a unique perspective on this crazy world

Archive for November, 2016

since Canada is trending ;)

I’ve been travelling all over the world as a Canadian for a long time.  It’s not a bad passport to have.  People generally have a favourable view of Canadians but they generally don’t know much about Canada, probably assuming it’s just America with fewer guns.

I’m OK with people not knowing much about us.  One of our virtues is that we are understated and polite.  It was refreshing to see the patriotism first hand at the Winter Olympics in 2010 but I hoped it wouldn’t change us too much.  What I saw when I saw the photos was how integrated and multi-cultural we were.  We are no longer a country full of white people and most people are cool with that.

I grew up just as Canada was starting to embrace multiculturalism so that has been part of my cultural identity my whole life.  It’s partly what makes me a great traveller.  I was taught to be curious and respectful of other cultures and to seek out interesting festivals and customs.

I am better able to represent Canadians than the average passport holder because I have seen most of the country and lived in five of the ten provinces, in both big cities and small towns.  I have had friends or family living in the missing provinces and territories so I have a strong sense of the country as a whole entity, not just my own backyard.

It’s my great familiarity with my own country that makes me think of it as “home” rather than “travel”.  I was just in Toronto recently and one of my friends there asked why Toronto never made the blog.  I told her it was on the list but it always got punted by a more exotic locale.

But since Trump has sparked interest in Canada and next year will be the 150th anniversary of our confederation, I thought it was likely a good time to write about Canada 🙂

I know a LOT about Canada so will certainly post more once I get some of the other travels caught up but, for now, we will talk about Toronto since I was a genuine tourist there twice this year.

My first serious boyfriend grew up in Toronto.  I met him in Calgary.  By that point in my life, I had managed to get to London, Ontario to go to a very fancy business school.  Toronto is the “big smoke” in Canada.  They used to share the power with Montreal until they passed Bill 101, making French the official language, and sending the English speaking elite to Toronto.

As a child, I spent a lot of time talking to my father who was surprisingly cosmopolitan in matters of business, history and politics so he seeded the dream that one day I would work on Bay Street (the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street).  Just the idea of GETTING to Toronto seemed an impossible dream in those days.

And the truth was that I wasn’t really prepared for it.  But I was lucky.  Michael was an extraordinary guy and introduced me to the city of his birth in a way that inspired and empowered me.  Toronto was where I came of age.  Where people started to think I had grown up in the city – not knowing how to clean a seed drill.  The transformation wasn’t instant but Mike allowed me to feel confident enough in the big city that I could eventually feel confident anywhere.

I’ve lived in Toronto twice and have had friends move there at various stages in their careers so it has been a constant presence in my adult life.  My most recent visit really demonstrated how tied I am to the city – celebrating the 21st birthday of the daughter of one of the friends I made at the fancy business school.  Why it’s so hard to approach it as a tourist.  Toronto to me has some of the same allure Montreal has for Leonard Cohen.

cn-towerToronto doesn’t have a ton of sights and must do’s for tourists.  That doesn’t mean it has none, just that it isn’t New York, Paris or London.  Its most famous attraction is the CN Tower.  It was completed in 1976 and was the world’s tallest tower at the time.  The record held until 2010 when Asia got rich.  It is definitely worth a trip.  My most memorable trip up the tower was on a rainy day where the rain changed to snow by the time we reached the top of the tower.  It appears there are a few other options now and I may need to relive the experience on my next visit to Toronto.  It also looks like the revolving restaurant at the top of the tower is a lot more sophisticated.  And for the daredevil, you can go on an EdgeWalk around the tower.

mind blowing chihuly

mind blowing chihuly

Another place tourists should check out is the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).  Given that there were a lot of dinosaurs ACTUALLY roaming around in Canada, that part of the museum is especially impressive.  The ROM also hosts a series of intriguing temporary exhibitions.  Until Jan 8, 2017, they are hosting an exhibition of Dale Chihuly’s phenomenal glass work.  It is spectacular!the-very-popular-persian-room

The other place I would send tourists to in Toronto is Casa Loma.  It has a long and turbulent history, which is as interesting as the estate itself.  Canada doesn’t have many robber barons and their spoils but Casa Loma defies that stereotype.  Henry Pellatt was a financier at the dawn of the twentieth century and bought up 25 lots of land on a hill from developers in 1903 and then engaged 300 workers to build a dream estate in Gothic style.  History wasn’t kind to Casa Loma.  First, World War I and then the Great Depression…  In 1933, the city seized Casa Loma for back taxes, which is why you can visit it as a tourist.

