Airborne in Alaska

Airborne in Alaska

By Harrison Lowman

Susanna Bronca is quite content with her view from the ground.    Gazing out across the bow of the cruise ship “Spirit”, the forty-four year old King City native soaks in the Alaskan tapestry being woven before her.  A snow-tipped mountain cuts through a royal blue sky, its torso scarred by glaciers that gutted it a thousand years ago.  Towering firs and spruces stand at attention, their bases lined with swaying golden grass.

            Susanna waits alongside her husband Vanni, and her two boys Tristan and Aidan on the deck.  The scraggily teenagers fish strands of their adolescent locks out of their eyes.  Uncle George, aunt Sandra and baby Georgie accompany them.  The extended family’s bags are packed for a day trip.

            The tourist vessel surges forward, displacing the reflective water below. A fine salty mist permeates the morning air, saturating empty lawn chairs and forgotten towels.  Men dressed in white uniforms walk well-rehearsed steps.  The ship lets out a thunderous bellow from its horn.  The Broncas have arrived at Skagway.

            Families hustle down gangplanks and disperse throughout the northern port.  The colourful boats that line the docks are guarded by a group of bald eagles. 

When Susanna lays eyes on her family’s method of transportation her heart skips a beat.  The white floatplane couldn’t be more than thirty feet long.  Its crimson racing stripe reminds her of the speeds they will soon be reaching.  Her stomach churns.

            Heavy footsteps echo off of wooden planks.  The family looks up to see their pilot, a forty-something local donning worn out blue jeans traipsing towards them.  Her wavy yellow mane cascades down her blue windbreaker.  Glasses sit perched on her large pointed nose.  They are wound tightly around her neck with a protective band.  She ushers the hesitant Broncas aboard the aircraft.  Tristan feels like he is piling into the minivan for hockey practice.

            Once inside the family is cramped and claustrophobic.  The cabin is a sea of legs and arms.  They are given headsets to communicate with one another over the moaning propeller. 

            As the plane’s pontoons leave the water it soon becomes clear something is awry.  Wind whistles through the cockpit, smacking the faces of the family inside.  The pilot is not fazed.  She flicks her wrist, swiftly closing the door firmly beside her.

“Is that normal?” asks a baffled Vanni.  “Oh yeah, no problem, happens all the time.”  Susanna’s brow furrows.

The floatplane dips through canyons and fjords.  They can feel every movement the aircraft makes.  Leaning back in the co-pilot’s chair, uncle George begins to taunt his sister in-law.

            “Can this thing do any barrel rolls, any loop de loops?” he asks the pilot.

            George’s requests fall on deaf ears.  The pilot has spotted a pod of orcas under the plane’s left wing.  Their rubbery black hides skim the surface of the depths below. 

Excited by the rare find she throws the aircraft into a corkscrew dive.  Susanna’s loose head is jolted violently forward.  Delicacies of the north find themselves on the mother’s new mukluks.

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The National War Memorial

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The National War Memorial

By Harrison Lowman

            Raindrops dance across a granite cenotaph.  Endless liquid finds its way between cobblestones, racing through indentations and crevices.  The wind groans.

            The storm feeds surrounding foliage.  Blossoms peer upward, delighted by their skyward visitors.  Sprouts stand shoulder to shoulder in cracks, pushing aside their brothers in a fight for sustenance. Plants are given life in a place that honours death.

            Leaves sag as branches tremor under immense weight.  The trunks that support them buckle.  They shrug every so often, allowing excess to fall to the earth below.

            The square is all but empty.  Plaques remain unread; their raised text sits in bronze.  Rental bikes are perched on their racks.  The maple leaf flag above is jovial.  The storm has injected life into its stagnant cloth.  Cars drone by, like a hive of bees humming in formation.  They form temporary paths on lubricated pavement.  A lone jogger pushes by.  His muscles tense and veins jut as he tries to outmaneuver the water that falls around him.

            Passersby dart in and out of buildings.  They walk with vigor, wincing as raindrops make contact with their skin.  They don colourful domes to shield themselves from the sky’s secretions.  Bureaucrats hide themselves under today’s news. Their eyes peek over the brims of jackets.  Although they make this pilgrimage each day, they cannot help but crane their necks towards the statue before them.

