A note from a reader;

The local newspaper’s editor is in bed with mayor as the editor’s wife is the mayor’s personal assistant and chief of staff. To speak out against the mayor is suicidal . MP Brian Masse and his NDP thugs with the help of cityhall are running a campaign of ruin against all businesses. Kate, I know you are extremely busy but I hope that you might get other consrvative bloggers to aid us and help bring an investigation to our municipality . Windsor has the highest unemployment,property taxes, utilities, water and sewage plus being next to Detroit our insurance rates are astronomical. Windsor has achieved socialist utopia with almost everyone living off a social program controlled by the left.

This is the type of local story that’s a bit outside the usual realm of SDA, but interested readers can bookmark these three Windsor blogs. Reading some of their entries, it sounds a bit like Saskatoon under previous administrations, or as John Gormley describes them – “Citizens Against Virtually Everything”.
Chirs Schnurr
Windsor Municipal Shadow
Windsor City Blog

The French Will Never Forget
h/t

To Enlarge.
h/t

More.

Really lucky.
More here
(h/t to reader Maple Stump)

Ten politically incorrect truths about human nature.

To the most generous, forgiving and thick-skinned nation on earth – and the best friend a country ever had: it’s an honour to number so many of you among my regular readers.
Have a safe and happy holiday.

(Spotted by Sean)

h/t

Australian Prime Minister John Howard is taking some drastic steps to address rampant child abuse in Aboriginee communities in the Northern Territories. Here’s a list of the measures being taken:

• Alcohol will be banned in some regions for six months, and X-rated porn
  outlawed in communities and on public computers.
• The need for outsiders to have permits to get into townships and roads on
  indigenous land will be scrapped.
• Every Aboriginal child under 16 will be required to have a medical
  check-up at federal expense.
• States have been asked to donate 10 police officers each to boost the
  uniformed presence in each community, working alongside federal bureaucrats
  who will be sent to live in selected regions as town managers.
• Centrelink will immediately begin quarantining 50 per cent of welfare
  payments to people in the communities, which can only be spent on food and
  other essentials. Further money can be docked if children fail to attend
  school, and to pay for meals for the children.
• Welfare recipients will be forced to help clean up homes and streets to
  ensure safe and hygienic living conditions, with managers able to inspect
  houses.

Full article available here.
Discussion?

So… Which provice has been fingered by both RBC and the BMO to lead the rest of the country in economic growth this year? Hint: it’s not Alberta.

Grab a spray can.

Institutional-style group homes across the province should be replaced with more family-oriented foster care, says a new report by the province’s child advocate.
Judy Finlay, who leads the Office of Child and Family Service Advocacy, is recommending that the “family-like” system be expanded to replace the group homes, which have been operating for years with numerous complaints and no standards forcing them to give good care.
“We have to re-examine group care – it does not work,” Finlay said in an interview.
The group home system in Ontario has had long-standing and well-documented problems. There have been reports of children in group homes being tied up or restrained for emotional outbursts, police being called to handle minor disputes, and an overall structure more institutional than family-oriented. — The Star

When I was growing up I had a friend from a nearby group home. He had a new (and very fashionable) winter jacket every year. He had a new bike every year. He went to Disneyland every year with the other kids from the group home. He got to eat good food every night (they BBQed lots of steaks and chicken breasts, as I recall).
I, in the meantime, was being raised by a single, unwed mother on assistance. My “previously used” winter jacket was half silver from the amount of duct tape needed to keep the remaining down from escaping. My bike was built from other bikes I salvaged from dumpsters. I’ve yet to visit Disneyland. I remember eating puffed wheat with skim milk from powder for weeks at a time because it was the only food in the house. When we did occasionally get meat, it was usually something along the lines of pork hocks (which made those dusty three year old tins of escargot that came in the food bank hampers look pretty exotic to me).
I would respectfully suggest that when Ms. Finlay is done investigating group homes she should start investigating single unwed mothers and the effect they have on their offspring. I’m guessing that what she finds will make the whole group home thing look pretty tame.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

1. Vancouver: 1.5 million people and two bridges. You do the math.
2. Your $900,000 Vancouver home is just 5 hours from downtown.
3. You can throw a rock and hit three Starbucks locations.
4. There’s always some sort of deforestation protest going on.
5. Weed.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN ALBERTA

