If these Games be the worst…

By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, February 17, 2010 at 7:52 AM - 112 Comments

British journalists are not the only ones raising awkward questions about the multitudinous stumbles that have characterized the beginning of the Winter Olympics. They merely attract the most attention, for reasons that have nothing much to do with the truth or falsehood of their criticisms. These reasons include:

1. Cultural cringe: the inherent Canadian awareness of inferiority, and suspicion of condescension, provoked by anything British-accented. No beast is feebler than the Canadian journalist who wraps himself in the flag and rushes tearfully to his typewriter or microphone upon the first hint of perceived sneering at the colonials. Don’t get me wrong: it’s good copy. I saw the technique, used cynically, work like a charm at the ’01 Athletics Worlds here in Edmonton when a couple of old Fleet Street soaks spoke unlacquered truth about the city’s broad streak of Soviet shabbiness. But to engage on that level is to perpetuate the cringe, and besides, there’s reason 2:

2. Criticisms naturally hit harder when they’re written with great force. British writers are vigorous, direct, unflinching, entertainment-minded, and, in general, better at their trade than ours. (Rest assured—they’ll be, if anything, much harder on their own 2012 Summer Games.) Their newspapers are more fun than ours, pay good writers much more, and are doing better as businesses. They are also rank with ethical failings and obnoxious practices, to be sure, but almost all of those arise from trying too hard to get the story, intruding too far into private matters, competing too viciously, overreacting to perceived injustice. The failings of Canada’s press are all, as a rule, on the other side—the side of compromise, laziness, and political correctness. For instance, look no further than reason 3:

3. Canadian journalists covering the Games have, virtually to a man, accepted the premise that the Games provide an accurate moral, artistic, and technical reflection on Canada as a whole. I don’t remember signing that contract, and if I were going to sign one with a city and its business and volunteer communities, I wouldn’t have chosen Vancouver. Are you kidding? Place is screwy! As it happens, Alberta already staked its international reputation on a Winter Olympics, thanks, and did fine. The rest of you are quite welcome to let yourselves be judged on the basis of this fiasco, but as far as I can see, you haven’t been asked.

I hasten to add that the relative success of the 1988 Games—painfully emphasized by the Great Calgary Zamboni Airlift—is not entirely to Alberta’s credit. After all, Beijing put on a heck of an Olympics, but I wouldn’t want to live there. It put on an outstanding show partly for the reasons I wouldn’t want to live there: crushing social homogeneity, one-party government, lack of civil liberties, central economic planning. If the Games needed a row of shacks in Beijing knocked down, they got knocked down, without a lot of paperwork or argument. If industrial pollution was a problem, mills and factories could be shut down arbitrarily for as long as needed to render the air breathable by gweilo weaklings. Protesters delaying VIP access to the Opening Ceremonies? In China? Forget about it. (Literally: forget about it or you’ll be sent to the laogai for re-education.)

I don’t mean to equate Calgary to Beijing, but the factors that allowed Calgary to succeed as an Olympic host probably did include weak political opposition on the municipal and provincial levels; a small, dominant social-financial elite; a certain degree of cultural homogeneity; and a borderline-inappropriate degree of coziness between legislators, regulators, and judges. What you want in an ideal Olympic city is that it be quite rich, very conformist, and a teensy bit crooked. Calgary wouldn’t be as good a host in 2010 as it was in 1988; it’s a more interesting place now.

And Vancouver may have bitten off slightly more than it can chew, precisely because it’s about the most interesting place in the country, in good respects and bad. It’s not a well-oiled machine, it’s a self-sufficient permanent riot. I have always understood its disorder to be part of its glory. I would have put an Olympics on the moon before I’d have put one there.

Hey look: Prentice in Calgary

By Paul Wells - Friday, February 5, 2010 at 4:17 PM - 6 Comments

Many of you have already found my column from the print edition, in which I try to make sense of Jim Prentice’s Calgary speech. Much hilarity ensues. Okay, not that much.

