Small Town Slow Down

Apparently, small villages are really concerned about people speeding through town. I'm seeing more and more of those speed readouts that tell you your speed, using colours and flashing appropriate to how much you've exceeded the limit. Those things are an interesting piece of psychology: they don't tell you anything you don't already know from your own speedometer, but telling it to you in public, you'll react differently, even though there's probably no one around to see how fast you're going; after all, this is a village with fifty people and no sidewalks.

I also find it amusing when a village has that sign as you enter, asking you to keep to the speed limit. Around here, that sign is usually in quotes. I’m not sure why they do that, but it makes it sound like it's the village motto or something. So it's like:

Paris: "The City of Lights" 
Las Vegas: “What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas”
Wheatville: "Please Drive at 50 km/h Speed Limit."

It's better if they go another step, and post a sign saying, "The Children of Wheatville Ask You To Drive at the 50km/h Speed Limit." Nice guilt trip, but I have to say:

1. There's like ten houses here and I've never seen anyone but seniors in this village.
2. Am I really supposed to believe that kids living by a highway want the cars to slow down?

If anything, it should be, "The Children of Wheatville ask you to really floor it past their place." or, "The Children of Wheatville Ask Semis to Blow the Horn on the Way By."

And now a few towns are even putting up signs with life-size cut-outs of kids asking you to slow down. Again, interesting psychology, since it's not telling you anything you didn't already know; it’s just making you confront the reality of your actions. But it makes me wonder how far this is going. An electronic signboard showing kids about to dart into traffic maybe? Holographic kids popping up in the street? Maybe on your way out of town a sign tells you how many virtual kids you hit?

It’s one thing when it's a village on a long, straight, smooth road. But I don't understand Haysville, near KW, which has one of those our-children-ask-you-to-slow-down signs, but the road through it is not only hilly and twisty, but it doesn't appear to have been repaved in my lifetime. Why do you need the sign? I'd need a Group B Rally Car just to get to the speed limit.

I have to point out that I don't blame anyone for their speeding concerns; lots of people barely slow down passing through a little hamlet, particularly if there's no stop sign or traffic light. It’s just unfortunate that you go through these little communities so fast that they only have time to show you one thing that distinguishes them from other villages. It’s a shame if that one thing they communicate to you is, “we hate you for speeding.” And since so many of them just give you that same message, it makes you feel like that’s the only thing rural people care about. That one village where one guy carved a statue of Iron Man out of the dead tree on his lawn seems full of personality by comparison, even if they do have weird priorities.

A Place To Rebuild

One story during my blog interregnum was the new plans for Ontario Place. I’m reminded of that now because some of the nostalgia accounts I follow on social media have run pictures from its beginnings in the early seventies.

Ontario Place redevelopment wasn’t a big deal to me; I don’t really have a personal connection with it. My experience is the same as many in southern Ontario; I’ve been there a few times as an adjunct to a trip to the CNE, and that’s about it. But the announcements of the new plans for the site stuck in my mind for a very notable reason: It made me feel sorry for Doug Ford.

Yes, I detest our premier, but I couldn’t help but have sympathy for him for the same reason I feel sorry for all politicians in office: they have to work in reality, while the rest of us compare that to faulty memories of the past or unrealistic imaginings of the future.

This was a great example of that pattern. His government announced an uninspiring but reasonable plan to revitalize the park, and that was greeted by howls of complaints about how he had ruined one of the great amusement parks of the world. People, we’re talking about a park that’s been closed for a decade. It was closed because it was losing money so fast that a Liberal government thought it wasn't worth keeping open. So when people wax nostalgic about the park, I have to wonder where they've been recently. Or more specifically, if people were so happy with how the park was, how come it wasn't more popular.

I have at least learned a bit about the history of Ontario Place. It always seemed like an oddity in the entertainment world I grew up in, with low-fear rides and semi-intellectual attractions in a world where most amusement parks were competing to have the scariest roller coasters and as many licensed-characters as possible. 

