Category: Life

What a week!

I attended a fundraiser BBQ on Monday, a town hall meeting with my MPP on Thursday, a drag show on Friday, the Dyke march on Saturday, the Pride parade and an after-party on Sunday. I also accidentally attended two events intended for lesbians (that the ticket said “House of Venus” should have been my first clue.) It was a great week.

I was also interviewed with Jay at Pride for one of the two French newspapers, Le Droit. That ended up making yesterday’s issue, in an article discussing the parade and tolerance. On that note, the lone detractor at this year’s parade was sign guy. I call him sign guy because he’s actually a staple of this city; usually protesting outside the women’s clinic or in the market.

Speaking of tolerance: Even the Ottawa Sun, the local conservative tabloid paper is starting to come around. Granted, they still put a piece out a few weeks ago trying to link the attendance of the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board at the parade with notions of sexual perversion. But their coverage of Pride itself in yesterday’s issue was very positive in nature, and today they defended its existence to an incensed reader. Its editorialists didn’t touch the subject.

On the subject of schools, the Ottawa Catholic School Board (OCSB) was a no-show, as expected. However, in a brave move, representatives from the student association at St Paul’s University were there. They had a poster saying “we welcome all students”, followed by another that said “shh – our administration doesn’t know we’re here!”

I was able to talk to my MPP, Yasir Naqvi, at the town hall meeting on Thursday. I brought up the issue of Gay-Straight Alliances. As it turns out, his assistant did misspeak. Come September, GSAs will still be prohibited. I do not fault the minister for this current situation. He’s very much an ally, but bound by the will of his party. To that extent, I do fault his party for not enforcing their own equity policy.

Back at Pride, things were vibrant and colourful.

For the parade, we had chosen to sit down on Wellington Street, near the start. As it turns out, that’s the best place to be if you want free stuff. We got candy, a kazoo, two frisbees, buttons, lanyards, and a year’s supply of condoms.

If you’re in town and didn’t go this year, I highly recommend you try to make it for the next one. You’ll have a blast.

Jack Layton passed away this morning at age 61. He had beat cancer, but it had come back, and unfortunately this time, he did not prevail.

Jack was a truly charismatic individual, who never failed to stand up for those without a voice. It was in large part thanks to him that marriage equality didn’t take longer than it did in this nation. Whether it was aboriginal rights, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, union rights, or rights for the disabled – Jack Layton and his party were right there to support them.

Those who disagreed with his policies still found him to be a man of conviction, loyal to his beliefs.

After nearly a decade at the reigns of the NDP, he would take his party from a few seats to the official opposition. No one would have thought it even possible. But his tenure was cut short – just a few months after his meteoric rise, he would announce that he was temporarily stepping down to fight his cancer once more. That was this past July.

What follows is Mr. Layton’s final letter to Canadians:

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election. 2 To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done. My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Jack Layton

Photo credit for image of the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill belongs to Shawn Dearn.

Tic toc tic toc…

I broke the strap off of my faithful watch a few months ago. At first, I didn’t go out to replace it out of laziness. Now, it’s because I believe the quality of my life has gone up since I’ve been without it. I can still get the time from my cell phone if I need to, but only when precisely that: it’s when I need to.

I went out to the market last Sunday, ordered a nice cup of coffee and sandwich, and read while sitting on a park bench. When I felt satisfied, I got up and left. It was wonderful and relaxing.

The old me would have looked at my watch every five minutes at that park bench. Knowing what time it was at that instant would instigate distracting thoughts. Oh I should probably get up. Oh I should do this for another 20 minutes. Oh the afternoon is passing quick. 

I would be needlessly be preoccupied by such matters. So, off it goes. Now, I only check the time when I actually have a reason to. And that is liberating.

Update: You can read all the ways I’m wrong about the text below over at this discussion here. This was a fun thought experiment, and I’ve left it as-is. Please take the following as being %100 wrong.

I don’t believe that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is an accurate understanding of the mechanics of gravity. Of course the formulas for predicting behaviours are accurate, and have been proven time after time. But there’s a difference between establishing formulas for behaviour prediction, and understanding what’s going on in the back. You can come up with the right mathematical relationships for the wrong reasons. That’s what I believe Einstein’s theory to be: the right math for the wrong reasons.

Einstein believed that time was flexible, affected by gravity.

I believe that time doesn’t exist, other than a human abstraction to quantify the fourth dimension (dimensions themselves being an abstraction.)  A clock doesn’t actually measure time itself – time isn’t a particle or thing you can detect. What your common watch is at it’s heart an oscillating crystal which we’ve associated a given number of oscillations to mean a unit we’ve given to quantify a fourth dimension, a second. This behaviour is constant relative to other observed phenomena over this fourth dimension, so we can use it as a means to establish differences between points in time. Like other dimensions, time would have no start or end, and it only has meaning when presented relative to something else. For this last point, think about it this way: if I say it is currently 12:45pm, we know that that’s relative to the start of the day, the day being relative to the month, the month to the year, and the year to a historical event. Remove these established points which we use to derive meaning from time, and time itself becomes immeasurable. Even when we say something happened 4.7 billion years ago, we need another point with which to compare it with (present time in this case.) Same with cartesian coordinates – without a center point to anchor coordinates (commonly (0,0)), coordinates lose meaning.

Time as an abstraction is thus static, no more flexible than the meaning of the number “one.” When you see the clocks of GPS satellites skew due to the effects of gravity, Einstein would argue that you’re witnessing the variability of time itself – relative to us, the satellite’s clocks would run slower. Relative to the satellite, we on Earth would be faster. Within the frame of reference of each, time would be the same. This would be due to the effects of gravity bending spacetime, he would argue, the effects which would be stronger for us Earthlings than the bodies further away from this mass that is our planet (assuming no other bodies existed.) This is because the force of gravity is proportional to the distance between both bodies.

I would argue that time itself is the same for both (being static), but that the effects in the current static four dimensions due to the difference in gravity alone accounts for the alterations we see in the output of these clocks.

I also believe photons to have a mass, and that the bending of light paths we see (gravitational lens) are not due to the warping of spacetime, but simply due to the gravitational pull on the photons by bodies in space. With the Einsteinian spacetime explanation, the light always travelled in a straight path relative to its frame of reference, but the space through which it travelled was curved due to gravity. With my explanation, light travelled was travelling in a path curved due to the pull of gravity. It would be “aware” of the curve in it’s path, if you will.

Current accepted theory would dictate that photons are massless. I disagree. With my theory, we can predict the mass of a photon. You can estimate the mass of the star that bends light, you know the positioning of the source relative to this planet, you know the speed at which light was travelling, and you know how much its path was bent to reach you. You can thus determine what the mass of the individual photons must have been for it to have been altered to that extent.

Of course, all of this would be much easier if we knew what gravity was. We still don’t. We can predict with great certainty its forces. We can measure it’s effects on bodies with incredible precision. But we have yet to understand what gravity itself is.