Frightening news from France

Have you ever gotten forwarded group emails that you felt like you should respond to, but it's hard to get up the courage to do so because it seems like you have to write the perfect response, and you can only imagine the backlash you might receive? I seem to get them fairly regularly. I've let some slide because I couldn't find the time to write an article that would pass my own harsh criticisms, but here is one where I did write back. The letter is first, and my response is below.

Subject: Fw: Fw: Frightening news from France Once again, the real news in France is conveniently not being reported as it should. To give you an idea of what's going on in France where there are now between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews, here is an email that came from a Jew living in France. Please read! Will the world say nothing - again - as it did in Hitler's time? He writes, "I AM A JEW -- therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing." Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously than in France: In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseilles; so was a Jewish school in Creteil - all recently. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails,and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris , the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish footbal team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the Police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents PER DAY in the past 30 days. Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews." A gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop (and, of course, the butcher) in Toulouse, France; a Jewish couple in their 20s were beaten up by five men in Villeurbanne, France. The woman was pregnant; a Jewish school was broken into and vandalized in Sarcelles, France. This was just in the past week. So I call on you, whether you are a fellow Jew, a friend, or merely a person with the capacity and desire to distinguish decency from depravity, to do, at least, these three simple things: First, care enough to stay informed. Don't ever let yourself become deluded into thinking that this is not your fight. I remind you of what Pastor Neimoller said in World War II: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me". Second, boycott France and French products. Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred. So boycott their wines and their perfumes. Boycott their clothes and their foodstuffs. Boycott their movies. Definitely boycott their shores. If we are resolved we can exert amazing pressure and, whatever else we may know about the French, we most certainly know that they are like a cobweb in a hurricane in the face of well directed pressure. Third, send this along to your family, your friends, and your co-workers. Think of all of the people of good conscience that you know and let them know that you and the people that you care about need their help.

I appreciate the part of the letter from the jew living in France, but it's a shame that the second writer had to surround it with anti-muslim and anti-arab insinuations before and after the original letter. That person, who presumeably doesn't live in France, insinuates but doesn't actually say that the 5-6 million muslims in France are responsible for those acts, and are only outdone by the "hate and oil" exporting Arab nations. They clearly show no sympathy or kinship with French muslims who are themselves victims of systemic racism, segregation, and widespread poverty.

The letter leaves me confused if French muslims, who are largely impoverished and underrepresented in government, are indeed primarily responsible for those anti-semitic attacks, then how exactly could a boycott against France help that? If they're not, then why does the second writer poignantly note the existence of 5-6 million muslims in France, and claim that only entirely Arab nations are "more toxically anti-semitic," rather than suggesting we boycott France for its racism against both its jewish and muslim minorities?

If we can get past the "othering" rhetoric on all sides, most people just want a decent life for themselves and their families, and sometimes for others as well. However, "No one is free, until everyone is free."

-levi

Day 2 (Jen)

Worth noting: Muskox at lunch, test shooting a bear banger, first class I rapids. Sunday, June 26/05

To add to Drew’s notes from yesterday, leaving Yellowknife was a bittersweet experience for me as I was leaving home a few thousand kilometers later than the rest of the group. The YK has been home for me for the last 8 months and on top of the frantic packing session at the Legion, I was trying to deal with all the last minute stuff involved in leaving home. My favourite part of yesterday was the downward spiral that the plane made as it moved to land in the lake. It was like the whole world was being turned on its axis – you couldn’t tell which way was up. When we touched down, the landscape of the Baillie River barrens looked positively lunar. Tonight we are camped a few kilometers down river from last night. There is a bit of a ridge rising behind our campsite and I took a quick walk before dinner. The landscape reminds me very much of Scotland . . . rocks, low bushes (I don’t think these ones are heather, must ask Tim), and views in all directions. During our paddles today we went over some whitewater skills with our paddling partners. Luckily I am with Levi – he’s a patient teacher with me, the most inexperienced of the group. Alie and Tim are together and Jenny and Drew in the last boat. At lunch we were treated to the sight of two muskox munching their way around the tundra. I think that we must have been silent enough because they didn’t get scared away by our presence. Tonight after dinner we went over some bear safety tips and familiarized the group with how to use the bear bangers and screamers. We shot off a test shot into the air – it would be enough to send me running, that’s for sure! (ed: much later in the trip, when we entered potential polar bear country, we had a heated debate about whether to test the bear bangers. Pro was to practice and see how they worked and make sure they worked, con was that the instructions recommended a thorough cleaning of the starter pistol after each use, which we didn't have the capability to do. Somehow, apparently none of us remembered that we had already tested it on day 2 - we should have checked our journal.)

