Taking me, apparently, for an authority and one who would confirm his worst suspicions, he said to me, “Our country is going down, isn’t it?” I wasn’t sure what he meant. He went on, “The French are taking over. You know, a hundred years ago, we didn’t have bilingual signs. People spoke whatever language they wanted and got along fine.” More accurately, a hundred years ago we didn’t have paved roads and cars – there really weren’t any signs beyond the most rudimentary: “Kingston: That way” or whatever. But he was technically correct – whatever signs there were, were most likely in English.  Hoping that the conversation was now over, I smiled and nodded.

Unfortunately, the conversation was not yet over. “You can’t get a job in the government without bilingualism. You have to be French.” I calmly said, “That isn’t the case.” He replied, somewhat agitated, “That isn’t what they tell me.” I’m not sure who this ‘they’ was. But, he had the answer, “They [he meant the French, this time] run Ontario from Ottawa, you know, if you’re English you can’t get a job. Just go to Hull [he likely meant a complex like Place des Portages].” I replied, again, “This is not the case. You have been misinformed.” He said, quite insistently, “They are taking over the country.”

At this point it was clear that he wasn’t going to let the conversation go and I really wanted to finish that chapter from Latour’s book before the work was done. (I have to return the book next week.) So I told him that I didn’t want to speak to him because I found him offensive. He said, “Offensive? You find me offensive.” I said, “Yes. I would prefer not to speak to you.” He answered, “I don’t care about your brother in law.” I said, again, “Please stop talking to me.”

But he had me. Boy did he ever! He had the trump card. To no one in particular he more or less yelled, “I pay taxes! I pay taxes! And a lot of them! I pay taxes.” 

Awhile later he shuffled out trying to stare me down.

Meanwhile, the southern hemisphere prepares for spring.

(2) Feeling much better, on an adventure yesterday, we stumbled upon an ancient barn. Not especially “stumbled” upon as it was an attraction of sorts at a provincial park, but I wasn’t aware of its existence. We, that is, Blythe and I, parked the car and got out to look at it. As always, we forgot to bring the dogs’ leashes with us on our adventure, so we planned on being quick and leaving the dogs in the car. Mickey, however, had other ideas and managed to get out of the car before we closed the door, so, apparently, the dogs came with us. All that was left of the barn was its foundation, built entirely out of fieldstone. The extent walls were taller than me and the barn itself was quite sizeable — at least three times as large as the log house also on the site. While the construction itself was quite impressive (I highly doubt, for instance, that mini-mansions in the suburbs built by ‘professional’ building companies will still be standing, unlike the amature construction of the barn built with crude tools and materials a hundred and seventy years ago), I’ve always found the clearing of the fields far more impressive. In a sense, I can imagine the laborious construction of the barn and I can imagine the construction of the house, but I can’t imagine the clearing of the fields. How the hell do you, alone or with one or two sons and maybe a horse, clear ten or twenty acres of dense forest, turn the soil, a grow a crop? This feeling is even further amplified driving through Beckwith township, especially the ninth line, were the fields easily approach dimensions of kilometers by kilometers with the house and barns set back about nine hundred meters from the road. Unbelievable.

(3) My all but complete first comprehensive (I’m doing the final revisions this weekend) was judged, by one person, as “very well written” and, by another, as “boring and academic”. A third person suggests that my style resembles the style of the person who gave the positive evaluation and that the person giving the negative evaluation is just strange. I’m not sure what this third opinion means. More substantively, I was criticised for not making reference — at least overtly — to Hannah Arendt. Likely a fair criticism in a paper on “the social and the political”. Moving along, it occurs to me in retrospect that Schmitt has very little to say about “the social”.

