I’d imagine most students are ahead of the way formal education is considering technology, but in a messier way. To drag up an old term, “Computer Literacy” is as important as literacy. What good is being able to read something if you can’t find it, assess it’s authenticity or reliability when you find it, or understand that now we are moving into a discussion based information society rather than a question and answer…

To clarify this, when I say question and answer, I mean approaching a problem in a “conventional way” (though frankly, conventions have changed so this isn’t really a valid term when applied to the following concept – but I digress) where you have a question, and you go to the library (where books are vetted before purchased and cataloged) and looking up an answer in a book nets you a fact that is for the most part, fixed.

Now we exist in a more discussion based information world. Though some people still go to places of authority for information (like me, even if it’s online, eg, National Geographic), in certain circles it’s as often, or perhaps even moreso, that people will ask the community, via Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Wikipedia is a great example of how this discussion has manifest, and has for the most part evolved into a massive peer reviewed journal compendium megapedia. It may not be suitable for first sources, but the best entries all cite multiple sources and you can use that to do further research.

I can recall taking mandatory library classes in school, where we’d learn the Dewey Decimal system. I don’t know if those are still part of the curriculum, but I’d hazard the statement that in today’s society, having an equivalent that talks not only about how to find, but how to evaluate information online is vital, far more than the knowledge of the Dewey system (though that is good to know). Does this exist in current curriculum? I don’t know.

Curating the discussion has become a new theme that has developed in journalism discussion in the last few years. Essentially, at the root, it’s talking about how research is done. There are no shortage of tools (which I am only now starting to explore) but Storify.com is one that seems intriguing. It allows the user to collect and curate a story across multiple social networks, pulling comments from Twitter, Facebook, etc, photos from Flickr.com and so on. It still needs to be curated correctly, but the issue is becoming less about finding the information, and more about evaluating it. And just to add some credibility, Storify was started by ex- Associated Press staff. Andy Carvin of NPR also has made a massive impact, using Twitter to curate stories on unrest in the middle east, and a NYT reporter recently said his twitter feed from Joplin after the tornado was some of his best reporting.

None of this is to say that Twitter or Facebook are the most important things in the world, but rather it’s how they are used. Facebook has more photos online than anyone else on the planet. More than Getty Images, more than Reuters, more than the Associated Press. Imagine the significance of that. Certainly, it’s about the kind of photos, but it does drive home the impact of how a population can create a lot of media, and I’m sure as you can imagine, a lot of it is crap.

Immersion is the only way to teach this stuff. It’s like a language – use it or lose it.

I was tweeting back and forth with a friend and former co-worker last week about how she and her son were in a fight about how much online time he gets (one hour/day). She’s a new media fiend, and I found it interesting that she was restrictive about time, rather than quality. I suggested she take her son, who loves Wikipedia, through their local neighbourhood and do some research so he can update the wiki for where they live. Not only is it something he’d love to do, but he’ll learn about his community, about how information gets online, and who puts it there, and about how important it is to be correct in what goes up. I also suggested she not count that towards his allocated time online. She loved the idea and is running with it. I can’t wait to see the results. That exercise will do more for his abilities with a computer than sitting in a classroom talking about the “computer” as if it’s a separate entity sitting off in some air conditioned room munching on punchcards.

Computers are everywhere and what we do with them is going to determine how our lives advance. Do we want to be educating our kids in a way that makes them illiterate for the real world they are about to enter?

About halfway along our trip through Africa, we enjoyed the longest break from travel on the whole trip – three non riding days based in Arusha, Tanzania.

I say based because Arusha is the main jumping off point for trips into the Serengeti, a massive plain to the west that is the result of an ancient volcanic eruption. I can’t tell you when I first heard of the place, but it was so long ago that as far as I can tell, the Serengeti, or at least its legend, has been in my mind forever.

What I didn’t know anything about was the Ngorongoro crater, the remains of the aforementioned volcano. No longer active, the crater is about 20kms across, and deep enough that from the rim, you can look down on the clouds inside. There are watering holes and grasslands across its floor, and every single one of the safari “Big Five” can be found inside. The walls of the crater are so steep and so high that animals rarely enter or leaving, turning the Ngorongoro into a sort of fishbowl.

