Bombs Away

• I"m working my way towards more scenic pictures. Here is a lake somewhere in Kananaskis country. Another place I could live without too much arm twisting.
  
  Inspired by a concurrent MSN conversation, here are my current top 10 places I'd like to live.
  
  1. Whitehorse/Dawson City/The Yukon
  - I don't know the area well enough to have an actual preferance but I'd like to see the tombstone mountains for certain
  
  2. Northern Vancouver Island - actually anywhere in BC where the mountains meet the ocean would be fantastic or in the north
  
  3. Newfoundland/Cape Breton - two of the rockiest, most beautiful parts of Canada with the nicest people
  
  4. Yellowknife - we simply have family history there and its up north.
  
  5. Labrador/Iqualuit/Repulse Bay/Innuvik - anywhere in the high arctic
  
  6. Thunder Bay, Ottawa, Sudbury, Timmins, Kenora, Rainy River - medium-large northern Ontario town with a small town feel and lots of bogs
  
  7. Coastal New Brunswick/Nova Scotia - Gabe really likes the ocean and maritimers are as friendly as northerners - St. Martin's, South or North Shore - a place with red cliffs and beaches and waves and the tang of salt in the air
  
  8. Scotland - lochs and moors - who could want anything more, other than neighbours with excellent accents
  
  9. Churchill Manitoba - Polar Bears and a train
  
  10. The Canadian Rockies - Canmore, Banff, Jasper, Revelstoke, Hinton - there are few places more breathtakingly beautiful in this county of breathtakingly beautiful vistas
  
  Cheers
  
  Jennith

 

Not Quite Dressed for Glacier Hopping

Continuing on the out-west theme - Here I am in sandals on the Columbia Ice Fields. You'll also note that it was windy, and I regrettably (for all the pain suffered brushing my hair back at the car) did not restrain my hair from the windy turmoil.

Guelph has a strange habit of heating the behjeebers out of the Eng. Grad offices on the weekends, then freezing us all week. Right now I'm pretty warm - but often I find myself wishing I had a hat, mitts and extra sweater.

Cheers,

Jennith 

Hang On Geoff

I'm sure many of you have seen this picture or its cousins from other cameras taken in the bad lands...

It was the only time I've been to the Tyrell Museum (dinosaur) and I must say its a fantastic must-see stop on any tour to Alberta.

Did he survive...? Well, not too badly - all those trips to the Grotto must have done the trick.

Cheers,

Jennith 

Doe!! Another sunrise and more Kashechewan Stuff

Well I thought I'd throw in some more Kashechewan links from the Globe and Mail.

1. Last October
2. Ottawa's Soln: Move to Timmins
3. Critics fear for remote reserves
4. Running for the Shadows of Dispair

The last article is pretty depressing, but not completely off the mark - alcoholism and unemployement are serious problems in Kash. I do understand that the Federal Government is giving them the choice. My concern is that they haven't put all the choices out there - and while time is of the essense in terms of overcrowding and the post-flood conditions in Kashechewan - I think somehow, something is missing in terms of solutions. And the journalist didn't capture the sense of community and attachment to the land that the people had - she missed that essence of community that always impressed me in Kashechewan, even though I was an outsider. Kids do watch TV and play video games there - but they also play outside, they have a quality that city kids lack - even if I can't put a name to it. As tough as it was for me, as a green first year teacher in a tough situation, I've often considered going back and I still think fondly of my students - they were the only class I ever have - They certainly made me crazy some days, but I never found them hard to like and I respected their knowledge of the outdoors. They had great senses of humour and living in that community was truely important to them. Sometimes a family would move to the south, for a job or for the opportunity to get better schooling - but they came back because they missed their community, their home, their land and their friends and family. I'm not sure a stranger can get a sense of that easily - but I believe its value is beyond measure.