Abortion play draws a big crowd

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 12:50 PM - 5 Comments

A new play set to open in Calgary is stirring up controversy before the actors even take the stage. The Abortion Monologues, which will be performed on Feb. 4 at Mount Royal University, features dramatic monologues from 23 fictional female characters “at all ages and stages of reproductive life” speaking about their experiences with abortion, says author Jane Cawthorne.

Cawthorne, who left a job teaching women’s studies at Mount Royal a couple of years ago to pursue writing full-time, spent two decades volunteering with not-for-profit groups in the field of women’s health and reproductive rights; the play was inspired by some of the stories she heard. “I felt that the public discussion on abortion was polarized, and didn’t reflect what goes on in the real lives of women,” says the Calgary-based writer, who describes herself as pro-choice. Last year, The Abortion Monologues premiered in Portland, Ore., to a crowd of almost 400 people; roughly 300 are expected at next week’s performance, with tickets almost sold out.

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The west is in. Now what?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 12:30 PM - 74 Comments

The rise of Western Canada was the topic of a round table discussion last week in Calgary, broadcast live by CPAC. Joining Paul Wells and Andrew Coyne were Fort McMurray’s Mayor Melissa Blake, Alberta’s Minister of Culture Lindsay Blackett, Saskatchewan’s Environment Minister Nancy Heppner, Lloyd Axworthy, the University of Winnipeg’s president, and the Wildrose Alliance’s Rob Anderson. CPAC’s Peter Van Dusen moderated the event.

Coyne: How do we define the West beyond geography? Is there such a thing as a kind of western agenda, a western political culture?

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Canada’s Olympians No. 6: Helen Upperton

By Nicholas KÖhler Photograph by Jean-François Bérubé - Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at 12:20 PM - 2 Comments

Bobsled pilot Helen Upperton has elevated the pre-competition ritual to the standard of high voodoo. Her brakeman, Shelley-Ann Brown, twists her hair into elaborate “speed braids” that Upperton swears make her faster. She paints her fingernails black. And, as she negotiates the vertiginous corners of the bobsled run at high speed, she chews gum—for years it was 7-Eleven blue raspberry Slurpee flavour—like some snowbound Chuck Yeager. Don’t let the hocus-pocus fool you; it all enhances wicked focus. “I could close my eyes right now and picture any track in the world, every corner,” she says. “You have to—it comes at you so fast it has to be automatic.”

She was born to British parents on a Halloween 30 years ago in Kuwait, where her father, Kerry, worked in the oil industry. For a while it looked as though she might have been born under a bad sign: as a kid in Calgary, the middle girl of three, she spent hours in hospital thanks to a penchant for daredevil antics—catapulting off banisters, sticking metal doodads into electric sockets. Her mother, Hilary, has a vivid memory of Helen hanging in her diaper from a tree she’d climbed. “The girl was an ongoing, walking emergency-room case,” says a friend. Always athletic, she played soccer (her dad was her coach) and competed in luge as a tween: “I was like, ‘Sure, it’s like super-fast tobogganing!!!’ ” says Upperton, an avid gesticulator who speaks at bobsleigh speeds—but stopped when, true to form, she crashed, nearly knocking out all her teeth. “We’d spent all these thousands on orthodontics,” says Hilary.

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The tally

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, January 24, 2010 at 1:55 PM - 208 Comments

With 51 precincts reporting specific estimates—restricting the count to media-reported figures and, where available, police counts—it’s possible to account for approximately 21,000 anti-prorogation protestors at yesterday’s rallies. Continue…

The rebels gather

By Nicholas Köhler - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 9:10 AM - 3 Comments

Not long ago, after a Fraser Institute dinner at a Calgary hotel, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach strolled into the bar to find Rod Love, Ralph Klein’s one-time chief of staff, huddled with some friends drinking. “Is this the conspiracy table?” Stelmach, grinning broadly, asked the group. The gallows humour got a laugh. Still, there’s truth in jest. Love and one of his drinking buddies that night, Alan Hallman, a one-time campaign manager to Klein, had been rumoured to back a political challenger who could soon sweep Stelmach aside.

