Photos: September Steam in Ontario

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's update on my photo site features opportunities to step into the past.

The smell of steam was alive and well in the province of Ontario in September 2008. Classic tractors dating back a century gathered in Milton, Ontario on 1-September-2008. The following weekend, a Railfan Day was held at the Huntsville and Lake of Bays Railway in Huntsville, Ontario featuring steam locomotive #2.

Historic buildings in Milton and Huntsville were also included.

Margin Notes: Elections, One World, Guilt

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I thought I heard a quote on the CBC's The World This Weekend on Saturday night that might have been taken out of context, so I looked it up. Also according to the Toronto Star and others, Stephen Harper really did say “What we know about voting patterns across the country generally is that less and less people you know kind of vote for their grandfathers, right? They basically vote on what they think their needs are and how they think the parties are responding in this election.” Granted, he was speaking descriptively rather than prescriptively, but he's saying that voters are becoming more individualistic and selfish and are not only not thinking less about society, but less about even their other family members. Doesn't he think there's anything wrong with that?!? What about voting for the sake of one's children and grandchildren? Canadians, keep thinking for the good of society, and not narrow selfish wishes--dare I say it--like Americans!

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In the vice-presidential debate in the United States on Thursday night, many people couldn't help but notice that Republican Sarah Palin's body language--especially all the winking she was doing--was straight out of a beauty pageant. In fact, Palin's background as Miss Wasilla and runner-up to Miss Alaska in 1984 seems to surface fairly regularly. Why did she give virtually non-sense answers to Kate Couric during the now-infamous interview, and appear to have more confidence than content during the debate? Beauty pageant contestants are rewarded for keeping their poise in all circumstances and saying something, even if there isn't much content behind it. Basically, beauty pageant contestants are rewarded for spin--and Sarah Palin learned her lessons from those experiences, perhaps too well. It seems that she can't transition from beauty contestant to substantive politician on the national stage.

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I have contemplated if there is anything significant about the fact that John McCain has surrounded himself with "Beauty Queens" in the form of his wife Cindy and running mate Sarah Palin. While Palin may not be rising above her past, Cindy McCain most certainly is a woman of substance--whether I agree with her views or not--so I'm not certain that it says much about John McCain. I think he fits right in with many Americans and their emphasis on appearance.

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On last weekend's God Talk on San Francisco's KGO Newstalk 810, host Brent Walters stated that contrary to some teachings, "In all western traditions, God never deals through guilt; God only deals through encouragement... Guilt only cripples us." One doesn't need to have religious faith to recognize the truth in the latter sentence.

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For those that aren't familiar with Paul Harvey's "This Is Not One World" features on the radio, he includes them in his commentary broadcasts in an attempt to demonstrate that the United States is better than the rest of the world. Often, they are bizarre interpretations of news stories, to the extent that I've long-felt some counter-point was needed, because like it or not, there is only planet for all of us and there are more ways in which we are all similar than different.

In the "This Is One World" Department: The Christian Science Monitor quotes Ozlem Sandikci of Bilkent University as stating that "Across the Muslim world, there are numerous signs that Ramadan... is transforming from a religious month to a cultural and commercial holiday." In an article focusing on Turkey's Ramadan fast-breaking Iftar dinners, Monitor correspondent Yigal Schleifer notes that they are resembling "gala events" instead of religious ceremonies. I hope they don't invite Stephen Harper...

Radio Pick: TAL Frightening Economy

TORONTO, ONTARIO - One of the obvious questions asked during the ongoing financial crisis has been "What choice do we have; is there an alternative to the proposed $700 billion bail-out?" Few have asked the question, and even fewer have presented a coherent answer. It turns out there is an option that many economists favor, called a "stock injection"--and the best explanation I've heard not only of the crisis in general but of this alternative has been on the latest episode of This American Life entitled "Another Frightening Show About the Economy". Producer Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson (who also collaborate with the Planet Money podcast) demonstrate how to break down complicated concepts on the radio--and deliver the good news that "stock injections" WERE authorized as an option in the revised bill that passed on Friday in this 59-minute program, my clear radio pick of the week.

Listen to This American Life "Another Frightening Show About the Economy"

Heritage: Revue Cinema

The Revue Cinema on Roncesvalles

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Thousands of people pass it every day--on streetcars, walking, biking, and driving. Yet, as familiar a sight as the Revue Cinema at 400 Roncesvalles Avenue near Howard Park Avenue is to many people, its early history had been lost--until Jason Crowtz started his research.