            Bronze sentinels stand steadfast before their preoccupied audience.  The strokes of their sculptor are still visible on their jackets and boots.  The soldiers march into an invisible expanse.  Their eyes are transfixed.  Their limbs are battered and bruised, wound with dressings of gauze and cloth.  Caught in midstep, they trudge through muck and sludge towards an objective never to be achieved.  They haul mechanical burdens of soldered metal; artillery that will never be fired, grenades that will never be thrown.  These men and women wear their livelihood on their backs- rifles, canteens, picks, gasmasks.  Temporary waterfalls trickle down the frozen figures.  Some remain untouched by rain.  Protected by an arch, they stand out amongst their blackened counterparts. 

            High above, two angels are intertwined.  One holds a wreath, the other a torch.  Their flowing garments cascade over rocks below.  A crow makes home atop the holy beings and heckles at passersby. 

            Determined tourists begin to make their way up saturated stone steps.  An elderly man in a cream coloured trench coat raises his Nikon towards his face; his tote bag balanced precariously in the crook of his arm.  He is etched with wrinkles.  The soaked lenses of his glasses magnify his pupils as his shutter snaps.  A young woman in a black suit approaches a man in uniform.  His shirt is teal, garnished with shiny golden epaulettes.  A military crest is stitched neatly on the corner of his emerald beret.  Their conversation pauses as they look down upon the tomb below them.

            The sound of bells cuts through the pitter-patter of rain.  Two o’clock.  The chimes mark an end to the afternoon showers.

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"The Burbs" (Grade 12 Speech)

            Over the past century science has presented us with evidence claiming that mankind bears a close relationship with apes, resulting in the theory of evolution.  But few have noticed resemblances we as humans share with yet another species…sheep.  These few have also not overlooked the invention of man and the phenomenon which allowed our relationship with our wooly brethren to be established: the herd-like exodus of North Americans from cities to a new destination, a destination that we know today as the suburbs.

            The concept of the suburbs has changed over time.  Originally used to describe poor class residential areas found on the city outskirts in the 19^th century, today the suburbs accommodate and attract the upper-middle class as well.  Why would these people crave cookie-cutter housing you may ask?  Why does the average North American need 646 square feet of living space to the Chinese’s 108[i]?  People simply want more bang for their buck: more house, more land, more safety, more people like them.

            In 30 years, the average North American home grew from 1500 sq. ft to 2266 sq.ft., an increase of over 700 sq ft[ii].  It is now necessary to call your kids to dinner using intercom systems, turning homes into supermarkets.  Certain rooms in the house are not used and become showrooms for passersby, while house cleaners require weeks to finish the job.

            As a result of the expanse of land and the lay-out of the suburbs it is essential to own at least one vehicle.  Suburb communities are too low-density for efficient public transit, give little access to pedestrians, and thus force you to drive everywhere.  The average North American driver spends 440 hours on the road per year[iii], that’s 440 hours they could have spent aimlessly spraying water on their driveways with a hose.  This reality is prevalent in the suburbs, where traffic injuries and deaths are three times more likely[iv].  But at least you’re far away from those dangerous hobos in the city, where they have these things called “subways”.  They’re like tin trains which transport multiple people underground, from one place to another, all for the price of two dollars. You should see them, they’re groundbreaking. 

            The suburbs are not necessarily safer than the city.  Let us not forget the Brampton terrorists, and the one gun they had access to which happened to be owned by the RCMP informant of the group, as well as their plan to bypass our country’s most advanced security force and behead our beloved Prime Minister.

            Suburbia presents modern-day society with a cultural boundary as well.  Two identifiable groups are prevalent in neighborhoods: new and old Canadian citizens.  Regarding the first group, The Greater Toronto Area alone houses several of the biggest suburban municipalities in North America: Mississauga and Brampton together providing homes for over 1.1 million people[v].  Massive residential areas with fancy names like “English Springs” and “Yorkshire Bluffs” present homes for some of the 300, 000 new immigrants Canada receives each year[vi].  The majority of these immigrants choose to settle in suburban neighborhoods with others from the same cultural background.  These new “suburban” ethnic enclaves do not make up Canada’s cultural mosaic, they take away from it.  Easily accessible destinations like Toronto’s Chinatown and Little Italy, where urbanites of all backgrounds dine and shop are being replaced with immigrant “safe havens” in the suburbs. 