There are other formal tourist attractions as well.  If it is a first visit, the best is to buy a City Pass.

MY Toronto, though, isn’t the stuff on a City Pass.  There is a lot more to the city than is obvious as you step out of Union Station.

A topic for another post 😉

 

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travel stories

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YOU ARE what you buy – and do…

I am not planning to become a political commentator but, thanks to my grandmother’s son, I have been incredibly political my whole life.  When I was young, people thought I would be Prime Minister and I kind of thought they might be right 😉  But once I got to the big city and discovered the ugly compromises it generally requires, I resigned as the Secretary of the Young Progressive Conservatives at the University of Manitoba.

It didn’t mean that I stopped caring or totally abandoned politics.  When I was so hoping for the Hillary win, I was thinking of my dad, wishing he was still alive so I could call him to discuss – and remembering when we watched Jimmy Carter get elected.  One of my favourite memories.  Jimmy was a far more interesting outsider than Donald and still one of my favourite Presidents.  The truth is, people, Presidents are just part of the machinery and – if you don’t have a corrupt, incompetent system – they often set the tone rather than develop and pass all the legislation so I judge them more on what they do after they get that famous – and Jimmy has been a superstar.

It’s odd talking about Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump in the same sentence.  I do think there is a chance though that he is a different guy than we have seen.  I am going to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Hey, my grandmother inspired me and I have adopted a lot of her values in my adult life and I have a lot of admiration for her but that lady scared the shit out of me through most of my childhood 😉  She was one of the toughest people I have ever met.  She had some totally kookoo ideas. Despite the fact that she was fond of her Native Canadian son-in-law, she said things that were shockingly racist and made me uncomfortable.

She never had a passport.  She took long bus trips when she was so elderly most people couldn’t have made it up the steps.  She was a fighter.  She loved her family.  She loved westerns and young people.  She was a force of nature and I am so happy she was part of my inspirational life.

But she was not perfect – and she had the kind of world view some of the people who voted for Donald Trump had.  Politically, she was a hot mess.  I think it was the Conservatives she hated her whole life.  I know it had something to do about the price of eggs during that administration.  She was a farmer.  My father would argue with her but it never mattered.

I have been reading and listening copiously the past few days.  My takeaway is my very special privileged life.  I was raised in a place that isn’t dissimilar to the disaffected people who made Donald Trump President.  I was crazy ambitious so I turned myself into one of the elite who is sometimes resented by members of my own family.

I’ve toggled between the worlds – along with lots of other permutations and combinations, having now been to 58 countries – and it has made me far more sensitive and understanding of the entire world order.

Trump is an opportunist who seized on stuff I never would because my moral compass is WAY higher but there is value in us all getting out of our normal perspective and trying to understand – and more importantly respect – the other guy.

Sure, Trump is a bully and a lot of his supporters are bullies.  BUT I am NOT really an elite person.  I am a girl who passes for elite…

And lots of the elite are bullies too.  I managed to finagle my way into a very elite university program only to discover I had no way to bond with all these rich kids who had not been able to arm wrestle at eleven because part of their day was spent carrying ten gallon pails full of chop, which is pig food for all of you non-farm people.

I am trying to find something positive about the Trump presidency but I am listening to Colbert as I type this and it’s tough.

Trump is no ME.  He doesn’t understand at all the people who voted him in.  I hope they will call him out if he doesn’t represent them.  The big challenge is that the world is a complex place.  We are lucky in western democracies to have systems that can generally protect the average person.  We already know that I wanted Hillary… but I think I really liked Bernie better.

The truth is politics is a tough, messy business.  As is life.  It is SO hard to find a solution that will responsibly let national citizens prosper and thrive.

I’ve never known how my father voted.  Only that he really cared about the world.  Not even about democracy.  He seemed to be onboard when I decided at about age thirteen the best political system was likely benevolent dictatorship… but finding the right dictator such a tough call that democracy was the next best and workable option.

As a REAL OUTSIDER, what I would suggest to Americans is that they need to talk TO each other, rather than AT each other.  That is their biggest problem.  The elite can be pompous and insensitive.  The frustrated can be angry and unreasonable.

