Taking Maple Leaf Spirits to San Francisco Jan 17-19

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After speaking with the nice lady at Food Beverage Canada, it seems possible that I will be going to the Fancy Food Show in SFO and 45% of my travel costs will be reimbursed. I love the idea of a trip to SFO, whatever the reason, but to go there and learn more about getting Maple Leaf Spirits into the US market will be just fine, thx much!

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It smacks of the usual Canadian smugness!

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Canada least corrupt in the Americas: Report

BY PETER O’NEIL, CANWEST NEWS EUROPE CORRESPONDENT, CANWEST NEWS SERVICENOVEMBER 17, 2009

Canada is viewed as the least corrupt country in the Americas and is an “inspiration” for the U.S. and other neighbours in the hemisphere, Transparency International said in its annual report published Tuesday.

The Berlin-based watchdog ranked Canada eighth globally, in a tie with Australia and the Netherlands, in its index that assesses internal perceptions of corruption in 180 countries.In first place was New Zealand while in second last place, just ahead of the failed state of Somalia, was Afghanistan, the largest recipient of Canadian development aid.

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Here’s the latest “gift” from Harper’s govt to Canadians

and especially to those Canadians who have to, or want to visit Libya:

Canadians not welcome in Libya

Last Updated: Sunday, October 25, 2009 | 6:31 PM ET Comments137Recommend59

The Canadian Press

Libyan Leader Moammar Gadhafi at the United Nations in New York City in September 2009. (Richard Drew/Associated Press)

Canadian travellers have been told they’re not welcome in Libya, in an apparent reprisal for Canada’s near tongue-lashing of Moammar Gadhafi.

Gadhafi cancelled a planned stopover in Newfoundland last month after the Harper government made public its intention to scold the Libyan leader over the hero’s welcome Libya gave a man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

This is one more piece of evidence that Mr. Harper and his govt suffer from zero sense of diplomacy. They must be awful poker players since they obviously don’t know how to play without tipping their hand too early in the game!

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Bombardier wins $4-billion train contract in China

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Deal is to supply 80 high-speed trains to China

I think now I understand better why our Prime Minister is being very circumspect about his Dalai Lama connection. Canadian business must come before human rights, even for a hard-ass Tory PM.

But no fooling this is a big deal for Canada and Bombardier, who seem to have found the key to doing business in China.

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Lyon’ Brian Mulroney and hypocrite Steven Harper

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My goodness the Conservative Party in Canada organized a “love-in” for Brian Mulroney in Montréal to mark the 25th anniversary of Mulroney’s landslide federal electoral victory in 1984. Mr. Harper, in his inimitable rope-a-dope style, wasn’t there because he was bowing and scraping in the US.

The real joke about this is that Lyon’ Brian managed to talk for 30 minutes to that crowd of conservative ministers and Québec Conservatives without ever uttering the words PM or Steven Harper! But then Brian is well known for his oratund speaking style with its special bravado about his own deeds and glib glossing over of his obvious misdeeds.

Brian finished his speech with false tears and a quote from a John Diefenbaker speech, “and now I lay me down to fix my wounds to get up and fight on again” or words to that effect. Lachrymose and very Lyon’ Brian!

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Some holier than thou Canajuns love to crawl on our bellies for US dollars

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Our latest is the dirtiest Energy Project in the world – the Tar Sands processing in Alberta. Here’s a tacky image of it:

Our PM True Blue Steve H loves to wax dull about the Tar Sands and what it means for Canada US trade. But that thoroughly messy blight on our Albertan landscape is very unnice.

Here’s what the Rainforest Action Network says about it:

There’s a 70-foot banner and activists dangling over the observation tower at Niagara Falls. Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate advocates with the Rainforest Action Network rappelled hundreds of feet above the ground, to offer special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue will dominate the discussions,” one aid told the Globe and Mail. Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the climate legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

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The seamier side of Canadian Conservative politics

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I well remember the belligerent words of Brian Mulroney, when he was a Conservative in the Opposition to the Trudeau Government, commenting on the appointment of an old Quebec Liberal and Canadian-Irish pol to the chairmanship of the then government owned Air Canada. Bryce Mackasay had been a very successful Liberal House member and Minister from Verdun, sort of the down-class of Montreal. At that time Mr. Mulroney said of Mackasay’s appointment by the Trudeau govt, “There is no whore like an old whore”. The sort of put down that a resident of upper class Westmount might say in undertone, but Mulroney chose to say in the full light of day and for the public media in Canada.

