Margin Notes: Parade, Hockey, Basa, Granny D

The Toronto Police's pipe and drum band helped lead off the St. Patrick's Day Parade on Yonge Street in Toronto, Ontario on 14-March-2010

TORONTO, ONTARIO - What had been very rainy and windy weather for much of the weekend around Toronto calmed down just a couple hours before the start of today's St. Patrick's Day Parade. I've decided it's worth attending the parade just to find out what the County of Cork representatives come up with--this year, it was a soccer match between the "Republic of Cork" and France (which defeated Ireland in a very controversial World Cup qualifying game), complete with French star Thierry Henry receiving a red card. I think this beats last year's "first foreign overseas visit of President Obama to the Republic of Cork."

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While many cities held their St. Patrick's Day Parade today (the actual date is of course Wednesday), it's apparently never too early to celebrate the patron saint of Ireland, nor can it be done too often. For example, our friends at Steam Whistle Brewing in Toronto, besides participating in the parade today, started their public St. Patrick's Day bash at 2 pm yesterday, and were on hand for Achilles Canada St. Patrick's Day Run this morning, amongst other events running through Wednesday.

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A snowman in honor of Canada's Olympic hockey teams was noted still standing on Annette Street in Toronto, Ontario on 8-March-2010

Canadians scarcely needed another reason to celebrate, as some are still basking in the glow of the victories of both the men's and women's hockey teams in... well, you know where. A snowman honoring the gold medals was found still standing a few blocks from my home this past Monday--though rains finally swept it away later in the week.

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Rain swelled the levels of the Humber River this week, but I didn't see any fish. Lately, I've been eating basa fish from Vietnam which has often been on sale. I thought it tasted pretty good and reminded me of catfish. It turns out there's a good reason for that--it's basically another species of catfish, but the Louisiana catfish lobby prevented it from being labeled as a catfish to avoid "customer confusion." I think this may actually play to Vietnam's favor--I agree with the customer surveys that show the taste of basa is actually preferred to catfish.

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It's been a long time since I've taken a picture of a fish. I finally processed the last pictures from my trip to the west coast over the winter holidays, and there were 1944 pictures in total--and that doesn't even count most of the railroad photos that I deleted shortly after they were taken. No wonder it took so long, paring it down to the 541 photos that will ultimately appear on my photo site.

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A woman that walked all the way from the west coast to the east to raise awareness for campaign finance reform died this week. The passing of Doris Haddock, better known as Granny D, was not well-covered by the major media. In 1999 and 2000, the then nearly 90 year old walked all the way from California to Washington DC. Some credit her with raising awareness that led to the passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance legislation in 2002--legislation that was recently largely gutted by the Supreme Court. Haddock was 100 years old.