For weeks, the Tories’ annual general meeting in Red Deer, with its mandatory Nov. 7 leadership review, has promised to be good theatre, equal parts fun and intrigue (Duck Soup meets CPAC). Ordinarily a routine feature of party governance, this vote, wherein 1,000 delegates cast secret ballots for or against a leadership race, is now important business. Stelmach could go, and everywhere observers have delighted in identifying pretenders in the shadows—former leadership hopefuls Jim Dinning and Ted Morton, Calgary entrepreneur and Dragons’ Den panellist Brett Wilson, even federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice. Continue…

No vaccine for Catholic schoolgirls

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 1:40 PM - 22 Comments

In a 5-2 vote, the Yellowknife Catholic school board has decided against allowing human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination shots in its institutions. This will make it more difficult for girls to get the shots, increasing their risk for the sexually transmitted infection, which is the primary cause of cervical cancer. “This is not ideal for the work of public health,” says Sandy Lee, minister of health and social services for the Northwest Territories.

In Calgary’s Catholic schools, where the board refused to allow the shots, only one in five girls has been vaccinated against HPV (70 per cent of girls in public schools have received the shots). A similar situation could occur in Yellowknife, where girls are sexually active earlier than in most of Canada, and the rate of STIs is eight times the national average. Continue…

The Olympic bump

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 2, 2009 at 4:03 PM - 17 Comments

It has been speculated by various sources at various points that there is some benefit to the Conservative side in putting off an election until after the Olympics in Vancouver. That the resulting surge of patriotism will result in a similar surge of optimism about the country and support for the government that happens to be in charge at that time.

This perhaps sounds very plausible. Or perhaps it doesn’t. Either way, it would be nice, just this once, to sort out whether there’s any data to support this particular adventure in amateur strategizing. Continue…

The Calgary earthquake

By Paul Wells - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 7:04 AM - 44 Comments

Wild Rose Alliance wins Calgary-Glenmore provincial by-election; Ed Stelmach’s Conservative candidate comes third. What’s a Wild Rose? We thought you might ask.

Millionaire murder

By Nicholas Kohler and Rachel Mendleson - Thursday, September 3, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 11 Comments

Ryan Alexander Jenkins last showed up in Calgary in early June and found himself strangely alone. For several months he had been travelling back and forth between Calgary, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, where he had just completed filming a reality television program. “I think he came back without a lot of friends,” says an old drinking buddy, Chris Tutty, who, like Jenkins, is both a realtor and an aspiring actor. “It was almost like he was following me around to different places where I was at, casually running into me and buying me drinks.”

In fact, Jenkins wanted badly to talk. His relationship with 28-year-old Jasmine Fiore, the Las Vegas model he’d married in March, only days after meeting her, was in trouble. “He was saying that he was just being used and lied to and that everyone was making fun of him,” says Tutty. Tutty did not think much of Fiore, whom he’d met at a private party in the spring during one of her visits to Canada with Jenkins. And he had reason to be skeptical of his friend’s professed feelings for the woman he still called his wife: Jenkins was working the Living Room—a trendy Calgary hotspot—collecting telephone numbers from the buxom blonds he had always found so irresistible. “He was like a hawk that had seen his prey,” says Michelle Hull, one woman who met his criteria that night. “He said that he had an open relationship,” says Tutty. “I laughed at that one.” Continue…

You're doin' a heckuva job, Ablonczy

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 5:27 PM - 17 Comments

Tony Clement did an interview with Dave Rutherford on Calgary’s AM770 this morning and addressed the Divers-Cite situation. Here’s a transcript of that conversation.

Rutherford: This guy gets to hand out checks, even while doing serious business, he gets to hand out checks. Did one in Calgary yesterday. Even gets to hand out checks when he’s not there, one was handed out in Ottawa today on his behalf, 210,000 bucks to the Chamber Fest ’09. It’s all part of this marquee funding tourism events program that Tony Clement’s department is responsible for. Handing out money is a lot of fun, but Tony you’re getting some heat today from the gay community in Montreal because you didn’t give their arts festival any money, but you did give money to the Toronto gay pride parade. What’s the difference? Continue…

'Frankly, get lost'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, June 29, 2009 at 9:05 PM - 79 Comments

Michael Ignatieff talks to the Globe’s Gary Mason.

