The first big snow of the season ~ in Vancouver's Van Dusen Garden

It's December and the first snow of the winter has arrived on the Left Coast.

People in the rest of the nation watch their news portals and wonder why in the world people in Metro Vancouver get excited about a wee bit of snow; why bridges are closed and traffic snarls to a halt. The rest of the nations seems to know how act, and drive and walk, in the snow.






And every time snow arrives on the south coast a social media debate ensues about the proper use of umbrellas in the snow. Obviously we have too much time on our hands.

There's an amazing quiet that comes to the park after a snowfall.

Walking through Van Dusen Garden is a wonderful experience after a snowfall.

Especially when it only lasts a day or two.

Photos by Jeem. 

Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

The Better BC Rally ~ the first of the campaign

It was billed as a Better BC Rally and it came at the end of a Provincial Council meeting of  New Democratic Party leaders and activists from throughout BC (of which your faithful scribe is one).

Over five hundred people queued outside Ballroom A at the Pinnacle Hotel in downtown Vancouver. It was hot in the lobby, but that was nothing like the heat felt inside the ballroom once things got going.

We were greeted by a sign that will become ever more common at public events in the coming years, especially at political rallies where the public is the actual backdrop for the event itself. No longer are there any places in which to feel a sense of privacy because there are cameras everywhere and everyone is sharing photos without getting anyone's permission. Still, the sign did seem a wee bit harsh to our lawyer, and friend, B.T. Mendelbaum (disbarred).

The crowd was warmed up with speeches by new candidate Anne Kang, and the young-but-not-new MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert. Anne is running in Burnaby-Deer Lake, while Spencer rules the West End.

Jinny Sims spoke, given the difficult task of asking for money. Asking for donations is unfortunate, but essential, especially in a province where foreign donors, wealthy Realtors and rich corporations buy their audiences with the Premier. That's one of the reasons this huge crowd showed up ~ to work to end the influence of big money in politics. So, Jinny was given a tough job, and she did it with style and humour, and on May 9th she will become the new MLA for Surrey-Panorama.

Finally, about the same time as B.T. Mendelbaum almost passed out from the heat, the star of the afternoon appeared, our next premier, John Horgan. And the phones were busy.

John is an interesting guy. He appears to be very comfortable in his role as leader, and he shines when speaking one-on-one or in small groups. In larger settings, like this one, he delights in the energy of the crowd. In this speech, at the first big rally of the campaign, John was easy-going to the point of diverging from the teleprompter on occasion and simply riffing about the topic at hand. Nice touch that.

His speech hit the key points that mattered to this crowd, and probably to most of us: jobs, health care and education, affordability, good government and the environment. 

John's address was serious, angry at times, delivered with a great sense of humility and a natural sense of humour. Brilliant thought B.T. Mendelbaum, regaining their composure and glad they were dragged to this thing after all.

The end of the rally came with John's obligatory selfie, trying, as always, to get as many people in the picture as possible. And after sixteen years of an entirely different approach to government... that's a refreshing concept.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

Fear and loathing America

All of us knew this would be a strange presidential election.

We knew it when Bernie Sanders refused to allow the established order to anoint one of its own, and a bunch of kids joined his crusade. It reminded me of Gene McCarthy's kids in 1968. Bernie's campaign was probably the best thing that happened in the strangeness of this election cycle.




We had to know that something terribly wrong was happening to American politics when a band of right-wing lunatics challenged the Republican Party establishment, and won. It wasn't just the rise of Donald Trump, in fact in those early days, he seemed almost moderate in comparison to the strangeness of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson.

And now, just days away from the presidential election, there is a sense of panic, uncertainty and fear. The racism and sexism that infects and fuels Trump's campaign continues to ratchet up, and we are anxious.





In recent weeks a Ku Klux Klan newspaper endorsed Trump and white supremacists across America announced their plan for voter intimidation. At Trump rallies, supporters have shouted antisemitic abuse at reporters. In Greenville, Mississippi the Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church was set afire and 'Vote Trump' painted on its walls. Women have come forward accusing Trump of sexual assault, and a Republican official in Texas used the c-word to describe Clinton in a tweet.



Walls to keep some people out. Banning other people from entering. Criminalising abortion. That so many Americans would actually support such a deplorable candidate is mind-numbing. This is no longer a political divide between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. No, this is an issue of decency and morality that all of us should understand.




We all know that bigotry and misogyny have been part of the US since its beginning. It's the bedrock upon which the nation was built, and it continues to this day. But to see this vileness in the mainstream of political discourse, is something else again. This is not a bad dream we can shake off the next morning. The people who feel they no longer need to hide their hatred aren’t going anywhere after election day, and the political masters who tapped into this marketing goldmine won't disappear either.

