prairiechickin

No, you are not alone. I too like pumpkin pie. I like it with a blast of whipped cream, but without I can slither pieces straight down my throat like a python.

Funny, all of my Indian friends consider themselves Canadians, where do you get off speaking for all Indians? You're "Special" allright, like the Polish Special Forces in 1939. So what's your endgame? Do you see the New Native Economy as teams of Native Lawyers and Historians culling the depths of old documents to see where whitey fucked up and where we can extract some cash. And if we take your "We are the landlords, you are the tenants" philosophy, where does that go in 20 years? Is your vision of Native Utopia three per cent of the population lives like Pirate Kings on the royalties of their great-great-great grandfather's legacy, while their lesser non-aboriginal underlords slave to pay the taxes to cover the sins of their fathers? Did we lose a war somewhere I missed? I've got a better idea, you were lucky enough to be born Indian in one of the truly decent countries on the planet. If you think you've got it bad, go read what the Spanish and Portugese did to Indians. Quit whining about the past and trying to make your living there, look towards the future and be part of the process of integrating into Canadian society. We gave Quebec 'Distinct Society', but we never relinquished soveriegnty, why would we give it to scatterd bands across the country?

I'll bet you a bottle of rum it isn't. Our painful run at a new Constitution ended in the early 80s, the entire Proclamation thing only emerged in the mid-90s with, of all things, eels. There was a Mig,Ma guy, I forget his name, but he was famous for being locked up for a murder he didn't commit (he was only trying to rob an old guy in a park when the old guy stabbed his accomplis, the story got tangled after that), but then he got caught fishing eels out of season when he got out of jail. Then some lawyer dug up the Proclamation of 1763 where it said Indians could fish, hunt, and generally sustain themselves off the land. Fair enough, but it aint in the Constitution because when that was written the Proclamation of 1763 was but a dusty chapter in history books.

See, its statements like this that tell me you have maybe 10% of the story right, the rest you just make up. Go read some real history books on Natives in Southern Ontario, then we'll chat. ps...tell me what happened to the Huron.

You could have said that in the first place instead of tossing in a single case and claiming it was a gold standard for all treaties in Canada. This is a ruling in Ontario, and is relevant to treaties and land surrenders there, and may be used in other provincial courts as a similar case. The thing you have to understand about treaties is that one size does not fit all. Starting in Newfoundland, which made no treaty with the dying Beothuk, treaties across Canada reflect the centuries of Native-European interaction and they change as you move west. Deals were struck across what is now southern Quebec and Ontario and in this region the Proclamation of 1763 has been deemed, rightly or wrongly, to carry some historic weight. While any French deals with the Indians were null and void after the collapse of Quebec, this Proclamation was intended to pacify the Indians by assuring them that any westward progress would be orderly under British rule. Its no accident that the American Revolution took place within 15 years of this Proclamation. Britain was trying to hem in its rebellious colonies to the south and stop them from spilling into the Ohio Valley (which was French territory) and starting expensive wars with the resident Indians. So King George The Tyrant was just trying to cover his colonial tax ass when he feebly tried to calm Native fears before the inevitable revolution in the southern colonies. So trying to argue that a pronouncement from some long-dead king a couple of hundred years ago (that was actually aimed at what is now the United States) has some legal weight in Saskatchewan is a bit of a logical stretch for me.

If memory serves, the myth they sold us was that the maple leaf was adopted because the bright red British troops in the War of 1812 used maple boughs to cover their shame and try not to get shot. Might be true, who knows, but I find it strange that an American of any political persuasion would get so worked up over another nation's flag. As a westerner, I did note that I'd never actually seen a real maple leaf until my early 30s when I moved east, and that irony wasn't lost on me, but I never got that worked up about it. I used to put them in all the letters I wrote to family and friends back west so they could see what one really looked like. So why do you get so worked up about our flag? And why do you hate Pearson? Did he steal your girlfriend in college or something?

"They" seem to have done a good job of stalling that pipeline to Texas.

I don't know but that's a good question. I'm guessing they used the same walk-the-line, touch-your-nose type of techniques they still use today. But you're right, I don't think we can read too much into these stats, but I did find it strange that drunk driving seemed such an insignificant category every year.

