Novel Political Protest

Yann Martel wrote in the Globe this weekend about a group of artists being brushed off by the PM.

This is the action he has decided to take. I would categorize it as "Harassment by Literature". Should be entertaining for people who like literature, but don't like Harper.

http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca/

Cheers

Commonwealth Games

The big news here this weekend was the collapse of the Commonwealth games bid. I got a kick out of how gracious Ottawa's mayor was about it all. There's no way he could meet his election promises if he had to budget money for upgrading facilities and infrastructure, so I'm sure that he didn't want the games to be in Ottawa anyway. There's rumours of trying to get a CFL team. Good luck without a stadium.

You know that there's something to be said for the attitude that "We're not big, but we're small". Halifax is a beautiful little city and maybe it doesn't need the trappings of a larger city. The thing is that only a small portion of the urban parts of Halifax Regional Municipality is beautiful, and in my opinion a lot of the facilities and infrastructure could use an upgrade. I think that we just saw the entire reason for Dartmouth -- the proposed site of most of the events -- to exist disappear. It's really only useful as a placeholder for some large-scale mega-project that will have a purpose and identity. Otherwise it's a run-down suburb with a huge mall -- the Mic Mac Mall -- and a bleak industrial harbour.

Then of course, the Provincial Conservatives really screwed up the announcement. City Council was an hour into a meeting to debate and vote on a revised budget for the games when they all received a news-release on their Blackberries announcing that the Premier and Mayor had decided to pull the plug. There was quite a bit of shock and anger in the room -- at least from the Councilors who didn't run out of the room to vent or to catch the new conference down the hall.


Cheers