Arctic canoe trip journal, day 1 (Drew)

Arctic canoe trip journal, day 1 (Drew), originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

I recently received our completed group journal from my arctic canoe trip last summer, so I'm going to start posting entries from it here, along with pictures. On this trip, 6 of us (Jen McKay, Jenny Kingsley, Tim Irvin, Drew Gulyas, Alison Pick, and myself) paddled 1050km in the NWT and Nunavut over 54 days on the Baillie and Back Rivers and Chantrey Inlet. Here is our first journal entry. It starts off pretty tame, but there were some real adventures on this trip, startingaround day 20.

Arctic Journal 2005

Worth noting: no bugs, 1C, Arctic terns, several ducks, Tim found Muskox fur.

We are living the dream.

It is 11:45PM and the end of Day #1 in the Arctic. Today was smooth but oh did it take some hard work to get here. After a joyful gathering at the bus station on Thursday night (the first time we were all together as a group), we woke up to rain on Friday morning and a slight wrinkle in our packing plans. The Canadian Legion to the rescue. We took over their Bingo Hall and packed our brains out. We packed and repacked. Debated, conferenced, discussed. We considered all the angles and merits of every piece of food and bit of equipment. We purged and then retreated to Jen’s place to work on personal gear. The packing wrapped up around midnight and we were proud of ourselves for all we accomplished – including packing Blueberry Pie. (ed - Blueberry Pie was a very large canoe pack loaded with about 150lb. of food.)

Up early today to deal with the last minute details. We work on canoes, purge more items and tend to the details of our lives that will have to do without us for the next 50 days. Take out from the noodle house and then it’s time to fly. We are the third canoe trip to be dropped off the Air Tindi this year. The flight is cold but uneventful. Yesterday’s plane crash lurks on the shore, upside down beneath a crane but it doesn’t seem to be a bad omen because we are up, up and away. We take in the landscape and as the plane climbs above the cloud cover people drift off the sleep. When we emerge from the clouds 60 minutes later we can see the barrens, and as we continue north it isn’t long before we see the ice on the lakes. What an adventure we are beginning!

We set up camp and take some important quiet moments as individuals. We reconvene to talk group dynamics, camp chores and paddling partners. It is a productive conversation followed by dinner, a bit of tinkering with the boats and gear, and now camp is quiet and it’s time for sleep. Day one was a success, a dream come true.

some things I've carried on my bike in the last week

I've been known to carry a lot of unusual and/or bulky and/or heavy stuff by bike, but this past week there's been more than usual. I wish I had some pictures to share.

• A bike stand, like the one shown on the right, also for about 5km. I only had a bungee cord and a couple of velcro ankle strappities to attach it to my bike, which gave it the same sort of nerdy rigging appeal as rigging a tarp does for some of us campy types. The legs of the stand traveled in front of me and I had to lift them every now and then to stop them from rubbing my front tyre, but it was no problem.
• a canoe pack containing a desktop computer with its old-style 14" CRT monitor. That was on my back, then I had a garbage bag full of clothes strapped to the rack, for about 5km . This was a tough haul; my shoulders were sore when I finished. But it still pales in comparison with this fellow I saw in Guatemala, or to this load of plastic bottles shown on workcycles.com:

• a dead racoon, killed by a car and driver and left in the middle of the lane on Roncesvalles Ave this morning. I took the body to rest in nearby High Park,between a couple logs and underneath a pile of leaves.