“Frankly,” he said, “I think it’s condescending to westerners that being a so-called intellectual is some big liability. People out here are as devoted to the life of the mind, and the life of culture, as anybody else in the country. So I don’t think that’s going to fly. It’s just stupid.”

He said his life has exposed him to different cultures and different experiences. He is the only current federal leader in Canada who has been to Iran. Besides, he said, there were other prime ministers, Lester Pearson among them, who spent a great deal of their lives outside Canada before they assumed power. “The alternative [Mr. Harper] is a politician formed and shaped in the radical conservative ideological world of Calgary and Calgary think tanks,” Mr. Ignatieff said. “To the degree this is about my patriotism and devotion to Canada, frankly, get lost.”

Elsewhere in that piece, the Alberta oil sands explained with a goose analogy.

Quebec vs. Windsor

By Paul Wells - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 12:30 PM - 11 Comments

At the headquarters of the Canadian Council on Learning in downtown Ottawa, researchers have an animated chart they use to demonstrate the relationship between learning and the job market.

It’s a standard graph: unemployment rate up the vertical axis, and the CCL’s Composite Learning Index (CLI) across the horizontal. The dots are Canadian cities. And the dots move to show how the cities evolved along both measures from 2006 to 2009.

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Canada's smartest cities

By Cathy Gulli - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 12:25 PM - 8 Comments

How dumb do you think Canadians are? The answer may come as an unpleasant surprise. A new report by the Canadian Council on Learning shows that, for the first time since the organization started measuring what it calls “lifelong learning” in communities across the country—which reflects everything from university completion and museum attendance to participation in sports and volunteerism—the national average score has actually dropped. Visit the art gallery? Forget it. Pick up an actual newspaper? No, thanks. Canadian cities, it appears, are getting dumb and dumber. And given that a city’s performance on this lifelong learning index seems to go hand in hand with economic success, some are wondering what this tumble may foreshadow. “Learning plays such an important role in the social and economic resilience of the country that I think we really need to pay attention to this,” says Paul Cappon, president and chief executive of the Ottawa-based non-profit corporation.

Until now, Canada’s score had been on the upswing, from 76 in 2007 to 77 last year. Today that number has dropped to 75, precariously close to the lowest level recorded, which was 73, in 2006. The figures are based on the annual Composite Learning Index, which gives every Canadian community (some 4,719 in all) a score according to how it supports lifelong learning. It’s broadly defined by four categories or “pillars” that were originally developed by UNESCO: learning to know (which encompasses access to schools and literacy levels), learning to live together (religious activity and the level of interaction between people from diverse cultures), learning to do (workplace and vocational training), and learning to be (engagement with the arts, sports, media). And taken together, the categories correspond with economic indicators like unemployment rates and incomes.

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Calgary's sinkholes multiply

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 5 Comments

Last week, a Calgary landlord strolling through her building’s parking lot discovered that the front tire of a pickup truck had inexplicably slipped beneath the asphalt and was dangling above a depression two metres deep. “The dirt just disappeared,” she told local radio. “They’re not even sure where all the earth went.” It was Calgary’s latest sinkhole.

Two weeks earlier, the city had evacuated a condo that officials feared was structurally compromised by another chasm that opened up under the earth; 13 residents found themselves homeless for days as a result. Earlier in the month a third sinkhole, associated with a financially troubled downtown condo project, had extended out onto city property to threaten a busy thoroughfare, forcing its closure for over a week.

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George W. on Laura Bush, Putin and getting the Hollywood treatment

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 9:18 PM - 0 Comments

A sampling from the former president’s appearance in Calgary today, which included a post-speech interview with former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna.

On the Hollywood treatment: McKenna wondered whether Bush had seen Will Ferrell’s You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush, a Broadway show that also aired on TV this month. No, said Bush. “I don’t pay attention to Hollywood.” Had he seen any of the films made about him (W., by Oliver Stone, likely uppermost in McKenna’s mind)? “No.”

On Vladimir Putin: “He’s a tough dude. I liked him.” He added: “He and I saw eye to eye on Iran.”

On Laura Bush: After arriving home in Texas, Bush said to his wife: “Baby, free at last.” Replied Laura: “You’re free to take out the trash. Just consider it your new domestic policy agenda.”

ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: George W. speaks in Calgary: Defends his decision to invade Iraq. Offers Obama help, if he wants it. And “They got the shoe cannon, eh“: While awaiting George W.’s arrival, two worlds collide on Calgary’s Stephen Avenue.

On his mother Barbara’s recent heart surgery: When his departure from the White House neared, Bush called his mother and told her he would soon be home—that it would be like old times. “She immediately checked herself into hospital for open-heart surgery,” said Bush. He maintains, however, that Barbara is a “tough old bird.” Barbara has told him she doesn’t like this expression. “Mom, it’s a sign of affection,” he told her. “Plus you are.” Considering his emotional reaction to his wife’s illness, George H.W. may be less so. “It is clear to me that he can’t live without her,” George W. said.

On the team of economists that have worked on the recession: Bush recalled how former treasury secretary Hank Paulson (“who I came to admire”) and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (“a good solid guy”) last year marched into the Roosevelt Room and declared: “Mr. President, the situation is dire … could be easily as great as the Great Depression.” Hmmm, thought Bush. “A heck of a way to end the presidency.” He added: “Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover … I didn’t like it.” Bush said he was reluctant to say I told you so, but: “I actually tried to regulate Fannie and Freddie,” he said, referring to the government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, because, he said, they were over-leveraged. Bush reminded the audience he’s no economist (he was a history major and likes to tell C students: “You too can be president”). But when Bernanke says–as he did on 60 Minutes last week–that he predicts growth in the fourth quarter, “I trust him,” says Bush. “I don’t know what he’s basing that on.” But: “I like him.”
McKenna later wondered whether Canada’s banks hadn’t got it right. “Seems like your banking system was a lot more sober than ours,” Bush replied. Drink, offered McKenna, “but not the whole bottle.” “Not the whole crate,” said Bush.

On former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi:
After Sept. 11, he said, then-PM Junichiro Koizumi called Bush in the Oval Office. “I’m with you, brother,” Bush recalled Koizumi saying. It is the kind of conversation, between a U.S. and Japanese leader, that 50 years ago would have been unthinkable, Bush said. “Koizumi, by the way, is a piece of work,” he added. Taking the Japanese PM to Graceland and seeing him sing Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog “was one of the great highlights of my presidency.”

On picking Calgary as his first stop on the speaking circuit:
McKenna noted that Tony Blair also picked Calgary as the site of his first Canadian speech after leaving government in 2007. “In Blair’s case he wanted to,” replied Bush. “In my case it was my only choice.”

"They got the shoe cannon, eh"

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 8:11 PM - 0 Comments

Above, in the windows overlooking Stephen Avenue, were the pinstriped class biding their time before heading in to hear former president George W. Bush give his first speech since leaving office. Below, on Stephen Avenue, was the motley crew of protestors, about 200 of them, assembled, placarded, some even hooded, to let Bush know he wasn’t wanted in Calgary.

One storey and the glass of the Calgary Telus Convention Centre separated the two groups, yet they were one in their pursuit of the juvenile. Continue…

George W. speaks in Calgary

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 6:55 PM - 12 Comments

In an at times passionate, occasionally combative and frequently funny speech before a packed Calgary audience, George W. Bush addressed the issues of his controversial presidency and the challenges facing the world in its aftermath for the first time since leaving office in January.

“This is my maiden voyage,” Bush said, after a standing ovation had
subsided, at the outset of his speech today at the Calgary Telus Convention Centre.

But the talk ultimately plumbed the rhetoric of his presidency, as Bush urged his listeners not to forget the “murderers” who struck the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001 and who could do so again. “We must keep them on the run and put them to justice wherever they light,” he said.

ALSO AT MACLEANS.CA: “They got the shoe cannon, eh”: While awaiting George W.’s arrival, two worlds collide on Calgary’s Stephen Avenue. And why Calgary was the first stop on his speaking tour.

The address, followed by a relaxed on-stage conversation with former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna, who briefly served as Canadian ambassador in Washington, D.C. during the Bush presidency, was wide-ranging and anecdote-filled but dwelt for the most part on the impacts on his presidency of terror and the 9/11 attacks.