            Secondly comes the other group of suburbanites, the long-time established residents, who are becoming more and more socially inept; rarely learning their neighbours’ names.  Many wake up in their bubble worlds, roll out of their beds, into their Escalades, and then into their cubicles, without as much as a wave to a passerby.  Mark Kingwell, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto states that, when looking for a home, people “come together seeking each other, but are now fleeing each other into isolation”[vii].  In other words, people have the desire to live amongst other people, but once they are presented with these gigantic homes and monoculture environments, they find themselves staying inside…a lot.

            I once found myself walking down a deserted street in Erin Mills and noticed a man drag himself up to his window, peer through the blinds at me, almost cower at the sunlight which struck his face and then recede back into darkness.  The look he gave me seemed to say “Why are you outside walking?”; it was as if there had been a zombie infestation and he thought I should be in a shack somewhere with the windows boarded up.

            Suburbs are not part of a progressive community.  They do not promote the advancement of the species, but rather leave no room for residential progress and push us closer towards American ideals.  Families of four are given houses that are much too big for them, accompanied by gas-guzzling cars which they will take to and from work each day during their long rides to the downtown.  They buy their food from the nearest strip of box plazas, and they retrieve their mail each morning from their cubby holes, found in the massive box halfway down the street.  They hire people to walk their dogs, take care of their kids, mow their enormous lawns, and clean their massive pools.  Oh, and think of the money they’re saving.

            The future will not stand for suburbs.  An Earth that is struggling for natural resources and undergoing an economic recession will not see mass housing that resembles a lunch lady putting congealed meatloaf on your plate, with one swift motion of her ladle, as a way of solving the problem.  Over time, suburban home owners will no longer find themselves turning on the lights in what they thought was their bedroom, only to discover that they are not in their house at all, but two blocks down the street in a house that looks exactly like there’s.  Change will come, don’t you worry.  

---

[i] Radiant City.  Dir. Jim Brown, Gary Burns. Perf. Hong Cheng, Kyle Grant, and Amanda Guenther. 2006. DVD. Burn Films Ltd, 2007.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] www.statscan.ca

[vi] Saunders, Doug.  “Europe comes home to the shock of a demographic bombshell.” The Globe and Mail 6 Sept. 2008: Unknown.

[vii] Radiant City.  Dir. Jim Brown, Gary Burns. Perf. Hong Cheng, Kyle Grant, and Amanda Guenther. 2006.  DVD. Burn Films Ltd, 2007.

Trillium Scholarship Fund

Last week the Progressive Conservatives announced their post-secondary education platform, stating that they would slash the province’s  “Trillium Scholarship Fund” in its infancy. 

            Introduced last year, the fund was established to provide 75 highly regarded foreign PhD students with funding for their education in Ontario, according to the Brock Press.  Currently, the program provides these individuals with $40,000 a year for four years.  While the Ontario government was to invest $20 million, $10 million was to come from the universities. 

            According to the Brock Press, the PCs would like to divert this $30 million to middle class families, making it easier for them to access OSAP loans.

            This week’s Economist included a special report entitled “The Great Mismatch”, written by Matthew Bishop.  Bishop stresses that, “In the world of work unemployment is high, yet skilled and talented people are in short supply.”  The Conservative policy emphasizes this sentiment.  In a world where houses go up on the market for one dollar a pop, there is no need for small groups of weathered academics flipping through the tattered pages of dusty hieroglyphics. 

According to the scholarship program, this country has a “new knowledge based economy.”  I contend with the importance that is placed on knowledge for growth.  

This scholarship fund is not an incentive to those who will benefit Canada’s economy, but rather one that sends a come hither motion to those who will simply continue self-obsessed research on Canadian soil.

           

            Although this aspect of the Conservative platform may simply be a microcosm of something that must be accessible to a much larger segment of the population to be taken seriously, it is a starting point.

            Canada should instead look to pull from its own population if it wants to cure its economic woes.  Specifically, members of this highlighted underprivileged “middle class” require more opportunities; those just out of reach of achieving financial assistance.  Rather than extending our lens to specialists beyond our borders, we could just as easily be looking at ways to foster the specific labour force we need close to home.  This country is desperate for skilled workers. 

