BRT v2.0

So instead of a 70 million dollar half-leg for Gerbasi, they decide to go with a 187 million whole nine yards version.

I'm still against "rapid" Transit corridors for the most part. I still feel that getting the existing service up to snuff --AC on buses, new buses, more buses, bendy buses, etc -- would go a longer way to improve service than any one single BRT corridor would accomplish.

I suppose it's still speculative at this point, so I'll wait and see how the official announcement pans out.

PS...whats with the fruitcakes doing this "Sherlock Holmes" thing by riding the bus to city hall dressed as Sherlock or something. Looking for clues that the "rapid" Transit thing hasn't started yet? Maybe some of us, the Mayor included, just aren't convinced. A dozen people going to city hall in a Sherlock Holmes stunt, and a recreation of "The Last Spike" at confusion corner doesn't convey any kind of message to politicians.

The annual "smoke pot on the Leg grounds" event has more impact. A demonstration with 15 people in a city of 700 000 isn't going to go very far.

Human Rights Suggestions

So about a week ago archaeologists uncovered an 800 year old footprint at the Museum site.

And the Friends of the Forks are...where...?

Okay, enough about the "Friends" wisecracks (although can you imagine if the UFG apartment went through, and they found an 800 year old footprint).

But since this idea was first conceived, I've wondered what will actually make the grade and get an exhibit in this museum.

Will they play it safe? Put in the big ones, the most obvious. Will it be political? Will it include human rights issues with native Canadians, or natives of other current governments around the world? Will it bring to light human rights issues in China? Will the board decide to just name current human rights issues, or will they have the balls to outright name countries and corporations?

How about environment-related human rights?

Perhaps an (oftentimes) overlooked aspect of human rights in some areas, mostly because, here, people don't even know about them. The BBC often does a good job of uncovering these stories. And thus, I have a few suggestions:

Isolated tribe vs modern society.

Picture an isolated, primitive tribe of people living in a virtually untouched area of the world, in the jungle, harvesting the fruits of the land, participating in their own customs and religion.

And then the white man comes. He wants the ground from the mountain. For what? Well it's valuable. Bauxite. To make foil for candy bar wrappers.

This is modern society, consumerism in practice. Is the displacement of an isolated tribe of jungle people who want nothing to do with "us," just so that we can continue to enjoy low prices for chocolate bars and beer, moral?

I thought assimilation and plantation was a thing of the past. We didn't learn anything from the Irish, from the North Americans?

At least worthy of discussion in a human rights setting?



Chevron pumps thousands, perhaps millions, of gallons of waste crude into the Amazon rainforest.

They covered it with dirt and pretended it didn't exist. The locals began to get sick. They couldn't drink the water. They started getting cancer, when before cancer was unheard of. And then the dirt covered dump piles started leaking and bubbling slick black crude to the surface.

Chevron/Texaco denied that the water was polluted. They deny that oil contamination can cause cancer. They've deprived over 30 000 natives of basic living rights. Instead of clean environment, they have a toxic waste site with undrinkable water.

This is an atrocious story, and one that has been ongoing since before the year 2000 I believe. Will the Human Rights Museum run an exhibit like this? An ongoing dispute, only being dragged on by the multi-million-dollar lawyers that Chevron can afford.

Would the threat of an angry letter from perhaps the biggest corporation in the world stop the possibility of an exhibit like this one?

Museums are supposed to be impartial, neutral, non political, and display facts.

Until I see it with my own eyes, I will be skeptical and critical of which kinds of stories the Museum will end up telling. I can only think it will end up being a Museum of cop-outs, or half-assed conservativeness.

I suppose I'll have to wait for my world class museum to be completed to find out.

"The Big Wild"

Back from Dauphin for a short work-related thing. Actually I only spent a day in Dauphin, but the days leading up to it prompted so much overtime I barely had enough time to read about taserings, bodies in Lac du Bonnet, Ryan "Favre" Dinwiddie, Transit "labour disruption," and not to mention all the international news the FreeP doesn't bother to report on.