On my trip back to Arusha, after visiting the Serengeti, we spent one night camping on the rim of the crater. The next morning we drove down into the crater as soon as the gates opened, to explore.

The night before, hot sunny skies gave way to a storm rolling in from the east. Dark clouds filled the sky and we sat outside to watch the weather move towards us. To our backs was surely a stunning sunset, but the closest I came to noticing it was the red light that shone across the clouds to the east.

The image is one that I love for the depth of colours. The green grass and brightly coloured tents set against the dark clouds bathed in light from the setting sun, are as vibrant as the life in the crater itself.  It’s a nice reminder that really, humans aren’t much when compared to the power of nature.

The next morning, as clouds cleared, we waited outside the gates down into the crater. Winds cleared the rim of the crater, but clouds down inside stayed relatively unmoved, and we headed down into the cold of the crater floor.

Over the next few hours, we spotted countless animals including cheetah, hyena, a pride of lions lazily stalking a wildebeest that had become separated from the herd, plenty of antelope, and elephants making their way out of the mist.

By mid day the sun had burned off most of the cloud and we headed back for Arusha.

Of course, I shouldn’t be so rude as to skip over the Serengeti. Truly, a remarkable place, I spent a night in a tent, listening to the roars of lions, and awoke to a day of spotting zebra, giraffe, lions, hippos, storks, elephants and even a rare leopard.

It’s not to downplay the magnificence of the Serengeti – it really was stunning, and I can only imagine what it would be like during the Great Migration – but the crater is not to be missed. If you don’t get to see a storm move in, I’m sure you’ll get a stunning sunset. I don’t think they come any other way in Africa.

Wildlife Crossing

This photo, taken in Egypt while travelling as staff with the 2007 edition of the Tour D’Afrique, is one of many that I could pull that feature wildlife.

Taken early in the trip, the group I was riding with were the racers. I wasn’t able to hang on very long with them, and that ability only diminished as we rode further through Africa. I was riding about one in every four days, maybe more frequently, but often had to do other tasks as staff, that I couldn’t always ride.

For some the trip wasn’t just about riding the length of Africa, but to do it at speed, racing a total of 96 stages over four months, having times taken and accrued, and ultimately finding out who was fastest as time wore on.

Early in the trip, there were a number of people who raced, but as the trip continued, their numbers dwindled. Even those who insisted on racing would have a gentlemen’s agreement not to race on certain days, effectively keeping the score even.

With so many things to see and places to stop, many of those who started out as racers gave up that pursuit, occasionally racing on certain days, but foregoing the chance to score an overall total that would be competitive.

However, no matter how steadfast a racer’s resolve, invariably Africa would force a pause, a moment to reflect on where we were, and what we were seeing.

We all coasted to a stop as the camels stepped into the road, took a moment, looked, pointed, smiled at how all of our ambitions to ride 12,000kms were put on hold for a few moments.

These moments happened with amazing frequency, and yet, on arriving in Cape Town with no further to ride, they happened nowhere near often enough.

To get the photo, I reached as high as I could, and snapped a few photos. It’s interesting how, as time wears on, the memory I have takes this viewpoint, not my view, which was certainly lower to the ground, and more “within” the group. I wonder how many of my memories have been tempered by those created in my camera. As I continue to explore this photo collection, I imagine that will become more clear.

I have a hard time saying that this is a favourite photo, or that I even really like it. In fact, if anything, I’m a bit ashamed by it.

The story behind this photo is fairly straight forward. One of the riders on the 2007 Tour D’Afrique – I worked as the bike mechanic on the trip – was descending a hill in Ethiopia, and moving at a good clip. Somehow, a young girl stepped in front of him. Maybe she didn’t see him, or underestimated his speed, but the two connected in a most unpleasant way.

Meanwhile, I was sitting at the lunch truck. The rider came around the corner on foot, carrying the girl, and another staff member tended to her injuries. Thankfully none were major – a swollen lip and one eye swollen nearly shut.

She must have been terrified.

She didn’t speak english, and she didn’t even speak the same dialect as our Ethiopian guide, so we had to find another local who would help us talk with her to track down her family and make sure she got home alright.