Fun fact: Ontario Place opened less than four months before Disney World.

I just assumed that Ontario Place was what happened when the theme park concept was filtered through government. But no, it turns out Ontario Place was an attempt to recreate Montreal’s Expo 67. I guess it should have been obvious: artificial islands with a geodesic dome as the crown jewel; sounds familiar.  Rides have been added over the years to bring in more visitors, but it never truly became a ride-oriented park like Canada's Wonderland. 

Fun fact: Canada's Wonderland has 17 roller coasters, which is tied for second most in the world. 

Personally, I was cautiously optimistic about the new plans for the park. Like I say, the plan wasn’t that great. It was sort of like when Ford announced new license plates: “A Place to Grow” wasn’t the greatest plate motto ever, but it seemed like Shakespeare given that we were bracing for something like, “Open for Business.” With Ontario Place, the proposed assortment of attractions announced was a bit uninspiring, but because we were expecting casinos and condos, the plan came as a relief.

I have to be honest, if we look at this realistically, I doubt there’s any saving Ontario Place, and it’s all because of the location. Driving there means going through some very busy thoroughfares. It’s not well-served by public transit. Putting up condos on the land would be disappointing and boring, but at least it would be successful.

The Royal Weed

I have to admit a little bit of Schadenfreude when I found out that the soon-to-be-legal pot in Ontario will be sold through a small number of government-owned stores. I mean, I've always supported legalization, so that's good. But the government-owned stores concept gives me mixed emotions.

Just to be clear, I think this is a dumb decision by the government. It's essentially replicating Ontario's traditional way of selling alcohol in government stores. That never made sense to me: Alcohol isn't really dangerous enough to require such oversight, the government-run stores did nothing to keep alcohol out of the hands of minors, and for some reason, we're totally okay having private companies sell tobacco. And of course, we're now moving away from that approach in alcohol, selling it in grocery stores. That change, and the complete lack of a societal collapse resulting from it, would seem to show that the old approach was wrong, and we know it.

The decision to sell pot through government stores also makes little sense politically. Premier Wynne and government may be looking at this as a compromise between a ban and complete deregulation, so it will be a good way to sell the public on a change not everyone in comfortable with. But I think it's more likely to cancel-out support. Libertarians will hate the government control. Social conservatives won't be placated because they've been taught that pot is the creation of Satan, so careful distribution of the creation of Satan will seem no better. And even left-leaning people like me will see the move as paternalistic, rather than socialist.

Further, it looks like Wynne is developing a Hillary-Clinton-like anti-cult where a large segment of society has decided that they just don't like her or anything she does, not really sure why, but it couldn't possibly be sexism, really, I'm sure. As such, trying to reach a please-everyone compromise is impossible; people will just focus on what they didn't get, because the narrative is that everything Wynne does is bad. It doesn't really make sense for her to try to grab the centre; she'll find little traction there. She'd be better off trying to prove here bona fides to the left where more people will give here a chance.

But I am having a bit of Schadenfreude for Canada's prince of pot, Marc Emery. See, I've been waiting years for a chance to talk about him so that I could point out that I've actuality met him. After bragging about this to someone, that other person would then ask, "how did you meet him?" And I'd reply, "he spoke at my high school."

Okay, he technically spoke at our model U.N. assembly, invited by a school that was drifting towards the proto-alt-right. Back then, Emery wasn't concentrating on legalizing marijuana; he was just a general hard-core libertarian. For me, that was the beginning of a lifetime of finding extreme libertarianism both fascinating and scary. It's like how you might enjoy mob movies, but then you find out that people actually look up to their characters and suddenly it's not so much fun.

So I've taken note whenever Marc Emery's name has come up, as he's moved out west and taken marijuana as his life's cause. Living in Vancouver, he won't have to care about Ontario's nanny-state pot stores. But I'd like to think that his head did explode just a little bit when he heard about it.

Don't Follow Me...