Dauphin is a pretty kickass place. As a biologist/farmer I didn't spend too much time in the city, but the rural municipality sure has a lot to offer. I can't wait to get up there again next year and be re-amazed at all the rivers, natural areas and all the wildlife that call it home.

But enough about Dauphin. One last thing, that train station is pretty sweet. The Via Rail station here in Winnipeg has it's own bout of sweetness, but the one in Dauphin is more of a traditional style railstation, and it's all fixed up nice and painted and everything.

I don't have much to blog about recently. Well, actually I do, 3 stories I'm wanting ot write about but not necessarily relating to Winnipeg. More of the environment world-scale habitat-loss shake-your-head kinds of things.

I do have one thing to note. I saw an airport ad (gosh we all love those, don't we) that said "I Want My Airport To Be World Class." Gee golly we're reeeeeeeeally shaping up to be that World Class city, aren't we.

The reason to this post/post title has got nothing to do with Dauphin or airport signs.

I stopped into MEC today to pick up a couple of non-bisphenol-A waterbottles just in case it actually is a health concern and I don't accidentally end up consuming trace amounts of estrogen.

There's a kiosk type thing with a big title that says "The Big Wild" and you can buy a pair of green shoelaces for two bucks, that goes towards something or other. I found it a bit curious and thought, well, it's probably a half decent cause, and so I bought a pair of green shoelaces.

I'd like to plug for The Big Wild and encourage you all to go down to MEC and buy a pair of shoelaces and check the site out.

They're about protecting Canada's forests and natural areas, and actually protecting them, not quasi-protection like many provincial parks across the country where logging and such is still permitted. You can sign up if you'd like and put a marker on the map of a place you feel has natural beauty or you think should be protected.

This kind of thing reminded me of Riding Mountain, which I drove through on the way home from Dauphin. I'm thinking of maybe going there and camping for a weekend in August.

But, I don't have any camping gear (!). I have a Coleman stove, of course. Perhaps somebody could help me out, any advice or suggestions on tents would be great. I'm wanting to get a tent for just two people, I'm looking at the Hummingbird H2 or H3 that MEC carries. I suppose my biggest worries are durability and waterproofness.

Anyways thats it's for now. Don't forget to drop by MEC and check out The Big Wild.

I'm Officially Convinced

I am convinced that the writers and editors of the Winnipeg Free Press are social conservatives. For proof, just take a glance at the front page of today's print edition and tell me what you notice.

This cheerleading bullshit was a non issue, non story, made into one four days ago, and they WONT LET IT GO!

They insist that these pictures were "extremely candid," which, if whoever is pushing this story would type in "sexy girl" into Google, would find that our ex-cheerleader posted pictures of "candidness" that get beaten by people's pictures on FACEBOOK! You know, pictures you share with your FRIENDS! This girl's pictures aren't going to make Playboy magazine, fuck they can't even make MAXIM!

And now, what do they want? For us to turn back the clock and have fully clothed women wearing sweaters with a giant "W" on the front chanting "give me aaaaa....B!"

Four days ago, this was on the front page of the LOCAL section.

It's apparently escalated to front page news?

My non-professional advice to the cheerleading coach? Don't RESIGN! Tell the reporters of this oftentimes atrocious newspaper that there wasn't a story to tell. Tell them to piss off and go find real news to report. Like bigshots from other cities telling us our stadium plan for SPD sucks. Or the ridiculous amount of toxic waste sites in the riding of Churchill.

In other REAL news....

Again, buried in the Detour section is something that maybe should be front page news. Or at least, front section worthy. Perhaps my favourite reporter Mr Kives is onto something, is Manitoba Conservation making the lives of loggers easier and the lives of canoers more difficult?

But maybe big fat trees and pristine water don't sell newspapers. Sex sells, right?