Two winters ago, Mickey was outside for a pee at the cottage and a coyote happened to walk into the yard. They stood about five meters apart staring at one another, neither making a move. We happened to look out the window and saw Mickey staring down another dog, so we went outside to make sure Mickey didn’t cause any problems. (He likes to be the dominant dog.) At this point we realized it was a coyote and not a dog: we knew all the dogs in the area and it wasn’t one of them. Plus, it looked like a coyote and not a dog.About a year ago, I began hearing ‘reports’ (gossip, really) of an increase in population in the coyotes in the region. They had been known to pass through the area in the winter when most of the cottagers were in Ottawa or Toronto. They had been spotted along Old Perth Road near Frontenac Provincial Park (in Frontenac County) and I had seen one near Crosby (in Leeds County). But, best of all, in early last summer through the fall we occasionally saw an adult coyote and a puppy along Brighton-Houghton Bay Road (just below the intersection with Old Kingston Road), also in Leeds County. One day while we were driving along Briton-Houghton Bay Road, we happened upon the coyote and the pup; the pup, being silly, decided to flee the car by running along side the car down the road. Eventually the puppy turned off into the woods. Occasionally, about on a weekly basis, we’d see the coyote and pup along the road. Since the winter started, however, we have not seen the coyote or the pup. Today we were driving down the road and, just below the Moonlight Bay Campground, we came upon the coyote standing on the road. The coyote mosied on into the brush, back a hundred meters from the road, and looked at us with its ears up. After awhile the coyote turned around and walked off down a pathway. It wasn’t there when we returned about a half hour later, however, we saw two deer — a buck and a doe — on the way back.

Unfortunately, people have a tendency to dislike wolves and, because it is difficult to distinguish a wolf from a coyote (and, indeed, hybrids), coyotes get put into that poor group of oppressed animals. For instance, the Canadian Parks and Wildlife Society tells the story of one radio-collared wolf (part of the Algonquin wolf population under intensive study) who travelled from Algonquin Park to Gatineau Park, just north of Ottawa, and then back to Algonquin Park, where his head was found nailed to a telephone pole near Round Lake. (Readers will note that the wolf’s journey took him across the Ottawa River twice — not a small feat.) Consequently, coyotes are threatened by the same dangers as wolves; viz., assholes. These assholes are a combination of farmers who kill them as a nuissance and hunters who kill them to ‘hone their skills‘ during ‘fun, off-season hunting‘ (graphic images).For more information on the Eastern Coyote, see canids.org and CPAWS. Red Wolves [pdf] are endangered in Canada and the United States. For more on the efforts to save and protect the Algonquin Wolf, see algonquinwolves.ca.

I asked the woodcutter, "How much am I likely to need?  I’ve never bought wood before."  He tells me about half cords and face cords.  How long and how high they are.  He tells me about the different types of wood and when he expects to get other types.  He makes it clear he isn’t interested in delivering the wood even though his barn is about a kilometer and a half down the road.  I can likely fit a full cord in my car anyway.

I asked the woodcutter again, "Yes, but how much do I need?"  He still hadn’t answered that one.  Finally he answered, "Depends how much wood you burn."

Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington
Riding Profile
Map
Results (The only significant result being that Scott Reid received more votes than all the other candidates combined.  But this is hardly surprising: a rotten pumpkin leftover from Hallowe’en could have won the riding if it ran for the Conservative Party.  I don’t mean to denigrate pumpkins, of course!)

Candidates
Jerry Ackerman, Canadian Action Party
Party
Phone: 613-375-8256

Helen Forsey, NDP
Riding Association
Party
Phone: 613-479-2453

Mike Nickerson, Green Party
Personal
Party

Ernest Rathwell, Esq., Marijuana Party
Personal
Party

Scott Reid, Reform Party (incumbent)
Personal
Riding Association
Party

Geoffrey ("Geoff") Turner, Liberal
Riding
Party
Phone: 613-302-8085

General
Elections Canada: The 39th General Election
Canada Votes 2006 (CBC)
Decision 2006 (Globe and Mail)
Election 2006: Christmas Election (Toronto Star)
Canada Votes (Ottawa Sun)
Decision Canada (Canada.com)

Whose leaf is it anyway?
Nov. 13, 2005. 01:28 PM
KENNETH KIDD
FEATURE WRITER

Irina had just moved into her Scarborough townhouse when all those tornado-fuelled winds hit in August. Her home survived just fine, as did the maple tree on her front lawn. There was, however, one problem, insignificant to her but apparently monstrous to others: A lot of the leaves from her tree ended up in a small drift by her neighbour’s door.

The next thing she knew, said neighbour was stuffing those leaves into plastic bags — and then carting the bags over to Irina’s front lawn.