1. Big rock between you and B.C.
2. Ottawa who?
3. Tax is 6% instead of approximately 200% as it is for the rest of the
   country.
4. You can exploit almost any natural resource you can think of.
5. You live in the only province that could actually afford to be its own
   country.
6. The Americans below you are all in anti-government militia groups.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN SASKATCHEWAN

1. You never run out of wheat.
2. Your province is really easy to draw.
3. You can watch the dog run away from home for hours.
4. People will assume you live on a farm.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN MANITOBA

1. You wake up one morning to find that you suddenly have a beachfront
   property.
2. Hundreds of huge, horribly frigid lakes.
3. Nothing compares to a wicked Winnipeg winter.
4. You can be an Easterner or a Westerner depending on your mood.
5. You can pass the time watching trucks and barns float by.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN ONTARIO

1. You live in the centre of the universe.
2. Your $400,000 Toronto home is actually a dump.
3. You and you alone decide who will win the federal election.
4. The only province with hard-core American-style crime.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN QUEBEC

1. Racism is socially acceptable.
2. You can take bets with your friends on which English neighbour will move
   out next.
3. Other provinces basically bribe you to stay in Canada.
4. You can blame all your problems on the "Anglo *#!%!"

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NEW BRUNSWICK

1. One way or another, the government gets 98% of your income.
2. You’re poor, but not as poor as the Newfies.
3. No one ever blames anything on New Brunswick.
4. Everybody has a grandfather who runs a lighthouse.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NOVA SCOTIA

1. Everyone can play the fiddle. The ones who can’t, think they can.
2. You can pretend to have Scottish heritage as an excuse to get drunk and
   wear a kilt.
3. You are the only reason Anne Murray makes money.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

1. Even though more people live on Vancouver Island, you still got the big,
   new bridge.
2. You can walk across the province in half an hour.
3. You can drive across the province in two minutes.
4. Everyone has been an extra on "Road to Avonlea."
5. This is where all those tiny, red potatoes come from.
6. You can confuse ships by turning your porch lights on and off at night.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NEWFOUNDLAND

1. If Quebec separates, you will float off to sea.
2. If you do something stupid, you have a built-in excuse.
3. The workday is about two hours long.
4. It is socially acceptable to wear your hip waders to your wedding.

—

Received by e-mail this morning from this fellow. If you somehow feel insulted by the contents of this post, yell at him and not me. 😉

UPDATE: The following were added by Hans Rupprecht in the comments and are worth appending to the main post:

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN NUNAVUT

1. You don’t want NONE OF IT any where else.
2. You don’t ever need to buy a freezer.
3. You are never short of ice for your daquiris while enjoying your ocean
   view.
4. Diamond mines are the jewels in the TRUE NORTH.
5. Polar bears make good fishing buddies, if you are short of friends.

TOP REASONS TO LIVE IN YUKON

1. Line dancers doing ‘can can’ have great gams.
2. There is gold in them thar hills.
3. Next to Alaska which used to be owned by the Russians, so it is kind of
   like Siberia.
4. Summer is two weeks, so it is a great place for winter sports.
5. The Dempster Highway is gravel, just like the condition of Saskatchewan’s
   roads!

The Vatican has issued 10 commandments for drivers:
1. You shall not kill.
2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.
3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.
4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.
5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.
6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.
7. Support the families of accident victims.
8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.
9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.
10. Feel responsible toward others.
— snip —
I was expecting something more along the lines of…
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s Porsche.”

Where do they find the volunteers?

Deerfoot Trail

Glenmore Trail
Thanks to reader Larry Weber for the photos. (The Glenmore underpass looked like that last time I was in Calgary, come to think of it.)

Sorry about that! In the interval between writing this post and the software auto-publishing it, the link went dead.
My apologies for the confusion.
So instead, a photo of new Champion Minuteman Death Valley Days, who was the reason I was pre-writing posts in the first place. He finished his title in Winnipeg on Friday.

When the second dog with me (a friend’s) also completed his title yesterday, I was able to pack up and head home early. Finally pulled over near Indian Head last night to crash for a few hours, and I’m still a bit buzzy – so there won’t be anything new from me for a few more hours.