Second Gen (2003-2016, 2016- )
…when the news items include the Kyoto Agreement coming into force, when the same-sex marriage bill enters Parliament, when the date of the Federal budget is announced and the number one item on the TV news is the ending of the locked-out hockey season.
Here comes the WHA. Can wide-leg jeans be far behind?
Presuming the alleged facts are as reported and as set out in the Statement of Claim, this will be a most interesting case to follow, as reported in The Toronto Star:
Romanian-born Alexandra Austin, who was adopted by an Ontario couple but sent back five months later to poverty and deprivation, has launched a $7 million lawsuit against her adoptive parents, the Canadian and Ontario governments and Swiss International Air Lines…[A]fter five months in the Austins’ Ancaster home, Alexandra was driven to the airport and put on a plane for return to Bucharest. Shortly afterward, the Austins adopted a Romanian baby girl…Canada had accepted her as a landed immigrant when the adoption was approved. But as she left the country before her adoptive parents filed a citizenship application, she never became Canadian.
The parents who adopted her are no longer in Canada, this person and her child are effectively stateless and Canada should be ashamed. How could such a thing occur? It is interesting that no reference to this case I have read, including the link above to the Star‘s full article, references the Criminal Code section that pops immediately into my mind and might have had similar wording at the time the one-way ticket to no one bought and used:
215. (1) Every one is under a legal duty
(a) as a parent, foster parent, guardian or head of a family, to provide necessaries of life for a child under the age of sixteen years…
(2) Every one commits an offence who, being under a legal duty within the meaning of subsection (1), fails without lawful excuse, the proof of which lies on him, to perform that duty, if
(a) with respect to a duty imposed by paragraph (1)(a) or (b),
(i) the person to whom the duty is owed is in destitute or necessitous circumstances…
218. Every one who unlawfully abandons or exposes a child who is under the age of ten years, so that its life is or is likely to be endangered or its health is or is likely to be permanently injured, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years…
I hope this sad case finds this person some meaningful remedy. Fortunately we have courts that allow for redress where these parents, these bureaucrats and all other adults involved failed if the facts prove out – but how could they not given she was nine?
With news like this you have to wonder what some of the smaller team owners are thinking this morning:
The NHL players union broke from its long-standing position of refusing to accept a salary cap in their latest offer Monday night, but owners rejected the deal, according to reports…The union counter-offered with a $52-million salary cap. The players also proposed more aggressive tax rates on team payrolls and offered a 24 per cent salary rollback on all existing contracts.
By rejecting this astoundingly sensible offer and moving to the cancellation of the season Bettman can only be saying the problem is not the players but the number of teams.
From the brother of the yellow press comes this item:
LONDON, England (AP) — Joe Strummer, lead singer of British punk band The
Clash, has been honored with a train named for him. Strummer, who died in 2002 at age 50, was remembered at a naming ceremony Saturday at a railway station in Bristol, southwest England. The Strummer train, a diesel locomotive built in 1965, follows a 200-year-old tradition of British trains being named after famous people. It will be operated in England by Cotswold Rail company. Strummer’s influential punk band rose to fame in the 1970s with hits including “London Calling” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Originally born John Graham Mellor, Strummer died of a heart attack at his home in Somerset, southwest England, in December 2002.
So will Thomas the Tank Engine come out with a version of Joe the Spitting Angry train?
The BBC reports that five percent increase in fuel costs would ensure 10% green power for the UK:
During the 2003/4 financial year, the amount of electricity generated from inexhaustible natural resources was 2.4%, just over half the target of 4.3%. The government hopes to double the amount of electricity from renewables to 20% of the UK’s needs by 2020, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by between 20 million and 27 million tonnes. The policy’s centrepiece is a commitment to stimulate green energy by making sure those who produce it receive more than the market rate for electricity – known as the Renewables Obligation. In addition, the government is providing capital grants to offshore windfarms, and to power stations that generate electricity from biomass and energy crops.
All sounds reasonable, paying for what you want to avoid what you don’t…unless I suppose you are 17 and love self-help-guru, Miss Take-a-lot 1957 Ayn Rand aka i-me-mine.
BOSTON — In the first tangible sign that it is almost time for the Red Sox to begin their first World Series title defense in 86 years, the team’s equipment truck — stocked with some 30,000 pounds of freight — pulled out of Fenway Park early Friday afternoon and headed for the team’s Spring Training complex in Fort Myers, Fla.
I got off the 401 at the Brighton exit and headed away from that town, going north. I will write more about this brewery tomorrow when I am not so tired but for now here are some pictures and the assurance that some of the best beer in Ontario is being made in a small Victorian church in the rolling hills of Northumberland county. Just one point before tomorrow, however: there were renovations going on and that is why a good swiffering looks due.
The Next Day: You have to spend an hour getting to and from Church-Key Brewing from the 401. Do it. It sits between Campbellford and Springbrook on route #38 on a high point among small century farms. If it is not on the road, you will notice the yellow draft dispensing van out front. The brewery is housed in the former Zion United Church which was likely the former Zion Methodist Church. The main body of the building is from the 1860s or ’70s with an addition from the 1920s that the brewery is expanding into at the moment. Its 3000 litre conical fermenters stand floor to rafters like the dullest organ pipes in the what was the sanctuary.
I got to spend an hour with Church-Key Owner John Graham and Marketing Director Cary Tucker. We got so quickly into talking that I didn’t even sample any samples. They only sell six-packs at the brewery, moving kegs to bars and restaurants from Ottawa to Toronto, Kingston to Peterborough. Cary and I got into beer travelling, the joys of the Galeville Grocery and his website. These guys like to know what is going on in the industry and, after five years or operation, are still self-described beer nerds.
They brew a lager, a pale ale, a smoked ale and a chocolate porter and, going by the two sixes I picked up, the beer is some of the best made in the province. I’ll review the smoked ale and chocolate porter later but suffice it to say that I can easily see making the two and half hour round trip some Saturday just to get another fix. Recently, they have won some important awards:
Church-Key Brewing picked up three Gold Medals at the second annual Canadian Brewing Awards held at the Duke of Westminster Pub in Toronto. Church-Key’s first gold medal came in the Scotch Ale competition as Holy Smoke was chosen Best of Category. In the Cream Ale Category, Church-Key’s Northumberland Ale tied for the Gold Medal with Gulf Islands Salt Spring Golden Ale from British Columbia and Quebec’s Microbrasserie du Lievre La Montoise. Church-Key’s Decadent Chocolate Porter, flavored with cocoa from World’s Finest Chocolate in Campbellford, tied for Gold in the Stout or Porter category with Black Oak Nutcracker from Oakville, Ontario and Boreale Noire from Quebec.
Impressive competition which makes me think we have a couple of candidates for the National Six-Pack.
A morning meeting in Newmarket, three hours west. You learn as you wrinkle there are morning people and there are middle-of-the-night-get-in-the-car-drive-to-Florida people. I like dawn being part of my morning person lifestyle. Dawn is an hour and a half away.
While I am enjoying the delights of the rental car – ooooh, a grey Taurus – why not perhaps comparable partake of the delights of the archives? The link usually sits down to the lower right. Today, you can enjoy the past, my past, right here ordered by date and topic for your perusing pleasure. 1616 posts of pure time waste. 22 months of my life – gone. Find the dullest or the wrongest post.
