Spit Images

Milkweed, Leslie Street Spit, 24 September 2023

There are lots of mink living in Toronto, but I'd never seen one until I took a walk on the Leslie Street Spit (Tommy Tompson Park) last Sunday.

Bruce was laid up with a sore tooth, and I had a hankering, because Georgian Bay wasn't that long ago, to be in the presence of a large body of water.

Lake gull surfing the shore breeze, with surf.

I arrived there early, to avoid both the crowds and the heat of mid-day. It had been more than a year since I'd last been, but the spit doesn't change much. I wanted to take some pictures.

Honestly, I didn't even see the bee when I took this photo.
I was using a long lens and was many metres away.

Turtles sometimes sun themselves by the pool of stagnant water called the Goldfish Pond. I went there to see what was going on.

There was a rough path down to the water and as always I was worried about my footing. My steps were slow and careful. And that's when the mink, coming the other way on the path, popped into view. It couldn’t have been more than two feet away from me.

I stopped and stood still, my camera not at the ready. It was slung over my shoulder, keeping my hands free in case I stumbled on the trail. 

I couldn't take its picture, so I just looked at the mink: the chocolate brown coat, the dark beady eyes, the cute triangular head. It looked a little dirty and had a bald patch at the base of its tail, maybe an old wound or mange. 

I don’t know if it even saw me. With our height difference, it’s not like our eyes met. But it seemed to understand there was an obstacle on the path in front of it, so it chose to go another way. It headed off, not startled, not in a hurry, on the path that branched off to my right. I held still until it was gone.

And, Apropos of Last Week's Post

In 2012 and 2023, I took almost exactly the same shot of the Toronto skyline from the prospect of the southwest end of the spit.

2012

2023

That haze that you can see in the 2012 shot? That was what the air quality standards negotiations were about. The much clearer skies in 2023? That's what the standards accomplished. 

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Not the little guy I saw on
Sunday, but he bears a 
strong resemblance.

It's An Old Story, Times Two

Water like glass, Bayfield Inlet, Georgian Bay, 17 September 2023

Today is my 66th birthday, so I'm offering up a re-run from more than a decade ago, when I co-chaired the multi-stakeholder process to develop national air quality standards.

Here you go:

I spent Monday and Tuesday of this past week performing in what felt at times like a Neil Simon comedy.

Scene 1:  The scene opens in a medium-sized hotel event room, set up with a large u-shaped table. Present are a varied and exotic cast of characters including a soft spoken Quebecois man who has a secret he'll be sharing soon with the room, and the pugnacious Director from Health Canada who co-chairs the committee and who, of course, smokes. 

There are many others - thirty in total - and they cover a range of interests from the emissions-loving oil industry to the emissions-hating Ontario Medical Association. This group of fundamentally opposed participants has been working for more than a year to identify and agree on air quality standards for Canada. This is their final meeting and by the following afternoon, they will have decided on their recommendations to the federal and provincial governments.

...

Scene 5:  The soft spoken Quebecois man, in charge of the network of air quality monitors across the country, has just finished a slide presentation that has either baffled, enraged or baffled and enraged everyone in the room. One of the co-chairs -- the one who doesn't smoke -- tries to restore order. It doesn't work...

...

Scene 10: After a long day of almost reaching consensus -- and then having that blown sky-high -- and then slowly wheeling back to consensus, everyone retires to the hotel lounge for a drink. In the final comic turn of the day, the Director from Health Canada and the representative from Imperial Oil inadvertently walk off with one another's bags.

....

Scene 32: The two co-chairs, the one who smokes and the one who's writing this account, are in the hallway outside the meeting room, comparing notes on the day. They feel it's been going well, and are waiting for hotel staff to bring them the bill they'll be splitting to buy champagne for the group at the end of the meeting. After the astronomical bill tests their resolve, the co-chairs take a deep breath and tell hotel staff that three o'clock would be a good time to bring the champagne into the room.

...

Scene 35: Just as the meeting reaches its most antagonistic point, waiters bring in the champagne at three on the dot. The co-chairs wonder if the arrival of the bubbly might help break the tension. It does not. 

.....

Scene 38:  Forty-five minutes after being brought in, the champagne is down the throats of the meeting participants, and everyone's either packing up to catch their plane, or excitedly chatting about the meeting's result.

And there are new ambient air quality standards (proposed) for Canada.

Roll credits.

And In Today's News

In case you haven't heard, Doug Ford has finally gotten around to reversing his government's corrupt decision to hand over parts of the Green Belt to developers.

A couple of readers have asked me what I think about this.

Well, in this as in all things about Doug Ford, my answer is just that the man is an idiot. 

Because he's an idiot, he was persuaded by developers that no one would find anything wrong with the deal. They told him people would believe that it was about housing. He might have even believed that himself.

The maligned actions of the Chief of Staff who took direction from developers are actually quite normal for Ford's government. Because they are idiots, they don't trust the bureaucracy.

Once the issue blew up, because he's an idiot, Ford couldn't see how he had done anything wrong, so he stood his ground and defended his minister. Even in the face of the Auditor General's report, he refused to reverse the government's decision, because he's an idiot. 

Finally, after weeks of getting beat up in the press, and suffering in the polls, Ford did what I was starting to wonder if he had the weakness of character to do, he announced he would rescind the government's decision.

Commentators in the press have rightly brought up the gas plant scandal (the 3 billion dollar Liberal gas plant scandal) as a situation perfectly analogous to Ford's Green Belt scandal (8 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation and idiocy).

Ford failed to see how easy it would be for people to make this comparison, and failed to see how politically dangerous messing with the Green Belt would be because (all together now) he's an idiot. 

