Archive for July, 2008
Ernest Hemingway on Toronto’s Oak trees circa 1923
The Star today certainly had a variety of stories to occupy me this morning. Much of what is being reported is sobering, but one piece the Star ran was quite an interesting re-print. I did not know that Ernest Hemingway had lived in Toronto or worked for the Star for a number of years before his first book was published. A couple of days ago an oak tree fell on a playground in High Park and slightly injured a mother and her son. It was this incident that prompted the Star to re-publish one of Hemingway’s articles about the health of High Park’s oaks, so long ago, in today’s paper.
The picture below comes from www.insidetoronto.ca as part of their article on the tree falling.
The Star has a video of a massive tree falling in the Beaches in a number of backyards.
When Hemingway was writing for the Star, under the pseudonym Peter Jackson, he wrote a beautiful piece about the impacts of urbanization and increased pollution caused by city living, and in particular “motor cars”. It is not very long, reads as you might expect it would and paints a very familiar picture of the struggle to balance nature and progress. All roads in Toronto have been paved since 1923, and in that time science has also progressed enough to tell us that it is not just oily dust being kicked into the air we need to worry about. Nonetheless, I found it fascinating that there is an article from 1923 concerned about the health of Toronto’s trees and open space, worried about urban growth enchroaching on natural environments and the impact of fossil fuel burning vehicles on the environment around them. Hemingway having a Toronto connection is pretty cool too.
2 Comments »
Last Lecture: “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”
Randy Pausch’s last lecture was originally given to some four hundred people in the McConomy Auditorium at Carnegie Mellon, where he was a professor. He had been diagnosed with cancer and told he had three months to live, just one month before delivering this speech. He died yesterday, and it was reading his obituary that described the speech, the subsequent book and the You Tube video that got me to take a look. I first began to watch the video almost million viewers ago (Friday), and finished it up yesterday, when the hit count was 4 121 135.
The line that touched me the most came at the end:
“Its not about how to achieve your dreams its about how to lead your life. If you lead your life in the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.” “(the) [t]alk is not for you, its for my kids.”
Pausch described the speech and book as being a time capsule for the three young children he has left behind. Listening to his explanation of some of his life experiences and relating them back to childhood dreams is something I would expect a lot of people can relate to. It is impossible to imagine having an open mic, an hour of air time and knowing the best medical advice you’ve received has told you in just three months you’ll be gone. Pausch demonstrated an incredible strength and used his opportunity to inspire others. The speech can only be described as a powerful tribute to a man whose fight was truly dignified and gave him a rare opportunity to touch millions of people at a time in his life when many are strong but rarely have the ability to leave this kind of mark on so many.
If you haven’t taken a look you should.
Randy Pausch: The Last Lecture
Comments Off
A Bizarre Logic: Flaherty on Ontario’s taxes, while Ottawa falls into the red.
I am going to be very careful to not appear overly partisan here but I do believe that two Toronto Star articles from today need to be brought together in a way, a newspaper may not be able to do.
The first article is “Flaherty lectures Ontario – again” with a subtitle of “Province can no longer ignore his calls for lower business tax, federal finance minister says”
The second article is “Ottawa dips into deficit as GST revenues drop, economy slows”
I don’t plan on harping on the fact that in 1993 the Federal Liberals began a program of deficit reduction that put the Canadian government’s surpluses at the top of the G8. I also am not going to focus on the hidden deficit that the Harris/Eves government left in Ontario or the work of Premier McGuinty’s government to balance the budget by making difficult choices that seemed counter to any political logic.
There is no doubt the economy is slowing down. Based on the housing market in the United States and the beating bank stocks continue to take on Wall St. it is clear this is not over yet. Premier McGuinty should not begin taking economic advice from Flaherty, simply based on his track record and obsession with tax cuts as a cure all solution to whatever ails the economy.
If you’re Jim Flaherty and you know an election is hanging over Ottawa and could well happen in the fall, would you not feel some concern that this intra year deficit could be a canary in the mine? If this government falls into a year end deficit, and does not find some clever way to hide it from the public, that ladies and gentlemen will be the election right there. During the Chrétien days Canadians found religion in deficit elimination and debt repayment. My belief is a deficit created by irresponsible tax cuts is not something Canadian’s will easily understand. I do believe Canadians, like most other people in the world prefer to keep as much of our pay cheques as possible, but not if saving four cents on their morning coffee means the government is financing day to day expenses by selling bonds.
All levels of governments should be focused on job retention and working with industry to minimize layoffs facing workers in our province, and starting another jousting match about Ontario’s tax rates and the need for a harmonized GST and PST is not the best way to do it in my opinion.
Comments Off