Arguing that the world is now in the grips of “one of the great ideological battles of all time” between the forces of freedom on the one hand, and freedom-hating extremists on the other, Bush called upon his audience “to never forget.” He added: “I believe freedom is a gift from a universal god.”

He delivered the address before a $400-a-plate luncheon audience of business people who had braved the heckles of boisterous anti-Bush protestors outside, then the indignities of an intimate frisk by security guards inside, to hear the former president.

Though Bush did not refer to the protestors assembled outside with signs and a pile of shoes, a nod to the Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, last week sentenced to three years for the caper, Bush did note that some of  his decisions over eight years as president had damaged his initial popularity. “Popularity is nothing,” he said at one point. “It’s like the wind—it comes and goes.”

He recalled the day that began his “war on terror” with vivid detail. “I was deeply affected by Sept. 11,” he said, describing how he was enveloped on Air Force One by “a fog of war—no one was certain what was going on.” Bush recalled how he had located his wife, Laura, in D.C., and his parents, former president George H.W. Bush and his mother Barbara, in Minneapolis. “They grounded our plane,” she told him.

Defending his decision to invade Iraq in 2003, Bush argued the Middle East is today a safer region than it would have been had Saddam Hussein remained in power to compete with Iran for nuclear supremacy. “The Iraqi people are better off without Saddam Hussain in power, no ifs, ands or buts,” he said.

He urged the international community to squelch the threat of a nuclear Iran by pursuing tougher sanctions and by using the new democracy of Iraq to model a compelling alternative for Iran’s people. Bush also appealed to Canadians to support the Canadian government’s efforts in Afghanistan.

But Bush’s speech also dealt with the challenges of the current economic disaster and President Barack Obama’s efforts to diffuse them. “I want the president to succeed,” Bush said in a thinly veiled reference to conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, who has very publicly hoped for Obama’s policies to fail. “I love my country more than I love politics,” added Bush.

“He was not my first choice for president,” Bush said of Obama, “but when he won I thought it was good for America.” He described being moved when seeing crowds of African Americans on television weeping at Obama’s presidential victory.

Launching into comments focused on the current economic turmoil, Bush cautioned that they should not be seen as criticisms of Obama’s policies. “He deserves my silence and if he wants my help he can pick up the phone and call me,” said Bush. “I think it’s time to tap dance off the stage.” But in a broad hint that Obama’s policies might stifle what Bush characterized as the entrepreneurial spirit of the U.S., Bush cautioned that America should not “substitute government for the marketplace” and disparaged the notion of letting “a bunch of elites sit around and decide” how to spend money.

He warned equally of the dangers of a new protectionist strain in American politics, citing the $1.5 billion in daily trade between the U.S. and Canada. “I’m a free trader to the core,” he said.

Addressing the energy sector that is the heart of Calgary’s business community, Bush argued that technologies that stem the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere could only be developed in a time of prosperity—one that depends on the exploitation of hydrocarbon resources in the U.S. and Canada. “In order to be prosperous, we need to use all the resources at our disposal,” he said.

Though he acknowledged that “global warming,” as he put it, “could” pose a major threat to the planet, Bush ridiculed the notion of the U.S. leaving aside Canada’s oil and gas resources. “I want to thank Canada for being a reliable source of energy,” he said. Try having Venezuela as our major source, he suggested, a barb directed at Hugo Chávez–”and see how that goes.”

There was also levity. Bush recalled the 19th century duel between a former secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton—who died as a result—and Aaron Burr, the sitting vice president. “At least when my vice president shot somebody, it was by accident,” Bush said.

And he told a story he said he had recently related to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, about introducing Vladimir Putin to his Scottish Terrier, Barney. To Putin, the dog “looked like a Monopoly piece.” Later, in Russia, Putin asked Bush if he would like to meet his dog. “So out bounds this huge hound,” said Bush. Putin looked at Bush: “Faster, stronger and bigger than Barney,” Putin, then president of Russia, told Bush.

Quipped Harper when Bush finished the story: “At least he only showed you his dog.”

