In the Waterloo news

I've made the news in Waterloo Ontario! After years of being the reporter, I am now the reportee. See it here. and here.

I am Canadian: Woooooooooooo!

There is no such thing as Canadian Summer without going to at least one outdoor concert. This year, for the first time, I saw the uber-Canuck band called The Tragically Hip. If you are from outside of Canada and haven't heard of this band, well, you are not alone. Like many things in Canada, they are obscure on the global entertainment scene. However, here on our broad land they are the staples of rock stations and field parties.

When The Hip or any band plays an outdoor Canadian venue, you'll see: empty and crushed beer cups on the long brown, heavily trampled grass. Guys in cargo shorts and baseball caps on backwards with sunburns on their necks. Drunkards wheeled out on stretchers. Line ups for beer. Line ups for bathrooms. Line ups to get into the designated drinking area. Line ups to get in. Lineups to get out. That one really drunk guy dancing around too much and knocks into the biker. Weed wafting this way and that way. A safari of bad tattoos.

And when the sun sets, the lights of the stage blaze to life, you hear the immortal, beer-swigging cry of the Canadian male: Wooooooooooooooooooooooo! Woooooooooooooooooooooo!

Pins and Needles

Woke up this morning with a strange feeling in my arm. I had slept on it the wrong way. It happens all the time. I wake up with pins and needles running up my appendages. But this morning the numbness stayed. I had a shower, ate breakfast and started to get ready for work. And still I had this tingling sensation in my hand. Immediately started to worry (my favourite hobby). I imagined all sorts of nasty diseases and afflictions that I could be showing symptoms for: MS, cancer, whatever. Maybe I was having a stroke. Would I have to live with this? Is it getting worse or better?

By the afternoon, I left work and went to the doctor. She said it was just a stressed nerve and things should be better in a few days. But it was strange how, under the threat of some terrible illness, everything in my daily life seemed so insignificant. I just wanted my arm back to normal. My job, my wages, my toys meant nothing.

A lake

I want to be by a lake today.
Not in an office.

Krazy Koreans

In Toronto, I live in the heart of Korea Town. For those not from Toronto, Korea Town is on Bloor Street West. It's a block north of Little Italy, three blocks north of Little Portugal, and three blocks east of Little Ethiopia. And when Brazil plays, the city turns into little Brazil. A World Cup Time, after every game, somewhere in the distance, you hear the joyous beepings to celebrate a victory. Cars slowly drive the main strips, loud music playing, flags flapping from the windows. Yesterday, it was the Angolans out. The Iranians. And flags I'd never seen before.

Sunday, I happened to be watching the Korea-France game in Little Italy, sitting in the sun drinking a coffee and watching the action unfold. The only those with bets to win cheered on Korea. After Korea finally tied the game, people on the patio quickly left.

When I biked home, it was another story. The Koreans were going mad. Like no other nation in this city. They choked up Bloor Street in an instant. An old man in sunglasses set up a drum kit and banged away while people danced and shouted something in Korean. Dudes without shirts hung out of cars. People dressed in devil outfits. Even the oldtimers were hopping up and down. White, blue everwhere. Engines revving. Woooo! Ahhh! Woooo! The cops came, tried to keep people off the road. Useless.

On this hot night, with the windows open, I can still hear the horns blowing. I wonder what would have happened if Korea acutally won the game.

Tommy Thompson Park

I've always been a bit of an urban explorer. I like nothing more than getting on my bike on Saturday afternoon, and heading somewhere. Anwhere. I had often heard of, but never visited Tommy Tompson Park. It existed as a rumor only. This weekend, I decided to visit. In essence, the park is a peninsula build entirely out of construction/demolition rubble. Over the last 50 years or so, excavations from the subway have been dumped into the lake. Slowly, this pile grew far out into the lake, shaped like a pork chop. You would think the idea of dumping rubble would create a toxic nightmare. For example, on the shore, where you'd expect to see rocks and stone, you see old slabs of concrete, street lamp posts, and hunks of twisted rebar. Piles of old bricks have slowly rounded and crushed into smaller stones. It's an apocalyptic landscape.


But this land constructed from deconstructed buildings has sprouted something new: life. Old sewer pipe and rusty street and bent wires has again become the foundation of structures (albeit, natural ones). The older sections of the park, from the 1950's are filled with poplar trees, grasses and wild flowers. On the south shore, herons and gulls have built their nests in the trees. Thousands, maybe millions of birds all chirping. I saw old hunks of asphalt sprout lichen. A pipe with sea weed.

I wheeled my bike to the tip of the park. I found slab of concrete and lay down with my feet resting on a rusty old bolt and pipe. I took off my shirt and drops of water sprayed over me when the waves broke over the steel wires. More waves broke on the broken infrastructure. I thought of a thousand metaphors for this scene, a million symbolic images. Delicate yellow flowers on ten ton rubble.

I was just happy to know that nature can still win.

West, East, and everything in between.

On another flight from Toronto to Vancouver. I’m in the back of the plane, jammed beside a guy who takes up both arm rests with his hairy elbows. He’s reading a book about God. I quickly learn that he’s a lawyer in the construction business. He’s been in Toronto for a few days. I’m thankful for the window seat at least.

“I’m one of the few people who can actually say that I’m born and raised in Vancouver. Not just an Ontario person whose come over the mountains. I’m glad to be going home. As soon as I step off the plane I can just feel the air and moisture sticking to my skin.”

“Ya Vancouver sure is pretty.”