By the way - I'm sorry for being so long between postings - I just haven't been inspired for a while. If you want to know when there's a new posting without having to check this website, you could subscribe to the newsfeed at: http://levi5.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Climate Change

I feel like it's time to really start getting worried about global warming. Here are a few of the recent items that concern me. Recent sampling of ice cores from Antarctica indicate that our atmospheric CO2 concentration is 27% higher than it has been at any time in the last 650,000 years [1]. No wonder it is so hard for climate modellers to predict what is going to happen. An article in Nature this week concluded that the Atlantic "thermohaline circulation" which draws warm water up from the equator and keeps Europe and possibly much of the northern hemisphere warm, has slowed 30% since 1992 [2]. Slowing of the thermohaline circulation is expected as a result of freshening of the north Atlantic from melting of multi-year arctic sea ice and arctic and antarctic ice shelfs, but there is still considerable debate over the reliability of the findings and whether it indicates a trend or a spike. It is a very difficult measurement to make, it is in conflict with some other measurements, and it's much faster than has been predicted. It's understandable however that such a measurement should cause concern, since disruption of the thermohaline circulation could happen abruptly, and could cause an rapid conversion to ice age. The freshening of the north Atlantic over the past couple decades has been well measured, and some potential implications are discussed here [3]. This page also has some cool animations of ocean circulations. Yeah, I already knew that the atmosphere has been warming and increasing in CO2 concentation at an accelerating rate over the past century and especially the last decade. But for some reason, recent reports that ocean currents and salinity are changing unusually fast trouble me even more. Perhaps it's because I can remember as a kid, my grandfather the meteorologist telling me about how ocean currents and weather patterns were closely linked, but no one knew which caused which, and that they probably both affected each other. Our difficulties predicting what will happen in this giant experiment remind me of Einstein's quote, "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically." One more very recent doozy: plants emit methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2, and they emit more of it at higher temperatures. This appears to be a feedback loop that causes further acceleration of global warming. [4] [1] http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00020983-B238-1384-B23883414B7F0000 [2] http://www.techcentralstation.com/120205F.html [3] http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/currenttopics/abruptclimate_joyce_keigwin.html [4] http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1137019812913&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724

one family with their new stuff

one family with their new stuff, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

Looks like the package included some toys for the kids too. I should note that I didn't say what to buy with the money; it's whatever Carlos and the folks at Maya Pedal determined that people wanted, was available cheaply, and could be bought in sufficient quantity to evenly distribute amongst 103 families.

the recipients

the recipients, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

Here are folks of San Andrés Itzapa, picking up their new kitchen supplies.

the kitchen supplies

the kitchen supplies, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

This is what $720 CDN bought: clay comals (for cooking tortillas), plastic masa bowls (for carrying cooked corn to the grinder and dough back home), smaller bowls for washing, and some miscellaneous plates and cutlery.

Some photos from the redistribution of money from my friends and family to Hurricane Stan victims

Some photos from the redistribution of money from my friends and family to Hurricane Stan victims, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

This is Carlos Marroquin, the guy in charge of distributing the funds to the approximately 100 families who lost their homes in flooding during Hurricane Stan.

more on the flooding in Guatemala

more on the flooding in Guatemala, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

This article was written by Megan Hyslop, who was working at Maya Pedal in San Andrés Itzapa at the time of the Hurricane Stan. She is helping out with the transfer of $720 of the money folks sent to me for redistribution to people displaced by the hurricane. As the article relates, there was very good community support for the victims in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, and this money will be going towards helping them rebuild for the longer term. I will continue posting what I know about what is happening.

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Rebuilding in San Andres Itzapa - by Megan Hyslop

The rain began the night of Sunday, October 1st and didn't stop until Thursday morning. Today is Saturday, October 8th. The town is San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala, the land of friendship and the guaque chile, as its entrance sign proclaims, and one of the many communities afflicted by the recent floods and mudslides brought on by Storm Stan in the Gulf of Mexico.

I came to Guatemala a month ago as a CIDA intern with the GAIA project. My original assignment was to work with Maya Pedal, a local NGO that builds pedal powered machines such as corn grinders, from recycled bikes. However, this week bikes take a back seat to more pressing needs as all of the staff at Maya Pedal are out helping the community. Samara, a Maya Pedal volunteer, and I visited one of the shelters in town Wednesday night. Since then, our role has evolved to include serving hot atol, a warm corn drink, to the people in the shelter and playing with the children now living there. Approximately fifty indigenous families lost their homes and land to a swollen river that only now has begun to recede. The community support has been incredible. Bags of used clothing, beans, corn flour, toilet paper, and diapers are piled along one wall of the shelter, in this case, a public hall/gym. Hardworking volunteer women cook meals for the group. Each morning, women living in the shelter enter the makeshift kitchen to tortear, or slap corn flour dough between their hands for the day's tortillas. An equally devoted group of men bring drums of water to the shelter daily, as ninety percent of the pipes in town broke during the storm. Others shoulder picks and shovels and walk up to the mountains to work on the momentous task of fixing the water system, a project that the town leaders estimate will take five months. There has been a loss of corn and bean crops, the staple foods here in Guatemala. In a sense, San Andres is lucky. There was no loss of life and the town remains uncovered by mud. The roads into the town are unblocked by dirt and uprooted trees. It is worse, the newspapers tell us, in other communities. As is often the case, the people most affected by this disaster are those with scarce economic resources.

