Canadian Flag in Reflection

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Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Only in Canada do you get advertising that also talks about the weather. Let's face it, talking about the weather is about as mundane as you can get in normal conversations, but today we received an ad in the mail for Rogers cable TV where you can get "the hottest shows anytime with Rogers on Demand-free access on Channel 100; up to 170 channels, and Reliability." This is where you can "enjoy your favourite programs even during extreme weather conditions". And I think that's a point well taken because the Canadian weather can be extreme. It has already snowed three times since July and it's still pre-Christmas. In New York, we rarely had a white Christmas. Sometimes we'd get a few flakes in early December, but the flakes were a fluke--it would not snow for a month afterward. But here in Canada snow is like oxygen--they need it to live, and it's everywhere around you all winter long.

I'm going to a hockey game tonight, the first I've been to since I was in my twenties. The Sens are playing the Rangers and guess who I'm rooting for .  .   .

Wrong--I'm rooting for the Sens. I am no longer a New Yorker, although I miss the Big Apple a bit (or should I say "a bite"?), but I never had allegiance to the Rangers. In fact, when I went to that game years ago at Madison Square Garden (which is anything but square), I was surrounded by crazy louts who smoked dope and drank beer, often launching it in the air whenever a Ranger physically abused a member of the opposing team, thus dousing me in suds and making my time at the game quite uncomfortable.

I told Thasneem that I'll be wearing my new Senators sweater and she said "It'll be too cold." I realized she thought the game was played outdoors and I comforted her by explaining the scenario. Imagine how small the crowds would be if the games were actually played outdoors in the dead of winter, when the weather gets really cold--at least it's only going to be around minus 15. No big deal. Eh.

war--what is it good for

thank you
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

This photo was taken on Remembrance Day in Canada. It seems that every country has some day set aside to honour the war heroes, alive and dead, who have risked or given it all for the real estate we call home. When I think of a justified war, I think of WW2--the Big One. There have been other seriously deadly wars, no doubt, but this was the war to end all wars. Yes, they`re all big ones to the families who have lost someone in it, or to those who lost a limb or their own life. War, it seems to me, is man`s craziest expression of his innate drives based on his testosterone. Men go to war and years later they make movies about it starring guys who look like they'd freak out if they broke a nail, and the men who served are proud to have been in that war. Well, maybe not so much for Vietnam, the war I served in, but there are a lot of wars that we can brag to our kids about. Like our Desert Storm, our Desert Shield, The Persian Gulf War and let's not forget the Korean Conflict. I like the last one--"Conflict" --a word we used in high school when we made out our class schedules and two classes we applied for were scheduled at the same time so we had to decide which one to attend. Now that's a conflict we can all live with--literally--but a Korean Conflict was not something everyone could live with because lots of dudes died. Well, at least we got M*A*S*H, a funny movie and TV show out of it.
Today we have a war on terror. Oops--I should capitalize that: War On Terror. This is the first war I can recall that actually isn't a war on people, but is a war on a tactic. If we used that premise in The Big One, WW2, The War to End All Wars, we could have called it The War on Messerschmitz or the War on Kaimikazes. Let's face it, we're so clever to call it the War on Terror.  By calling it that, we avoid offending anyone, like the people who are blowing themselves up, or flying planes into buildings to kill us, aren't we?  But we aren't fighting people--we're fighting the way those people are trying to kill us. I recently saw a cartoon (no, not of Muhammad), but of an ostrich with its head hiding in the sand, and there was a desert guy with a sword (I have no idea what his religion must be) cutting the bird's head and legs off. This is the west as I see it. We are ostriches.
Well, it`s getting late and I should end this and go to sleep. I just hope we can kill terror and make the world a safer place.

old soldier

old soldier
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Thasneem, Vidhya and I found ourselves in the midst of a huge crowd on Remembrance Day, November 11th. We were simply planning on showing Vidhya the town but when we saw what was going on, we had to be part of is--especially since I brought Steve, my Nikon D300 camera along for the ride.

It was a huge event, and I suspect there were tens of thousands of spectators, and there was a flyover by a few jets and some older planes like Mustangs, and the like. I mostly got to see the backs of people's heads as we were buried in the crowd (next year I'll go earlier), and I felt proud to be a part of this town where it was obvious, that people took very good care of their hair, and I couldn't find even one case of dandruff in the crowd.

There were speeches and a 21 gun cannon salute, which was quite moving and quite loud. There were wreaths from many countries, businesses and even local schools, laid at the tomb of the Unknown. I became a bit nostalgic, thinking of my own Marine Corps days, and how glad I was to make it home from Vietnam in one piece. War sucks, but sometimes it is the only way to defend our country. I worry about the world of today. I think the west is handing over our land to people who don't deserve what we worked so hard to get and to keep. I think the west is asleep at the wheel and it isn't funny, like it was in the movie Vacation, when Chevy Chase woke up in the car from a deep sleep, and he realized that he was still driving. I hope the west remembers that Israel is a better country than any of those tyrants who would want it destroyed. I hope Obama changes his thinking about Islam being a religion of peace and sees it for what it is and what it is doing.

Lastly, I hope someday we'll have world peace, but I don't think that's going to be for a long long time.