September 2006 – Page 3 – a sibilant intake of breath

Blood and Belonging

While flying home, I finished Micheal Ignatieff’s Blood and Belonging. The main subject of the book is the examination of a number of contemporary examples of ethnic nationalism, both more and less violent in character. As he intended, it is a fairly chilling depiction of some of the uglier elements of human relations, in the more disputed parts of the world today. His description of the use of chemical weapons against the people of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq makes his initial support for the American led invasion more comprehensible.

At the same time as this book makes one fearful about the kind of world we will inhabit in twenty years, it also provides some hope. While I have not personally visited Quebec or Northern Ireland, it seems, on the basis of the coverage I have seen, that things are not as bad as they were when this book was written in the early nineties. Economic prosperity and civic forms of nationalism have the capacity, at least in theory, to slowly erode the bases of hatred and violence. Let us hope that this trend can win out in the long run over the one that seeks to define nation by something as arbitrary and damaging as an ethnic notion of identity.

I started reading this book in order to get a better sense of Ignatieff as a thinker and as a prospective leader. While my new sense is not sturdy enough to be definitive, I definitely think more of the man than I did in the period before I had read any of his writing. His understanding of difficult issues seems to have a subtlety and a compassion that is definitely not the mark of your standard politician. I will have to read more of his thinking, however, before I can issue or withhold a final endorsement.

Incommunicado

I have returned home to find my internet connection at home completely disabled, the landline in our flat being strange and particular about who it will call, and my mailbox in Wadham College re-assigned, with my large pile of post dumped in a box with that of all the other people who have suffered the same undignified treatment. Wadham College has even disabled my access to the network in our Middle Common Room. I feel rather like Bilbo Baggins returning home from a long voyage to find his relatives auctioning off his possessions.

With luck, I should be back up and running by tomorrow. I certainly have a great deal to do.

Canada finale

Barring some final familial plans, frantic packing, and travel, this Vancouver visit has come to an end. The best part, of course, was spending time with friends and family. I am made up of parts from all of you, so seeing the whole of you makes me feel whole myself.

I will keep in touch from Oxford.

Hey Tiger… wake up

Now that I have enough RAM to be confident of being able to run Dashboard without making my iBook run like molasses, I picked up a copy of Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) from the UBC Bookstore today. Wish me luck – and no file corruption – for the cross-over. I probably won’t have time to carry out such an operation in Vancouver.

[Update: 6:00pm] Easiest operating system update ever. I started the installer, went for coffee, and came back to find my computer at the login screen. All my files and applications seem to have passed through the transition intact.

[Update: 7:00pm] Existing Tiger users: which widgets do you use, and why?

Britannia Mine copper leaching

A few years ago, I wrote a paper for an essay contest being run by the Fraser Institute, a notoriously right wing think tank in Vancouver. The assignment was to write about a free market solution to an environmental problem, and I suggested that a firm could extract and sell the 450kg of copper leaching out from the Britannia Mine into Howe Sound every day. Because of heavy metal pollution from that source, there is a large marine dead zone just offshore, along the road between the two venues where the 2010 Olympics will be held.

Today, while sitting in my dentist’s waiting room, I read in Time that a company called EPCOR has taken on the project I suggested. I didn’t win the contest, some paper about tradable carbon emissions did, but it’s nice to see that the idea was viable enough to implement in some form. It may be more about public relations than profit – especially since the company is advertising its benevolence – but I am glad to hear that one of the many scourges afflicting that particular marine ecosystem is to be somewhat abated.

Matters logistical

Permit me to apologize quickly for the scheduling problems that have cropped up in the last few days. While I would dearly like to spend time with all of my friends in Vancouver, limitations of time and communication capability have reduced the scope of what can be achieved. As it stands, I have visited Lonsdale, the UBC campus, downtown, and Commercial Drive on basically every day that I have been in Vancouver – averaging some ten bus journeys a day, criss-crossing the city.

Therefore, if I have been confusing or unavailable, please do not interpret it as any slight against you. This visit has been a marvelous opportunity to connect with family and friends and be reminded of the kind of deep networks that can surround you. While Oxford has much to recommend it, there is nothing to take the place of familial relations and ancient friendships.

