Life's twists

Funny how life works. Forty years ago, I was a cub reporter with the Montreal Gazette. Gord Routley wanted to become a professional firefighter. We'd run into one another all the time, usually in the company of Sidney Margles, Rick Leckner, Ron Armstrong and a gang of hard-boiled reporters and photogs who'd chase firetrucks and police cars back when newsgathering was a cutthroat trade.
We all had scanners in our vehicles and another at home to listen in on police and fire calls. We knew the codes by heart and when we heard a big one, we'd converge like moths. Our idea of a hot date was a general-alarm blaze with possible propagation.
Well, Gord became a fire protection engineer. He's been the fire chief in Shreveport, Louisiana, assistant to the fire chief in Phoenix and fire department safety officer in Prince George's County, Maryland. He has conducted more than 30 firefighter fatality investigations, including the June 18, 2007 fire at the Sofa Super Store in Charleston.
J. Gordon Routley led the team investigating the chain of mistakes and failures that led to the deaths of nine firefighters in that fire. Google that report. Before they start on what went wrong, they tell us everything we need to know about the nine dead men - their wives, their kids, their favourite hobbies, football teams. That says everything I need to know about Gord's ability to put people first.
Gord's 60 now, grey-haired like me, retired, but still working at the career he loves - making firefighting safer for its practitioners. He's technical advisor to the Montreal Fire Department, where my son is a First Responder. Gord also works with Canada's National Fallen Firefighters Foundation on the Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives Project and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Safety, Health and Survival Section of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.
Gord knows Hudson. He was here for James Ratcliffe's civic funeral. He knows Peter Milot, James Campbell and the Hudson Volunteer Fire Department. Like many of us, he wishes it hadn't come to where it is, but it's his mandate to chart a course for the short, medium and long term. If there's one man on this earth who I trust to help the Town of Hudson make the right decisions, it's Gordon Routley.
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In last week's Itch, Peter Ratcliffe floated the suggestion of building a municipal complex in Benson Park.
Besides housing the fire department, this new municipal services complex would become the town's technical, planning and administrative headquarters. Public works and their storage bins would be moved next to the snow dump and the sewage treatment plant on Wharf.
Peter's rationale: Nothing we add onto the current structures is going to satisfy Hudson's long-term needs, so let's bite the bullet and do what will eventually have to be done now.
I took the week to think it through. Dawn found me walking around the firehall and public works looking at how much space there is there now that the Halcro Cottage has been moved west (and looking damn good perched next to 541 Main).
Peter's right. That's far too valuable a site for gravel bins and machinery bays. It would make a good park, or it could be sold for a mix of attractive residential and retail, as you'll find in many towns. I don't agree with selling McNaughten Hall (Hudson's town hall), but I agree with the mayor it should be renovated. If we're to have a Hudson Museum and tourist office, that's the place for it. Then sell or rent Halcro and 541 Main.
Once construction begins on the new medical centre, things will happen fast in Hudson. Several buildings will find new uses. We can expect one, maybe two new condo/townhouse developments downtown. Good. If I was mayor, I'd be pushing for a change to the master plan allowing three-storey buildings in the downtown core, more justification for an aerial ladder and more people sharing the cost of our new sewer system.
The mayor has his own good ideas. He'd put a 60-foot addition onto the existing firehall, together with a second storey of subsidized housing for firefighters and First Responders.
All this to say if we're planning Hudson's future, why not start with a blank slate? Think way outside the box. Let's plan for the future, not try to recreate or fix the past.

