A Canoe For The Making by Maryke Mcewen

I saw a show on TV about a dozen years ago, on APTN, and would LOVE to see it again.

A motorized canoe brings three (native) men to an island in the boreal forest. Two of them get out and start to unload supplies. The canoe takes off leaving the two men stranded. The younger of the two is freaking out, but the older man calmly announces that they’ll just build a canoe.

They build a birchbark canoe and while doing so the dynamic between the two men is explained. The older man is the younger man’s grandfather in law. The younger man is very much used to modern life, where as the older man is still into the old ways. It becomes clear that the younger man is also an alcoholic. The time they spend building the canoe allows him to dry out. There is a bottle of booze sticking out of the top of a stump out in the water. Initially he can’t wait to get out there and get at it, but when the boat is done, he has the chance to paddle out there and get it. But opts not to take it.

Deciding that they will head back in the morning, they fall asleep. He wakes to see the older man in a drunken rage, bottle in hand, kicking at the boat. He runs over asking him what he’s doing, that he’s destroying the boat. The old man it quickly becomes apparent is not drunk at all. He turns to him and says:
“I can fix this boat or make a new one. I can’t replace my granddaughter. If you ever hurt her again, I’ll kill you. I could easily have killed you, and buried you here, and people would believe me when I told them it was an accident. And then I would come back and build a boat over your corpse year after year.”

The half hour show was called A Canoe For The Making, and it was a 1995 CBC production by Maryke Mcewen, and directed by George Bloomfield. The grandfather was played by venerable Canadian actor Gordon Tootoosis, the younger man was played by Kennetch Charlette .

And wouldn’t you know it, it is impossible to find anywhere.

Maps on Spark

CBC Radio 1’s Spark is always a great show. While it falls under the “technology” heading it doesn’t so much deal with what the latest games that are coming out, or how many gigahertz of terabytes a new gizmo has. It deals more specifically with the interplay of society and  technology and how culture is shaped by that.  This weeks episode, episode 199, dealt with maps. If, like me, you find maps interesting, and especially if you dig DIY, this is a good one.

I have been puttering away at a map of my area, but far too many other things vying for my time and effort.

My idea is to take info from a few different sources and compile it into one So much more detail is revealed on aerial photos. Some maps show hiking trails, while others show pubic transit info. Some show topographic or geological info. Some show more human details, building and the like. Take info from a bunch of sources and put it into one. I dream of one map that I can not only create in layers, but view in layers. Having it so that the viewer can customize it to what they want. Someone might have no need to view detail that a contractor might want to view - where hydro poles and storm drains are, but another person might want to not clutter up a map with where public transit routes are, and another could care less about the geology underlying an area or about the topography or lats and longs.

The city I live in has lots of maps available, showing a host of info, some nicely detailed. Problem is that they are all locked PDFs. I know how to work around that and hack into them, but it creates its own set of problems. There are no more layers, typed is cracked up. A lot of time to get that back to a version I think is acceptable. In its own way it solves some problems and saves some time, but it also forces a lot of effort into fixing it. Is it worth it to devote time to it? - one of those 50-50 things.  That’s why the efforts of the city frustrate me. Let me and everyone else at them. I realize they’ve spent an untold amount of money to have a map drawn, but I don’t want to access their maps for nefarious ends. I just want to add that other bicycle route I know of, or add where that grove of oaks is, or add that path that an aerial photo didn’t reveal, or add info that an aerial photo did reveal. If I can add that to a public database, or even just use for my self - print out one or two copies, that's it. Once I get the boat in the water, I might want to add info that other boaters might dig. The spot where you can lift over into another area, precise location via GPS of where there is a fallen tree that is creating an obstruction, those kinds of things. If I go to the trouble to annotate maps, or make improvements to them, why go to the trouble just for me. Share that info.

http://www.cbc.ca/spark/episodes/2012/12/07/199-scouts-apps-maps/

And some of the other 198 episodes are worth checking out as well. Great show.

Massey Lectures

The Massey Lectures are an annual series of week-long of lectures on a political, cultural or philosophical topic given here in Canada by a noted scholar. They were created in 1961 to honour Vincent Massey, Governor General of Canada. Their purpose is to “enable distinguished authorities to communicate the results of original study on important subjects of contemporary interest.”

Some of the Massey Lecturers have included Northrop Frye, John Kenneth Galbraith, Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Franklin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Willy Brandt, Wade Davis, Douglas Coupland, Michael Ignatieff, and many other notable individuals. A book of the lecture is also published each year by House of Anansi Press.

They’re nearly always thoughtful and mind expanding essays (well Douglas Coupland’s didn’t do much for me personally). The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has put them online, so if you are intrigued, you can check them out.

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/masseys.html 
(scroll down for a list of all the lectures with a description of the topic and a photo of the book.)

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/massey-lectures/
(and if you want to listen to any of the lectures.)

CBC finally coming to Hamilton

I love the CBC, but there is no radio or TV service here in Hamilton. I listen to the CBC signal out of Toronto. While the programming is always top notch, and what I start my day with, Metro Morning, in particular, it is weird that I know more about what goes on in Toronto, than I do the very city I live in. I could listen to a radio station here in town, but to say that it is all dross is an understatement. Classic rock, light easy rock, new country, mindless pop music, sports/talk radio - ugghhhh....no thanks. CBC is an eclectic blend of things - the talk is intelligent and the music is eclectic. 

It appears the Ceebs is finally coming to my part of Ontario. It may only be a digital station - not sure what that all entails - but I’ll take what I can get.

Yippee!

Doubly nice, given that they are 75 years old today, this very day.

http://cbc-radiocanada.ca/newsreleases/20111101.shtml

According to some more info in the Spectator, it will largely just be a website. Hhhmmmhhh. Not as thrilling as a version of Metro Morning or Here & Now for the Hammer, but still...it’s a start in the right direction.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/618356--cbc-to-start-online-service-in-hamilton