The Ontario Election

A funny thing happened at our annual block party on Sunday. We got ambushed by a candidate in the provincial election. It raises the question that underlies much of what we hear on the news all the time: Just what is fair in politics? Today both Tim Hudak and Kathleen Wynne were forced to apologize for  recent actions of their parties. Federally, there has been a lot of chatter lately about the mailings that MPs regularly send out.Tonight on the National there's going to be an item about a behind the scenes person who "helped" all kinds of politicians rise to power. Who knows what really goes on behind political doors?

Anyhow, what happened at our place on Sunday does not involve anything remotely illegal. Rather, it was just a questionable move. Every year we host our neighbours at a very informal gathering. All we do is set the date and provide a place to gather. It's our neighbours who bring the food to share. The weather was picture perfect on Sunday and we had over 50 people on the laneway, chatting and eating when a friend of ours came up to me and said, "What do you think? Isn't that tacky? Imagine the nerve!"

I had no idea that the NDP candidate for our riding was working her way through our neighbours, introducing herself. She also had a veteran NDP person with her and at one point he advanced to the barbecue area and asked for a burger. Someone opened the bbq lid and as it happened, it was empty at that point. Tough luck!

Everyone was very polite but I think we all felt the same way. This party was our effort to build community on the street...to give all of us, especially the new young families, a chance to meet each other, so that from now on,  we'll perhaps remember names and have more than "hi" to say to each other. We've never had a politician attend. Usually, the highlight at our block party is the "eat the donut off the string" event.

This was not an open public gathering at a neighbourhood park or town hall. It was a private party. I have nothing against the NDP. I have voted for them many times. However, I think she crossed the line by crashing our party. If I had voted for her in the advance poll I would have been regretting that.

However it was my current MPP, Liberal Yasir Naqvi, who got my vote. Yes, I know all about the gas plant scandals but I am not holding Naqvi or Kathleen Wynne responsible for that. This is a corny thing to say but, on the surface at least, I like both of them. They seem to be good, decent people. That sounds very naive.

I question Horvath's timing in suddenly pulling the plug on the government after they put forth a budget with many NDP features. And Hudak? Please protect us from that man. His plan to cut so many government positions scares me. I admit that I am no expert in economics but I simply do not understand how cutting 100 000 government jobs will create one million jobs.  There have been many pieces written on this but basically it's education that worries me the most. The idea of increasing class sizes and eliminating most of our educational assistants in classrooms is ridiculous and almost unbelievable. Children need more, not less, of adults' time and care. This morning I heard an interview with the parent of a murderer. He spoke of his child's rough time in school. These young, vulnerable children need care, attention, and supervision, besides academic instruction.  One teacher on their own simply cannot attend to the multiple needs of today's classrooms.

Years ago we chose to send two of our kids to nursery schools when they were four. The ratio there was eight to one. Today, nursery schools are still governed by the Day Nurseries Act, which stipulates that four year olds must be in an 8:1  setting. However, these same 4 year olds, if in a school, under the Education Act, could be in a classroom with over 30 students. Many of today's full time kindergarten classes have about that many kids, with a teacher and an Early Childhood Educator (ECE). At a nearby school, in a combined JK/SK class there are 31 kids. How can one adult keep up with 15 or 16 four and five year olds? And Hudak wants to eliminate most of the non teaching staff in our schools?!

It is so obvious that it seems silly to say, but really, our future society hinges on the start that we give to all our children. Hopefully Ontario voters will remember that.

Great Glebe Garage Sale

Well, garage sale season is now in full swing. Here in Ottawa, the unofficial opening sale is the Great Glebe Garage Sale.

Every year, on the Saturday after the May long weekend, you will find thousands of people downtown, partaking in the Great Glebe Garage Sale . It's been going on for years. What started as a collection of garage sales has become a real community event. Along with the private garage sales are a good many sales where the money raised goes to various causes. Many of Ottawa's charities…Habitat for Humanity, Ecology Ottawa, Grandmothers to Grandmothers, and so many others, have huge fundraising sales. Along with new and used items they offer crafts, baking and plants.

The Great Glebe is a feast for all your senses. People arrive very early.  Breakfast at home is unnecessary because so many homes offer all kinds of food.  I had lemonade from a young girl raising funds for CHEO (Ottawa's children's hospital) and a peameal bacon sandwich from teens who were raising money for a summer trip to an orphanage in India. Here's a vendor with a sense of humour with her aptly named, breakfast on a stick.

Then there are the smells: all kinds of barbecue offerings plus the fragrance of so many flowering trees. It is possibly the loveliest week to go for a walk because lilacs, crab apples and so many other flowering trees are at their best.