Obama and Clinton have suggested that America is better than all the hatred, racism, sexism and xenophobia that comes from Trump and his supporters. But it isn't. And no matter who wins this election, the nation remains the same. It's not Trump I fear, but America itself. It's not the day of the election I'm worried about, but all the days after.

Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

Matchstick Coffee on Main Street

Matchstick Coffee is a Vancouver roastery and coffee shop with three locations. The newest is referred to as Riley Park on their website, and it's within walking distance of Nat Bailey, the winter famers' market and Hillcrest Community Centre.

There's a Winnipeg thing going on here, or maybe the trendy coffee shops in Winnipeg have a Vancouver thing (Thom Bargen in Winnipeg serves Matchstick coffee).









Clean, relatively unadorned, minimalistic. Friendly staff, highly efficient and dedicated to the art of coffee making.













Pastries are baked on site and the croissants are excellent ~ maybe not the best in the city, but excellent nonetheless. The coffee is superb. Not the most comfortable seating.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

Autumn's leaves

The summer sun is fading as the year grows old.
And darker days are drawing near.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

The American Way ~ When was America ever great?

Stronger Together. 

Make America Great Again. 

Are they serious?

Here's a photo from 1937 that is just as much real today as it was then.

During the Great Depression propaganda was used to raise spirits among the citizenry, like this billboard created by Arthur Rothstein in February 1937. In this case, the billboard is shown in Louisville, Kentucky, just after a massive flood ravaged the city. Seventy percent of Louisville was submerged under river flood waters, and it was almost entirely lower income, lower class neighbourhoods that were impacted.

The photograph was taken by the legendary Margaret Bourke-White for Life magazine. Her image shows people in line for aid, in front of the billboard. They are all African-Americans, bundled up in layers of clothing to protect against the cold. They are flood refugees and many are living with the knowledge that they have lost everything.

Rothstein's propaganda poster shows an ideal of the US that reveals the prevailing ideology of the time. A perfect nuclear family, complete with dog. What's good for General Motors is good for the US.

Bourke-White's photo suggests a huge disparity between the reality and the propaganda.

Has anything really changed since 1937? Is national greatness measured by how the wealthiest of a nation live, or by how that same society looks after its poorest citizens?

Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

Fire hydrants, metal boxes on intersection poles and a statue of Ben Kingsley ~ in Winnipeg

While in Winnipeg last month, Jeem and his lawyer friend, B.T. Mandelbaum, discovered that this is a friendly city. Truly friendly. Everyone seemed friendly. Winnipeg is not Vancouver.

They also discovered an exciting reflection of the multicultural diversity of Canada, of the First Nations, and our country's two official languages. And they found it on every street corner and in every coffee shop in Winnipeg. Again, this is not Vancouver.

However. They also were confounded by a couple of things.

First: what's with the poles attached to most of the fire hydrants in the city, especially in the residential districts? Surely to god the fire fighters can see the hydrants easily enough muttered Jeem. Why the poles then, offered B.T. Maybe a flag pole for Canada Day? suggested Jeem. That's just dumb replied his older, wiser lawyer friend.














The second question: what are these strange metal box contraptions attached to most stop-light poles at nearly every intersection in Winnipeg? At first B.T. thought they might dispense some sort of ticket for transit. Like a Pez dispenser added Jeem. The duo actually started to stick their fingers in these things until they noticed Winnipegers laughing at them.












In the end, B.T. came up with a logical answer to the first question, one that most Canadians would have recognized much earlier than the two from the Left Coast.







The fact is, said Mandelbaum, Winnipeg gets a lot of snow, and when the streets are plowed the snow piles up. It doesn't disappear later the same day as in Vancouver.  The poles show fire fighters where the hydrants are buried under all that snow. Ahhhh, thought Jeem, in admiration for his legal adviser, though in truth B.T. Mandelbaum had been disbarred years ago.









It took the help of an actor in Sherry MacDonald's play, The Seduction Theory, to answer the second question, without laughing at the ridiculousness of these two goofs from Lotus Land. Apparently, and Jeem checked it out for himself, given the weather of Winnipeg, these metal attachments contain the electronic speakers which aid the blind and visually impaired while crossing the street with the beeping noises we hear across Canada, and even in Vancouver. Hmm, thought Jeem. I see. And we were sticking our fingers in there, said B.T.






Questions. Answers. Sometimes they are both much simpler than they appear. But what in the world is a statue of the British actor, Ben Kingsley (born as Krishna Bhanji) , doing outside the Canadian Museum for Human Misery? Jeem and B.T. Mandelbaum never did find out.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.

My evening with Tommy Douglas

Years ago I spent the better part of an evening with Tommy Douglas.