This morning CBC.ca reports:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will publicly reach out to Brian Mulroney, and by extension his Tory predecessor’s powerful sphere of influence, in a video to be shown this week at a gala in Montreal.

Sources have told The Canadian Press that Harper recorded a congratulatory message that will be aired Thursday at the celebration of Mulroney’s historic 1984 electoral victory at the helm of the Progressive Conservative party.

The video will represent the prime minister’s first gesture of solidarity with Mulroney in two years.

No doubt the memories of Mulroney’s words of that bygone era will have no place in that congratulatory message from the current PM. But the echos ring in my ears especially because Mulroney continues to practice the retail politics of Canadian-Irish blarney and bluster to offset his unhappy connections with Schreiber, a tax cheat and arms dealer from Germany. Who’s the whore now?

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To answer why psychology became the subject he wanted most to study …

Steven Pinker has written this in NY Times Sunday Magazine:

The very fact that I had to think so hard brought home what scholars of autobiography and memoir have long recognized. None of us know what made us what we are, and when we have to say something, we make up a good story.

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An obvious candidate for the real answer is that we are shaped by our genes in ways that none of us can directly know. Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life.

Given the story of where I was born, Barcelona, Spain, and of how I got to live in Canada – my parents were born on Ile Madame next to Cape Breton Island – beginning in mid-July 1940, I have been messing around with the notion of writing the story of my “path in life” to this point.

I am 73some now and in 4 days I fly off to live and work in China, Dalian in Liaoning Province next to the Yellow Sea. So my “path in life” is going to take on a whole new orientation. And there is no doubt that I will blog post about the quirks and turns of that “path in life”.

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So writing that memoir, whether it will be semi-fictional and how semi-, takes on a new life.

But it occurs to me that not the least important fact today is that I feel that I have reached a milestone as an “aspiring writer“. In the last week I have wakened, with the help of a continuing conversation about why I write, to the sense that I am now a learning writer and I won’t refer to being an “aspiring writer” any more.

I feel in my gut that that means I have given myself permission to write that memoir in a more deliberate way than I have been doing since I began messing around with it about 12 years ago.

Now I accept that I have to write my way into a way of telling that memoir story in way that compels my interest to write it and then get a sense of it’s value to me most of all, once I have finished the writing of it. If I can do that then I will have a better chance that my completed memoir will have some redeeming interest to my own children and grandchildren, who are the primary audience I am aiming at.

If you stick to your passion long enuff, u 2 could be a world champion

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Lorne Main, a 76 yr old Canadian singles tennis world champ, is a legend in his own time and it’s now!

There he is behind the wheel of his convertible that he uses to criss-cross Canada in search of the next over 75 tournament. Wow, I vaguely remembered his name and was astounded to hear his story on CBC Sunday Night. A real story of tennis success in Canada!

And here is the link to the canada.com version of his story!

Lorne, I’m sure you don’t have the time to read my blog, but let me say for the record that envy you a ton and I’m 73. Just a great story!

Gov. Sarah Palin’s “bad week”, or same old, same …

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Now it’s a top McCain national security adviser:

Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and whose endorsement is often trumpeted by McCain, said on Thursday that the Alaska governor is not only unprepared to take over the job on a moment’s notice but, even after some time in office, would only amount to an “adequate” commander in chief.

“And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested,” he added for good measure — referring both to Palin’s policy dexterity and the idea of McCain not making it through his time in office.

Oh well what does he know anyway!

But the NY Times adds this sour note about La Palin:

A growing number of voters have concluded that Senator John McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, is not qualified to be vice president, weighing down the Republican ticket in the last days of the campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Here in Canada our Conservative PM just appointed a 41 yr old woman to be Minister of Health, the biggest budget in this government. I read this morning that she is from the north, Nunavut Territory, ambitious and “tough”.

Does this mean that we may have our own Inuit version of La Palin? Who needs that?