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.

WOMAN IN LINE (looking at the 10 boxes of ammo I’m carrying): I can’t believe they let you just carry that through the store.
ME: Well, the last time I drove up to the ammo counter they told me to leave my car outside from now on.

Via Clayton Cramer.

You decide!

There’s a shotgun in the “survival kit” of every Soyuz spacecraft – added, the story goes, after a Soviet astronaut crew landed in a remote area to find themselves fighting off wolves.

When the space shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere 2003, all seven astronauts on board were killed. There were, however, still three humans left in space — the astronauts on the International Space Station. Two Americans and a Russian were left to deal with the aftermath of the accident. They had to cope with the loss of their friends, which was hard enough. They also had to worry about how supplies were now going to reach them and how, ultimately, they would get home while the Space Shuttle fleet was grounded.

If the book is as entertaining as this Quirks and Quarks interview with author Chris Jones, it’s worth checking out.

mp3 (8.3 megs)

MYTISCHI, Russia (AP) – Erik Staal scored 23 seconds into overtime Sunday to give Canada a 4-3 victory over the Czech Republic, but the point earned by reaching overtime still was enough to advance the Czechs to the quarterfinals at the world championships. […]

Tomas Plekanek put the Czechs back in the lead on the power play at 12:05 of the second period, but Staal made it 2-2 by beating Cechmanek with a backhand at 3:22 of the third. Rostislav Olesz then knocked in a rebound to make it 3-2 for the Czechs at 6:36, but Shane Doan forced the extra period by shooting through Cechmanek’s pads at 10:57.

Photo courtesy Flaming Bear.

“They had to fool the people,” he told Sukhanov. “It is now clear why they made it so difficult for the average Soviet citizen to go abroad. They were afraid that people’s eyes would open.”

May he rest in peace.

“…but stickier.”
They need our help.

Thank a Conquistador.

Archeologists have discovered the remains of two dozen children who were apparent sacrificial victims to a rain god by Mexican Indians nearly a thousand years ago, researchers said Tuesday.
The bones of the children, dating from about 950 to 1150, were found on the outskirts of the Toltec archaeological zone of Tula, said Luis Gamboa, an archaeologist with the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The discovery about 40 miles north of Mexico City predates the Aztecs, an advanced civilization conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century.
The bodies of the children, who ranged in age from 5 to about 15, were found in a single pit during excavations that began last month near a police station just outside the archaeological site.
All of the bodies were laid out in the same position — facing east — around a shrine to the god Tlaloc, leading archeologists to believe “this was something collective, done simultaneously,” in a single ritual, Gamboa said.
“They had some incisions on the vertebrae that suggested they had used some sort of (stone) to cut their throats,” he said.

If you’ve never been through a real middle-eastern market before, you’ve missed a wonder. Especially for those of us accustomed to shopping in strict rectilinear grids laid out according to the results of exhaustive market research. To add strangeness to the western mind, similar vendors are set alongside each other in Kurdistan, so competitors see each other. We normally avoid putting two grocers side by side, but here you have six or twelve all calling out for your business. Loudly.

In photo and video.

That might have made Dick Cheney President.