The license plates here in Ontario display the slogan, "Yours to Discover." 

Older folks will remember that they used to say, "Keep it Beautiful" to encourage respect for the environment.  But in the early 80's, they adopted the province's tourism slogan, "Yours to Discover." Ontario has had other catchphrases, but I guess none have had the same kind of emphasis, since they haven't made it onto the plates yet.

I'm not sure how far an ad campaign would have to go before they start putting a new slogan on the plates.  I'm kind of worried about this, because the latest tourism campaign have been focused on a kind of cryptic phrase.

As an ad phrase, it gets attention and is distinctive, even if it doesn't have a strong message.  But whether it works as an ad campaign or not, I have to point out to our government that it would be particularly bad on our license plates.

9 Represent

You occasionally hear places described by their area codes. For instance, Toronto's satellite communities are often collectively called, "the 905." Toronto's original area code was 416, and it has since added a second one that I can't remember, but it apparently has a six in it, so Drake had decreed that henceforth, Toronto shall be known as, "The 6."

But outside of Toronto's cultural currents, the numbers don't come up much. For instance, I've lived my whole life in the 519 area, yet those digits just sit in my phone's contact list doing nothing.

Until now, that is. I've heard the evening news refer to the 519 region a few times as shorthand for Southwestern Ontario. I suspect it's just because in our world of consolidated local news, it's a convenient way of using the same report on CTV's London and Kitchener stations without anyone noticing.

But it actually makes some sense. After all, the 905 and 416 may be at each other's throats in elections, but they really have a lot in common. The 519 is really more distinct culturally and economically. Yes, I hate allying with our rivals in London (the Knights are going down in the playoffs!) But there I go: we both care about junior hockey, while the GTA shows little interest. That settles it: Shad, as the foremost hip-hop artist in the 519 region, it falls to you to popularize the region as, "The 9."

Red Red Wine

Rumour has it that once again, the Ontario government may open up sales of alcoholic beverages to supermarkets. You'd think this would be a fairly popular thing outside of the remnants of Canada's temperance movement. But there's actually a lot of criticism: it'll be harder to get alcohol in smaller places, they'll concentrate on main brands, rather than the wide range you get on dedicated wine and beer stores.

Those aren't necessarily bad arguments. But they are arguments that can be made about virtually any product. For example, if we mandated that crackers had to be sold in government-approved stores instead of supermarkets, they'd have a nice selection of imported and craft crackers, and small towns would be assured of basic service from their local C.C.B.O. (Cracker Control Board of Ontario) store. There'd be negatives of course: it would be inconvenient buying your soup and crackers at different stores. And if you don't like the service, you're out of luck.

The fact is, we in Canada have made the general principle that goods and services should be provided by private businesses unless there's a compelling reason for the government to do it. I don't have a problem with re-examining that philosophy: if you think we'd be better off with the government providing all or most services, put that argument forward.

But the fact is that isn't a very popular point of view. So it's frustrating to see this more-or-less decided point re-opened and re-argued. Given how economically conservative our society has become, there shouldn't be this much opposition to deregulating alcohol sales. Or conversely, given how much opposition there is to deregulating alcohol sales, other conservative economic initiatives shouldn't get the wide support they do.

Either way, it seems a lot of us have difficulty recognizing patterns or thinking in the abstract. We have to learn to think through the consequences of of our guiding principles, and use those principles to guide our decisions so that we don't start from scratch in reasoning out every question.

I Refuse To Do A "Wynne" Pun

It's time for a post-mortem on Thursday's provincial election.  With Ontario's Liberals facing a billion dollar scandal, they somehow expanded their minority into a majority.

I mentioned in the past that PC leader Tim Hudak is a poor political strategist, because he tries to speak to both the centre and the far-right, alienating both in the process. This election was a good example: With the government mired in scandal, all they had to do was stand around looking reasonably competent and they'd win. But instead, he had to go and announce his plan to cut 100,000 government jobs.

