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April 01, 2013

It's spring!





It's springtime on the left coast. And for faithful readers in Argentina, that doesn't mean Chile. Nor does it mean that's it's September already.









We're on the upper left coast, past the Excited States of America, in Canada, and while the rest of this nation continues to have winter like conditions, its spring in Vancouver.









This Passover and Easter long weekend brought temperatures inland to over twenty. On the coast it's only slightly cooler and nice and warm, and everything is beautiful.







March 31, 2013

Argentina's disappeared: never forgotten



The terrible events of Argentina's dirty war remain close to everyday life. Criminal proceedings continue to this day. Mothers continue to seek the truth about what happened to their children. The stolen children are being sought, and in some cases, found.

Pagina|12, a  daily newspaper, runs memorial adverts that regularly appear in its pages. Placed by friends and family on the day their son or daughter, or uncle, or mother... disappeared, they are memorials and warnings both; that this will not be forgotten, justice will prevail.



Young men and women, often students, or workers, or teachers, or ...

Sometimes grandmothers, whose only crime might have been to rent a room to someone under suspicion.

The ads, usually in the lower left hand corner of an inside page, remind us, almost everyday.

In this advert, the young couple are Silvina and Daniel, detained in Cordoba in 1976. Silvana was six and one half months pregnant at the time of the arrest. In all likelihood, she was kept alive until giving birth when her child was then adopted, and she was dumped from a plane into the ocean.


Memoria, verdad y justicia
Memory, truth and justice

March 30, 2013

It's Canada, eh?

Sadly, it had to come to an end. Three winter months in the Yukon at the end of 2012 (see the Dawson  City Journal) followed by almost three summer months in Argentina. Two extremes:
in temperature and in lifestyle, as typified in the photos to the right and below, both taken at "high noon."





We arrived in Buenos Aires at the height of summer and watched as the season slowly changed to autumn. Returning to Vancouver we were met by the last elements of winter. Across Canada late spring snow storms caused travel problems and even here in Vancouver we awoke one morning to a light dusting of snow.









But it is spring on the west coast and it's a beautiful place. The trees are beginning to bloom, the flowers are coming up, the kites are flying in Steveston and we are at the beginning of a provincial election campaign! It's about time.



As for The Murray Chronicles: watch this space for more photos and stories of Argentina, Australia and closer to home! It's Canada, eh?