In Ontario, when a Canadian soldier dies for his country in Afghanistan they touch Canadian soil at Canadian Forces Base Trenton. From there, a funeral procession leaves the base and heads to Toronto, Ontario taking our departed heroes to the Centre for Forensic Sciences. Along the 172km path of Highway 401 people fill the overpasses to show their support, waving Canadian flags and signs, in a sort of paying their respects to the fallen and their families.

The Ontario “Highway of Heroes” Petition to Ontario Ministry of Transportation was created by members of Milnet.ca and written by James Forbes (forcerecon85@hotmail.com).

On August 24, 2007 it was announced that Ontario’s provincial government consulted the federal government, municipalities along the highway and the Royal Canadian Legion and on September 7, 2007 it was official, a stretch of the 401 would be renamed ‘Highway of Heroes’. The highway will not lose its official designation as the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway, but signs would be erected designating the route as the Highway of Heroes.

The Song ‘Highway of Heroes’ was recorded as an extension of the emotion expressed when thousands of Canadians voiced their desired to honour our fallen soldiers by having a part of the 401 renamed. Hopefully, when the song is heard, it will remind everyone to take a moment and reflect on what is truly important in their lives.

The Liberals seem hell bent on forcing an election.  They’ve done this a number of times in the past few years.  If they force an election when Parliament returns – we will have spent over $1.2 billion on elections that haven’t changed things subtantively.  In other words, we will have wasted $1.2 billion in taxpayers money to soothe the egos of the parliamentarians.

I understand the concept of Her Majesties Loyal Opposition but we have opposition parties who have voted down everything that the government has proposed even if it was good for the country and was something they would propose.  The NDP has voted against the government over 72 times in this period just because they can, they know that the bill will pass and their constituents will benefit anyhow.  I do not call that being a responsible representative of the people.

The Bloc is Quebec centric and couldn’t give a hoot about Canada so they are taking money for doing nothing good for the country.  Soon a large number of NDP and Bloc members will be vested in their generous pension plan – but they need to be MP’s until around July 2010 – whoops, they seem to have screwed up.

It would be entirely appropriate to work with the governing party cooperatively, now they won’t get everything they want but there would be pressure on the government to respond to this cooperation otherwise the people would let them know they are jerks. 

My solution and suggestion is that we send a bill to each MP for $1 million to be paid out of their personal funds so that we can fund this next election and not waste tax dollars to get the same results.  We are getting tired of living crisis to crisis when it’s just for the vanity of the political leaders.

If they do force an election  over nothing we should punish the opposition parties severely and throw those bums out on their respective asses.

The following are previews of this episode which aired November 15th, 2009.

From Wikipedia:  “The story is set on Mars^[10] and the Doctor will be joined by a new companion named Adelaide, played by Lindsay Duncan, who is head of the Mars base.^[3] Producer Nikki Wilson described the character as “the Doctor’s cleverest and most strong-minded companion yet.”^[6] The most recent trailer shows a massive Terrarium of life on the planet’s surface, and a mysterious alien which infects its victims using a water compound it creates.

In the BBC trailer, the Doctor says that the events ongoing on Mars are a fixed point in time and must not be changed.

This promises to be a darker episode.

I have been having issues with Bell over the years with poor to non-existent customer service.  I moved my home phone about a year and half ago and have not regretted it at all.  I had a contract with Bell Mobility that terminated April 30, 2009.  I couldn’t wait to get away from them.  On April 1, I moved to another service provider.  I needed only to pay my last months/final bill which was on pre-authorized credit card.

Bell Mobilty’s solution was to charge me $100 plus GST and PST for terminating my contract, as for the outstanding service amount I can’t say exactly because their pay ahead system is a bit confusing.  I thought that I had paid up to my service date which was around the 22nd of each month and only owed the remaining 8 days.

They proceeded to bill my credit card for the excess amount.  As soon as I was notified of the penalty I was on their case and they said it was a mistake.  I have been trying since then to get my money back.  Their billing system only work once a month.  So this month I get a bill that says that I have a credit of $1113 coming and that it’s pre-authorized but nothing happened.  I called and they said I should get my credit next month – July/August.  This is a reason why I despise this company.  They have now promised to send me a cheque in a couple of weeks, we’ll see.

Since I left Bell for my home phone I have received monthly addressed junk mail from Bell trying to entice me back.  Annoying and a waste of money for them.  When I moved to a new cell provider, I received 3 calls from Bell (I know their number) but no one was there – dead calls.  They deserve to fail.  They have no idea how to take care of their customers.  I could talk about my wasted adventure trying out ISDN from Bell but suffice to say they couldn’t get it to work and didn’t bother telling me while I was waiting for a service response.  Losers!  Then there was the issue of a wiring problem in the house and they wanted an exorbitant fee to even come and address it – found a cheaper and better solution.