There are approximately one hundred children staying in the shelter. In the mornings or afternoons, Samara and I, with the help of the older girls, take a small group down the cobbled streets to the basketball and soccer courts beside the town square for games and fresh air. The view of the green hills surrounding the town and the sunshine is welcome after the stuffy air of the albergue, or shelter. The boys invariably start a soccer scrimmage; the girls play their own match or other group games. Pato, pato, ganso (duck duck goose) has become a new favourite; the children in exchange have taught us "In the patio of my house", a circle game that involves a lot of crouching and yelling "CHOCOLATE!" in the ears of the child in the center of the circle. My strange name, my country of origin, and my nose ring also provide endless entertainment. The children cling to our arms but seem to be facing their predicament with bravery. On the one hand, it is inspiring to see the webs of support woven by the people of San Andres Itzapa and the rest of the country. On the other hand, it's hard to look at the people in the shelter and wonder where and how they will rebuild their lives.

It is raining again, but this time only an afternoon shower typical of the wet season in San Andres. People stop on the street and take cover under the eaves of the blue and green cement homes and store fronts. Rain on a tin roof is thunderous. With any luck, this time the water water will stop before dark.

written by Megan Hyslop, from Maya Pedal

more cyclist-haters

The following letter was written to NOW Magazine this week, in response to this article about the death of a 31-year-old cyclist riding his bike home to help his daughters with their Halloween costumes, not 5 minutes from my home. I hope I am not giving any sort of credence to the letter by reprinting it, but I'm feeling a need for some sort of release.

Cyclists make good hood art despite your furry-headed sense of entitlement, city roads were not made for cyclists, but for a little invention we call the automobile. If you want to play with your bicycle, go to a park, ride along a bike path and ring your little bell. Have fun just leave the streets to people engaged in adult pursuits such as earning a living.
Bicycling Luddites at play in the 21st century are destined, nay begging, to become hood ornaments. Dingaling. Andrew Matheson Toronto

At first I felt angry, as in Andrew Matheson had better hope I never meet him in an alleyway or identify his car somehow. But the anger passed quickly as it usually does on the rare occasions when I feel personally threatened or insulted, especially once I realized there are many Andrew Mathesons and there's a good chance it's a pseudonym anyways. As I finish writing this note, I just feel that the most productive thing to do is ignore Andrew and his likes when they open their mouths or expose their ugly thoughts, and stay as far away as possible when they are behind the wheel of an automobile. You can't reason with them. One good thing to come out of this, at least, is that I immediately feel a little more solidarity and closeness with every other cyclist. Ride on.

My response to an irate motorist. ***oops, corrected version***

(I had some cutting and pasting issues originally, and some paragraphs were duplicated) On 11/8/05, ***name cut to protect the, er, innocent*** wrote:
In over 25 years of driving, I can count on less than both hands, the number of times, I have seen cyclists stop at red lights. But, I have lost count of the number of times I have been inconsiderately and thoughtlessly cut off, hit and intimidated, while walking, by cyclists blasting down a sidewalk, a path. They are always careening through intersections, sliding between lanes, without signalling, up and down sidewalks, regardless of pedestrian traffic. Cyclists generally display a flippant arrogance for basic road safety, driving rules, and thoughtlessness for the safety of the public that surrounds them. EDUCATE CYCLISTS and hold them RESPONSIBLE and ACCOUNTABLE for going through red lights, making illegal turns, and negligent riding-Maybe then, cyclists will have the respect they are demanding.


Dear Denise,

I am sorry that you have such a negative view of cyclists. It may interest you to read the city of Toronto's 2003 report on bicycle - motor vehicle collisions. Interestingly, "cyclist failing to yield at intersection" accounts for less than 3% of all bicycle - motor vehicle collisions, while the 7 main accident types which account for 72% of all collisions and are the only ones which individually account for more than 3% of all accidents, are ones where the driver is partially or entirely at fault (these are: drive out at controlled interesection, motorist overtaking, motorist opens vehicle door, motorist left turn - facing cyclists, motorist right turn (not at red light), motorist right turn at red light, drive out from lane or driveway).

