen.
10. You probably live in a small seaside cottage with no television.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN NOVA SCOTIA…
1. The only place in North America to get bombed in the war by a moron who set ammunitions ship on fire. (Halifax Explosion).
2.The province is shaped like the male genetalia.
3. Everyone can play the fiddle. The ones who can’t, think they can.
4. If someone asks if you’re a Newfie, you are allowed to kick their butt.
5. The local hero is an insane, fiddle playing, sexual pervert.
6. The province that produced Rita MacNeil, the world’s largest land mammal.
7 You are the “only” reason Anne Murray makes money.
8. You can pretend you have Scottish heritage as an excuse to get drunk and wear a kilt.
9. The economy is based on lobster and fiddle music.
10. Even though it smells like dead sea animals, Halifax is considered Canada’s most beautiful city.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE ON PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND…
1. Even though more people live on Vancouver Island, you still got the big kick-ass bridge.
2. You can walk across the province in half an hour.
3. You were probably once an extra on “Road to Avonlea”.
4. This is where all those tiny red potatoes come from.
5. The economy is based on fish, potatoes, and CBC TV shows.
6. Tourists arrive, see the “Anne of Green Gables” house, then promptly leave.
7. You can drive across the province in two minutes.
8. It doesn’t matter to you if Quebec separates.
9. You don’t share a border with the Americans, or with anyone for that matter.
10. You can confuse ships by turning your porch lights on and off at night.

TOP 10 REASONS TO LIVE IN NEWFOUNDLAND…
1. The poorest, drunkest province in Confederation.
2. If Quebec separates, you will float off to sea.
3. In the rare case when someone moves to the Rock, you can make them kiss a dead cod.
4. The economy is based on fish, seafood, and fish-related products.
5. If you do something stupid, you have a built-in excuse.
6. You & only you understand the meaning of Great Big Sea’s lyrics.
7. The workday is about two hours long.
8. You are credited with many great inventions, like the solar-powered flashlight and the screen door for submarines.
9. CBC sets time in terms of you being on the half hour.
10. It is socially acceptable to wear your hip waders on your wedding day.

So there you have ’em; enjoy. Me? I’m off to a weekend of beer, bbq, bonfires and buddies. Have a safe one, everybody.

Well, it’s about God damned time.  That’s all I can say.  Latest word has it that HMCS Corner Brook — one of the four Victoria-class submarines we bought from the Brits in ’98 — is going to be on its way to the waters off Baffin Island this summer to participate in Operation Nanook.

Finally, we can start exerting our sovereignty over our own damned waters ourselves, instead of having a bunch of damned Yank subs puttering around up there…

“Sending a sub up to northern waters has significant ramifications for our ability to know what’s going on,” said Rob Huebert of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

Basing and operating a sub in North Atlantic and Arctic waters keeps Canada privy to high-level NATO information-sharing between other nations who operate submarines, he said.

“The moment you start operating in those waters, what kicks in under NATO is you have to share that information with each other, so they don’t go bumping into each other in the night.”