“It was funny to see that,” says Irina, who didn’t want her last name used, lest it incite any neighbourhood hostilities. “People, they don’t think, I guess. It’s leaves! What can I do, it’s nature.”

And no, she doesn’t mind the cleanup — “It’s not a big job, not a big deal” — but she is wondering what the neighbours might get up to next, what with the big autumnal shed now in full swing.
Leaves, leaves and more leaves, all dancing in the breeze until they fall, exhausted, onto a lawn near you. Or, depending on your (regrettable) point of view, heaps of #*%+ cluttering up the joint.
Does anything divide the many from the few — or show our true nature — quite as deeply as the annual leaf-raking chore?

Just about every neighbourhood has someone who seems to catch every stray leaf before it hits their lawn, a testament to the clenched personality for which old Toronto was long notorious.

These people are not true gardeners, of course, or at least not ones with a well-developed organic sense. The “horty” set mostly adores the leaves of fall, and members of that tribe are pretty easy to spot this time of year. They’re the ones carefully piling leaves on their flowerbeds as winter mulch, running the lawn mower over those left on the grass and composting the rest.

“I love the colours,” says Gail Malcolm, a professional gardener tending a much-forested lot in the Kingsway. “We’re dealing with the leaves every day and taking out the annuals.”

She holds out a nearly pristine bunch of pink roses she has clipped from one bed. “The last roses of summer,” she smiles.

Some, like renowned Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, can even wax mystical about death, decay, and the endless circle of falling leaves feeding the next generation of growth. As he writes in one of his books: “Acceptance of death is an important part of developing a relationship in the garden, and decaying leaves have a role, and even sometimes a beauty of their own.”

All of which may seem a bit much as you schlep your 20th kraft paper bag of leaves to the curb sometime later today, which is what most people end up doing.

But if you think you have a lot of leaves, consider the metropolis at large. “Last week we collected 4,000 tonnes, so it’s starting,” says Steve Whitter, director of transfer, processing and disposal services at the City of Toronto.

The next few weeks, in fact, will see the city collect more than one-third of all the yard waste it collects in an entire year, peaking at somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 tonnes a week.

But it depends on the weather. Rain followed by winds — the weather we had last week — is usually a good recipe for big piles of leaves, although they won’t make it to the curb if the weather stays crummy.

“It has to be followed by a couple of decent days so people can clean them up,” says Whitter. “If it’s a nice weekend, then we’ll see bags and bags and bags of them at the curb.”

Which is where a logistical stutter step comes in. A single dump truck can carry only 8 to 10 tonnes of leaves, wet ones accounting for the heavier loads. So the leaves end up getting transferred to much bigger vehicles that can cart anywhere from 25 to 30 tonnes out to one of four composting sites around the province. “We took 30 loads out yesterday,” Whitter was saying on a recent morning. “That will grow, of course.”

And no more so than at George White’s composting operation near Arthur, Ont., about an hour and half northwest of Toronto, which is where a lot of the city’s leaves come to die. There are so many giant piles of steaming compost here — hitting temperatures of nearly 80 degrees Celsius in their middles — that the one-time dairy farm now looks like the collection of ash heaps in The Great Gatsby.

But the leaves by themselves are a little tricky to break down. Unlike general yard waste, which contains enough green stuff (i.e. nitrogen) to speed up decomposition, leaves are mostly carbon.
“It takes a good 12 months to break down,” says White, wheeling his SUV past a pile of nearly finished compost that stands 15 metres tall and covers two acres.

By the end of this month, the big transfer trucks from the city will have made close to 1,000 visits to his farm, but it’s not always just leaves that they deliver. There are, well, surprises in some of those kraft paper bags.

“We get barbecues, kids’ toys,” says White. “One time we got a cylinder head from a car.”
Fortunately for White, none of those items seems to be among the stack of leaves Ursula Yanchak has going in the front yard of her home in High Park.

“Having a corner lot is not the most ideal,” she says, surveying the three mature maples in her yard and the many neighbouring ones. “Then there’s the wind, and we’ve got a fence. It’s kind of a catchall — they’re from everybody.

“You want to talk about sweat?” she asks. Oh, and spider bites.