I hope that the people can find their strength and make a choice that works for them and preserves the best parts of their community while allowing them to remove the cancerous aspects of drinking, abuse and disease that is keeping them from happiness.

Cheers

Jennith

Doe!! One more picture for the road.

Ha! I'm procrastinating heading down stairs for a bit of excerise of the step-yoga-pilates variety. However, I thought I'd post one more picture of the prettiest lake in Ontario - Doe Lake. Especially now that I'm going to school with a bunch of my campers. :D

Cheers,

Jennith 

Favourite Out-West Picture.

I think this is Bow Lake by the Numteejaw (sorry - not a clue how to actually spell this) in Banff National Park in 2004. My friend is inspecting the aquatic invertabrates I believe. 

Me on top of the world

Here I am hiking in Canmore (Ha Ling Peak) with my friend Scott (taking the picture) - probably one of my more insane hiking endeavors, but at least I was in tip-top shape at the time. Its pretty much straight up and straight down with a pretty spectacular view of Canmore at the top. I have a lot of exercising to do to get back into shape for all the hiking Amanda has promised to drag me on.... Yippee for happy, healthy goals.

Jennith 

Pointing the Way to the Loons

Here is a sound bite meant to tempt your camping soul. Well, you have to click on the link to Cottage Life Magazine and then on the link to "hear the loons' call". There are two calls a wail and a tremolo.

In other links - for the development types... I mentioned my friend Mike in Mali. He's very well written as he describes his experiences in Mali.

Alright, I have a few more pictures to post tonight. So I'll continue above.

Jenn

Sunday Creek, Algonquin Park

 

Algonquin Park 2006

 

Kashechewan unsolved

Ooops... there goes the sun. I'm suffering from a day of trying to relearn statistics.

Kashechewan. I don't know what the government is up to, but I can't see them choosing to move from the James Bay Coast to Timmins (see Toronto Star Article). These are people who hunt routinely and count on wild game for a real contribution to their food supply (healthy food supply might I add, having lived their with a good job, I could not afford healthy food at the store - so I lived off of processed carbohydrates, frozen vegetables , hotdogs, ground beef, apples and white bread). I guess moving south would solve some of the cost of living/employment issues, however, it would not be the same community, nor would it be possible to maintain their way of life. While, clearly the leaders of the community are wisely taking their time to discuss it at Public meetings, my gut feeling is that the idea won't sell well. Place is a part of community, and the different between the topography, geology and geography of Timmins is huge.

More Kashechewan Articles
1. Smooth Rock Mayor surprised
2. Troubled Reserve Could Move
3. Flowery words, poisonous water

Before you think to yourself how reasonable it would be to expect Northern Aboriginal Communities to relocate to the south for less costly services and more opportunities - consider how you would react if your community - particularly a small town, close-knit one - were basically told that you should pick up everything and relocate to a place of someone elses choosing. There would be outrage.

I as a former resident (albeit temporary) of Kashechawan, school teacher and recent civil engineering graduate, understand better than most the challanged and expensive of providing infastructure to northern communities. Some of the problems are engineering problems, some of the problems are the same ones that stereotypically haunt our native peoples, while others are simply logistics and demographics. This solution however is the conservatives forgetting to tally the non-monitary costs and impacts. Where the reserve should relocate is only one element of the equation - how the town can be made an economically sustainable and healthy community is an entirely different dimension of the problem.

Jennith
Flowers on the trees and the birds and bees, little boys with scrapes on their knees 

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I was just commenting on the rain this morning, then this afternoon (shamefully looking for dirt on Brittany Spears) I came across this Toronto Star Article on the unusual drearyness of the last 2 months. That said, we do have a brief blip of sunniness occuring in Guelph at this moment... and the butterfly pic - taken last July on another dreary day.