A few years ago I was doing some research on highway development in New Brunswick after 1945. I read all of the Department of Highways Annual Reports from 1945 to 1970. From '45 until the early '60s the Department provided a list of the causes of traffic accidents for the year. Topping the list annually were driver carelessness and road conditions which accounted for well over half the accidents every year. After that the list was broken up into a couple of dozen other categories ranging from collisions with wildlife to mechanical failure. Way at the bottom of the list every year was drunk driving, which never accounted for any more than 3% of accidents in any year. So what are we to glean from these lists? Was there no booze in New Brunswick after World War Two? Were New Brunswickers so law abiding that they simply didn't drive much when they were drinking? Or were they just so good at drinking and driving that they rarely got into accidents? Or maybe those stats are just a reflection of the real danger involved in drinking and driving, that is, its not nearly as dangerous as MADD would have us believe. Seems to me that drinking and driving was not considered really dangerous until the early 1970s when a reliable roadside breathalizer became available to law enforcement. After that drunk drivers were no longer funny, they were downright dangerous and the hunt was on. Now they are just behind terrorists and pedophiles as the scourge of modern Canada. Maybe we should do some research into How New Brunswick managed to keep the drunks from crashing into each other way back when.

Unless he cites a source, pretty much. See my post above, he has a pretty good track record of just making stuff up.

Chippewas of Sarnia Band v. Canada (Attorney General), 195 D.L.R. (4th) 135, was a decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario rendered on December 21, 2000. The plaintiff, an aboriginal nation, claimed aboriginal title to a four-square-mile parcel of land in and around the city of Sarnia, Ontario. The Court of Appeal dismissed the claim, upholding the lower court's judgment although with different reasoning. The Chippewas of Sarnia sought leave from the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal the decision, but leave was denied. So much for your oft-repeated claim about the Chippawa of Sarnia v. Canada. First of all, the case never made it to the SCoC. The Chippawa lost in the Ontario Court of Appeals. The judge ruled that regardless of the legality of the transfer, the Chippawa never filed claim in the 60 years following the deal, so any right they may have had for redress from the many innocent legal landowners died in 1921.

You are bang on here, but all the factual history in the world will not convince CR of anything -- he lives in a parallel universe where everyone is their own historian and we all get to rewrite our past so as to cast ourselves in a favorable light. Facts are powerless when confronted with his all powerful imagination.

I thought I'd actually take the time to go down to the library and read the full articles so we could have a real discussion.

and overused expressions...

Sure, you sound insane to me, five years minimum, indefinate until you smarten up.

You like flat-picking, fishing and moonshine? Maybe you're not as big an asshole as you seem.

No, lucky for me my Mother's Norwegian, not taken to the drink, so I percolated in a non-alcoholic womb. But once out of there my Dad was a country musician and the arse went out of 'er. There I was, pissy in my diaper, listening to steel guitar and sweet harmonies, and the die was cast. I drank a battleship worth of rum playing hillbilly tunes in every small honky-tonk in Saskatchewan. Never hurt nobody, but I sure made a lot of them dance.

Domestically yes, militarily no. I think our troops performed to the very high standards set by the Canadian military, and I think they carried out a very tough assignment with exceptional discipline. The politicians behind them, not so much. I was not pleased when, after much hoopla, America tired of Afganistan and ran off to Iraq leaving us on point since none of the other pussie nations would serve in a combat zone. I'll give Cretien points for keeping us out of Iraq, but he made nary a noise about being left in Afganistan. And then there's the question of Pakistan's duplicity, how many lives did that cost? The good news is that we're out of there now and if some other nation thinks they can bring these people into the 21st century, good luck with that.

I've read through this thread and its taken some strange turns, but if the question is should Canada be a refuge for legitimately persecuted gay people, I say hell yes. I'm less interested in how many of their relatives are likely to come here than I am in making a statement that Canada is a gay-friendly nation, and we accept that designation as dangerous in some parts of the world. We should always be open to the victims of intolerance. But what struck me as wierd was the part of this thread involving our immediate ancestors in World War Two. For the record, I consider that generation that endured the Great Depression then went on to fight and win the Second World War to be among the finest Canada has ever produced. Most of them saw little but depravity before signing up to fight for European freedom, but they did it anyway and paved the way for a good chunk of the peace we have today. But by today's standards, they were a racist, mysoginistic, homophobic and outright bigoted bunch, and I'm struck by the irony that their sacrifice would parlay into gay refugees. I think they'd be cool with it though.