And, while I am very glad the people of Ontario got to stop Ford in his bone-headed tracks this one time, there are many more dunderheaded schemes going full steam ahead, like the Ontario Line and whatever the hell is happening at Ontario Place.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Georgian Bay

When we come to Georgian Bay these days, this is where we stay, the spacious and comfortable "cottage" we rent with two of our friends. Along with this main cabin, there are two bunkies and a utility shed with a washer and dryer. Plus there are flush toilets. 

Our friends book the cottage for two weeks, and we stay with them for the first. We enjoy their company and that of their dogs, two lively, cheerful miniature Aussie shepherds.

We go kayaking and see strange images in water edge mirrors.

Can you see the beetle king?

And tramp around the small island where the cottage sits.

Lots of fungus going on this year.

The wet weather that the mushrooms love, plus the hot long weekend, launched a mosquito renaissance. It's been buggy all week.

City slicker alert: this is not a mosquito.

And we've been eating well.

We're returning to Toronto tomorrow, very sorry to go.

Thanks for reading!

Passe une bonne semaine!

Karen

Sunrise with lens flare, Georgian Bay, Ontario, 14 September 2023.

My AI Teacher Doesn't Care

Porcelain figures representing me and all my French teachers,
Shary Boyle, McMichael Gallery, August 25, 2023

All of my French teachers in grade school started out liking me as a student. None of them ended that way.

I became for them whatever the opposite of "teacher's pet" is. Teacher's nemesis, maybe, or teacher's bane.

French was mandatory from grades seven to twelve, and I tortured all my teachers with my lack of skill. The one I remember best, and tortured most, was Mademoiselle Woywitka.

I could grasp the basics easily enough, but as soon as complicated concepts crept in, my work collapsed in a heap of errors.

And then I learned how angry I could make her, and how disappointed in me she could be.

My relationship with any new teacher followed this pattern. They learned not to expect much from me, and I learned how to be a solid C student in French. 

Which is how, even though I spent more time studying French than I spent studying the law, I have a vocabulary of about 300 words and no ear for the language at all. When I try to speak French, I mime my meaning with my hands, because I have no confidence I can make myself understood with just my words. Frankly, this is embarrassing, and because we want to go to France again next year, I want to do better.

As a pseudo-Millennial, I know my options are to learn online through videos and self-study, or to get an app.

A friend told me about the app Duolingo, and I decided to give it a try. 

I've been at it for a week, and have discovered, as I progress through the "gamified" sessions, how close to the surface are all the unpleasant emotions from my French lessons of long ago.

But here's the thing. My AI teacher doesn’t care.

I stumble over pronunciation and mix my words up real bad, but my AI teacher doesn’t care.

I make a mistake. Without anger or frustration my AI teacher tells me to try again. And, with infinite patience, keeps asking me until I get it right.

My AI teacher doesn’t take my failings personally. 

Merci d'avoir lu!

Karen

Sacrifices

Shaman: The McMichael Gallery, Keinberg, Ontario, 25 August 2023

Once I was retired and looking for something to do, I decided I would become a blood donor. Most of my adult life I'd avoided it because I'd fainted a time or two after giving up a few vials for blood tests. But, that was then, I thought. It didn't kill me, so it must have just made me stronger.

I have donated twice since I made the decision, and felt fine afterward each time. My third appointment was just this past week. I go to the nice old Confederation style red stone building on College Street west of Bay. 

After I'd gone through screening, I was approached by “Jill” … her real name… to join her in the ritual bloodletting. I sat in the comfy lounge chair and told her I preferred she drain me from the vein in my left arm. I also asked her to use iodine to disinfect the site of the puncture wound. 

“The other stuff,” I explained, “gives me a rash.” 

That seemed to deeply discombobulate Jill, who set about looking for things all over the place. This was very different from the last time, when the person who extracted my blood was coolly in control and clearly knew what she was doing. Jill clearly did not. 

This caused me some concern. I asked, half joking, half with trepidation, “Is this your first day?” 

Jill said, as she continued to fretfully look for things, that she was a competent nurse with 20 years’ experience, she just hadn’t done a lot of this sort of thing recently. As she spoke, no less than three other nurses took up positions in the near periphery of my chaise lounge and sought, as they kept a wary eye on her, to distract me from what Jill was doing. 

Jill finally found the iodine, sterilized the site, stabbed me with the needle, and having gotten the hard part out of the way, seemed to relax a bit. I did not relax. The hovering nurses were talking to me, offering me things to eat and drink, showing me a card with exercises to do if I started feeling faint, all while Jill rambled on about how some people avoided donating blood because they were afraid of fainting.

 

And as if on cue, I started to faint. 

 

The hovering nurses leapt into action, elevating my feet, applying cold compresses, fanning me, putting a plastic bag on my chest in case I barfed and encouraging me to do those exercises they had just shown me. Jill promised to abort the extraction that very moment but was slow enough that I’d pumped out the whole donation by the time she had the needle out of me. I was soon well enough to leave but felt a bit woozy for the rest of the day. 

 

Like I said, that was my third blood donation since I retired. There will be a fourth. Just so long as Jill’s not the one with the needle. 

Kitchen Reno Update

We made our decision about a contractor (the one who promised, and delivered, a highly detailed quote), paid the deposit and have a start date of October 16. Now we're shopping for appliances, finishes, flooring, fixtures and a fan that hangs from the ceiling. 

It's exciting and horrible all at the same time.

Thanks for reading! Happy Labour Day!

Karen

Me giving blood... except
my colour was more like the photo
at the start of the blog.