Category: Toronto

Two plans

On the morning of September 12th, I need to be in Toronto.

Between now and then, however, I actually don’t have any firm commitments. This raises the question of how to spend the time.

Plan 1: Safe and responsible

Move and apply to doctoral programs

I need to move to Toronto and applications to doctoral programs for the fall of 2012 are due this fall. I could stay in Ottawa and put together a research proposal. I could chase down people to serve as references. I could visit Toronto to look at apartments, choose one, and ship my things over.

I could also work on the great many semi-complete tasks that tend to get buried underneath trivial day-to-day stuff while I am working.

Plan 2: More adventurous

Explore

I could also push the moving stuff into the smallest amount of time possible and get myself a 30-day unlimited Greyhound ticket. I could go to New York City on my way to New Orleans. I could take photos, visit the campuses of schools I might apply to, and take advantage of the longest unstructured span of time I have had since Oxford.

Lately, I have been feeling a bit untethered and uncertain about what I should do with myself. I am dispirited by the way recent efforts to drive action on climate change have failed so completely in North America in recent years. Having some time spent in solitary travel could allow me to think things through, and perhaps reach a sense of clarity about how I should spend the next few years.

This would probably mean pushing back doctoral applications, but it might be unreasonable to aim for this fall anyhow. I need to write the GRE and do a pile of work. I am also not totally sure if a doctorate is really what I want to do.

So, readers, which plan do you endorse? Do you have other ideas?

One element that is common to both plans is my intention to go to Washington D.C. for the Stop the Pipeline Sit-In being organized by Bill McKibben, James Hansen, and others. As well as being a good opportunity to see climate change activism in person, it could provide some contacts and empirical data for subsequent academic work.

Missing Vancouver

There is a lot I miss about Vancouver. There are the obvious things, like all the friends and family I have in that city. There are also more esoteric things, like riding the stretch of the Skytrain between Chinatown and the wild outer reaches of New Westminster, walking across the False Creek bridges in the middle of the night, or trekking between North Vancouver coffee shops by means of wild parks with dangerous rivers in them.

Moving to Toronto, I am sure I will find things to appreciate about the city. On the basis of all the trips I have made there since 2007, I certainly have an awareness of the virtues of the city, from the active arts community to the sheer wonderful anonymous size. I look forward to disappearing into the mass.

One day it seems likely that I will find a way to live in Vancouver again, at least temporarily. It is probably a city with long-term economic vitality. At least until all the soil is depleted, British Columbia will remain a massive engine for producing wood demanded in other places. Vancouver has an excellent harbour, and doesn’t seem to be too vulnerable to sea level rise (aside from the unfortunate suburbs kept dry by levees). There will be a gigantic earthquake one day, but the city will survive – particularly the buildings with wooden or steel frames. British Columbia has lots of hydroelectric power and a reasonable amount of arable land.

For someone who avoids flying, getting back to Vancouver from the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto zone is quite an undertaking. The bus journey is a long and unpleasant one, and the train is both much more expensive and much less environmentally sustainable. Flying, of course, is the ‘nice for me, too bad for people in future generations’ option.

Still, as long as the visit is going to be a fairly extended one, it is worth putting in the time and carbon to get back to the west coast. To be in Vancouver with a decent job and a good place to live would be an enviable situation. It may also be a decent option for doing a doctorate, if I decide to pursue that strategy. Walking around the UBC campus while it is milling with new undergrads would surely be a bit strange. I wonder what the first-year version of me would think of the version from ten years later. I have certainly grown a great deal more pessimistic about the future of the world, and probably more realistic about my ability to alter it.

#movingtotoronto

Everything seems to have come together for me to relocate to Toronto by early September.

There will be much to do, winding down life in Ottawa, sorting out the move, finding somewhere new to live, and applying to doctoral programs for the fall of 2012. I am still not sure if I actually want to do a doctorate, but the only cost associated with applying is work and a modest amount of money. It seems like a good idea to give myself another option for a year from now.

Does anybody know of any good housing options in Toronto available for September? A place of my own is one possibility. Cool roommates would be another, as it would make sense to save some pennies for potential future tuition payments.

“The Pedaler’s Wager” – Toronto

Starting tomorrow, the Clay and Paper Theatre Company are performing their original show “The Pedaler’s Wager” in Dufferin Grove Park, Toronto. It sounds like quite a lively experience:

This original comedy features puppetry, live music, and our very own CYCLOPS: Cycling Oriented Puppet Squad. Each weekend audience members are invited to cycle from act to act alongside performers, literally following the troupe to the show’s conclusion.

The show runs from July 20th until August 14th, and all performances start in Dufferin Grove Park.

Stationary performances are happening Wednesday through Sunday at 7:00pm and Friday at 2:00pm.

Traveling performances start on Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00pm and require that you bring your own bicycle to follow the performers from Dufferin Grove Park to Fred Hamilton Park and Trinity Bellwoods Park.

The show is $10, or pay what you can.

Grandfather birthday photos

On Flickr, I have uploaded photos from my paternal grandfather’s 90th birthday party.

For the most part, they are lit with two flashes – one in the back corner of the room and one in a window alcove. One flash was fired using a radio trigger, the other using an optical slave sensor. Both had their output set manually.

They can also be viewed as a slideshow.

Widening the search

A while ago, I wrote about how I am looking for climate-related jobs in Toronto. So far, the search has not gone especially well. Positions listed tend to be either very junior or too senior. Also, most of what is available looks more tedious than meaningful or engaging.


For a number of reasons, I am now broadening my focus beyond Toronto. I am looking for jobs anywhere in the world that would offer the opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills to meaningful work on helping to fight climate change. I am also considering academic programs that would be useful, that would put me in contact with people doing interesting work, and that would put me in places where new and important ideas are developing.

If readers have any suggestions, please let me know.

Citizens arrest

There are good reasons why we restrict powers like arrest to trained agents of the government. While there are certainly many problems with the conduct of police and oversight over them, at least they have training and experience and there are mechanisms in place to evaluate their actions. By contrast, empowering every shopkeeper and random citizen to physically detain people who they think are criminals seems dangerous and unnecessary. In a few cases, it may be the least bad option available, but I think the onus should be on the person performing the arrest to justify it later.

In the grand scheme of things, shoplifting seems a lot less significant than physically detaining somebody against their will. Saying that as soon as somebody steals from you, you have the right to effectively kidnap them seems liable to create harm and abuse. Kidnapping is rightly considered a more serious offense than shoplifting, and I don’t think the fact that someone committed a crime before being thus apprehended has all that much legal or moral significance. It smacks of the sort of crude revenge-based legal systems where people get their hands lopped off (or get thrown into the terrible conditions of prison, but that is another discussion).

That’s why I think it is wrongheaded when people argue that David Chen – the Toronto shopkeeper who physically detained a shoplifter – should never have been criminally charged. When you opt to take the law into your own hands, you are effectively claiming that the situation is so important and so urgent that you should take over from the actual authorities. It seems to me that such cases are rare and involve things like real risks of injury or death – not the danger of losing a few dollars worth of merchandise.

If you feel that you need to usurp the powers of the police, it just seems sensible to expect that you may need to justify that choice in a court of law. They may well find that you behaved reasonably. But the fact that there will be some after-the-fact oversight could in itself act as a minor deterrent to abuses of power.