You may not like it but the world is constantly changing and you just need to accept it and try to find the best way to embrace it.  I have so much sympathy and compassion for the people in the Rust Belt whose jobs have been taken over by a robot or a cheaper worker but you have to realize those workers used to be really poor – as you were a century or so before – so they are grateful for the jobs, which have made THEIR lives better…

The big change that has happened in the last hundred years is that there is a lot more wealth.  The bad part is that we have allowed that wealth to become concentrated in too few hands.  A lot of us are victims of marketing.  If you really want to change the world and bring jobs back to your region, support your local entrepreneurs – even if it costs a little more.  We need to rebuild our sense of community.  We can’t stop globalization and it is not all bad – but we have lost each other’s back…

Enter the Trump machine… It’s up to you.  We can stop him.  He doesn’t have a lot of original ideas…

 

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social commentary

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the beauty at the end of the world

Patagonia is not a land for wimps.  I had been drawn to visit by a travel article that made the trip to Cape Horn sound like an adventure.  The Australis team is very zodiac-experienceprofessional and you feel that you are in safe hands.  It will be an adventure but draped in first world safety standards.  Quite different to being trapped on a runaway elephant sans driver in the Thai jungle…

It was my first time on a zodiac though and I had seen enough of the Strait of Magellan by then to know I did NOT want to be in that water!  First you are suited up in lifejackets.  You then go through detailed instructions, which are repeated every time.  It isn’t particularly difficult but you do need to follow the procedures to avoid tipping the raft.  It’s an adventure for small-a adventure people.  People who likely don’t swim with sharks, climb Mt Everest or paraglide over the Grand Canyon.

We all got on the zodiac without incident but everyone was pretty quiet and there wasn’t even a lot of photos being taken.  No one wanted to tilt us into the Pacific Ocean.  The zodiac driver employed only modest speed and tried not to scare us.  I am always fascinated watching pampered first world travellers morph into greater adventurers.  Even by the return trip to the ship, you could see people were relaxing on the zodiac and the driver gunned it once he knew we could handle it.

That was probably because the harder hike was indeed harder.  By Navy Seal standards, a walk in a particularly pleasant park but we had been expecting something more 60+ friendly.  Everyone made it but our tour leader just quickly led the way without paying too much attention if everyone was right behind her.  There was enough elevation for heavy breathing and. in some places, you had to pull yourself up by grabbing a rope and making your way along its length, frequently through enough mud to destroy your footwear for any other future purpose.

22-stunning-patagonian-landscapeIt was all quite exhilarating and the view from the top made it totally worthwhile. And this is a luxury cruise, so all physical efforts are rewarded with hot chocolate, whiskey or both.

There is a lot of time on the ship to chill out – or be brave and take photos in the frosty air.  I did a lot of the latter.  Luckily, I grew up in one of the coldest places on the planet so freezing my fingers off for a photo seems a fair trade-off.

In the afternoon, we got to put our zodiac skills to use a second time.  This time we just cruised around a couple of islands admiring cormorants and penguins.  It’s always amazing to see wildlife in abundance IN THE WILD in our over processed modern world.  Patagonia has done a good job of maintaining its natural splendor.

cormorants posing for tourists ;)

cormorants posing for tourists 😉

Part of the credit goes to Doug Tompkins, one of those rare local hero types who can actually turn money made from being a good businessman to money spent actually doing something good for the entire world.  He was the guy who created, along with his first wife, The North Face and Esprit.  He first travelled to Patagonia in the 1960s and in 1968 did a famous trip with Yvon Chouinard (founder of Patagonia Inc.) where they put up a new route on Mount Fitzroy.  Growing disillusioned of the environmental impact of the fashion industry, he channelled his Esprit profits into conservation.

yes I know I'm cute ;)

yes I know I’m cute 😉

He moved to Chilean Patagonia.  At first, he explored the wilderness of the region, eventually setting up the Foundation for Deep Ecology, The Conservation Land Trust and Conservacion Patagonia.  He also married Kristine McDivitt Wear who had been the CEO of Patagonia Inc.  North Face meets Patagonia… quite the love story.

Not surprisingly, they both shared the same retirement goals – land conservation, environmental activism and biodiversity.  Tompkins used his retail riches to buy up land in Patagonia to save it from mercantile uses.  This land grab by a foreigner was regarded with suspicion by locals.  He was at various points accused of being a spy, of buying up land to create a Zionist enclave, and of planning to ship Chile’s fresh water to parched lands overseas.