'He also had some important successes'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 5:01 PM - 17 Comments

Monte Solberg blogs George W. Bush’s speech in Calgary.

I’m at his speech in Calgary. He is well received, and gives an animated and funny speech. He praises Canada. Speaks passionately about democracy and freedom. Good for him.

Lots of anti-Bush nutters outside wearing T-shirts like “investigate 9/11″. Okay….that’s real credible.

Former Ambassador Frank McKenna is interviewing him. Frank just noting that W is credited with saving millions of lives because of his support for malaria eradication and the prevention of aids. Hmmmm the nutters outside didn’t talk about that.

Sure W made mistakes, but a little balance please. He also had some important successes. If you don’t acknowledge those please don’t expect people to take your criticisms seriously. 

Gearing up in Calgary for George W.

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 5:48 PM - 31 Comments

George W. Bush’s speech in Calgary on Tuesday will mark his first public appearance since Barack Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, a day in which some gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue to boo the outgoing president. In Calgary, where Bush is scheduled to speak about his legacy to a well-heeled crowd at the TELUS Convention Centre, he may receive a more sympathetic reception.

But then, who knows, considering that even Calgary has fallen upon hard times. Early on, event organizers with tinePublic Inc. expected about 1,500 people would attend, with tables of 10 selling for $4,000, singles for $400 (GST not included). The group has since become more reluctant to discuss numbers. Ticket holders have been sent detailed instructions requesting that they arrive at 10:30 a.m. for the noon-hour event, and cautioning them they will frisked. The RCMP won’t discuss the security measures in place but have warned Calgarians to expect traffic delays. Continue…

Budget '09: A view from the West

By Nicholas Köhler - Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at 8:33 PM - 2 Comments

Response to today’s federal budget was slow to seep out of Western Canada today, with premiers in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba still mum on what they thought of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s stimulus package. But one big city mayor, Calgary’s Dave Bronconnier, appeared pleasantly surprised with what the budget puts on the table. “There is much to like,” Bronconnier told a radio show this afternoon, part of a media blitz the mayor conducted in the wake of the budget’s release. “What I believe the government was trying to do, which is a short-term stimulus to deal with the creation of jobs. And when you look at it short-term, $4 billion for infrastructure funding, that is directed towards jobs.” Continue…

Calgary may label big oil ‘unethical’

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, December 15, 2008 at 9:00 AM - 6 Comments

Calgary probably owes more to the oil sands than any city in Canada. So it’s a little odd that it may become the first to proclaim investing in those projects unethical. That possibility emerged last week, when Calgary aldermen looked into adopting socially responsible investing, or SRI, an increasingly popular investing approach that eschews “unethical” practices such as child labour, weapons manufacturing and excessive emissions.

If Calgary adopts the SRI philosophy for its $2.5-billion portfolio, it will raise a tough question for a city that’s home to the headquarters of such energy giants as EnCana and Petro-Canada: do the oil sands, the fastest growing generator of greenhouse gases in Canada, constitute an ethical investment? Ald. Joe Ceci, for one, isn’t so sure. “We should be able to say to Calgarians that we’re investing in things that are contributing to a positive world,” he argues. “If environmental factors on some of the companies out there are less than sustainable, then we should not be investing in those areas.”

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UPDATED: Canadians rally around—and against—the Liberal-NDP coalition

By Nicholas Köhler and Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:49 PM - 45 Comments

Rallies both in support of or against the Liberal-NDP coalition drew Canadians in cities across the country today—thousands on Parliament Hill, perhaps a little less than that in spots like Yellowknife and Charlottetown. In Edmonton early this afternoon, about 200 people unhappy at the prospect of a new government huddled outside NDP MP Linda Duncan’s office, though Duncan, Alberta’s sole opposition MP, has yet to put up signage and telephones aren’t installed. Still, the mob managed a passable rendition of Oh Canada. Curiously, pro-coalition events in Alberta, the heart of Conservative country, attracted comparable numbers. And all this despite the prorogation granted Stephen Harper by Governor General Michaëlle Jean. The following are two scenes, both from pro-coalition rallies, in Western Canada.