Crowtz, a volunteer at the Revue, told the story of its origins at the monthly meeting of the Swansea Historical Society at the Swansea Town Hall on Wednesday. Relying primarily on contemporary newspaper accounts and interviews with the descendants of its original owners, he was able to piece together much of the history, but there's still an opportunity to learn more.

The first known showing of a motion picture in Toronto took place in 1896. By 1897, the first controversy had already erupted, as it was debated whether prize fights in boxing, banned as a live event in Toronto, could be shown on film (they were eventually allowed). By early 1911, there were 44 theaters operating in Toronto and the industry was flourishing and expanding rapidly.

In this environment, a company named the Suburban Amusement Company was formed in November 1911 to build a "theatorium" on Roncesvalles Avenue. (The term "theatorium" was the common term in Toronto for cinemas at the time.) While Crowtz was able to determine the five people behind the Suburban Amusement Company, how the men met is not readily evident, nor is it clear why they chose Roncesvalles as a location.

That location would prove quite consequential, however, as it was near Howard Park School. The High Park Ratepayers' Association found out about the permit and organized a protest. At the time, there was considerable concern about the impact of motion pictures on society, especially on youths. In fact, members of the Board of Education chose to oppose the proposed "theatorium" by calling for a mandatory distance of such establishments from schools--one proposal even called for a two thousand foot buffer that would have effectively banned movies within most of the city.

What was the concern? They were seen as creating an "unnatural desire for excitement" and creating habits of "spending money unwisely." There were health concerns, as people claimed to acquire "moving picture eye." Even cross-border cultural concerns entered into the debate, with one protester stating "We don't want any Yankee jingoism over here." Some things never change!

The formal protest was filed on 3-January-1912, and the controversy was covered in all the local papers. By the end of the month, though, it was ruled that the adjacent residents were not concerned about the business, and soon thereafter, the "theatorium" opened. While the original owners sold the Revue Cinema in 1936, it continued operating continuously until the end of June 2006. A community-wide effort to save the building bore fruit, and the theater re-opened in October 2007, operated by the not-for-profit Revue Film Society with volunteers like Jason Crowtz. The schedule of events at the Revue can be found on-line.


Jason Crowtz and Swansea Historical Society President Norm McLeod contemplating an audience question

Crowtz intends to make the original source material that he has used to piece together the Revnue's history available on the Internet. "You really only understand what happened when you put it all in the full context of what was happening at the time," he stated.

I couldn't agree more.

Politics: Debates as Entertainment

TORONTO, ONTARIO - The biggest question both before and after the Leadership Debates in Canada the past two nights has been whether watching last night's English-language debate or the vice-presidential debate in the United States was more worthwhile. Just about every Canadian I've spoken with either planned to spend or actually spent more time watching the US debate, and former premiers speaking this morning on CBC's The Current admitted the same. Even discounting the importance of the Canadian election--which I do not--this seems bizarre behavior, as historically no vice-presidential debate has ever made an impact on the result of a US presidential race. It only makes sense because the debates now are regarded as strictly entertainment.

I have resisted this view because I still think that a chance to appear before a national television audience, whether in a country of 30 million or 300 million, presents a chance to introduce the candidates' personalities and positions to the people and hence represents a function of democracy. At least in Canada, there is still some of this feeling in the electorate, as demonstrated by the outcry when Elizabeth May of the Green Party was originally excluded from the debate.

Granted, I had fairly complete knowledge about each party going into the Canadian Leadership debate, but it soon became clear to me while watching the show that the average voter wasn't learning much. Someone not paying much attention to the campaign might have learned a bit of the contrast between the Conservatives and the other four parties, but they weren't helped much in choosing between the other parties if they decided they weren't going to vote Conservative. The only truly differentiating exchanges occurred between Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton and neither came out looking high-brow from that.

Instead, I found myself just viewing the event as entertainment--how were they going to gang up on Harper next, and how would he respond? At first, I thought it was odd that Harper was remaining so calm for a second straight day, but then I realized that he understood the game. The other candidates weren't stealing his voters with the pile-ons, they were only competing for entertainment value--and Harper doesn't need to be entertaining to win the election. Duceppe always provides entertainment in English-language debates, and he would be unlikely to win many votes with it even if he had candidates running outside of Quebec.