And in the midst of the mayhem, I got out my camera. I think I had some vision that if I shot difficult circumstances, I would somehow be a better photographer, or somehow be more worldly. I asked if I could take photos, but of course, the girl had no way to let me know how she felt. The rider said he thought it would be ok, and so as the two of them sat there, waiting for her family to show up, I took a few photos.

It’s a striking photo, but in a way, I wish I hadn’t taken it.

His grief at the accident, and her strength, sitting quietly, not crying, just waiting are what compel me in this image. There are so many intrusions in someone’s life, but I can’t imagine how that girl must have felt about everything that happened to her that day.

The Ferry

One of the biggest regrets I have is not writing more while traveling. There are a lot of excuses, maybe reasons, but as I look back on my trip through Africa in 2007, memories are starting to get hazy.

The quickest way to clarity is to have a look through the 10,000 or so photos I took on the trip. Thinning that stockpile has been an ongoing project. Dropping duplicates and trashing the worst of the photos has still left me with a massive pile, and now it’s time to start turning each photo into words, to tell the stories associated with each, and to start to develop the story of the trip as a whole.

There is so much about this photo that I like. It’s easily one of my favourites from the trip.

We arrived at the ferry docks on Lake Nasser in Aswan, Egypt, to board an overnight ferry headed to Wadi Halfa, Sudan. I was energized at the excitement of leaving Egypt to see what lay beyond, and I was also very happy to be healthy. A foolish assumption about the quality of the water at our hotel in Cairo meant for most of the week prior to arriving in Aswan, I was running to locate every bathroom I could, and often none were available, so I’d dig in the sand.

My memories of an afternoon in Aswan meant checking out the dam, getting spare passport photos taken – I still have these in my passport wallet, one of the few photos I have of myself from the trip – and getting a relaxed meal with our tour leader, Jack. At camp the night before boarding the ferry, we stayed at a campground in Aswan, repacking our gear for the transfer from the coaches that carried our luggage, to the ferry.

The next morning, we packed up and made our way to the docks. We were told to expect a long day, and no one could wander off as our scheduled boarding time wasn’t known. Instead, we hung out on the massive ramp down to the ferry, wide enough for four or five lanes of traffic.

As we waited under a hot sun, small pickup trucks drove wildly down to the loading doors, despite cargo loaded more than double the height of the truck, held more or less in place with an intricate series of ropes. Men sitting atop the cargo would spring into action as soon as the truck was stopped, untying and lowering boxes down to more men who had jumped out of the cab. One by one, each box would be carried across a barge at the edge of the dock and onto the boat through a single doorway in the side of the hull. A steady stream of men wrestled boxes onto the ferry and a second stream came back to the trucks for a second load.

Most of the product being carried on board were goods that were not so easily available in Sudan, and instead could be more quickly and easily imported from Egypt.

Sometime in the early afternoon, our turn came to load. Calling it our turn is maybe a bit misleading though. All it meant was we got to join in the ever increasing crush all funneling through the door on the side of the boat.

The tour company had booked all of the first class cabins for our trip. Each cabin had two bunk beds, about the same space again in floorspace, except for where a desk intruded into the room, and a tiny closet. Washrooms were shared with the hundreds of other passengers on board.

Once a few of our group were on board, we began loading bags through portholes on the side of the boat. It was a precarious operation, with a sliver of water between the barge and the boat wide enough to swallow a duffel bag.

With the bags all on board, the bikes came next, hoisted in similar fashion, from the barge up to someone leaning out a porthole, who then passed it further up the side of the boat, to someone leaning over the deck railing. We got hold of some rope and used that to help string bikes up to the top deck, where the 40 or so bikes would be locked together for the overnight trip.

We said by to our Egyptian guides and got on board the ferry, pushing past the continuing throng of people loading boxes onto the ferry.

My bags were in a room along with the gear of two other staff members, our nurse, Elaine, and an amazing generalist, Rachel. Each of them got their own bed, while I would sleep sprawled across duffel bags and backpacks tiling the floor.

As the sun set, a number of our group began to relax on the front deck of the ship, and a few people took out laptops for their first chance in some time to draft letters home or download photos from digital cameras.

And that’s what strikes me about this photo. After the madness of Cairo and the hundreds of kilometers we rode getting to Aswan, the manic experience of getting our stuff and ourselves on board in a world that had already changed so much for all of us, we were only a fraction of the way into the trip, with so much left ahead.