Still, it’s one of her favourite chores. “I really love it, the physicality of it.” The occasional neighbour stops by for a chat, and there’s always her bounding puppy, Arthur, for constant company.

Yanchak has nothing but contempt for those who bemoan the fall cleanup, especially since the trees have for months given people oxygen, shade and now colour. “Our city is beautiful because of the trees,” she says. “It’s just part of the whole living experience.”

Naturally, this line of thinking has Irina wondering how her new neighbours will react when the following season hits — the one with that other substance not given to a tidy regimen.
“Next it’s going to snow,” she says. “Then we’ll see what happens.”

[From the Toronto Star]

It’s different for people who live on tree lined streets, such as mine. The two houses north of me, as with my house, my neighbour to the south, and the next two houses after that all have large maples on their front lawns. (My neighbour to the north also has an ancient maple — possibly one of the tallest in town — in the southwest corner of his backyard.) The wind, lately, has been blowing down the street and, along with passing traffic, the drift of leaves has largely been from north to south in a cummulative way: I have leaves from the maples of the houses north of me.

I know they aren’t my leaves because my tree (as my neighbour to the south) has not turned yet. The only leaves that aren’t green are brown, because they are on dead branches. (Maples lose a lot of branches in storms.) Very few leaves have fallen from my tree. On Saturday I raked my lawn. I didn’t rake any of my leaves. I raked someone else’s leaves that were on my lawn.

This, in a sense, is a core problem of liberal property regimes and the correlative security that goes along with that: everyone is free to have trees on their lawn, but when the trees turn and leaves fall, they are not responsible for the leaves. Indeed, unless there are bylaws stipulating that leaves must be cleaned up, the tree-owner is under no obligation to clean up their leaves. The result is that everyone has to deal with the freedom of one person, which is secured by their property rights.

They are only responsible insofar as their property extends. (This is why cars are such a big problem — and it isn’t the fuel. In a sense, when the NRA wants to introduce legislation in Florida that will make cars an extension of the household, they are only putting into words what is already there. Their point, however, isn’t consistenty in liberal property law, but rather to allow gun-owners to keep guns in their cars — they’re already allowed to keep them in their home and, if the car is an extension of the home, then they should be allowed to keep them there too. The big problem for the NRA is that employers have the right to refuse guns on their property: the issue turns on the relation between the parking lot and the car. Comparable, no doubt, to condominium law.) Anyway, digression.

While raking leaves on Saturday, I found myself to be quite pissed off. I looked at my neighbours’ lawn and it was covered a foot deep in leaves. They were everywhere: up the driveway, on the porch, on the lawn, on the sidewalk, and on the road. Ankle deep throughout. They were the source of my problem. I began to rake and, with every gust of wind, my lawn was recovered with leaves. Their leaves on my lawn.

Soon enough, the daughter came out armed with tight jeans, an inappropriate shirt, a telephone and a rake. She pretended to rake as she talked on the phone. I finished raking and bagging well before she did. I broke a sweat and got a huge blister — that subsequently opened and is still open — while doing this. She pushed leaves around.

Befitting our rapidly approaching middle age, we got in the car (Blythe and I, not the girl and I) and went for a drive. We saw a house we liked, online, in Chantry, a small town not far away. This is our middle aged entertainment: we scan mls.ca and oreb.ca for houses we like and then go look at them. We get curd or fries along the way. It’s something to do.

When we got home, it appears that the girl had finished. There was a huge pile of leaves on their lawn, but she didn’t put it in bags. It’s still on their lawn now. And, now, my lawn is covered in leaves again. As John Locke (who, incidentally, invented that small-town passtime: scrapbooking) would have it, I spent the entire day improving my property. At the end of the day after much labor had been used up, my lawn was in the same condition as it was when I woke up. And, through no fault of my own: the problem was the freedom of others.

This, of course, is the crisis at the heart of liberal politics: containing freedom to your own property. And this explains the pervasive powers of the social welfare apparatuses: they don’t have property, so we can come in and examine at will. This is security in a Foucauldian sense: it doesn’t involve (at least in the first and second and third instances) guns and violence. It is far more subtle. Far more insidious.

And it is at the core of the Rural Revolution, a topic for another day.