Calgary: Despite temperatures that hovered around –10, making it the coldest night of the year so far, about 100 people gathered in support of the coalition outside the federal government’s Harry Hayes Building. Occasionally, a pickup truck buzzed by on the busy thoroughfare shouting down the speakers. But the crowd’s temperature rose now and then, as contrarians penetrated the mix of students and grandmothers holding signs and wearing T-shirts with such slogans as “Down with Harper” or “Support the Coalition.” Paul Caouette, a stocky 49-year-old contractor, darted in and out of the crowd denouncing “The Three Stooges” and accusing Stephane Dion, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe of mounting a coup. “You got the wrong address,” advised one wag. “Go to a country that’s really had a coup.” Caouette, butting heads with former Calgary West Liberal candidate Jennifer Pollock—she lost to controversial Conservative Rob Anders—recoiled at the idea that Layton and Dion would rely on the support of the Bloc: “They’re not part of Canada,” he said. “I can’t tell someone else how to run their home—unless I’m part of their family!”

Buttonholed by a radio reporter, Caouette began to speak at length. Just then, an elderly man with a great white beard and a tweed cap broke into the interview. “Why are you talking to this asshole,” he asked the reporter. A microphone suddenly in his face, the bearded man, his face red, told the reporter to remove the instrument. “I’m talking to you,” he said, thrusting a bony white finger at her nose. His critique was brief but not without merit—the crowd here, granola as it may have been, was hefty for this city, and pretty civil. Tomorrow morning, he told the reporter, he didn’t want to hear all the airtime go to a spoiler. Many here recognized the pro-coalition crowd as an exotic species. “Calgary is the centre of the Conservative Party in this country. It’s the stronghold for capital-C Conservatism. So it’s definitely a minority viewpoint to be against what the Conservative want here,” said organizer Grant Neufeld, who introduced himself to the crowd as a community organizer.

One thing was obvious, though—this Calgary minority, lonely supporters of Liberals, New Democrats, Greens and the labour movement, were frequently new to the city. “I think it’s false to say all Alberta is against the coalition,” said 25-year-old Katrine Beauregard, a political science student at the University of Calgary but originally from Montreal. “It’s an interesting time for being here now.” Also in the crowd, Martin Mesvadba, who described himself as a longtime waiter and who was born in Czechoslovakia, could remember Prague during the Warsaw Pact invasion, had been in Montreal in 1970 when the October Crisis prompted Pierre Trudeau to call in the army, then watched his mother country split in two in 1993. “An anti-Conservative groundswell in Calgary is a little rich,” he said, but added: “You need to defend democracy.

Vancouver: “Yes, we can,” shouted the 1,200 to 1,500-strong crowd packed into Canada Place, in Vancouver’s downtown harbourfront. It was a predominantly NDP crowd—a “teamster event,” chuckled a well-known federal Liberal in attendance. Also spotted: Three city councillors from Vancouver’s newly-elected council, David Eby, the widely-known, new Executive Director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, U.B.C. student union president Michael Duncan—who donned Kanye West “shutter” shades to the night-time rally—plus a handful of high-ranking local Greens. Marc Emery, Canada’s “Prince of Pot,” was there too—admittedly, for selfish reasons: “The Bloc, the NDP and the Liberals support canceling my extradition to the U.S.,” said Emery, who’s been indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on conspiracy to distribute marijuana seeds into the U.S. “The Conservatives want me out.”

Not everyone had a personal stake, though. “I’m here to celebrate democracy,” said Taylor Verall, a 14-year-old Rockridge High School student, who carried a hand-made poster that read: “36 per cent is not a democracy.” Verall can’t vote, of course, but considers himself an independent and was incensed that Parliament had been suspended. “We need the country pulling in one direction,” rally organizer, B.C. Federation of Labour president Jim Sinclair, told Maclean’s. “Heading into a recession, a depression, we don’t need divisions,” said Sinclair.

There was one disruption: when Herb Dhaliwal, a Chretien-era cabinet minister, took the podium, three eggs were thrown toward the stage. All whizzed harmlessly past the former fisheries minister, and Dhaliwal carried on, seeming oblivious to the near-miss while a crowd of supporters formed a protective wall in front of him.