Last time I did that I was canoeing across Saskatchewan on the South Saskatchewan River and after 10 days in the sandhills, I hit #4 highway a bit grubby, soaked and sunburnt, and I parked my canoe on a beach. After tip-toeing through a cactus minefield in my runners, I got to the hiway to hitch my way to Kyle to resupply. I thought this would be easy since it was rural Saskatchewan, but apparently I was just a tad too scruffy to have in the car. After 20 minutes I tired of rejection and walked the 18 miles to town. It wasn't too hot, around 27C, but it took a few hours and when I finally reached the bar in Kyle I croaked out to the bartender, "Give me two Pil, I won't even taste the first one." And I didn't, much to their amusement. After the first two in five minutes I just settled back to enjoy the tunes, the cooler climate, and a couple more beers. I was just getting ready to load up and head back to the canoe since I still had enough light to make it back to the river and a few miles downstream, when the after work crowd hit the bar. They were nice folks, and couldn't stand the sight of me sitting alone so they sucked me into their table and we enjoyed an interesting evening together. Point is, two beers really depends on who's drinking it where. I can drink 6 beers and still walk 18 miles back to where I started and canoe another ten. If two beers makes you dizzy and incapable of operating machinery, that's your problem. But don't judge me by your limitations. I come from a long line of functional alcoholics, and I'll bet I've done more half-pissed than you ever did sober.

Squid, or is it The Squid? Thanks for bringing this up, it flew under my radar and I had no idea this was going on. I'll be watching this story unfold. Interesting that a government that openly cut funding for reproductive choice (Canadian funding for abortions in the third world), would suddenly and quietly open an office to protect religeous freedom around the world. By the way, well presented with good references, we need more of that around here.

A month or so ago I saw a piece on the news about young Somalian immigrant males getting sucked into the drug trade up around Edmonton and Fort MacMurray and ending up dead. While that was interesting, what I found more telling was the size of their greiving Mothers back in Toronto. The only Somalians I've ever seen close up were in Ottawa when I lived there back in the mid-90s. They were coming here in droves following yet another round of African madness, and they looked absolutely skeletal, like they'd been living on a diet of bugs and chickweed, which they may have been for all I knew. They've plumped up a bit in the 15 years that they've been here, or at least the Somali Mothers had that I saw on tv. So I think you're right that importing skinny starving people keeps your national BMI down for a bit, but once they muscle up to the trough with the rest of us, the effect is shortlived.

That 80% was a number specifically pertinant to Saskatchewan, and had nothing to do with the articles cited by cybercoma because I haven't read those articles yet. But since you've chimed in here, I assume you have, so I ask again, tell us what's in those articles.

Interesting list, and I could go along with most of it with a couple of quibbles. I rank Trudeau first because he had the greatest impact on the Canada I grew up in. I didn't agree with a lot of what he did, but I admired him because he had real vision of what he thought Canada could be, and love him or hate him, he did what he said he was going to do. Laurier makes second for me because he was such a great statesman and sailed the Canadian ship through some pretty rough French/English turmoil. I'm ok with Macdonald at #3, for all his shortcomings, like Trudeau he had vision and was essentially an honest man. King I have a problem with. While I admire him for his tenacity and longevity in office, I dislike him more for what he didn't do. He had his hand on the tiller through some pretty big events in Canadian history, yet had the maddening habit of procrastination if only to wear his political opponents down. King lacked vision, and seemed interested in power for power's sake, so I don't rank him that high. The rest of the list seems ok to me except for Mulroney. He was at best a puppet for right wing forces around him, at worst an outright bounder who abused the office of prime minister for personal enrichment while promoting grand changes that I doubt he even understood.

I agree with everything you've said here, and you've summed up the current state of the drinking and driving hysteria. I recall back in the mid-80s when this was just catching steam, some grad student out of the University of Alberta looked at good sampling of provincial accidents and did as you suggested, figured out what exactly was responsible for the accident rather than just pointing to alcohol because it was present. I can't remember the exact figure, but it was pretty small, as in under 5% of accidents were actually caused by a drunk driver. You can bet that study never got a lot of airplay. Did you know the woman who founded MADD (due to her daughter being killed by a drunk driver) no longer belongs to the organization? I heard her in an interview on CBC saying she quit years ago when the organization was over-run by neo-prohibitionist fanatics.