Downhill English

Warning: The following contains intentional errors. Read at your own risk.
Back to school season. I'm not an English teacher or an uptight elitist, but I am one of those fussy middle-aged people who cringe when I see bright young adults writing stupider by using simple words badly. There's rampant confusion between there, they're and their. Same for your and you're. Unless your an engineer, from whom I simply have come to expect bad spelling and worse grammar, reading a job application full of such errors drops an applicant's perceived intelligence. Especially since, as I right this column with intentional random errors has my spelling and grammar checker already nagging me to stop abusing my language, on most but not all infractions.
I don't know if its true oar knot, but I've been told we shouldn't blame the kids because we're well into the more efficient modern age of teaching whole language, not the old school spelling and grammar by memorization. Would it be cruelly unfair to expect today's positively reinforced young adult to suck it up and understand that you're is a contraction of you are with the apostrophe replacing the space and the letter a? When texting, clicking away behind me at the movies or while driving, the lazy modern stupidism of ur is not fraught with confusion. Ur fits either use without thinking and if you Tweet it's (it is) efficient and consumes less of 140 allowed characters to express your deepest shallow thought of this brief moment.
In many societies the way one uses language clearly identifies both their social stratum and education level. While Conrad Black exudes pompous with conviction, Harvard graduate Barack Obama is doing his part to make spoken English more efficient and approachable as he verbally drops his trailing g's. I'm sure his written text says working, but his spoken Chicago comfortable English of the average people voices the blue collar workin. Bill Clinton is a great orator because he's brilliant, but also because his speeches used well crafted simple small words like "I did not have" strung together to explain incomprehensible issues and falsely deny obvious oral transgressions in solid believable verbiage. The average guy clearly understood Clinton's massage nine times out of ten and even Clinton's worst enemies failed to actually impeach him for hitting that in the Oval office.
Good English can make some people seem far more knowledgeable and trustworthy than they actually are. That's marketing, you rarely see bad English in ads for expensive things. The outgoing CEO of BP might just have well gone to Louisiana in overalls and have said "we don't got no plan" because they really fooled us into overconfidence with Seville Row tailoring and cultured educated English saying that they did in fact have a plan to fix the oil leak mess. Didn't matter much in the end cuz they din't have much of a plan. Don't matter to him neither, he's millions richer and off running the Siberian operation where no one needs to understand or believe him ever again.
I'm sounding like a white Bill Cosby hounding his race to stop dumbing themselves down by using ghetto and rapper English, I hope our next generation smartens up and takes written English more seriously. It is (if you do not know then simply avoid using contractions) even more critical here, where our latest Quebec Liberal Education Minister doesn't speak English well enough to answer questions in the lower language of an uncomfortably bilingual Quebec nation.
Face it, our government doesn't care if your child speaks and rights correct English. When did you last hear of a Quebec student failing High School because of English? Math oui, French oui, English non. English is an inconvenient educational afterthought here, but speaking and writing proper English is a vital part of global mobility and our children's future. Good English will make them seem as smart as they really are, no matter where they go in life, bad English might close competitive doors.
Our teachers do their best, but time, curriculum focus and staff are budget limited. It's left up to parents to ensure that their children read and write to the highest level they aspire to. I'm sure we've even got enough older people in town with excellent, memorized for life, English writing skills and some free time who might be interested in the survival of their language. Perhaps some could offer drop in volunteer spelling and grammar review sessions for school papers. That kind of inter-generational face to face help could be a great way to bridge the age divide and perhaps help save our good old English from dilution, regression and downhill slide in the Internet age. For my part; I usually politely correct and explain rather than simply ignore errors I hear and read.