It is a people event. With everyone crowded onto the sidewalks you hear some pretty funny conversations as friends and families try to stay together or find each other . With so many people all over the streets we always bump into someone we know. The highlight of the day for me, at this year's sale was a conversation I had with Clive Doucet. He was a city councillor here in Ottawa for many years and ran for mayor in the last municipal election. He is a fine person, very concerned about the environment. His retirement from civic politics is our loss for sure. What a wonderful mayor he would have made.

Musicians are playing on many corners. My absolute favourite sound from this event is this lively jazz band. Every year they are out there, accepting donations for the Ottawa food bank.

Of course there are all kinds of interesting sights: crowds of happy shoppers of all ages, people walking down streets carrying all sorts of bulky articles and beautifully manicured gardens.

After all is said and done, it is a shopping day. Unlike shopping in a mall where everything is predictable, this is fun, surprising shopping. That's what I like; the unpredictability of it all. You never really know what you will find. The challenge is to buy only what you truly need. If only I could follow my own advice. I didn't exactly need this; my favourite buy from this year's event!

Really, who could resist this Little Tykes slide for $6.00? Not I! While it awaits Avery's next visit, it  has taken up residence in a neighbour's yard.

You may not find what you are looking for at the Great Glebe Garage sale but it is always an entertaining walk on a spring day.

Grandchildren

A few words about my absence. Nothing earth shattering has happened. I simply find myself busy all the time, in spite of being retired. It is a good kind of busy and I am grateful to have our family to keep me on the go. Spending time with our grandson, Avery, is a real treat. I was in Toronto for the better part of a week and I have to admit that Toronto is winning me over. We left Brampton twenty-five years ago because we did not want to live in that huge GTA area. Funny how life changes. We now go there so often that our car pretty well drives itself. I have stopped thinking of Toronto as simply one unruly, gigantic blob but rather as a collection of many interesting neighbourhoods. Now, when I walk along Danforth Avenue or take Avery to one of the many parks, it feels like a community, not a metropolis.

Avery is changing by the day. It is so entertaining to watch him learn new skills like walking, talking, climbing up into a chair, spooning food into his mouth, pointing out people as their names are called, and pointing to people and items in a story book. 

At the same time that we admire his accomplishments, we are journeying with a couple of family members who are living with Alzheimers Disease. Many of the afore mentioned skills that Avery is now mastering are the very ones that are slipping away from our other loved ones. It is sad to witness their decline.

Days with Avery start early but that is a small price to pay for the privilege of reading with a little one in bed.

Here in Ottawa for the Victoria Day weekend, we took Avery to see the tulips at Dow's Lake. Because of the late spring, the tulips were at their peak for the long weekend, which is rare. I don't think he was particularly impressed with the flowers, but it made for some memorable photos.

A couple of weeks ago I met a friend that I had not seen for a long time. When he asked what was keeping us busy these days I told him about Avery and his expected sibling. "Ah," he replied, "Grandchildren..the dessert of life." Amen!

school dress codes

After such a long absence, wouldn't it be good if I returned in a positive mood? Sorry to tell you but it is my grouchy meter that has got me writing again. This morning on CBC radio (where else?) there was a discussion about proper attire for students. After all it is the season for showing some skin. With about six weeks to go in the school year, some schools are attempting to clamp down. On Ottawa Morning there was an interview with some grade seven and eight students. I was not surprised to hear the students objecting to the school rules. After all, that's what you expect students to do. What got me was the mother who was also interviewed. She objects to schools complaining about girls' short shorts. It was enough to set me writing again. I sent this letter to Ottawa Morning.

Well here we go again. Yet another debate about proper clothing. As a mother, a grandmother and a retired teacher I often find it sad to see how today's teens dress. This mother thinks her daughter's dress is "okay by me" but her standards may not match the school's expectations. It is not unreasonable for a person's shorts to have to meet the person's fingertips. For a few years I worked in a school where the administration was very reluctant to say anything to students who obviously broke  the school's dress code. Male principals and VPs do not want to be seen as harrassing young female students. The mother in your interview said that the male teachers who objected to girls' clothes were sexualizing those girls. I'm sorry but parents who allow their daughters to dress in skimpy clothing are the ones who are sexualizing those young women. 

The high school I worked in went from grade 7 to 12. You know what was sad? In the fall of grade 7, the young girls, fresh from a K to grade 6 school, came to school dressed in regular, appropriate clothing. However, many of the girls, by Christmas time, had radically changed their clothing to reflect the clothing that they saw around them. Suddenly they were sporting low cut tops, so low that on one occasion I had to argue with a student to take her cell phone out of her bra. She assured me that all the girls carried their phones in their bras. She was not embarrassed that I could see her bra. As summer rolled around I kept a supply of my husband's old t shirts in my classroom and had students wear them over their tops if I thought their clothes were too revealing. 