“Every time I come east, I’m always happy to be going home. Toronto’s just so ugly. I was in Muskoka today and that was nice… but even then I wanted some mountains to make it that much better. Other than that there’s nothing to Ontario”

I don’t know what it is but many people from the west coast love to dump on Toronto. I didn’t even ask if he likes Ontario. He just had to make his dislike known from the outset. I explain that Toronto is a dirty city; the air is bad, the traffic is bad, and people get shot. But there’s something I love about my city. Not a foolish pride, but a love of the busy-ness that turns most people off. There is vibrancy that can make up for the flat landscape and smog alerts.

The plane takes off. And when you cross Canada by plane, you see the lakes and forests of Ontario slowly fade into bigger Great Lakes and long lakes that were scraped out by the glaciers. And an hour later you’re over the prairies. From up here at 39-thousand feet the land is flat and green, apportioned into small squares of yellow and brown. Small lakes and ponds are here and there. Roads, small dirt roads lead off into the hidden distances. Another rhour later the land slowly begins to bend and fold into corrugated patterns. Rivers cut into the land, leaving behind jagged valleys and canyons. Now the fields are with cattle. The roads twist and bend like string around the changing altitudes. An hour after that the foothills of Alberta appear. Then suddenly, out of no where, the Rockies jut out of the earth like giant teeth with snowy caps, deep valleys with rivers. We pass over a set of green mountains. If you look carefully, you can see where they’ve logged the land of trees.

“Ah it all grows back, I would not worry about that. People from Ontario are always complaining about our cutting down trees.”

I don’t argue. But his elbows are still taking up the arm rest. I don want to start a brawl at 35-thousand feet.

The mountains below. I picture myself skiing down the ice caps and glaciers. Big towering white clouds cling to the leeward side of the slopes, holding them like kites. And then before you know it, you are in the green again with the ocean below. Vancouver on the coast. Deep green and beautiful. The Fraser river appears as the plane circles to land. You can see the big tanker ships coming in from the Far East. Logs floating down the river. The landscape from Ontario to the West Coast is like a symphony, a slow beautiful build. Rising and falling. And it’s all one country.

We land in Vancouver.

Mr. Lawyer turns to me.

“And another thing, the Sushi in Toronto is terrible!”

I wish he had a window seat instead of me. I didn't see any borders or counties or jurisdictions. Just a bunch of land.

A walk in the park with the chess teacher

It was raining hard in Montreal. I was walking to the Sherbrooke Metro station with a friend of a friend whom I had met only the night before. We both wore raincoats slicked with water and shuddered when the wind gusted up on our faces. He explained that he is a chess teacher. Not just a chess player. A chess teacher. And not some do-gooding, part-time, after school community centre teacher. He is a full time, professional chess teacher. With long brown hair and a five o’clock shadow, he’s not a thick-glasses-wearing nerd that you might expect. He spends forty hours a week teaching children one of the oldest board games on earth.

For me, chess is and always has been torture. In grade six, I made a brief appearance at the Bedford Park chess team. In the afternoons, I’d square off against a fellow classmate. Picture it: two squares squaring off through a game of black and white squares. I always lost. Badly. No matter how many books I read or quick tips from peers that I got, my opponents were able to annihilate my poor wooden pieces in mere minutes. Starting with a few pawns, my bishops, rooks and queens were routinely slaughtered, knocked over, raped and pillaged. Not to mention my ego.

I never played much again until I spent time traveling through Asia with my friend Jeppe. During the long hot waits for delayed busses, he’d pull out a small portable chess set from his backpack. We’d crack open a few beers. We’d set up the pieces. And in minutes, I’d lose. He’d laugh. I’d come back for more. He’d win, he’d laugh. Repeat.

“Wow you really do suck,” he’d say with his famous Dutch honesty.

They say chess makes you smarter. I wondered what that mean for me. I decided to stick to other games. Like hockey.

Back in Montreal, our walk continued through Carre St. Louis. We weaved past the deep puddles, and chose our route through the walkways. I explained my chess deficiency.

“That is because you don’t know the true game of chess. You must have passion for it. Chess is a beautiful game. Like music. You must play it like music. Each game has its own rhythm, its own movement. It’s not always about winning. You must feel the game and then go from there. It is a truly magical and amazing experience every time.”

I explained that I never had time to study strategies.

“That is only a small part of it. You have these competitions that my students enter. They play will passion because that is the first thing I teach. You must first show how to love chess, how it moves before the technical parts. In competition they play against Chinese kids who have been playing since age 3 who practice four hours a day! Sure, they play well. But there are no Chinese chess masters at the elite level. They get to a point where they cannot go any higher and the reason is that they don’t have that passion to take you all the way… technical skill is 80% and 20% emotion. But if you lack both you never love or succeed at chess.”

Thinking back to the chess team, and Asian casualties, I realized I never even played chess properly from the start.

Montreal Cusine

Fine. Montreal is the best city in Canada. I'll admit that. The style, the culture, and lets not forget La Belle Province. (merci J)

Stanley Park and Trees

And while Vancouver is rife with glass and steel condos, there's also the thousand year old cedars to clear up everything. This reconfirmed by love for trees. The rain left, the sun came out and the air was soaked in cedar. Big green ferns fanning out over the ground below. 

Stanley Park

I am so very Toronto. After leaving work on Sunday in Vanouver, I jumped into a cab went to Mountain Co-Op and then cabbed again to Stanley Park while most people walk or bike there. With only a few hours to spare, I had no choice. But look were a five minute cab ride and a fifteen minute hike can take you! This is about a kilometer from downtown Vancouver.

YVR

I'm at the Vancouver airport Elite lounge (someone elses tab). Through the window, I see mountains and deep clouds hanging over them like big billowing hats. There are 747s set to go. Gas and luggage truck darting in and out. I've got a cold beer by my side. I less than an hour, I'll be up there over those mountains, in those clouds, on my way home. Half a continent in five hours with a bag of peanuts on my tray.

Progress!