How better to sell your newspaper than to make a non-issue out of a bunch of hot girls and put their pictures in your newspaper for as long as you can stretch it out for.

And they say the SUN is a Tabloid...

Maybe New York is Good...

So maybe, just maybe, it's worth some 25 grand for this New Yorker to tell us what we already know. After all, SOMEbody needs to tell us. Apparently we can't tell ourselves what we already know.

After looking up Mr Michael Berne I stumbled upon a power point presentation that you can view by following that link.

I still think it's ludicrous to outsource brainpower. This is not a very difficult problem, just maybe we should avoid our urban planners for their opinions. Shit, did I say urban planners? No planning going on in this city, the only planning I'm aware of is how to turn inner city neighborhoods into oases for suburbanites. That, and we could keep that 25 grand in our own province, just give it to Policy Frog, he did Mr Berne's work for him already anyways.

So what's so special about this power point presentation.

Well, you don't have to wait too long for this to get interesting. On the (not counting the introductory slide) very first slide of this presentation, is a bullet point that may be worth our 25 000 dollars for Mr Berne to come to Winnipeg and tell our politicians and development corporations that:

"Revitalization planning can be very elitist."

"The people driving the process are often NOT representative of the overall shopping population."

Holy South Point Douglas, Batman!

Oh wait, I thought we weren't hiring him for South Point. Just for downtown. Looks like his words of wisdom are applicable elsewhere in our city. Isn't that what Asper, and Doer and Katz really need to hear, after all? That South Point, the stadium, the extension of Waterfront, that it's elitist, and doesn't represent the people who actually live there?

But it turns out it's Downtown BIZ that hired this guy, and I'm pretty sure they aren't involved with the Stadium. Downtown BIZ wants the professional advice for the actual downtown.

Mr Berne is probably laughing all the way to the bank....he doesn't even need to do any work, everything is in his power point presentation. And everything in it can be applied to downtown.

He addresses the "creative" and "artist" kind of aspects that would highlight an area like the Exchange, the slides with "creative/hipster niche," citing things like cheap living space and things like small live music venues and vinyl record stores.

Most interestingly, on the second-last slide, states:

"Retail revitalization almost always starts with food, drink and entertainment (e.g. restaurants, bars, live music venues)"


Like I said, he doesn't even need to do any work. He just described the Exchange, Osborne, and Corydon, in one sentence. That's the foundation. Restaurants, bars, and music venues.

What gets built on the foundation? Population. This is what Osborne and Corydon have covered, people live there. Lots of people. Red River College is going to help cover the Exchange with a revitalization project of their own undertaking.

As for stores? Trendy and edgy as I said on a previous post, but which businesses specifically? They don't EXIST yet! Leave the rent/lease low, let the blossoming imaginations of freshly graduated entrepreneurs take care of that. Sky is the limit, literally. Maybe another futon/furniture place? Independant clothing stores, like Mix Tape? A Windows/Doors place maybe that will work out good, who knows?

But are we going to learn anything?

Or every time we have a squabble about what should be done, when we have a tug-of-war of ideas between different development corporations headed by different people but ultimately serve the same purpose, will we turn to somebody from New York?

Is this guy going to rehash his power point presentation, are we going to be wow-ed by what we already know and hail him as a downtown hero? Just more incentive/excuse to look to New York every time we have an issue?

Maybe if Winnipeggers stopped looking to the sky as a world-class-wannabe city, with big giant megaprojects everywhere with enough parking space to justify our sprawling suburban desires, we could make up lost ground all by ourselves.

News Du Jour

It's amazing what passes for news in this town.

"Racy" pictures of a "supposed" former cheerleader....who the fuck cares?

This damages the Bombers' reputation? How? This is a FORMER cheerleader, who may have posted pictures on (warning may be borderline pornographic) site that people looking for porn go to, that was somehow picked up by people browsing it that work for websites nobody takes seriously and is then reported in the FreeP as some kind of damage of credibility and or reputation.

