A Rain of Frogs

Sometimes you find the most amazing sights in your own home.

It’s sort of funny, but I was born in Toronto, lived in and around it for all of my life save one year (when I was eight and lived in the BC interior), and I’ve never been to Allan Gardens until this past weekend.

I highly highly recommend it to anyone, whether you live in the city or not. I’ll be going back, that’s for sure.

All shot with an iPhone 3G.

Shot with an iPhone 3G.

Like option packages on automobiles, or channel packs on cable, mainstream media and politicians are packaging up values and ideas and applying labels to them. I cannot help but feel this is a bad thing.

When I talk to people, they cannot mesh my views on fiscal conservatism with the fact that I am pro-choice when it comes to abortion. They have been preprogrammed, through dozens of elections across North America, to associate pro-choice stances with Liberalism. And everyone knows that Liberalism and Conservatism are mutually exclusive, right?

Why can’t I pick and choose? I think Canada should have much tougher immigration laws, specifically where refugees are concerned. I think government should be smaller, and that in general laws should protect rights, not interests. These are traditionally Conservative positions.

I also think that GOOD universal health care is a right, not a privilege, and I think that state welfare (when operated by competent and effective people) is a good thing. I think the strong have a moral obligation to protect the weak in our society. This also leads me to believe in strong gun regulation. These are traditionally Liberal positions.

At this point, you might want to start telling me that some of my beliefs are contradictory. I’d tell you to really think about that. They aren’t. I have no trouble holding these values because I don’t think it is an either-or proposition.

I think I can have good gun control and laws that protect rights. Canadians have the right to bear arms. They just have to be registered to do so. I think we can protect the weak in our society while at the same time protecting that same society from abuses being committed against our refugee system.

Will it be easy? Hell no. Is it possible? Absolutely.

And that’s what I am looking for. I am tired of fear-mongering and polarization. I am tired of soundbite journalism that wouldn’t know context if it bit them in the ass. I am tired of fractious politicians telling me I am with the country, or I am against the country. I am tired of mayoral candidates telling me we can either have public transit, or fiscal responsibility.

I think we’re all tired of being asked to compare, but not being told that it’s apples and oranges, and then being told I am unpatriotic if we try to point it out.

It’s apples and oranges, folks. Always has been.

Last week I had to travel to Kamloops, British Columbia on business. I was somewhat excited, since it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the mountains. The media had warned that a few weeks ago there had been some forest fires, so I was prepared for a bit of haze caused by smoke.

I landed there on Monday afternoon, to a beautiful clear day. There was a touch of haze in the air, obscuring the more distant mountains, but the closer ones were quite visible. I took this picture at the airport. I wanted to show my kids how small the Dash-7 100 I had been on was:

Kamloops airport is very small. It has two gates, Gate 1 and Gate 2. This means there are only two places for planes to park, and they are both side by side. Nonetheless, Kamloops is (thankfully!) big enough to land smaller jets.

I woke up on Thursday morning to the smell of a camp fire. This confused me, but I didn’t make much of it till after I had showered and headed downstairs for breakfast. The hallway was hazy with smoke from the forest fires. After breakfast I checked out and started my morning walk to work. It was so smoky I couldn’t see more than 500 feet or so.

To give an idea, here’s the 737-300 I eventually flew out of Kamloops on. It is parked at the Gate next to the one in the previous photo. It is about 20 feet to the left of where the first one was.

This was the only plane to land or take off from Kamloops on Thursday, because the visibility was so bad that the prop-planes couldn’t land. Even Calgary, a 45 minute flight to the east, was blanketed in smoke, though nowhere near as bad as Kamloops was.