PS. Anything that is not actually Vancouver centred is entirely on the back burner at the moment. Things like the final edit of the fish paper will just have to await my return to the city of spires.

HD disparu

There is a short story by Orson Scott Card about a beleaguered group of photographers sinking into depression as film becomes completely unavailable in a digital age. While that is a distant prospect, if it is ever to come about, I am nonetheless feeling some sympathy towards those hapless fellows. It seems that Kodak has decided to discontinue my favourite colour film: their High Definition series, formerly called Royal Gold. Impossible to find in England or Ireland, it is now no longer stocked by any of the Vancouver photography stores that I have dropped into to talk shop with the employees.

After a period of time, a film becomes very familiar to you – even friendly. You know what conditions are likely to make the sky blow out; you know when a portrait really needs a bit warmer light; you know how complex patterns will be rendered on the film grain. While I certainly cannot claim to have mastery of any film, HD100 and HD400 were certainly the colour emulsions I understood best. All my colour photos from the trip to Europe with Meghan Mathieson and company were shot on it; likewise, all my colour shots from the Arizona Road Trip, Prague, Malta, and many other places.

The High Definition films were versatile, reliable, and attractive. Their passing will be lamented by me, among many others.

Early morning politics

Now, I could – and probably should – write about my enjoyable hike up Dam Mountain with my father today. Likewise, the subject of this early morning post should be the fine dinner at Palki on Lonsdale with my mother, father, and brother Sasha. Failing that, I should certainly write about exploring English Bay with Nick, Neal, and Lauren, then getting a jumbo poutine with extra war sauce at Fritz, just off Granville. But people are quite rightly sick of me just narrating life, so I will present a bit of a puzzle instead.

The image above was taken of the back of a utility truck of the kind used by many of the Vancouver schoolboards, at Georgia and Granville at about 2:00am. A fairly odd looking character in a jacket was using various tools on the newspaper vending boxes at that intersection: unloading newer looking units for selling The Vancouver Sun and The Province – local newspapers with content of varying quality.

The real questions are, who attached the original sticker, who blacked out one flag with spray paint, and why. Presumably, it previously showed an American flag that has been blacked out subsequently due to the widespread hostility in much of the world that has developed towards the United States, particularly since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

I don’t really know how I feel about this display, but I took a photo for much the same reasons I often photograph graffiti: any expression of a genuine sentiment is at least worthy of cursory examination, and frequently worthy of deep thought. Right now, I am far too exhausted to think it through.

Departure countdown

To all those Vancouverites thinking “naturally, I am going to be able to engage in Activity X with Milan during the period before he returns to Oxford,” take heed. I now have only three full days left in the city: days that are increasingly full of existing commitments. Arranging new ones at times that do not conflict is thus becoming ever more challenging. While I do want to do everything and see everyone, I shall be constrained by the limitations of my time and other people’s initiative.

My flight home is in the evening this Saturday. I have a family dinner on Friday, but if people would be up for a group outing on Thursday night (after eight), to somewhere where a bit of food and beer might be had, please list yourself and suggested locations as comments.

PS. I have made good, but not complete, progress through my list of Vancouver tasks.

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North Vancouver hydrology

In the last few days, I have twice been up to the Capilano Reservoir. Located behind Cleveland Dam, it provides much of the drinking water for this part of the city, though it does not generate electricity. I don’t think I have ever seen it at low as it is now. At the top of the dam is a kind of huge rolling blockade that can be raised or lowered to adjust the water level in the dam across a particular range. At present, it is all the way down and there is no water flowing over it. Likewise, there is a larger section of the lake bed exposed than I have ever seen before.

Since the reservoir is normally fed by snowmelt and glacial runoff, every time there is a warm winter we start having water problems. It is even worse when what little snowpack there is is melted early in the summer by high temperatures. Since the dam is unable to hold more than a set amount, it can be necessary to vent a great deal of that excess flow – flow that would be much appreciated a few months later.

As far as I know, there are no rigorous water use restrictions in place, so the hydro engineers must be confident that this supply will see us out until Vancouver’s most rainy winter season begins. For the sake of water supplies next summer – and friends moving to Whistler to ski – I hope that most of that precipitation comes in a solid form, both above a certain altitude and in the area to the north of the city.