At the time I was President of the Young Fellows Club of Weyburn and it was our 60th anniversary. The Club began as a service organisation formed in 1922 and it was a place of fellowship and community action for young guys mainly in their 20s and 30s. My father had been a member and so had Tommy Douglas, and they knew each other well apparently, though my dad was never a member of the NDP.

To highlight our Club's 60th Anniversary, and thinking big, we decided to write a letter to our most famous member, and invite Tommy Douglas to be the keynote speaker at our gala evening celebration. Tommy had retired from politics by this time and was living on Vancouver Island, and he surprised more than just a few of us by saying: yes.


Sitting at the head table I had Tommy Douglas on one side of me, and our local MLA, a Conservative, on the other. I kept calling our special guest Mr. Douglas and he kept telling me to call him Tommy. "Your dad called me Tommy, so should you." "But you two were about the same age Mr. Douglas." And we both laughed.

The Young Fellows Club is a group of young men dedicated to making a difference in their community, through service and by creating better citizens of themselves. It's not hard to see why Tommy Douglas was a member.

We had invited Tommy to tell us stories, and he didn't disappoint. He was a master storyteller, spinning yarns that softened hearts and fired up the belly. The message was always constant, his beliefs rooted in an earlier version of Liberation Theology.

Twelve years earlier, Tommy Douglas spoke out against the War Measures Act invoked by Pierre Trudeau during the October Crisis of 1970. At the time it was a courageous stand; few Canadians were willing to go against the draconian measures Trudeau and the Liberals unleashed upon the people of Quebec. I was a teenager in 1970 and Tommy's stand influenced me greatly in ways I only began to appreciate much later.

That night in Weyburn, I thanked him for his stand twelve years earlier, and we talked, however briefly, about the loneliness of standing for what is right when everyone says you're wrong.

A few years after his brief return to Weyburn, Tommy passed away. Today, October 20th, is his birthday.

"We are all in this world together, and the only test of our character that matters is how we look after the least fortunate among us. How we look after each other, not how we look after ourselves. That's all that really matters, I think."     

Tommy Douglas

Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray. 

Saint-Boniface & Louis Riel

Across the river from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (or Human Misery as some might say) is Saint-Boniface. At one time Saint-Boniface was its own municipality but it has long been a ward of Winnipeg. Its population is about 55,000 and it remains the centre of the francophone
community in Manitoba.

L'Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Boniface

Saint-Boniface has a old world charm all its own, and features historical landmarks like l'Hôtel de Ville de Saint-Boniface, Université de Saint-Boniface and Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface.

Université de Saint-Boniface

The Université de Saint-Boniface is a French language post-secondary institution affiliated with the University of Manitoba. Its origins date back to 1818 and it is Western Canada's oldest post-secondary educational institution.

A stone's throw from the university is Cathédrale de Saint-Boniface, which also dates to the early 1800s when it actually took the shape and style of a log chapel. The first cathedral was built in 1832 and it was destroyed by fire in 1860. Rebuilt a few years later, it was replaced in 1906, and that building was largely destroyed by fire in 1968. Today only the façade, sacristy, and the walls of the old church remain.

                                                                                                                                                                Within the cemetery of the old church we found the tombstone of one of Canada's greatest politicians, Louis Riel. Riel was born in Saint-Boniface in 1844. It is a rather unassuming resting place for the founder of a Canadian province, indeed for one so much involved in the early history of our nation.

Louis David Riel was the political leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies and he led two resistance movements against the Canadian government and its first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.

Riel sought to preserve Métis rights and culture as their homelands in the North-West came under Canadian influence.The provisional government established by Riel ultimately led to the terms by which Manitoba entered Confederation as a province. But there were complications, including the execution of an anglophone soldier, and Riel went into exile south of the border.



In 1884 Riel was called upon by Métis leaders in Saskatchewan to voice their grievances to the federal government in Ottawa. Instead he organised a resistance movement that escalated into a full scale military confrontation: the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Canada used the new Canadian Pacific rail lines to send in thousands of combat soldiers. The rebellion ended with Riel's arrest and conviction for high treason. Rejecting many protests and appeals, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald decided to execute Riel by hanging. The order was carried out on November 16, 1885, in Regina.








Riel was portrayed for years in history classes as a crazy religious fanatic and a traitor against the Canadian nation, but that view has changed over time. He is now seen as a heroic leader who fought to protect francophone rights from the unfair actions of an anglophone central government. Sometimes seen now as a Father of Confederation, he was in fact fiercely committed to Métis nationalism and political independence.

Fascinating stuff. And if ever you find yourself in Winnipeg, see the Museum, but also walk around Saint-Boniface and see all that it offers, including the amazing story of Louis Riel.

Photos by Jeem. Copyright 2016 by Jim Murray.