We’ll follow this adorable story throughout the day

CNN is treating Obama’s visit like a water-skiing squirrel.

Auswandern

According to Deutsche Welle:

At the end of the year, Vogt plans to move to Australia, a country he has never visited. But he knows that architects there are highly sought after. The Australian government put his occupation on a list of those most urgently needed to fill the labor shortage Down Under.

Many educated Germans are doing the same thing as Voigt. The country’s statistics office estimates that more than 160,000 people emigrated last year, a level that hasn’t been topped since 1954.

Whatever happened to the Canadian brain drain?

La mémoire des anges

Watch the trailer for The Memories of Angels at Spacing Montreal. It is really cool.

I’ve never been to Montreal. As a young, pretty much unilingual (merci, public schools) Ontarian, Montreal has always felt like a gray anaemic has-been somewhere out past Kingston. I know that’s not a fair assessment and I’d like to see the city today… almost as much as I would like to see it in its prime!

The Montreal of this film is far more interesting than history lessons (those damn schools again) or Canadian popular culture (such that it is) have led me to believe.

[image] promotional still from NFB

[video] Spacing Montreal or NFB beta

Polaris Music Prize

The shortlist for 2008’s Polaris Prize is out:

Black Mountain – In The Future

Plants and Animals – Parc Avenue

Basia Bulat – Oh, My Darling

Stars – In Our Bedroom After The War

Caribou – Andorra

Shad – The Old Prince

Kathleen Edwards – Asking For Flower

Two Hours Traffic – Little Jabs

Holy Fuck – LP

The Weakerthans – Reunion Tour

Are you surprised? There are a couple nominees I didn’t expect to see. Somehow I have never heard of Kathleen Edwards, and her Wikipedia entry suggests she doesn’t deserve my ignorance. The same goes for Shad.

My knowledge of Cancon doesn’t have the breadth, let along the depth, that I sometimes like to imagine.

Having said that, I can vouch for the excellentness of Stars, Caribou, Holy Fuck, and The Weakerthans. Finding out more about the other artists will make an excellent task for after I have my wisdom teeth pulled in a few weeks.

You can hear samples from all the artists in a special Polaris-themed Radio 3 Podcast. Have I told you lately how wonderful the CBC is?

[photo] “DSC_3465” by David Topping

Another confidence motion passes.

Does anyone pay attention anymore? The media might try to infuse each confidence motion with some drama, but I’ve tuned it out.

I suspect the Tories could get away with repealing gay marriage and the ill-prepared Liberals would support the motion to avoid an election. And nobody would notice.

Mrs. Public: “There’s some kind of protest going on downtown.”

Mr. Public: “Oh, that’s probably just the Tibetans again.”

Eventually Every Wall Falls

A friendly reminder from the Government of Canada arrived in the mail today about the documentation required to enter the United States.

By land or sea, Canadian citizens need to have a driver’s licence plus a birth certificate (or equivalent documentation) or a passport. Only a passport will suffice if flying by air.

It’s a strange world when travel between two countries that have never been to war (or not for at least 200 years, depending on how your perspective) is getting more difficult, but the movement of people on the 20th century’s bloodiest continent is nearly unrestrained.

Even if you are worried about the hegemony of American culture on the continent (or a deluge of handguns into Canadian cities), it’s hard to deny that the future will probably see greater freedom of movement for people in North America. It’s not truly free trade if goods but not services can cross borders.

Someday, maybe sooner than it seems, the Americans will get over their terror and get on with trade and travel.

[photo] “A Wall graffitto of olden times has come true” by Frederik Ramm

All Aboard

In writing a slow-going and not-yet-posted entry, I got to thinking about high-speed rail. Just how fast is it?

It takes five and three-quarter hours, according to Google, to drive from Union Station in Toronto to Gare Centrale in Montreal. At best, VIA Rail says they can do it in four hours, though most of their trains make the journey in five hours. It’s certainly an improvement over six hours on the 401 but taking the train is still a fair chunk of the day.

Compare that to the experience in France. Paris and Bordeaux are just a fraction of an hour nearer to each other than Toronto and Montreal; Google says it takes five and a half hours. On the TGV you can travel from Gare du Nord in Paris to Bordeaux in only three hours.

Can you imagine a Canada in which Montreal is only three hours from Toronto? We probably wouldn’t see many people making a daily commute, but you can bet it would take a lot of business away from the airlines on these short flights.

Win for the environment, win for commuters, win for a lucky few struggling manufacturers who get to build the rails, trains, and cars. Lose for the airlines, but I don’t think most people have any sympathy for those monsters.

Sadly, it’s all just a dream with the government we have now.

[photo] “300 Km/h” by Tramway de Lyon