Rain falling each day
Unrelenting deluge makes
Grass green, souls weary

Cya,

Jenn 

Dutchman's Breeches

At least these aren't as blurry as the violets in the post below. I really need to get out with my camera - I'm doing some serious digging to find stuff I haven't already posted. As for the violets I posted them direct as a edit post in blogger and picked them off from a thumbnail where they hardly looked blurry at all... anywho... I must run run run to the far ends of the earth...

Jenntih 

Keep your eye on the ball

Here is me loosing at pool... or should I refraise that as Gabe sharking it up at the 20/20 club.

I once played with 3 members of his clan all at once, and found myself sadly, sadly outclassed.

JP 

Can't beat a good view or bad spelling

Well, I've been working on transferring the rest of m y photographs from my old computer to this one - just for those times when I've run out of recent pictures and have to go digging through my stock. I may have even posted this one before - but its a place that I've am looking forward to visiting so yeah for a nice view - hopefully I'll end up with a full card of nice pictures to post here. If it would ever stop raining here I might get some from close by... but alas.. it keeps a raining.

As for the bad spelling, I have to admit that I often check my site stats to see where my readers are coming from... most of the time it is a direct hit, and I can't tell anything, sometimes its from a search engine - which is usually fun to try and figure out what search words end up at my site and in a few rare cases I can guess if so and so who is linked to my blog has come to visit me from theirs. Today, I followed the link to a search engine source, only to find that someone had ended up on my blog because neither of use could spell "priminister" correctly... my apologies for my spelling, but how embarassing is that. Hopefully, they found what they wanted. All I had was a picture of statue of a prime minister, seagull on head, and seagull excrement from head to mid chest. Probably not exactly what they were hoping to find.

Cheers,

Jennith

More Cool People

Saint Andrew's, New Brunswick with the smell of fish and no porcupine in the tree today.

My biggest regret on this day is that the Salmon Centre was closed, because I was kind of looking forward to checking it out. 

Up to Parr?

So here are a few unrelated thoughts and I settle in for a long sleepless night.

The photo is of two of the coolest bosses I've ever had. One, Mike, is in Africa working on some development/engineering project - I believe with Engineers without borders, but I could be wrong. Cool world view - thanks for many fascinating conversations on the way up to the "gouche".

Pete, note the crazy bush beard, is still in New Brunswick, but has about a million of the best and craziest stories about Vermont, New York, Seattle and some jobs that made my employment record look mundane. The two of them, after a previous stint doing research with yet another grad. student in Thunder Bay and my boyfriend's own tendencies, compspired to turn me into a CBC listener.

Here they are, after a rather long and intense week of work, stretching poor tormented backs at the end of the day. As for the Parr... well those are the little 1-2 year old salmon we were researching. Coolest fish ever!!

In a completely unrelated thread - note the link above - The court's thankfully tossed out a lawsuit blaming the Provincial Government for the death of a family member owing to West Nile Virus. Not that I don't feel sympathy for the family, however, the government isn't not responsible for preventing every unforseeable disaster from coming to our lives. Besides, in the case of West Nile - utter prevention would likely have required drastic measures with unpalatable environmental and human health effects. Perhaps the blame should fall on travellers who brought the disease here (lots of people are relatively irresponsible about preventing transmission of disease home from abroad. )....... The Sueing bug (with its permenent source in the States) is ruining our society - taking individual responsibility away along with the freedom to take risks. The cost - we can't do anything, costs of operating spiral out of control and often the benifits don't warrent the cost incurred merely to prevent being sued when someone decides to take a risk - often going against posted rules - hurts themselves and sues anyone they can get their hands on. Growl!! Okay.. to rephrase that - decisions are frequently made based on litigation prevention rather than for practical reasons... not a good way to think or plan or spend money. Nor is it healthy for individuals who believe that everyone but themselves are to blame when their decisions cause them personal injury.

Safety and due diligence are important, but individuals should be held responsible for their choices and their consequences.