How does this damage their credibility, and how does it pass for news, those are my questions.

This person takes pictures on her own time, posts them...wherever, its not like they got sent to all kinds of sports stations and newspapers to attempt to tarnish the CFL cheerleading image purposely.

And how is this any much different than a cheerleading swimsuit calendar? The outcry is because these pictures are "taboo", they damage cheerleaders reputations, but all kinds of cheerleading squads everywhere sell calendars of cheerleaders posed "provocatively" in swimsuits or other "scantily clad" garb.

If they're worried about their reputation, and be taken as a serious sport, they should be cracking down on other clubs' cheerleading calendars, and perhaps they should dance less provocatively to less provocative songs.

But...who am I kidding. That's what cheerleading is and thats what people (read: men) expect.

Quick Thoughts

Two quick thoughts for today.

First....What the hell is up with outsourcing brainpower to high end firms in New York? Like we can't solve our own problems, we can't figure out which kind of businesses we should attract to the areas we want to revitalize?

We couldn't write our own provincial slogan, we can't find our own businesses to occupy vacant space downtown....why not outsource our city slogan quest as well? Does anybody really believe this guy is going to "figure out" what kind of businesses we need to attract to the Exchange District? Nobody in Winnipeg can stand up and say "this is a trendyish neighborhood, we should attract trendy and edgy businesses?"

..................

Second...I've taken an interest in the Detour section every Saturday, if only because the FreeP likes to slide in a column by Bartley Kives in the hopes that nobody will notice it. Unfortunately, this tactic of hiding his columns in a section nobody reads is a big waste because unlike the rest of the material in the Detour, Bart's Detour-columns are very good.

For the Love Of...

Fucking cyclists.

So I'm driving north on Henderson towards East St Paul today, and theres a cyclist, cycling, IN THE CURB LANE.

You know, for all the support I throw behind cyclists and the countless times I've defended their right to cycle on roadways, it's fruitcakes like this moron who make me think about my position.

It's bad enough, you may take your life in your hands cycling anywhere in the city, but for fucks sakes, when there is a paved shoulder put there specifically so you can use it to cycle in a safe manner and you disregard it, you're ASKING to be running over.

Forget about that point, who WANTS to cycle....IN TRAFFIC? When you have the option NOT to?!

Yikes you cyclists, some of you make the anti-cyclist hatred justified.

Ignorance is Bliss

Occasionally I read a statement by some CEO or lawyer or something that makes me just shake my head and laugh in disbelief. Today a letter in the FreeP did just that.

In defence of plastic bags

Re: Teen creates method to break down plastic bags, July 2.

While the Canadian Plastics Industry Association would like to congratulate Daniel Burd on his win at the Canada-Wide Science Fair, we are concerned about the myths that this article perpetuates. The article extols degradation as the answer to concerns about plastic shopping bags. This is wrong and will only add to the problem by creating more greenhouse gases and kill our ability to recycle traditional plastic shopping bags. It is much better to reuse and recycle a resource than waste it by allowing it to degrade in landfill.

The article perpetuates the myth that because plastic shopping bags are not biodegradable, they are bad for the environment. The fact that conventional plastic shopping bags are inert in landfill is a good thing because they don't give off methane and leachates when they are landfilled.

Plastic shopping bags are highly recyclable and can be remade into new bags or many different products like siding, decking and laminate sub-flooring. Recycling is a $2-billion market in North America. Let's work to improve plastic bag reuse and recycling, not destroy it.

Cathy Cirko

Vice-President

Canadian Plastics Industry Association

Toronto

While we're at it, tobacco companies deny that smoking causes cancer, pharmaceuticals deny their drugs are ineffective or have unmentioned side effects, and industries of all sorts deny they are responsible for contamination.