The real reason that many Canadians wanted to watch the US vice-presidential debates wasn't that the US election was viewed as more important, but that they viewed that debate as potentially more entertaining. Canadians have heard from Duceppe, Layton, Harper, and even Dion and May before. While they have heard Joe Biden before, they also knew that he has been prone to mis-statement and had come up with good one-liners in the past. Sarah Palin was a complete unknown, and with her poor performance in the Couric interview some hoped to see a meltdown, while others hoped to see the fire and confidence from her nomination speech.

In the end, neither debate was terribly entertaining. Neither Biden nor Palin made any consequential mis-statements, and neither had any knock-out blows. Palin may have had more confidence than coherence, as a CNN commenter put it, but neither did she do any damage to the Republican ticket (except maybe in a bizarre answer about education). Arguably, the Canadian debate was a bit more entertaining, with some of the pile-ups of four-on-one against Harper and such exchanges as Duceppe's insistence on hearing the word "reimbursable" from Harper. Duceppe had the line of both debates when he stated that not only would he not be Prime Minister, but neither would three of the other people at the table.

The ultimate irony of the inclusion of Elizabeth May into the leadership debates is that while many of us wanted her there for the sake of democracy, she may have provided the most entertainment. While she definitely demonstrated that she could hold her own at the table, spouting out facts and figures to back her position on each topic discussed--not just the environment--and speaking as eloquently as her competitors, in the process of serving as a "fact checker" on Harper, she was providing entertainment as much as content. It became a fun game to watch how May would correct Harper again.

In the final analysis, it is not healthy to view debates as entertainment. The final question during the Leadership debate amounted to "how can we trust any politician?" May's answer was dead-on, in my opinion: "You have to demand more, and let them know that you demand more." Regardless of your ideological stripes, figuring out how to demand more, and how to communicate it would be a good exercise. I daresay it should begin by expecting more than entertainment out of each debate.

Politics: Performance, Not Expectations

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Tonight in the United States, the vice presidential nominees of the two major parties will debate in St. Louis, Missouri. Like a good Canadian resident, I'll be watching the FIVE party leaders up here instead. Why? It's less about relative interest and more about potential results. It almost doesn't matter what happens between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin. Because of lowered expectations, short of a completely disastrous, painful-to-watch performance that seems unlikely, Palin has already been perceived to have won the debate.

While the Democrats are far from blameless in the trend, the Republicans have raised the practice of lowering expectations to an art form. In 2000, Al Gore was made out to be such a stronger debater and George W. Bush made out to be such a weak debater that the objective performance during the debate became irrelevant. The same thing happened with Kerry in 2004. Bush himself actually stated at one point "I'm the master of low expectations."

For evidence that expectations are a powerful tool in human psychology, look no farther than the stock market. A company can still report profitability, but if it was less than analysts had expected, the stock will plummet. In July 2007, Google announced profits that were UP by 28%, but the stock went DOWN by more than 7% because the expectation of a 30% increase in profit had been missed. The same basic event happens to some company almost every month.

So, the poor performance by Palin in interviews with ABC's Charles Gibson and especially CBS' Katie Couric in recent weeks, while undoubtedly raising questions in voters' minds about her competence, have also served to lower the expectations for her debate performance to essentially zero. The attacks on moderator Gwen Ifill as having a financial stake in Biden winning the debate because of her upcoming book on African-American politicians (including Obama) further "pre-spin" any poor performance as being the fault of a biased moderator, instead of the candidate. Basically, there's no way for Palin to lose.

(While anyone who has ever watched Washington Week in Review in the Ifill era on PBS would have no actual concern about her ability to be impartial, the suggestion of switching moderators at the last minute to avoid the perception of bias AND inject some additional uncertainty into the debate for the candidates was an interesting one that I would have supported--and I would have suggested CBS's Lesley Stahl as the new moderator. As a 60 Minutes correspondent and former Face the Nation host, I think Stahl would make a great moderator.)

Furthermore, there seems little reason to believe that Palin will actually be a pathetic pushover during this debate. Videos on You Tube, such as this one, demonstrate that she was fiery and effective in the 2006 Alaskan governor's debates. The fact that the debate format has been modified to ban follow-up questions make it all the less likely that Palin will perform poorly, as any small weakness will not be able to be exploited strongly by Biden or the moderator.

Personally, I'm tired of expectations. Political campaigns are often compared with an extended job interview. Expectations have no place in a job interview. The candidate either makes the case that they are best person for the job or they don't. How the candidate performs during the campaign, including any debates that occur, contributes to the case they make. Their performance helps make clear their relative merit.