Jenn

Amazing Random Blogs

Well, I meandered into a fantastically written blog - which although the title suggests that its a femminist blog - aside from an interesting blog on 2-tiered breast feeding opportunities, it seems to cover the gammut of ethical topics in an informed, balanced and interesting way. This was the quality of stuff I had hoped to have on my blog before I had to give in to the reality that I simply don't have time to write and research essays of any caliber - so I've mostly settled for short, babbling postings on the rather mundane doings of my life and a few interesting links and as many quasi-decent photos I can find. I haven't had 2 many complaints - so I won't dwell on it.

I specifically would like to draw your attention to the following article, on the costs/benifits and problems posed by the cost/creation of novel and expensive new pharmacueticals. However, I recommend that you continue to the site and peruse the offerings of this team of talented and interesting writers. Well, the breast feeding one and the fat tax ones were intersting... I guess if you look a bit closer you'll see that there is a fairly feminist theme... but I haven't read them all.

Anywho... back to work again...

Jenn 

Nostalgia

Hah... here is me missing Fredericton - This place has the best and most generous nachos I've ever run across and it's definately a place with "PUB Character".

Cheers!!!

Jennith 

Toronto from above

Here is a quick snap I took from a tall building in Toronot a few weeks ago. Like most of the last month it was over cast and threatening to rain, snow or both all day.

Today on the other hand was mostly lovely and I was stuck on the other side of this screen all day - typing and excelling.

Highlights on leaf piles
Fluttering from near bear limbs -
Soft golden carpet

Frosted grass blades green
Iced with winter's chill, crisp breath
Steam rises from poo 

Still Amazed at my Luck

In a world that fills newspapers with stories of the horrible things people do to each other, it still often amazes me how lucky I am to have a guy like Gabe in my life. (Thank you to Gabe's mom!!) Aside from being cool and having a zillion wild and crazy skills and a healthy outlook on life (if anyone can save me from working myself to death it might be him), he's the nicest person I've ever met.

:D --- Anywho, where I was really going with this is that the best thing about Gabe is that he gives great hugs - and I don't know how I survived without anyone to hug for so long. It must have been lonely having no one to hug when I was feeling sad, frustrated or overwhelmed. So, find someone to hug or give a hug to a friend who needs one. I think more hugs would make the world a better place.

Okay.. that is my procrastination for a bit... well, after the next post which will include a haiku.

Jennith 

Credit River Outfall

Well I assume it is a stormwater outfall... I'll have to ask what the shape of it means in Watershed Systems Design.

Here is today's Haiku...

Ground-hardening frost
Sets chill tone under slate sky
Hue-leeched view forwarns

I wish I had a view from my window to post - the window is a bit hazy itself, but the view is heavy and grim indeed inspite of the red siding building in view.

Hopefully there will be a bit more sunlight - I guess those Thunder Bay folks are lucky (being in the Sunshine Capital of Ontario) and the folks in Burke's Falls are even grimmer than us - living in the rain capital of Ontario.

The municipal election is coming up, and I still haven't found much on any of the candidates. Its a shame - in terms of your day to day life, municipal politicians probably have more effect on you than federal in some ways and yet they aren't exciting to elect. I'm sure there is a web page somewhere I can find all this information on... wait let me link it. Here is an official list of candidates and voting instructions. And here are some write ups on local candidates.

Alright... back to writing reports for me.

Jennith 

Fractal Website with neat pics

Stumbled accross this site... and it had cool looking pictures... so here is the link.
 

Coverpage evolution continues

I installed ArcSoft Photo Studio - which has been quite useful so far, and took a bit of a break to spiff up a cover page graphic for my project. We got an extension - which is good for my hours of sleep tonight, but it just means that the weekend is a complete write off and its a good thing I'm not driving on Monday because I'm going to be a zombie.

I'm enrolled in a workshop Monday morning and have a presentation in another course in the afternoon (YIKES) - so I might have to look at withdrawing from the workshop - depending on how things go.

And hey... it is actually nice out.

Cheers,

Jennith