In 2007, The Conference Board of Canada issued a report entitled, “Ontario’s Looming Labour Shortage Challenges.”  The report highlighted that in 2025, the province, “…could face a shortfall of 364,000 workers.”  It appears as if we are slowly falling off of a precipice.

While holding the bargaining ship of funding, the Ontario government could easily encourage our middle class to pursue careers in trades.  This would allow the province to fill the gaping holes of unemployment within these sectors.

Finally, one does not solve brain drain simply by forcing another nation to endure its wounds.  We cannot merely pluck intellectuals from around the globe, but instead must look inwardly for reasons as to why our citizens have flown the coop.

Some say it is illegal to pick a trillium in this province.  Ontario’s Trillium Scholarship Fund may in fact be an exception to the rule.

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Liberals promise to extend teachers college

This past month, Ontario Liberals announced their plan to expand teachers college from one to two years if reelected.  In doing so, the party has turned a blind eye to a year’s worth of practical learning environments; determined that instruction trumps experience.  However, passion for teaching is not bound between the pages of a textbook.

As it stands, Ontarians interested in pursuing a career in teaching must either complete a four-year teaching degree or add a year of teacher’s college to an undergraduate degree in a separate field.  These students are expected to spend approximately 40 days learning in a classroom setting.

While the Liberal plan may sound appealing in theory and on paper, the needs of the individuals training to become teachers are lost behind a veil of numbers and promises.  Carleton students know full well, simply by flipping through the pages of their agenda, the astronomical costs of tuition fees in this province.  The Canadian Federation of Students places the average undergraduate tuition fees of Ontario students at $6,307.

Graduating students in Ontario thus already find themselves thrust into a job market, bogged down by debt.  Teachers, in particular, have difficulty staying afloat.  This past February, a study from the Ontario College of Teachers revealed that, “two-thirds of education graduates from Ontario’s class of 2009 found themselves unemployed or underemployed in the following year.”  Their unemployment rate now sits at 24 per cent. In response to this staggering overflow John Milloy, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities was forced to put a cap on funding for those entering teacher’s college.  There appears to be too many teachers to begin with.

With the addition of another year of classroom instruction, the minister insists that teachers require further training in bullying and discipline. However, what use are lessons when teachers may not even be given the chance to teach them to anyone?

Currently, teachers in training find what should be open doors slammed in their faces.  Clutching these door handles are the very individuals who they are meant to be replacing.  Apparently, baby boomers are not showing much sign of slowing down.  Retirement rates are down in Ontario’s teaching industry.  All the while, the province’s student-aged children population continues to shrink.

If teacher’s college is to be reconfigured there should be a newfound focus on practical application rather than lessons taught with chalk in hand.  We should look into paid internships, apprenticeships and the like, rather than spending more time telling others what they should expect to encounter before they are finally thrust into the lion’s den.  This will also allow teaching students to evaluate if the real job is truly right for them.

When teachers eventually do find employment, I am convinced that it is not the certificates mounted on the wall behind them that will make them fine educators, but rather their own personal drive. 

I myself attended a private high school, a place where it was not essential that an educator have a teaching degree.  I soon learned how little this mattered.  Teachers distanced themselves from one another not by their education, but rather through what I perceived to be instinct and experience.

The teachers of tomorrow need not be put through an additional twelve months of lessons and sensitivity training and rather should be cast into classrooms they themselves can manage, as soon as possible.

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Who Would You Line Up For?

This Friday, as I watched hundreds of Canadians cue to make contact with the late NDP leader Jack Layton's casket, a question came to mind,

"What Canadian would I actually physically line up to see if they passed away?"

The answer, "I'm not quite sure." 

This realization almost takes on a sombre tone.  The subject itself is quite bleak.  Few people want to think about death, yet we all know we cannot avoid the inevitable.  Titans such as Mr. Layton and the struggling Steve Jobs can be felled by cancer just as easily as Joe Blow down the street.  What separates the two is lives lived. 

I often wonder how many people etching chalk drawings or gracing the entrances to city hall actually met Mr. Layton, or even were in the same vicinity as the man during his sixty one years.  It takes a lot to command some one simply with your ideas, shouted in the halls of Parliament kilometers away, in opposition no less.

