Dirty Bingo

A few weeks back while I was waiting for the computer to warm up and load my PowerPoint slides for the morning's class I asked the students who were there "what is Dirty Bingo?".

I had noticed a poster advertising an event put on by the Student Association called Dirty Bingo and I was naturally curious what it was. It is not the first time that this event has occurred. In fact I think it probably is an regular event. I had just never gotten around to asking someone what it was. I suppose if someone had asked me what I thought it was I might have wondered what word could be used to replace "Bingo". If pushed harder I would have perhaps tried to imagine playing some game outside on large squares.... but  in all honesty I did not have a clue.

The answer I got from my students was simple. "It is like regular bingo except the prices are sex toys". I expressed a bit of surprise, the computer warmed up, my slides appeared and the class started. But their answer has been laying somewhere in the back of my mind - festering a wee bit. I am not too sure why but there is something about the students hosting something called Dirty Bingo that bothers me.

The easy answer is that much of my attitude around sex and all things related to sex was shaped by my upbringing. I am far more a product of my father's Baptist beliefs than anything that happened later including coming of age in the late 60s. Therefore I might be a bit of a prude and therefore naturally offended by the thought of sex toys being given to young adults. But that is not what is bothering me.

Why is it called "Dirty Bingo"? If someone decides to run a bingo game and hand out such toys - that is fine. But I don't understand why such toys are labelled as "dirty".  It would seem to me that if we are as liberated and as well educated as we think we are, then we should not need to titillate the audience by labelling the prizes in such a fashion. It is as if we still need to perceive sex as being dirty or not quite OK.

I don't understand.

Christmas Card

I mailed some Christmas cards yesterday. There were only five of them (sister, brother daughter, son and one close friend out west). I can remember my parents spending their evenings doing their Christmas cards- going through the list making sure that they had not forgotten anyone who had sent them a card, adding notes to the people who they were close to or had not seen for awhile. The cards were away of staying in touch with people - some of whom my parents had not seen in years. And of course I remember getting all of the cards in the mail and how exciting it was when I got a card addressed to me. My parents didn’t have a lot of money but they sold Regal Cards and I suspect that their sales paid for the ones they mailed out. I don’t want to exaggerate but I am sure that they mailed out well over a hundred, perhaps even two hundred Christmas cards every year

This year I mailed five. The stamps were left over from last year and the cards were free. Some charitable organization had sent me 8-9 cards along with a pen, some Christmas seals and some return address labels. There were nice cards with nice envelopes. They expected me to send them some money to support their worthwhile cause. I didn’t ask for the cards and I didn’t send them any money. In fact I never donate money to charities that send me stuff on the hope that I will send them money. I felt a bit guilty about using their cards without donating some money but I would have felt worse if I just thrown the cards away. I will donate money to another charity while thinking about them.

It may be the last year that I send Christmas cards. If Canada Post goes through with their plans to both increase the cost of stamps and to do away with house delivery, it will be too expensive to mail stuff out and everyone that I send a card to will have to walk somewhere to get their mail. I don’t think any of them care enough.

The failure of Canada Post to both make money and to provide a needed service is a classic example of Neo-liberalism. First one deregulates and de-funds a service that has traditionally been seen as a public service; when that service can no longer function and falls apart the government says “see… it wasn’t a very good service anyway and the private sector can do it better”.

It is interesting to note that the Conservatives, when they stop running from shame, will probably say that Canada Post is run as separate entity from the government and that its board is responsible for the necessary business decisions it makes. In the past the government has argued that a national postal service is a necessary service (which is why the government legislated workers back to work in 2011). Today I guess it is not a necessary service. And that saddens me.

Canada is a complicated country for numerous reason but the over riding issue that defines virtual all of its problems is its size. Politicians in the past have recognized that for the country to remain strong it needs to have national institutions that make it easy for Canadians to feel connected to each other. The national railroad, the CBC and Canada Post are three such institutions that have allowed us to stay in touch. There is no more national railroad, the CBC continues to be gutted every budget and now the postal service is on the way out. 

Do you ever get the feeling that someone would prefer if we didn't stay connected?