It's hard to keep track of all the ways that was a bad move:

• Though the Tories wanted the spotlight on the Liberals, they moved it to themselves.
• It made the rather predictable comparisons to Mike Harris very easy.
• It pushed unions and other interest groups to pull-out all the stops.  The Liberals hardly needed to run their own attack ads with so many groups lining up to go negative.
• The centrepiece of the PC campaign was the "Million Jobs Plan" but the vagueness of that plan was emphasized when put next to a solid promise to axe thousands of jobs.
• Presenting the elimination of jobs as a campaign promise looked very out-of-touch.

The commonality in Hudak's miscalculations is that while he comes across like an ordinary guy, he doesn't understand that he sees the world through the perspective of someone deep in the Conservative machine, and thus he reacts to things in a different way than most. Lots of people think - as he does - that government is big and bloated, but he doesn't realize that most people don't translate that into a desire to eliminate jobs. Similarly, many dislike the power of unions, but most don't hate them with the passion he does.  Unfortunately, this sort of political miscalculation is likely something that we'll see more of in the future, as so many people retract into media catering to their political beliefs.

And that's why I'm a little worried going forward. A surprise loss can be a time to reflect on what's been done wrong, but it often turns into excuse-making and incredulous head-shaking about the voters. And before election night was even over, Tory-friendly media outlets were already framing the loss as a strong performance except for Toronto. And judging by what we've seen of Hudak, he's probably now mumbling angrily about labour unions conspiring against him.

As for the New Democrats, they might be more disappointed, since they did trigger the election on what they must have thought were good circumstances for themselves. At first, it looked like the irony would be that they would gain seats in the process of putting a profoundly anti-labour government in power. Instead, the irony is that they will end up with the very same seat-count, but having lost their power because the Liberals won a clear majority. It's like a political Aesop's fable.

Either way, you have to wonder what they were thinking. Combine that questionable strategy with their bland performance, and I wonder if Jack Layton's federal breakthrough has gone to their heads, and they now think they can win any campaign. Andrea Horwath came across as political and distant. She was reminiscent of the federal leaders they had following Ed Broadbent, who were competent and non-threatening, but lacking in the passion a smaller party needs.

Right Honourable Brutus

Some members of Ontario's Conservatives are trying to push their leader, Tim Hudak out the door.

This brings up something that bugs me about parliamentary politics: the decision to replace the leader is done based on an absolute measure of electoral success, not on the leader's a achievement above or below reasonable expectations.A good example is in comparing Hudak to Ernie Eves.  Eves went down to decisive defeat, and thus fell on his sword, as was expected of him.  Hudak, in contrast, reduced the governing Liberals from two straight majorities to a minority.  That's considered a success, so he keeps his job.  But Eves inherited a lot of baggage from the outgoing regime of Mike Harris, and it's doubtful that anyone could have done better.  Hudak, on the other hand, was facing a two-term government plagued by scandal and a poor economy.  Really, the election was his to lose,and he lost it.  Putting aside sheer seat counts, you'd have to conclude that Hudak is an underachiever.

That seemed to be confirmed last week when the Tories won one of five seats in by-elections.  Many newspapers went with headlines about how bad it was for the Liberals, but a scandal-ridden government scoring 40% on by-elections was hardly surprising.  But the opposition winning even fewer seats, that's something to worry about. 

Hudak seems reasonably likeable, so what's the problem?  I'd say it's his wishy-washy strategy.  As a Conservative in twenty-first century Canada, there's two proven strategies: 1) limit your conservative policies, play the moderate, and win the centre (the Harper Strategy) or 2) be unapologetically, flamboyantly conservative, get your base excited, and overwhelm the half-hearted opposition (the Harris-Ford Strategy.)  But Hudak doesn't seem committed to either.  So even if they don't remove him before the next election, they need to rethink strategy.  Perhaps this is one instance where ads building up their own candidate would be better than spending all their money on attack ads.