It does not surprise me that, the VP of an industry group who's total demise is on the foreseeable horizon, comes out swinging.

I would like to take the time to deconstruct this letter.

The article extols degradation as the answer to concerns about plastic shopping bags. This is wrong and will only add to the problem by creating more greenhouse gases...

Credit where credit is due, degradation is not the answer to a problem....making something like this that decomposes only proves our unwillingness to find another solution. Plastic bags don't break down? Make one that does!

But to say that it adds to greenhouse gases? I noticed HMV started using degradeable bags. Many places have adopted their own version of some kind of corn-based bag. Plastic bags are now responsible for global warming. It's not the plastic industry. Not the petrol industry that makes plastic happen. But yes, bags that degrade.

So I guess the point here is not to let anything degrade...it adds to greenhouse gases. No composting, no starchy shopping bags. Use plastic bags...do your part to curb greenhouse gases!

....and kill our ability to recycle traditional plastic shopping bags.

Recycle plastic bags? Huh? I can't put them out in my blue bin. Can you? I thought you had to go take them back to the store you got them from...that's IF they have a bag recycling program.

It is much better to reuse and recycle a resource than waste it by allowing it to degrade in landfill.

This sentence makes my head spin.

Yes, it is much better to reuse and recycle.

But what happens to most plastic bags? People hoard them. For reuse. And here's this recycling thing again...you cannot toss plastic bags in your blue bin for recycling. Recyling a plastic bag requires an extra step of taking them back to the grocery store...and an extra burden on the store, to offer plastic bag recycling.

So where do they end up? If people hoard them for use for other things, they still ultimately end up....in a landfill.

There's only one possible explanation, with billions of plastic bags floating around in our country right this second, of why they cannot be recycled conventionally. In your weekly recycling box. It must not be cost effective to do it.

The article perpetuates the myth that because plastic shopping bags are not biodegradable, they are bad for the environment.

Another head spinner. Actually, this one makes my heart sink and my stomach churn.

Ignorance IS bliss after all. I didn't even search for anything specific. Or some artsy activist photos. That's what comes up on a search for "plastic bag waste."

It might not be so bad if they weren't so mobile. But they just happen to be.

It's not that they release methane. Or whatever. It's that they end up being DESTRUCTIVE!

Come on....we've all seen photos like those. Photos of a dying animal. We've all seen the plastic bag that gets stuck in the elm tree all winter. We've all seen the hedges around shopping malls and landfills that, in the spring, are full of plastic bags that people don't bother to dispose of properly, hoard up, OR RECYCLE.

Plastic shopping bags are highly recyclable and can be remade into new bags or many different products like siding, decking and laminate sub-flooring.

Aye aye aye...who recycles plastic bags? Because you can't toss them in your blue bin, I'd venture a guess that most people hoard them. I have a cat. They are quite handy for that. People have dogs, cats, other pets. What if you don't have a pet?

Cathy the VP is writing to "defend" herself against the 17 year old kid who made the news. The article is interesting, but look what the kid has to say:

"Each time I open the closet where we keep our cleaning supplies and things like that, the plastic bags are on the top shelf and they always fall down like an avalanche onto my head.

"One day I just got so tired of it and I began to research it to find out what other people are doing with these plastic bags, and through my research I found out that we're not doing too much."

Not doing too much. Ain't that the truth.

The difference in perspective between a CEO, a VP, some PR rep, or a lawyer, and a regular person is astounding. It makes me wonder sometimes, if they believe the garbage that comes out of their mouths. Cathy the VP banks her whole defending statement on the "ability" to recycle plastic bags, which almost nobody does, and even if you could put them in your blue bin, I highly doubt recycling would increase all that much.

North America is behind in all this. No plastic bags in China. I wonder why...the millions of barrels of oil they would expend making them every year? Or did the Chinese government do a Google search on plastic bags and find the images that I just did and decide they don't want their country to end up like that? Plastic bag taxation in Ireland has significantly curbed their use.