"right to express their opinions"

I saw Prime Minister Harper on the TV news last night. As reported on Global News, he righteously (in fact one could say almost aggressively) stood up for human rights. In particular he was making the point that Canada “expect(s) Ukrainian authorities to respect and protect the rights of its citizens, including the right to express their opinions freely” (Global News http://globalnews.ca/news/1022823/harper-voices-concern-over-ukraine-unrest/). A few weeks earlier Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird had said the same sort of thing on another world stage. 

It is wonderful that two of our leading politicians will speak out to the world about the importance of people being allowed to stand up to their government when they (the people) feel that the government is not listening or are doing things that they feel are bad for the country. Notwithstanding the fact that one wonders how the Prime Minister would react if the people of Ukraine were demanding closer links to Russia, it is important that world leaders take a stand about human rights. It might be too early in the political process to subtly threaten the government as Mr. Harper did, but then he is known for his ability to see the world in very clear black and white terms even if he risks polarizing the situation.

A few weeks ago I was showing part of a documentary to one of my classes. I Should Have Stayed at Home was produced by CBC’s The Fifth Estate and documents what happened to 4-5 individuals who chose to be part of the G20 protest in Toronto in 2010. The amount of violence and sheer aggression displayed by the police towards citizens who clearly were not anarchists and who had absolutely no desire to pose a threat to anyone or anything shocked some of my students.  They, I think, thought that we had the right to peacefully protest our government’s actions.

The juxtaposition of pictures of Mr. Harper’s speech beside the images of the police attacking people who were just expressing their opinions is striking. It is also frightening. We should all be afraid, angry and offended when our government preaches one thing and does the exact opposite. Even more importantly – we should be frightened when they don’t seem to have the capacity to recognize that is what they are doing. 

I can only hope that one day I will have the same rights as Mr. Harper says the Ukrainians have.

Cell Phones and the Canadian Government

As everyone who knows me is aware, I am not a big fan of cell phones. I am never convinced that anyone is important enough to need to be available 24 hours a day. In fact I think it is probably mentally unhealthy for us be connected all of the time. There is much to be said for down time.

On the other hand I can appreciate that they have their uses. For example when there is an accident, a cell phone ensures that help will get there quickly; when a parent needs to contact their daughter or  son who are out and about - it is reassuring to be able to reach out. But it would seem to me that those events are the exceptions to the rule. I don't need a cell to take pictures, I don't a cell to play Angry Birds and I certainly don't need a cell to send text messages to people.  But what I really don't need is to have my government spend money trying to convince the public that what we have now is bad and that what will be so much better is if there was less regulation and therefore more competition (read present Canadian companies might not be able to compete).

 CBC has reported that our government is paying 9 million dollars for ads such as this one ; to convince us that what we have now is a bad deal in part because we are being charged more than most countries. I always get concerned when the government makes sweeping statements without any documentation. For example according the the Globe and Mail we are paying less than the Americans and more than the British for similar plans. We are apparently somewhere in the middle in terms of costs. If the government is wrong about costs - what other facts are they wrong about?


There might be an argument that more completion lowers the price - I have never heard of such an argument or at least an argument that remained valid a year or two after the big boys came to play, but it is conceivable that such an argument exists.  But I can think of numerous examples where deregulation destroyed competition. The argument that we can get more by paying less is absurd. It is absurd when Rob Ford says it; it is absurd when Jim Flaherty says it. I understand the concept of "economy of scale", but deregulation creates an unequal playing field. And we all know that when there is no completion and no regulation - the costs never remain low.

So if there needs to be cell phones - I can live with that, but please Mr. Harper stop wasting my money convincing me that big business always knows best. 

I have to wonder if giving the 9 million directly to Canadian cell phone users wouldn't be a better use of my money?

The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

For the past few weeks I have resisted the temptation of responding to what is now called the Senate Scandal. I have been reluctant to become part of the collective outrage in part because it is just too easy to pick on people who not only lack the capacity to make morally or ethically driven decisions, but also who lack the political skills to recognize when the hole that they have dug for themselves is getting too deep to get out of. But I have also not engaged in Duffy bashing because something else was bothering me about the whole affair but I could not quite figure out what it was. Then yesterday as I was listening to news program I realized what was bothering me.