Respect for the dead breaks through biases and grudges.  Layton's follies are washed away with the summer monsoons that struck the city as he took his final breathes.  The press will portray him as a pure white light for weeks to come.  This is all textbook.

What becomes unique are these visitations.  In an age of "pokes" and "likes", I gain increasingly more respect for those who make appearances; those who physically take a spot in line, approach the wooden capsule, draped with our nation's flag (How do you get one of those anyways?) and lay down a mourning hand.  It must be strange to meet someone for the first time when they cease to exist.  



                                                                  -  30 -

Privacy is Golden

With all this talk of Wikileaks, people are starting to realize that privacy is becoming a hidden jem in the 21st century.  Each cable release makes it more of a commodity.  I'm all one for the release of information, but at what cost?  Although many may look upwards towards government and announce dictatorial states, there is undoubtedly content that stays hidden for a reason; for our own protection.  Wikileaks claims it edits it content in an attempt to preserve its most hazardous of information, but can we trust the anonymous, those who we have not elected?

Then we have scenarios such as the release that happened earlier this week.  CBC discovered that CSIS branded what we were told was a highly commended counter terrorist operative as a terrorist threat to the country: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/05/18/mubin-shaikh-wikileaks.html

There seems to be a very thin line between what can be "eye-openers" and threats to security.


The following is an article I wrote regarding a Parliamentary committee meeting I attended earlier this year regarding Google's collection of data in the country to create its "Google Street View" program.  Camera vans scoured the nation, gathering panoramic shots of their surroundings.  However, it appears they also gathered private data including internet passwords, usernames...etc.  Upon further investigation it was discovered that errors could be traced back to the program tweaking of a single engineer; that's right, investigators tracked the error back to one man!!! (almost too Hollywood to be true).  Google promised to destroy what it found.

 Needless to say, the next Privacy Commissioner will have a lot on his or her plate.  Hope they're hungry.........

Google Scrutinized for Canadian Wireless Data Collection

By Harrison Lowman

            Google found itself under the gun on Thursday, as a parliamentary committee discussed the inadvertent collection of Canadians’ personal information through its Street View project.  Officials from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said the captured data could include emails, usernames, passwords and medical conditions.

            “This was supposed to be just a snap shot in time,” said commission official Patricia Kosseim.  The American corporation’s attempt to create a panoramic view of the world, which began in 2007, hit a snag when it was discovered they were taking more than just pictures.

            In April 2010, Google added antennae to its street level imaging vehicles in order to pick up WiFi signals.  A month later, they realized they were also picking up peoples’ personal information.  Operations ended immediately; for many Canadians it was already too late.

            “They had been collecting 18 gigabytes worth of data a day,” said Information Technology Research Analyst Andrew Patrick.  Readers can equate this to approximately 5,000 songs on your iPod.

            In June, the commission launched three complaints against the corporation in the mail.  This was followed by a visit to Google headquarters in California.  What officials discovered was a single engineer who thought he had written a harmless code.

            “How could one engineer decide it was a superficial privacy concern?” asked Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett.

            Kosseim attributed this to a lack of privacy training during Street View’s conception and development.  She said that they should have followed what she calls a “precautionary principle.”  “They have to be certain that no harm is being done before the product is released,” she said.

            Nationally, the commission could take its complaints to federal court.  Internationally, there continues to be no communication between countries expressing privacy concerns towards Google.

Bloc Québécois MP Caroline Freeman said she thinks this is a scattered approach.  “Can’t we have standardization?” she said.

Kosseim said Bill C-28, a wireless spam act, would allow commissions from around the world to join forces.  “Commissioners need to be able to compare notes with international colleagues,” she said.

Back at Google, they have recently appointed Alma Whitten as their new privacy director in order to address emerging issues.  The commission admitted that they know little about the new director.

Bennett said she is unimpressed with the appointment.  “The privacy director will become a scapegoat,” she said.

Liberal MP Shawn Murphy considered the alternatives.  “What would have happened if Google had not been caught?” he said.

“They would have complacently continued,” said Kosseim. 

Although the Privacy Commissioner is away on business in Europe, Kosseim stressed her involvement in the investigation.  “The commissioner is extremely concerned.”  She said she awaits confirmation from Google that the segregated data has been destroyed.

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