Road safety: a shared responsibility

Last summer, my work brought me briefly to the busy downtown intersection of de Maisonneuve Boulevard and Mackay Street. Major road construction made street crossing precarious. I developed a habit of looking apprehensively in all directions repeatedly, ready to make a flying leap backwards if need be. My fear wasn't of oncoming motor traffic - no, it was of those crazed cyclists on the de Maisonneuve bike path.
So when the news story got out in August, 2009 of a woman injured by a hit-and-run cyclist on Mount-Royal, it came as absolutely no surprise.
Lé na Chabot was walking on a trail on Mount-Royal when she was hit from behind by a cyclist. She was left with cracked ribs, bruises and cuts. The cyclist was wearing an iPod when he struck Chabot. He refused to give Chabot his name and was gone in minutes, leaving Chabot to fend for herself. Now, if that isn't criminal, I don't know what is.
Yet police wouldn't help Chabot. Cyclist collisions and hit-and-runs are not covered by the Criminal or Highway Code. And even if that weren't the case, police have stated (off the record) that tracking down offending cyclists would be too difficult and time-consuming.
So much for justice. The problem stems from a legal code in desperate need of revision and a feckless police force. In a recently released SPVM pamphlet titled the "Declaration of Services to Citizens", one of the stated principles is that "Priority is given to any citizen in physical danger." This amounts to nothing more than slick PR spiel - a statement of real intent would read "priority is given to whatever is easy and convenient for us." I'm sure off-islanders are often faced with the same issues.
This is not the first or last instance of harm done by a cyclist. In 1990, CBC's Joan Donaldson was struck by a cyclist right outside the CBC building in Montreal. Donaldson suffered long-term brain damage as a result, remaining a quadriplegic until her death in 2006. Just this past June, a downtown cyclist cut in front of a school bus full of children. The bus driver slammed into a parked car, and then crashed into an apartment building on Doctor Penfield Avenue. All children on board were unharmed but shaken. I can just picture the moron cyclist merrily speeding away, completely oblivious to the harm and chaos he had created (or perhaps not).
Don't get me wrong; I was truly upset to hear of the Rougemont cyclists who were killed by a motorist in May. Whenever I hear of a cyclist getting harmed in traffic, it bothers me. But after such incidents, it irks me to be told that we need to take steps to create a bicycle-centred society, where we'd all be catering to the whims of cyclists. That makes no sense. Cyclists are capable of doing great harm and worse yet, they get away with it. Why give cyclists more leeway when the status quo already has them facing zero consequences for any of their actions?
My experience last summer of dodging cyclists, highlighted by the Lé na Chabot story, had me realizing that while there are cyclists who follow road rules and are courteous of others, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Most cyclists on the de Maisonneuve bike path seemed to have their actions ruled by a "whether-I feel-like-it-or-not" mentality rather than any respect for the law or their fellow human beings. And this doesn't apply only to cyclists in that area.
Once last summer, I drove down a short, dead-end street in the Villeray district. An older cyclist was riding up the street against traffic, going diagonally while passing in front of me. He looked at me as though I were completely insane. I clearly had the right of way; he didn't. The other day near my Pierrefonds home, I stopped at a stop sign. At the intersection to my left, a cyclist went right through his stop sign, without slowing down or looking around. These are more examples of how cyclists are emboldened in the knowledge that they can do whatever they want and get away with it.
All of us - motorists, cyclists and pedestrians - have a shared responsibility to ensure that our roads are safe. But as long as the current status quo remains in place, cyclists will never have the opportunity to live up to this responsibility.