School is school, not a beach or a Saturday night party. How are other students supposed to concentrate on their work? School is a place where we should be able to teach students about proper attire for school and work. The trouble is that many adults themselves seem to have missed that particular memo. When I'm on an OC transpo bus or in a store or at a bank I don't want to be looking at anyone's breasts or butt cheeks. I find it sad and depressing that young women today feel that they need to expose private areas of their bodies in order to fit in. If only they could be recognized for their sense of humour, their intellect, their caring nature, their sense of responsibility, their athleticism and not by their suggestive clothing.

I'm happy to report that my former school now has an administration with a more clearly defined dress code which is posted in all classrooms. This new admin team is not afraid to enforce this code and I respect them for that.

Spring.....at last!

In the words of my favourite spring song, the Beatles'  Here Comes the Sun;  "It's been a long, cold lonely winter. Little Darling. It feels like years since it's been here." Such a long drawn out winter we've had, here in Ottawa and right across the country.

And so I rejoice, along with everyone else, at the simple changes in lifestyle these past couple of weeks have given us: the joy of walking outside without shoving feet into winter boots, walking on bare sidewalks, sitting on the front verandah again.

Lately, I've been reading some of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency stories. While some readers might find these short novels simple and slow moving, I enjoy them. His slow paced storytelling, with vivid descriptions of life in Botswana and keen observations on human nature provide a charming and comfortable read. That "slow down and take time to smell the roses" philosophy is worth repeating. Is it not similar to some of the comments made following Jim Flaherty's unexpected death last week?

McCall Smith closes Blue Shoes and Happiness with a few wishes for a happy life, "It is important just to be able to sit and think. ...There should be some time for work and some for play....And some for sitting and watching the sun go up and down....And some time for listening to the cattle bells in the bush.."

Perhaps this appreciation for the simple pleasures of life is rubbing off on me, for last night I went to sleep feeling very grateful for  two spring items: cotton sheets and open windows. At long last we have stripped our bed of the fluffy flannelette sheets we have burrowed under all winter and happily replaced them with their  cotton counterparts . With the screen newly installed in our window, I opened it wide to let in the fresh air and sounds of outside. What a treat!

Our bedroom is small and simple. Some of the monster homes being built in our neighbourhood feature master bedrooms as big as bowling alleys with their accompanying walk in closets and ensuite bathrooms. On the street next to us, the owner of such a room, remarked to our friends, who lived next door, in their regular-sized home, "We just really need a lot of room, so we have two queen beds pushed together."

Anyhow, my needs are not that grandiose. Give me fresh cotton sheets on our bed, right close to the open window and I am a very happy camper.

Last week on Rewind, CBC's look back at old radio shows, Michael Enright played some signs of spring that listeners had sent in to Peter Gzowski's Morningside show, many years ago. My favourite was one sent in by an emergency room nurse. She remarked that, "It must be spring because we just pulled the first pussy willow out of a toddlers' nose."

Ah spring....

Pierre Poilievre

There is nothing much I can add to the discussion around the "Fair" Elections Act that has not already been written. Andrew Coyne summed it up nicely in this piece titled "A normal government wouldn't ram through this elections bill".

What is truly amazing is Minister Poilievre's total disregard, even contempt, for all the criticism levelled against the bill by all kinds of experts: the current chief electoral officer, the former chief electoral officer, and Sheila Fraser, to name a few. And yet Poilievre refused to admit that any of these experts had points worth considering. As Coyne writes,"If this were a normal government it would not have as its minister for democratic reform, such a noxious partisan as Poilievre, whose contempt for Parliament and its traditions registers every time he rises to speak in it."

Fast forward to today's news. The Conservative Senators are asking for significant changes in the bill. Now that it is Conservatives asking for changes, suddenly Poilievre has changed his tune completely.

Wait for it.........."I have always been open to ways we can make a great bill even better."

God give me strength.

Harperland 3.5

Well here I am again, playing catch up. After that last post about naming things after Conservatives I read this piece in the Ottawa Citizen. In fact, this appeared the day before my post, but like other things in my life, I often read papers a bit late.

Here Andrew Cohen elaborates on the same theme, but in this case it is all about Dief the Chief. As he states, "It is deeply cynical for a minister and his government to lavish praise on a former prime minister of their party while consciously ignoring -if not disparaging-the memory of those who were not....Baird pointedly does not mention Pearson; he treats this country's most celebrated diplomat like a contagion."
Enjoy!