A commentator said something to the fact that he was shocked and disappointed in the Prime Minister's response; that the PM had run on a platform of being the most ethical prime minister - and now quite clearly he, or at least his office was making poor ethical decisions.The fact that a commentator was shocked should be a bit of a concern to us all for a variety of reasons but I digress. Why would any one expect our politicians to have higher ethical standards than some regular Canadians? While it is alarming that a few senators declared costs that they were not entitled to, is their behaviour that unusual? How many Canadians every year declare costs that they are not eligible to?

According to the Financial Post - there are hundreds of modest income earners in the Peace River area who have been avoiding paying approximately two million dollars in income tax; Revenue Canada found about 2,700 people in the Barrie and Sudbury area who failed to file their returns accurately. The Globe and Mail reported a single tax preparer filed 129 returns with fraudulent information saving his clients approximately $245,000.00. An organization called Canadians for Tax Fairness (its members include some people who clearly lean towards the left including Ed Broadbent) suggest that 81 billion dollars a year is lost by people not paying all of their taxes because they get paid "under the table". Of course there are also the billions of dollars that are stashed in off shore accounts so that the richest of us don't have to declare that income.

Avoiding or at least reducing the amount of income tax one pays by any means possible is, at the very least, a national sport. It is common around income tax time to hear people brag about how much money they saved on income tax by using a deduction that while it may have been sort of legal - really wasn't. I don't think I have ever heard someone brag that they paid their full tax. Of course the reason why people cheat or "fudge" their tax returns is because, as they argue, they already pay too much in taxes and the government just wastes the money anyways. I suspect that some of the people who use that argument also complain about the bad roads or the waiting time for medical help.

 I profoundly disagree with what some of our senators did in terms of manipulating their expenses so that they would have more money to spend on luxuries. I am just not sure if I have the moral right to judge them. While it would be nice to assume or to believe that our politicians will provide moral leadership - nothing in the past 20 years has given me reason to believe in that particular fantasy. Why is anyone surprised when they don't provide such leadership?  It would seem to me that our country is in serious trouble if we are waiting for our politicians to provide leadership around ethics.

If we expect (and I do) that people who commit fraud against the Canadian taxpayer should at the very least pay the money back (and perhaps a bit more), not only does that include Duffy - but I suspect it also includes thousands of Canadians. If we are going to get morally outraged at politicians who steal - maybe the next time we see or hear of someone who is ripping all of us off, we need to say something. (We are all delighted when when we pay cash and are not charged hst) Either we lead our politicians by example and therefore have the right to expect more from them, or we follow their lead and get exactly what we deserve.

On the Road again 2013 pictures

I thought I would post a few of the pictures that I took on my travels. Before digital cameras were common - I would buy two rolls of film and be rather judicious in terms of which pictures I took. When I got the pictures developed I knew where each one had been taken.

Now that I have a digital camera - I can take 200 pictures - but I seldom remember where I was when they were taken. So here are a few pictures from places that I remember......

The train was stopped along a siding somewhere in norther Ontario to let a freight train go by. The little pond and the trees in the distance is mirrored in similar scenes for hundreds of miles.









Every once in a while the train passes a lake or a small community. It is always a surprise to see people doing normal things after a couple of hours of seeing nothing. It is easy, while on the train, to forget that there is life out there

 The train station in Hornpayne. There is a little grocery store that must do a roaring business every few days. Other than that there is not much to do

It is always exciting when there are patches of open ground. It makes one feel as if one is finally leaving the almost claustrophobic deep woods.

The Canadian landscape is truly remarkable. I think this picture was taken somewhere between Winnipeg and Edmonton

Every time I see a river like this, I wish I had a canoe. I would hop right out of the train or the car and put the canoe in the water - just to see where it and I would end up.

As much as I love the forest and the waterways of central Canada - there is something about that first view of the mountains that stirs my heart . Every year I look forward to that first glimpse of those majestic mountains.






This was taken in Nelson. I had a long wait for the bus that would take me to the Slocam Valley. Nelson is an interesting little town that clearly caters  to the tourist. The main streets are wide and attractive. Part of the reason why the strrets look so nice is that all of the hydro, cable and telephone wires are hidden in the back alley.