My new service supplier isn’t perfect, there was always going to be service issues but it’s how they handle them and to date they have surpassed Bell by a very wide margin.

Bell Sucks.

It is very discouraging to see the growing levels of intolerance in the world.  The latest incident in our country was at the Fete National when people tried to shout down two english acts (presenting bilingual sets) at a concert in Quebec.  Several sponsors of the event also withdrew their support when the acts were announced.  I sense this is an example of what a separate Quebec would be like, intolerance for anything other than french language.  It’s not like these groups were the major component of the entertainment package.  Even now, the language police harass businesses about signs that have multiple languages if the french is not bigger by a certain factor.  There’s protecting a language and then there’s intolerance towards anyone or anything that isn’t french.  If a business chose to have all of it’s signage in chinese, it’s indicating that  it is catering to a specific group and not the population as a whole and really what is wrong with that?

In Iran, we have a deadly form of intolerance.  I heard that in one situation there were 3 million more votes than there were voters, if this was close to the truth then the results of that election can be questioned.  The hard liners are using extreme methods to suppress any opposition because the will not tolerate any change of the status quo.  Iran is a country that was the cradle of civilization and should be a major player in the middle east.  Unfortunately, they could be  a force for good of the world but they seem to be bent on being a force for radical and intolerant views and their actions are destabilizing the area.

Back in Canada, Human Rights commissions were created to protect the rights of the minorities.  They have taken that to an extreme and now they are infringing on our basic freedoms such as free speech and ideas.  This is political correctness taken to the extreme.  It appears that some have found ways of milking this system for profit by filing and wining questionable cases.  The actions put a chill on free speech because it ends up costing the speaker a lot of money defending themselves.

In the words of Rodney King, “Can’t we all just get along”.

Here is a table Showing the past 3 winters by month, using  Environment Canada data for the Ottawa Airport.  There hasn’t been measurable amounts of snow in June in the past 20 years of data.  Data revised as per EC Climate Data Online Monthly Observation Data -June 24, 2009.

Source: Environment Canada Climate Data Online. 

Since 9/11 people in the western world are obsessed with security and in some cases have an irrational fear of terrorist acts.  In the total scheme of things, we tend to get very excited about incidents that are not always that significant.  That is not to say that we don’t need to be on alert but it’s how far should we go and what should we give up to attain that security.

1. Most important was to protect the front line health workers and wash your hands frequently.
2. It’s all done in the name of security so we just let it go.

Crossing the border is also getting harder all the time and the customs authorities have extra ordinary powers that they exercise as well.  There are a lot of stories about abuse here as well.  It’s because of security so anything they do is ok even if there was not just cause for their actions.  Give people absolute power and they will abuse it because they can.

The police are starting to show signs of being above the law since they are part of the administration of the “law”.  We seem to be seeing more and more instance where police are involved with excessive force and are not being held accountable.  It seems that they are able to break laws but they don’t have to face the consequences.  They, in many cases, can’t even be removed from the job.  Their union fights any sort of discipline even when the evidence is overwhelming that they should be dismissed and charged.  They can be violent and just flash they id and badge and they are driven home by a responding officer while they accuse the victim of causing the problem in the first place.  It’s the concept of power corrupting individual and institutions.  They are trampling on individual rights in the name of “National Security”.  Yes they have a tough job but taking away our rights in the name of security is not the answer.

It won’t be long before we will have to face the facts that we live in a police state with no real personal freedoms and we surrendered them without a wimper because we were afraid of something that really wasn’t as bad as the solution.

Gary Bettman, NHL boss, hates Canada.  At least you think that it just might be true.  The league did little to protect the Winnipeg and Quebec fanchises from moving to the U.S. yet they  seem to be fighting every possible move of a bankrupt U.S. team back to Canada.  What are we in Canada supposed to make of this?

How is it that New York can have 3 franchises while southern Ontario cannot have more than one.  This fascination with U.S. cities that have no history nor experience with Hockey having NHL teams while viable markets in Canada are ignored.  The NHL U.S. Strategy hasn’t, doesn’t and will not work.  Bowling on TV will outdraw hockey in most US markets.   It’s barely a niche sport in the US.  Hockey is an important component in many countries in the world besides Canada, for instance Russia and Sweden come to mind.

The league seems to not want to deal with a Canadian who has the money yet it has dealt with a large number of questionable owners in the U.S.

I find it discouraging that the league rolls its eyes if there is a Canadian team in the Stanley Cup playoffs since they can’t sell the TV rights in the States even though there wasn’t any interest in the first place.  Heaven forbid that there is a final between 2 Canadian teams, they might have to outlaw that possibility.  It’s like we are second class in the leagues eyes.

It might give us a complex or maybe we should learn to love bowling and invest our entertainment dollars in that sport instead of Hockey.  The league won’t miss the Canadian fans at all.