Instead, his goal was to turn the land into national parks working with the national governments of Chile and Argentina.  It appears he has made great progress in convincing everyone that there is benefit for everyone in creating national parks in Patagonia along with wildlife protection, biodiversity and sustainable organic farming practices.  It all sounds a little too good to be true but go to Patagonia and see for yourself.  The end of the world is a stunningly beautiful place full of fresh air and star-studded skies.

Sadly Doug Tompkins died in 2015 while on what he thought was an easy kayaking trip with a bunch of old friends.  No doubt it was probably a manner of death he would have chosen for himself.  Kristine continues on their legacy and the future looks promising.  According to The Guardian, the Chilean government announced the day after Tompkin’s death that Pumalín Park, one of Tompkins’ earliest acquisitions, would become a national park in March 2017 but the website suggests that it is already open.

Writing about Doug and Kristine is a great antidote to thinking about the US election and how most of the rich people spend their money.  I am incredibly hard to impress but Doug Tompkins goes on the hero board.  What a wonderful world it would be if this is what all billionaires did with their riches…

 

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life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary, travel stories

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my grandmother would have voted for hillary…

Of course, this is me putting a ballot in her hand and sometimes she had some kooky opinions so…

I have been trying to stay chill about all the insanity south of the border but the aforementioned grandmother was born in the USA so I have always had a complex relationship with both countries.

When I was growing up in Canada, the USA was notably cooler and I longed to be American and was distressed to hear that my father could likely have emigrated to California when I was a young child.  Instead, I was feeding pigs in sparsely populated parts of Canada growing muscles so I could beat boys at arm wrestling… seriously?

one of the strongest women ever born

one of the strongest women ever born

So, naturally, I learned all the words to the American national anthem, could list all the presidents in order, knew not only all the states but also all their capitals!  My grandmother would quiz me in the backseat while my father muttered that Canada was a better place to live.

In high school I took American History as an elective and used to be able to eruditely explain the three branches of government.  At 17, I managed to secure a highly competitive spot on the UN Pilgrimage for Youth, which also meant a free trip to DC where I even met a young aide to a congressman who later wrote to me about the Iran hostage crisis where Canada did the kind of stuff that Canada does best.

I have always known Americans and been invested in the country in a way that foreign aliens normally are not.

Some of them are batshit-crazy and it is a very complicated place but there is much to admire and I owe some of my success in life to Americans so I know it’s important to remember the facts.

My American grandmother (and her Canadian son – who would hate to have to acknowledge some of his great wisdom was kind of American :)) were likely the biggest influences on my life.  Despite some of her crazy opinions (you have to cut her some slack – she was born in 1906), she had a lot of wisdom and some incredibly progressive views.

I was one of the few girls growing up in the 70s with a father who was practically a feminist.  He turned my mom from a classic housewife of the era to a kick-ass role model who even ran for mayor in her misogynistic small town.  That was my unconventional Swedish metrosexual grandfather and his outspoken wife.

These are people who would have voted for Hillary.  When my niece was a little more aggressive than was really advisable for a five year old, my grandmother just said, “it`s good.  She`s a girl.  She can defend herself“

My grandmother grew up in a world where only the really tough girls who could beat boys at arm wrestling had any chance 🙂  In truth, though, women never win by brawn but instead by brains.  By being tough, tenacious and smarter than the average man 😉

My grandmother showed me how tough and incredible women can be and she always supported and encouraged strong women.  So I know she would have loved Hillary.

As a foreign alien woman, it is all a little disheartening that there is any question she SHOULD be President.  I have been saying it for months and – oddly – many comedians are saying the same thing…

WTF, USA???   Hey, I love comedians… but their job is supposed to be to be funny… not the smartest person  in the room…

I’m not just with her… I wish we would accept the globalization of the world and let all of us cast a vote.  There was actually a global poll where Gore won by a landslide… really!  I am sure Hillary would do even better!!!

Make my grandmother proud… vote for the candidate who IS the most QUALIFIED person EVER to be President of the United States of America.  It`s a no-brainer if you have ever done a civics class.

My grandmother was kind of like a female Clint Eastwood.  Don`t piss her off.  I am sure she has lots of time to haunt people who make bad choices 🙂

 

 

 

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shining examples, social commentary

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