 If one goes on Ted Talks - one can hear a short presentation on how this chalk board was first developed in New Orleans. There are now similar boards in a a number of cities including Nelson BC

 A magical day with my grandsons

 Pictures of Raft Cove. I may go back - it was a pretty special place. That sand was great to look at but when it was sunny outside - it was almost unbearable to walk on, it got in ones food and it filled up my shoues.

 There were all kinds of shelters hidden amongst the logs

 This is where I spent my quiet time. You can't see it but the bivy sack is under the tarp.

On the Road again 2013 Addendum

At some point as I lay in bed last night or early this morning I realized that I had not talked about some of my drivers. This summer I did a lot of hitchhiking on both Vancouver and Salt Spring Islands. Some of these rides were only five minutes, some for almost an hour. Without those drivers I would not have been able to travel around as easily as I did.

On Salt Spring, the Vesuvius ferry terminal is probably only a 15 minute drive from Ganges. About half way along there are the four corners, where on one corner is a large sports field, on the other corner a fire hall and on another corner an old but still active wooden movie theater. From here one can either go to the north end of the island or turn left towards the ferry. More often than not I get a ride from a spot just outside of Ganges to the four corners and then another ride directly to the ferry. During those short rides my driver and I seldom get much past talking about the weather. On occasion one of those rides is not only going to the ferry but are going across to Duncan. That means that I get a ride on the other side as well. One of those drivers this year was a transplant from Australia. As we had a 30 minute wait for the ferry we had a great conversation about politics and teaching and sociology. He had been one of the professors on the dissertation committee of one of my professors from Trent University. So we had a lot to talk about. It was a really pleasant afternoon.

Getting a drive from the ferry into Ganges was always a bit tricky. I don't think I have ever gotten a ride from someone who has been on the ferry. By the time I can get myself into a safe spot to stand - they have long disembarked. But I seldom have to wait too long, or at least it is such a lovely place to be that I don't mind waiting.But again the trip is so short that I never really get to know the driver. They have recently done a lot road work around Ganges. As in most cases when towns improve the roads, they have not made hitchhiking any easier by installing sidewalks where the shoulders use to be.

Getting a ride from the Croften side into Duncan is much more problematic. Again, by the time that I get to a safe spot to stand - most of the cars that were on the ferry have long driven by. It is also not quite as pleasant a place to stand. There are some folks who spend their time on the ferry knocking on car windows asking for a ride. I think it works well for them. I have never been comfortable doing that. It quite frankly feels too much like begging.  So I walk up a small hill until the road flattens out and wait until someone is going my way. There are at least two ways of getting from Croften to Duncan. The shortest route that most of the locals use is confusing and if I ever got let out half way I am not too sure if I could find my way home. So I take the long way and sometimes it does take me a long time to get a ride.

I also made a trip into Victoria and got a couple of rides relatively easily. Most memorable was from a young mother with her under 3 year old daughter. They were from Campbell River and were going down to Victoria for a doctor's appointment. That is about a three hour drive. While I was surprised that a mom stopped for me - I think she just wanted a break from her daughter who, by the time I got picked up, was understandably getting a bit cranky. So the daughter and I played some game that involved her throwing a stuff animal on the floor and then crying until I picked it up and gave it to her. Repeat as often as needed or desired by the child in the car seat.

I suspect that there were perhaps another 10-15 drives that I had this summer. I am grateful to all of those people who picked me up, cleaned the car seat so there was room for me and my stuff - all for a 10 minute drive. I wish I could bottle whatever inspired them to stop.  The world needs more of it.  But is the people at the ends of my travels that I need to thank the most. My daughter in Sudbury and my son and his wife in Duncan who throughout the year pick me up or deliver me to the various train stations, or bus, ferry or airplane terminals that I arrive at or depart from. I am quite sure that none of them ever dreamed that they were be chauffeuring their dad as much as they do. And best of all they do it with such grace and humour that not once have I ever felt that I was imposing on them.  I am sure there are times when it feels to them as if I am. So thanks kids. If I don't say thank you loud enough or often enough - THANK YOU!!

Now I am done.

