Cathie from Canada

I don't know where this is, but isn't it great?
It was posted on the #LeonardNimoy thread at Twitter, where William Shatner is doing a tribute.

Saw this a few minutes ago. I involuntarily gasped and had a hard time holding it together. #LeonardNimoy pic.twitter.com/3XYy69gkGg

— Neil Shurley (@ThatNeilGuy) March 1, 2015

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Daniel Nestor and Rohan Bopanna have won the Dubai doubles championship in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-1

Canada is always proud of you, Daniel!





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So yesterday I got into an argument about who was responsible for the tragedy of two children dying while adults squabbled:

While the house burned early Tuesday, the truck sat in the snow outside the home of the band’s mechanic. The volunteer fire department in nearby Loon Lake didn’t respond, because service to the reserve was cut weeks earlier over unpaid bills.

The discussion was about who had the greater responsibility for the deaths, the band which didn't pay its bills or train its own firefighters, or the Loon Lake volunteer fire department who went back to sleep when called out to the fire.
I don't know the answer. But I do know that somebody has to be the adult here -- maybe the provincial government rural municipality department, maybe the FSIN, somebody -- to step up when relationships between bands and nearby towns deteriorate.

“The bottom line is: Two children died and the adults have to sort it out,” Bob Pringle, Saskatchewan’s children’s advocate, said in an interview Thursday. “It clearly has to stop and it’s not going to stop unless we do something differently.”

But doesn't it always seems that somebody has to die before we are willing to do things differently?
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Canada's commentariat is going crazy over what a VERY BAD decision Justin Trudeau has made in welcoming Eve Adams to the party.
But it wasn't Adams that Trudeau wanted, it was Dimitri Soudas. The commentariat is also deriding this choice, but Soudas will frighten the Harper Cons the way no mere MP ever could. As John Ivison put it:

He knows where the bodies are buried because he buried many of them himself.

Trudeau is crazy like a fox...

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I know everyone is hyping the Duffy trial, but I think its likely going to be a big pile of nothing.
For the life of me, I cannot see how Harper will be tainted by this. Basically, Harper and his aides can argue that they did the right thing for Canadians by firing Duffy and Wallin as soon as their misdeeds were revealed.
Yes, of course, it makes no sense at all:

Defence lawyer Donald Bayne made much of the fact Mr. Duffy is charged with bribery in connection with the $90,000 he received from Mr. Wright, while the former Harper aide was not charged for providing the money.
“I am sure that I am not the only Canadian who will now wonder openly how what was not a crime or a bribe when Nigel Wright paid it on his own initiative became, however, mysteriously, a crime or bribe when received by Senator Duffy,” the lawyer said. “The evidence will show that Senator Duffy did not want to participate in Nigel Wright’s and the PMO’s repayment scenario, which they concocted for purely political purposes.”

But conveniently, Wright isn't on trial for anything.
So whether Harper knew or approved the payment in advance is not actually relevant to Duffy receiving it.
Given the long reach of the Harper PMO, there is no reason why anybody would want to testify to this effect except maybe Duffy himself -- and he would have done the Big Reveal already if he had had any evidence.
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One of the great things about being retired is that I can stay up til 3 am watching the Australian Open, on TV or just tracking scores on my tablet -- the "big name" matchew are televised, but few of the doubles matches are broadcast on TSN, even with their extra channels now.
In fact, TSN kept saying they couldn't get any television coverage of Pospisil's earlier single and doubles matches, even though later they did show some highlights. His last match, which was televised, was far from his best, unfortunately.
But finally I don't have to care whether some sporting event is going on half a world away.
Now that we have a larger TV, and I have learned how the games are scored, I find tennis fascinating to watch.
Next, if only I could understand soccer....

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Our one-word resolution this year: Clean.
We have had a difficult fall and winter due to dealing with the illness and long term care of a relative, including cleaning out a two-bedroom apartment, and it was even more complicated because we needed to travel to another city to deal with it. But everything is handled now, at last.
As a result of this experience, my husband and I have adopted a firm resolution: we will clean up after ourselves.
We will not leave a tangled mountain of stuff for our kids to have to sort out, clean up, or throw away. Deciding what to do with the furniture and so forth was hard enough, but then came the closets and the shelves and the drawers -- old photos and pictures, mementos of trips that nobody can remember, clothes unworn for twenty years, fabric for projects unstarted, Christmas cards a decade old, chequebooks and statements for accounts long-closed, stacked sets of forgotten linens and towels, dishes and cookware last used before the turn of the century, tchotchkes and geegaws and ornaments of all kinds.
We promise we will never say "but its still good" or "maybe I will use this again someday" or "we can't throw this out until we check with ...." -- any of these are a license to put something back on a shelf and never pick it up again. We are going to get rid of our extra stuff come hell or high water -- come to think of it, high water might be the answer!
And if you are in the habit of opening your mail, perusing the contents, carefully folding everything up again, putting it all back in one of the envelopes, and tucking it away into a drawer -- please STOP!
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