Health care: Charest's lost leadership legitimacy

The recession has spurred unprecedented political and economic upheaval, but one overlooked transformation is underway here, in the nation of Quebec. Universal healthcare is facing further erosion, not due to the inevitable stresses of an aging population, but because of regressive policies introduced by the provincial Liberals under Premier Jean Charest.
Charest was never a particularly popular leader, with approval ratings generally below the 50 percent margin. But a host of scandals and the most recent Liberal budget has sent the party and leadership into a tailspin. Yet of all the regressive elements contained in the budget, the most unpopular is a recently approved $200 fee levy for health care users.
Bill 100 was passed on June 11 during a surprise "extraordinary session" called by Charest just prior to the National Assembly's summer break. Sifting through the largely regressive elements contained in the Bill is a new "health contribution" beginning at $25 per individual in 2010 and rising to $200 by 2012.
These yearly payments of $200 will be funneled into a Fund to Finance Health and Social Service Institutions, which will aid in the deployment of family doctors, training and development for nursing and increased funding to primary care.
Charest defended the $200 levy with a common political tactic: blaming the previous government. Charest charged former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard's goal of balancing Quebec's budget in 1996 was at the cost of "destroying the health care system." Vaudreuil and Soulanges Liberal MNAs Lucie Charlebois and Yvon Marcoux likewise never miss an opportunity to attack the PQ policies of the 1990s.
Attempts to balance the budget will be different this time around, Charest insists. But Bill 100 confirms the Liberal budget is equally, if not more, regressive than anything the PQ introduced in the 1990s.
The PQ measures were an attempt at "cost containment" during a period of significant financial volatility. Quebec was suffering from an acute recession coupled with aggressive federal inflation rate targeting that crippled the economy. And while these containment measures were hawkish, the negative effects were felt by all.
Compare this with the "cost shifting" measures most recently introduced by the Charest Liberals. Cost shifting essentially entails moving "the costs from the healthy and wealthy to the unhealthy and unwealthy," to use the words of a leading Canadian doctor, Robert G. Evans.
Quebec has thus moved from a regressive "cost containment" strategy of austerity under the PQ to an oppressive "cost shifting" strategy imposed by the Liberals following the most recent financial crisis. To steal a phrase from Charest, "that's not my view of Quebec."
And some important distinctions between the 1990s and today must be drawn. The recession of the '90s had a significant impact on Quebec, with unemployment rates rising to 11.2 percent in 1992. This compares with today's unemployment rate of 7.9 percent, slightly below the national average. The debt to GDP ratio also compares favourably this time around.
What makes this budget distinct from anything in the 1990s is that the financial burden will be placed upon Quebec's lower and middle classes rather than the population at large.
Moreover, this fee levy and additional austerity measures are being implemented despite a period of prolonged economic growth throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Instead of utilizing this growth to enforce the Canadian Health Act at the provincial level, Charest introduced significant reductions in corporate income taxation.
It is very clear who Bill 100 affects. The Liberals, with support from elements of the PQ, appear confident that the population simply does not care. But if there is one thing that Canada is proud of, it is the country's embrace of universal social programs like education and health care. All families benefit from these systems and our society is better off for it.
Ultimately, then, Bill 100 presents voters with a moral issue. The Bill and the Charest Liberals that introduced it are tearing at Quebec's social fabric on unjustifiable grounds. The population must ask itself the extent to which it is willing to revive the widely-embraced goal universal health care.
But judging by 77 percent opposition levels to Charest and the provincial budget, citizens continue to make clear they are not sheepish about social programs. The public is beginning to show its teeth, and the next wolf may at Charest's door. There are clear signs of public non-confidence in Charest and his capacities to steer Quebec through the coming decade of austerity.
Matthew Brett is former reporter and acting editor of the Hudson/St. Lazare Gazette, entering his second year of MA studies in political science at Concordia University.

First day

It's too early to report exactly how well the little man's first day at kindergarten is going; I won't see him before I have to file my article. He is showing signs of nerves. Some bad dreams, a lot more regressive behaviour than usual, and asking to be hugged, kissed and cuddled more.
He was very insistent that Carolina is going to stay with him this morning ­ which is part of the induction process, thankfully ­ but I wonder how he's going to react on Thursday, his first 'alone at big school' day?
I can remember the trauma of being left by my mum at 'big' school for the first time. In fact, I can still remember the separation anxiety I felt at my first preschool, when I realised that my Nana had dropped me off and left me and would not be back to pick me up until after lunch. The preschool was called Friarswood, about five minutes' drive from my Nana's house; it was run by nuns.
The first day I was left alone, I cried my eyes out. I was lifted up by a nun and carried inside. There was a little chapel there, where balls of wax would be placed under the stained glass windows to soften in the sun, so the kids could mould them into shapes. This was a major treat to me ­ when the kind lady handed me some wax and a little glass of milk, I sat down, sniffling, and began playing with the wax.
The light made pretty patterns through the stained glass; colours seemed to dance on the table top because branches were nodding through the sunlight outside. It was a moment of peace after the trauma. There was a quiet room next to the chapel where we would be laid on padded benches to rest. After I calmed down, they took me there. I fell asleep and didn't wake up until lunchtime, and spent the rest of my time watching the road for Nana's car.
I hope Jasper finds his moment of calm after the storm of emotions he'll experience this week. With any luck, he'll make a friend on day one and forget all his troubles: JD's really good at getting on with new kids. If your little boy or girl is going to big school for the first time this week, I wish you an easy transition from child to little scholar. Sleep well.
Connect with me online! email: jaspersdad@live.ca internet: http://www.python-printable-games.com