On the Road Again 2013 # 29

And so that is my story of how I went from Sudbury to Vancouver Island, travelled around a bit and then came home. Nothing particularly extraordinary or amazing - just what I have been doing for the past few years. Actually when I think about it, I have been travelling for quite a few years. If perhaps the stories are getting a bit boring to the reader or that eventually that all of the rides start to seem to be the same, that is only because I lack the ability to find the words so that I can share the feeling I get when I am on the road. It is, in part, the sense of absolute freedom combined with the total lack of control over any part of my existence that I find so exhilarating. But that is only part of why I do it.

It may be that hitchhiking is just my way of finding adventure. Perhaps people who get involved in extreme sports or climb mountains or kayak in the Arctic Ocean get the same kind of high as I do when after a few minutes or eight hours standing on the side of the road, a vehicle stops and some kind soul offers me a ride. Maybe it is just a simple as I am spending an extended time in my second childhood. I don`t know what it is - Lord knows I have lots of time to think about it when I am on the road and yet I don`t. Whether my pack is on my back or beside me on the shoulder; whether I am climbing what seems an impossibly high hill to get to a safe spot to stand or rambling along a pretty logging road I don`t think very much at all about why I am doing it. I am just doing it and that seems to be a good enough reason. There are times when it is raining, when a cold wind is blowing, or when I am stuck in a spot where I know (or at least I think I know) that I am not going to get a ride for awhile that I curse my stupidity or my silliness at some decision I have made. But I never regret doing what I am doing.

If I have to define myself - I tell people that I am a dad, a granddad and a hitchhiker. All of the other attributes don't really matter to me; they don't define me. At some point every year I wonder how much longer I will be able to travel this way; for how much longer will my body be able to manage the walking, the pack and the hard ground. But I know that every year sometime around February the urge to pack my bag and start travelling will be all consuming. I know I will have no choice but to start travelling again. It is what I am.


I have however, thought a lot about why it has taken me so long to get this story done. It is now almost mid-November and I have just finished the tale. It feels as if I have taken twice as long as I normally do. There are perhaps a couple of reasons. One is that school continues to consume me. I have a great schedule and I am teaching subjects that I like but the marking and the preparation takes a lot of my time. Secondly I have been occupied with wool a lot this fall. I started going to the Saturday Farmer's market to sell my wares and much to my delight I have been selling stuff. So much so that I have had to work relatively hard to replenish my stock. Because I had to get ready for a craft show this past weekend - I have spent most of my free time especially in the last month playing with wool. But I think the primary reason why I have been so slow in writing is that I have been wearing headphones and my capacity to think about what I want to write has been limited.

I live in an apartment with my landlady below me and a couple of young people above me. I am respectful of how much noise I make and therefore I like to keep my stereo fairly low. However, carding can be noisy and the loom room is quite far away from the speakers. So my choice has been to either have the music or the talking book on really loud - or to wear my wireless headphones. I have chosen the latter option. Because of the headphone,  the words or the music are so totally within my head that it is difficult to think about anything other than the physical task that I am doing. I wonder if that is why the arts of conversation or of political debate are dying out. People have in their ear buds and  the capacity to think is destroyed. I wonder if that is why so many of my drivers absolutely crave conversation. So many people spend all of their free time with the music being directed into their brains to the exclusion of all other stimuli (the best headphones are designed to cancel out all other noise) that they don't need to think or to talk with anyone else.

At any rate I am done for another year. I am glad that I am finished that story. In a few months I will start thinking about the next one. I am thinking about going to the Yukon nest year.........

On the Road Again 2013 # 28

I am now back in my apartment. I am obviously somewhat behind in my blog postings..... I will continue to discuss my trip in sequential order.

Ted had been on a car trip to visit Edmonton and was on his way home. He had, on his way west, gone through Sault St. Marie and wanted to go the more northern route on the way home. While it would have been so much easier for me if he had wanted to go through Sudbury, I was quite content to travel with him as far east as Nipigon. I would decide then whether to stay on highway 11 and go through North Bay or get out and go down #17. That was four hours away and given the fact that it was getting late I knew that I would not need to make a decision tonight.

There are times when some of my conversations with the driver of what ever car I am in are quite focused and stay on one subject. There are other times when either the driver or I do most of the talking. But I think between Ted and I the conversation was pretty equal although we did bounce around a lot. We knew that we were going to be together for awhile and therefore there was no rush to get all of our stories out quickly. Ted was always quite enjoyable because he had no axe to grind. Unlike some of my other drivers he had no pet peeve that he had been been storing up for all of those miles, almost bursting to get it out; impatient to share it with someone.So our conversation sort of meandered along.