But in North America it's a city-by-city venture. Met with backlash every time....like we can't survive with cloth bags or something. In North America, it's about convenience, and taking away something that we've always had, even though there is a viable and non-life-changing alternative is total and utter sacrilige.

I guess I'll say kudos to stores like Supervalue, who have made it a fashion trend of sorts to carry around a reusable cloth bag.

I am against plastic bags. I'm not sure if I support an outright ban, but I would totally be in favour of something like phasing them out over some period of time.

The plastic bag hoopla that goes on in the FreeP and with the councilors sometimes is a soap opera in itself. Between plastic bags and "atrocious" welcome signs, it's a wonder how they have the time to debate things like stadium proposals and bridge reconstruction.

This is something I would like to see the federal government do something on, to phase plastic bags out by 5 or 10 years or something. It's not about greenhouse gases or any bullshit like that. It's just about common sense.

Slogans R Us

So, as we all know, the Mayor decided that "One Great City" wasn't good enough, and now we have to re-brand ourselves once again.

Except that "One Great City" was fine, even if we weren't that great. And we ARE a "city of oppurtunity," just look at how many blogs there are about the subject. And "centre of it all" is fine, even if the only thing we're the centre of is Canada.

Today in the FreeP they have another article about this subject and enlist experts to share their knowledge. The following quote made me chuckle:

Adopting a broad general statement won't work, he said, because it won't feel like it represents any aspect of Winnipeg. "It won't be inclusive and it won't corral anything in. The largest risk is it will be too general and lack specific relevance to the City of Winnipeg," he said. (Derrick Coupland)

Isn't that what "One Great City" is? You know, the one we already have?

I think that, the problem with a specific statement that includes reference to something local as he suggests, is that it leads us to go to people like the other expert in this article:

Jeff Swystun, chief communications officer at DDB Worldwide, a New York-based advertising and marketing firm....

"The slogan of some cities or provinces is (designed) to remind the existing population what a great place they're in, while other cities point externally to attract new people and new energy."

A New York advertising firm? Isn't that where we got Spirited Energy from....and isn't that supposed to, in a way, remind us that we have Spirited Energy? Which was totally and unanimously rejected by Manitobans.

So now that the Mayor thinks the signs look "atrocious" (I think they have that kind of...cheesy charm thing going on) and we should think up a new slogan, I say we go back to what I said about Spirited Energy: let the KIDS do it. Unlike marketing firms, kids don't empty your wallet. And they come up with better suggestions.

You shortlist the best, and instead of making a decision right away, you stick the shortlist on the ballot at the next civic election. And hey, the voting numbers might even go up for something like that. Who knows.

!

I had one of those lightbulb-over-your-head moments.

Realizing that the definition of "downtown revitalization" has the characteristics of a parking lot in a big-box mega-retail hub, a la Polo Park. Or Kildonan Crossing. Or St Vital. Or Kenaston.

"Revitalized" downtown via megaproject during the day:



The stores (downtown) open, and customers (downtown visitors) flock to spend their hard earned cash, driving in from suburbia. Rona (coffee shop, newsstand) opens at 7, other stores open at 8 or 9 (Portage Place). Customers stay during the day, may catch lunch nearby during their shopping (visiting) trek at a Kelseys (Portage Place food court). Later customers in the evening may stick around and go to SilverCity (MTS Centre), and as they exit the venue, they find stores are closed. With nothing to do in a virtual wasteland of level concrete with carefully painted parking stalls (parkade, surface parking lot.) They are greeted with this image:



The image of revitalization.

Revitalization during normal business hours only.

You Don't Say...

Katz suggested the inner-city revitalization project could cost the public purse considerably more than developer David Asper’s stated $40 million.

And nobody at the FreeP figured this one out?

They had to wait for a quote from the Mayor to put it in their newspaper? Crickey, what IS in it for them?