This corresponds with the experience of many cyclists, that our roads and rules were designed for smooth flow of automobile traffic with little to no consideration cyclists. Pedestrians, although still marginalized against cars, at least have sidewalks in most areas. There is no comparable study of cyclist - pedestrian collisions, because although I am sorry you have had some frightening experiences, the danger pedestrians face from cyclists pales in comparison to the danger both pedestrians and cyclists face from cars.

When the infrastructure is illogical and dangerous for a whole class of road users, why should one expect them to have arbitrary respect for aspects of it that do not even help anyone\'s safety? (remember the less than 3% statistic) When our infrastructure has been modernized to account for the safety and convenience of cyclists as much as it now accounts for that of motorists, you can expect to see cyclists fitting within the system better. One analogy that may help a driver to understand is this: if the government were to put stop signs every 100 metres along highway 401 to make it safer for cyclists, how many motorists do you think would obey? None. I assure you, cyclists are not "meaner" or more "reckless" than an average segment of the population.

Cyclists, unlike motorists, are vulnurable and a small minority of road users. Like other vulnurable and minority groups, it is tempting to consistently blame the victims and occasionaly blame the motorist for violence against those victims. Although this allows one to focus on the individual and blithely ignore the systemic problems, it unfortunately does nothing to actually reduce the death, suffering or inequality. You may not realize that cars and trucks kill several cyclists and injure thousands more in Toronto each year. If despite the statistics you still think this is all the fault of the cyclists, then you should try getting around by bike for a while, using all of the skills and knowledge of traffic rules you\'ve learned while driving, and feel perfectly safe.

Finally, I find the assertion remarkable that if cyclists would only obey all the rules of the road, we would achieve respect. I experience disrespect as a cyclist almost every day, but it invariably occurs not when I am breaking a law but when I am inconveniencing motorists: when "taking the lane," a legal manoevre required when there is inadequate space to share a lane, when cars are parked in the bike lane, or when a driver is inattentive (which is extremely dangerous and disrespectful, but not exactly illegal).

In closing, however, I only request that you drive safely and attentively. A car is a deadly weapon, and should be treated as such, every time.

Sincerely,
Levi Waldron
Advocacy for Respect for Cyclists

grocery shopping, the modern way

The other evening it was raining out, a cold, drizzly, fall rain, and my roommate and I were starting to make dinner together. We had everything we actually needed, but the salad was going to be a little bare so he suggested we run over to Dominion to pick up some more greens and a pepper. I was still wondering where the local 24-hour Dominion supermarket was, for those spur-of-the moment, middle-of-the-night purchases, so I agreed. I grabbed my jacket and tuque to prepare for going outside, thinking how cozy I would be, all bundled up in the rain, and how the Toronto air always smells the freshest during and after a rain. But when he hit the "basement" button in the elevator, I realized he was planning to drive to the store, an idea which hadn't even crossed my mind. I guess I was too surprised to protest too strongly, so the next thing I knew we were making the 5-minute drive to the grocery store. So we never had to step outside at all, except for the few steps between the parking lot into the large, sprawling supermarket. I hardly needed my jacket, much less the tuque. We picked up a bunch of spinach and a green pepper, grown with fossil fuels, then stepped up to an unstaffed checkout line! That's right, you check out your own groceries. Just scan the packaged items, and tell the touch-screen what your produce is before you put it in your grocery bag, which it weighs as you add each item. Dominion has managed to unemploy supermarket tellers, and in a way that requires you to use their disposable grocery bags as opposed to your own reusable bag. We took our well-packaged produce to the car and drove back home, then took the elevator back up to our 24th floor apartment. Amazing, the amount of excess energy one can consume to acquire food. I wish I had an easy way to calculate how much energy that little trip required. The 5-minute drive from a "cold" start emitted about half of what a 30-minute drive would have. I bet that the "incidental" energy consumed by the elevator, the drive, the agronomical inputs to grow the food, and trucking of the food, outweighed the calorie content of the food itself by many thousands to one. Not many things are more ordinary than a trip to the store, but on further examination it sure can seem extraordinary.

packed into a bush plane

packed into a bush plane, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

Continuing the canoeing slide show after a bit of an absence, here is our group packed into a twin engine Otter, along with our 3 canoes and 1500 lbs of food and gear for the 2-hour flight to our put-in point. When I receive our group journal, I'll start posting some entries from it.

flooding in San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala

photo credit: Elizabeth, English teacher and friend of mine still working in San Andrés Itzapa. This is just down the hill from where I stayed for my month in Itzapa.