We had a lot to talk about and the miles flew by quite nicely. Ted was a teacher in the correctional system. I don't think he told me which prison he worked at or if he did I didn't make note of it. Ted had some interesting stories about his career in the prisons . He had a perspective that I have never thought about before. When one thinks about prisons there are usually just two main characters -the inmates and the guards but in fact there is a small group of people who are neither. That is - those who provide the educational and other programs to the inmates. From what Ted said - neither of the groups, especially the guards gave a lot of respect to those professionals. It was a fascinating conversation and I learned a lot. Not that I understood all of the policies he talked about but at least I understood what happened. Things were also a lot more complicated then I assumed. For example the number of steps that the system needs to take to ensure that some prisoners never get in contact with each other surprised me. I guess I just assumed that they were not that careful.

Ted was also very passionate about his family history and had dome a lot of research about his Arcadian answers. In fact part of the reason for this trip was so that he could visit some of his relatives across Canada. I was more than a bit envious that he had so many relatives and knew how he was connected to them. Some of them the connections went back to the 1700s. I could see how following a family tree could be so time consuming and so absorbing.

We got to Kakabeka Falls well after dark. I was tired. It had been a long day. Ted was more than just tired. He had wanted to get to Thunder Bay and we were close enough. He really needed to stop.We chose a motel (The Telstar motel) and checked into two separate rooms. Ted did offer to share a room, but I wanted some private space. It felt as if it had been a long time since I had been in a room by myself. Both Ted and I used our technology to pass messages out to the outside world via the internet, I walked for a bit to stretch my legs and then went to bed. I was a bit nervous. The last time I had been in this general area and had found a motel late at night, my driver had abandoned me the next morning. I slept well and was up early the next morning, haunting the area around his car. At around 7:15 I bang on his door as we had agreed - he was up but just barely.

While it had been 24 hours since I had eaten a meal I was afraid to go have breakfast. I hung around and waited under the assumption that we would eat together. When Ted got out of his room- we left right away. He preferred to drive for awhile and then eat. Pity. I should have eaten at the restaurant. It would have been better meal than the one I ate at some Tim Horton's this side of Thunder Bay.

As we passed the turn-off to the Sault I thought about getting out and travelling south along #17. But in fact there was no guarantee that I would get a ride. So far, at the rate I was going, I was assured that I would be home late that night. If I got out, I might get a ride quickly or not for hours. As much as I wanted to go along the shore of Lake Superior - I wanted to get home more - in good time. Good company and a nice car going generally in my direction. I would have been a fool to get out.

That day was much the same as our previous time together. Lots to talk about lots of things including dating and when there were the odd quiet bits - that was fine too. One of the things that I remember talking about was the number of women riding Harleys. In the past it was relatively rare to see women driving their own motor bikes. Not only had there been a couple driving their own bikes next door to me at the motel, but I had noticed more than a few times coming east groups of 3-4 women riding together. I wonder if it is because Harley Davidson are making sightly smaller bikes that the women can manage.

I do not know why but it seems to me that on the way west I frequently get a drive from someone who is a crazy fast driver, but on the way east I frequently get a long ride that is a bit slow. Ted, while he had destination targets to reach, was not a fast driver. In fact he was a bit slow and took more breaks than I would have. I don't think he really cared about seeing the towns he stopped in, so he didn't care if he got there late at night. At one point when I called my daughter I thought I would be able to make the last bus to Sudbury. It should have been possible. However by the time it was dark it was clear that we would not be in North Bay until late. With her help we got a motel for Ted and she came and got me.

As I said goodbye to Ted it struck me once again that virtually all of these relationships that I have with my drivers - in spite of the hundreds if not thousands of miles that we travel together (Ted and I traveled about 1500 kilometers together) that they almost always end the same way - a quick handshake and then they are gone. What a strange way to meet people and to travel.

It felt like cheating - I should have/ could have just waited at the bus station until the first bus north in the morning, but I was tired - my trip was done and I could find no reason to sleep outside one more night.