I find it all the more ironic that conservatives, who are opposed to affirmative action and taking into account any factor except merit in any decision, are the chief purveyors of low expectations. As in a job interview, I don't care about the gender of the candidate. I don't care about the sexual orientation of the candidate. I don't care about the race of the candidate. I don't care about the religion of the candidate. I don't care what the candidate is wearing unless it is quite distracting in some way. I don't care if the candidate has a noticeable accent--southern, Boston, or Alaskan. I don't care how the candidate is expected to perform. All I care about is that the candidate answers questions clearly, reasonably succinctly, and makes the case that they have the best qualifications and ideas so that they are the best person for the job.

Candidates should win on merit, not expectations. Keep that in mind whatever debate you choose to watch tonight.

Politics: Parkdale-High Park Debate

The six candidates gathered for the Parkdale-High Park candidates' debate

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Thomas "Tip" O'Neill famously stated that "All politics is local." Sometimes, local politics can be much more heartening than large-scale politics run through the national media. In advance of the double-booked televised debates coming tomorrow night, I had the opportunity to attend a live debate amongst the candidates to represent my local riding of Parkdale-High Park in parliament.

There was no debate about who could speak on stage. All candidates were invited to the evening event in the auditorium of Bishop Marocco School near the Dundas West subway station. Six actually showed up, the one exception being Marxist-Leninist candidate Lorne Gershuny.

Despite the event being run by volunteers, this could have passed for a professional event until a bucket was passed around to collect donations for the sound volunteers and the school toward the end. The sound system worked fine, the moderator did a good job of making certain that all voices were granted approximately equal time, and questioners were drawn from a hat to avoid packing of the microphone line by the various campaigns. The format was driven by questions from the audience, with only a very broad opening question from the moderator and a three-minute closing statement from each candidate to encroach on that time.

Christian Heritage Party candidate Andrew Borkowski expressed the conventional wisdom in the riding when he stated, "We all know what's going to happen here. It's either going to be the Liberals or the NDP, or maybe the Conservative will come up the middle." Based on the audience reaction during the introductions, NDP candidate Peggy Nash and Liberal candidate Gerard Kennedy clearly had largest fan bases, much louder than Green Party candidate Robert Rishchynski or Conservative Jilian Saweczko. In my portion of the audience, Nash's supporters seemed to be the very loudest, and Nash herself looked almost surprised at the decibel level. Borkowski and Marijuana Party candidate Terry Parker received only low-level polite applause.


Peggy Nash and Gerard Kennedy listened to an audience question

Indeed, most questioners addressed their questions to Nash and Kennedy. Usually, they were called "Peggy" and "Gerard" by everyone, showing the affection held by citizens for their current MP and one-time MPP. In fact, one questioner, clearly addressing the two, appeared to speak for many in stating, "There's a lot of talent on the stage and it's too bad we can only elect one of you." A heckler put it more bluntly to Kennedy, when he was speaking about stopping Stephen Harper: "Why didn't you run against an incumbent Conservative?"

Kennedy probably didn't help his case much by seeming to belittle some of Nash's local accomplishments and bashing some national NDP policies. Nash wasn't above the fray, fighting back with some pointed barbs about the Liberals' performance in the most recent parliament, and Kennedy was probably at his worst trying to defend actions taken by national leader Stéphane Dion for which Kennedy really had no personal responsibility. I had picked out NDP and Liberal partisans in the crowd, and it seemed to me that the NDP supporters became much more upset by Kennedy than the Liberals became upset by Nash. Admittedly, neither crowd was likely to change their minds on this night, but those on the fence must have noted the difference.

The comic relief of the evening came from Parker, who didn't listen to some questions and needed them repeated, chose not to answer others, and either gave semi-coherent or extremely succinct answers to the rest. Borkowski also made quite an impression, gaining applause from the audience with his position against Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, but he nearly incited a riot with his position that Canadian-born acquaintances of terrorists should be deported from the country. A heckler barked: "And where would you send native terrorists?"

In contrast to his reception at the opening of the debate, after Rishchynski emphasized working with all other parties in his closing statement, he earned what sounded to me like the loudest applause during that segment. Notably, both Nash and Kennedy were vigorously clapping as well. It remains to be seen if that will translate into any votes for the Greens on October 14th.

For those in the riding who would like to see the candidates for themselves, two more debates are scheduled. One will take place at Swansea Town Hall next Tuesday evening at 7:30, and the final debate will place at Runnymede United Church next Wednesday evening at 7:00.