You may or may not have heard yet about Hurricane Stan, which hit Mexico and central America pretty hard this last week. In the little town of San Andrés Itzapa Guatemala, where I spent a month earlier this year, a lot of homes were destroyed by flooding and the municipal water and electricity were badly damaged. See, for example:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1195876

Since I still know a number of people in Itzapa and a good chunk of my heart is still there, I'm going to do a small-scale, informal relief effort. I just want to funnel some money to a couple Itzapa residents who I consider to be very trustworthy to buy food, clothing, water etc. for people who need it. There will be zero overhead and it will directly benefit very poor indigenous people who have just lost everything they have. Also, anything we send has an equivalent value of about 10 times more than what it's worth here, so even a little bit is significant. If you want to help out, please let me know soon for how much, then I'll cover it for now until you have a chance to get the money to me, because I want to get the money there quickly. If you'd rather go through more formal means that might go to areas where help is even more badly needed, and get a tax deduction, I might recommend Rights Action in Canada and the U.S. or Rainbow World Fund in the U.S. One advantage to going through me will be that I will be able to let you know exactly to what and to whom the money goes to. I was going to write a section on the importance of the transfer of wealth from rich to poor countries in the context of sustainable development in its original meaning (not the many perversions which have been adopted since), but in the interest of expedience I'm going to send this as-is with my stated opinion that such equalization is essential to environmental sustainability in the broad sense.

taking the bus

Taking a city bus in a poorly serviced area is good to do, at least now and then. I took the train to Ottawa this week, to meet with my research group. The Ottawa train station is a ways from the city centre, and is serviced by a 4-lane divided highway with occasional bus service. I can't really complain too much, the bus comes every 15 minutes, but when it comes it is crowded, and costs $2.75 just for the 10-minute trip into town. On my way back to the train station at the end of my trip, we stopped at a station where lots of people got on, crowding the bus a fair bit near the entrance. When everyone but one black woman had gotten on the bus, the driver shut the door and drove off. I yelled, "you're missing someone!" to which someone yelled back "we're rather full!" It was a huge bus and we could've made more room if the driver had told everyone to move back, but he didn't care and the decision was made. Earlier this year I saw BC Transit authorities in Vancouver telling someone he couldn't take his washing machine on wheels on the Skytrain, 10 at night, with hardly anyone on the train. Presumably, they thought it belonged in the back of his truck. I hate underfunded and uncaring transit systems. They're racist, classist, ableist, etc. etc. They mean real hardship, to real people, every day. They're the result of the better part of a century of all-out government policy and subsidisation in favour of auto transport, ubiquitous advertising of the power, individualism, speed, sexiness, safety, even environmental friendliness of driving. And of course, a fully willing middle class. One of the reasons I don't ever want to own a car is that I don't want to take part in the privelege of ignoring these problems, or bypassing them whenever it's inconvenient. Rant finished, for now.

trip prep in YK

trip prep in YK, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

organizing what seems like a staggering amount food and gear in a borrowed banquet hall in Yellowknife. How are we going to carry all this?

Tim and me, getting ready for the 3 1/2 day bus trip from Toronto to Yellowknife

Tim and me, getting ready for the 3 1/2 day bus trip from Toronto to Yellowknife, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

trip prep

trip prep, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

preparing food before the trip started. about 800 lbs of it in total.

crossing the north "wing" of Pelly Lake

originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

The end of a 5km open water crossing on Pelly Lake, Back River (see satellite photo - we crossed the north arm near the centre of the map, traveling west to east). Can't beat those conditions.

back in civilization

back in civilization, originally uploaded by Levi Waldron.

Hello again everybody, I am back in civilization after 54 days travelling in the arctic by canoe. It was an adventure that is now reaching surreal proportions in my mind, and I look forward to telling some of the stories here. I won't have much time til I'm settled down in Toronto in mid-September, but in the meanwhile I'll just post a few pictures. Here's one of the arctic ocean with sea ice in thebackground, and 1 of our 3 faithful canoes in the foreground.