I’m stranded in San Fransico, sitting on standby for a flight home after narrowly missing my flight yesterday evening due to a big accident on the Golden Gate bridge. So sitting the lounge, guiltily hoping every two hours that someone has some minor misfortune or change of plans that will open up one seat on a day when every flight home is full. Found a poem by Denise Levertov at the excellent Panhala: A Gift Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the …
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I’ve been in Portland Oregon this week working with Native community radio stations from across the United States on an exciting capacity development project. While here I’ve been enjoying the city. Portland, Seattle and Vancouver really are sister cities. We share the same climate, the same eco-systems and concerns, the same look and feel. The histories of the three cities are intertwined by the people that have lived on this coast since the cities were founded. The Columbia is the furthest south outlet of Canadian freshwater on the west coast, so in many ways, what …
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I am not talking about the bailout here. I am talking about a serious rescue. Abousifian Abdelrazik is a Canadian who has found himself in a big pickle. He returned to his birthplace in Sudan in 2003 to visit is ailing mother. While there, the CSIS, our spy agency, apparently had him arrested. He was later allegedly interrogated by CSIS, the FBI and Sudanese intelligence officials about ties to Osama bin Laden. He was in and out of detention for years in Sudanese jails, where he alleges he was also tortured. In the meantime, …
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A cold day to be on the outskirts of a cold city in a cold part of the world. When you travel midweek into Canada’s hinterlands and northern small cities, you share a plane with mostly hard and tired men who work for government or various companies doing business in the far flung nether regions of this nation. Whether it’s travel to Prince George, Thunder Bay, Prince Albert or Yellowknife, it seems like the same guys are on the flight – steak eating, overworked, tired, introverted, hard men. Once in a while, if they are coming home …
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For the second time in two weeks, I’m back in Ottawa, one of my former residences, and a part of Canada that I love very much. I arrived yesterday afternoon and spent the evening walking around my old haunts on Elgin Street, going to see Milk and then finishing with a late dinner at The Manx Pub, a place located four doors down from the first place Caitlin and I lived after we moved to Ottawa in 1991. The Manx opened three weeks after we got there and it’s still going strong. Today a day of teaching hosting, …