Nicola Valley, BC

It’s been a while. A whole season in fact. While I’ve had a lot of ideas for entries, I have been all over the place, without the bit of calm to sit down and get something done for this space. Of course, that’s a good thing, because I’ve been busy with other projects. How about a tour?

In late August, I travelled out to Mont Sainte Anne, Que., to check out the Mountain Bike World Championships. Having been to the Ste Anne World Cup last year, I was bound and determined to get to Worlds. The trip came together around some research projects for CTVOlympics.ca  as they start to look ahead to the London 2012 Olympic Games. I sat down with three Canadian XC riders, Catharine Pendrel, Geoff Kabush and Emily Batty. It was great to talk with three people at different points in their careers, all with massive drive and talent. Pendrel had won the World Cup women’s title just before Worlds, and though she missed the podium in Ste Anne by the narrowest margin, the next day she was an absolute pro, already thinking about next year and how to be even better. You can read all about her in a feature I wrote for Canadian Cycling magazine. You’ll also be able to read about Geoff Kabush in the same issue.  If you’d like to find out more about Emily Batty, who will be starting her first season in the elite World Cup this year, check out an article I did for the Globe and Mail sports section.

Emily Batty at MTB Worlds in Mont Sainte Anne, Quebec

It was a busy week.

A month later, and I was in BC, with two weddings and a Canadian Rally Championship round behind me. Of course, I was in BC for another rally, this time, the Pacific Forest Rally in Merritt, BC. Great weather, mountain roads and strong competition all came together for an excellent weekend. Word to the wise, make sure you keep you camera gear protected at rallies, dust is a killer. To see some of the coverage I do, check out Flatovercrest.com or check out Inside Track Magazine. The magazine is available both online and on news stands.

Pat Richard at the Pacific Forest Rally

A few weeks after BC, my first audio podcast was released over at the Dirtbag Diaries which is a fantastic blog about the outdoor, dirtbag life. I’m pretty sure I’m not really a dirtbag, but I’ll happily take that name. My short was a look back at my trip to Africa as staff for the Tour D’Afrique, and how the experience changed me, how I travel and how I pack. But don’t stop there. The minds behind the Dirtbag Diaries do great work, so keep listening.

Through a flurry of family visits in late October and early November, I ate a lot, put on a bit of winter “insulation” and did more work for Inside Track, this time the program for the Rally of the Tall Pines which is the final event of the Canadian Rally Championship. No sooner was that done, and Tall Pines was here, which meant another weekend of race fuel, rally cars and dirt roads. It was a stellar event, and I’m excited to say it was a great way to wrap up the season. No spoilers here, get back to Flatovercrest.com to find out what happened.

Just after wrapping up Tall Pines, I went out to Alberta to check out the World Cup alpine races in Lake Louise. Though things didn’t go initially as planned, I had a fantastic time watching the women’s races before coming back home.

Ladies World Cup downhill, Lake Louise, Alberta

Now it’s time to set up some new projects for 2011 to mix in with my usual fun.

Icefields Parkway, Alberta

I tried surfing two years ago with a South African friend in a place called Muizenberg, outside Cape Town. He’d done various sorts of board sports, but for me it was a first on water, my closest experience was having been snowboarding once before. I expected to learn quickly, and by the end of the day, be carving solid turns and looking like something out of a surf magazine. After all, I was completely at home on a pair of skis, and picked up snowboarding quickly. Both of those ride on snow, which of course, is just frozen water. How hard could it be?

The goal to look like some sort of surf model went out the window as soon as I was handed a wetsuit. What little muscle I had did nothing to fill up the neoprene skin around me. Wetsuits are supposed to be tight, but my cyclists body stayed a bit too trim to really fill out the suit. Nevermind, I thought, I’ll just make it look good out on the water.

I quickly realized why surfing is so hard. Once I was on the board, I did fairly well, years of balancing on two wheels and two boards had kept my reflexes sharp and me upright. No surprise really, and not really all my doing – the board was the size of a large wharf in Rotterdam. No, the issue was getting up on the board in the first place.

It’s really the biggest lie of omission in the entire surfing world, that you’re up ripping waves so easily and quickly. Magazines and advertisements show massive tubes – is that even the right lingo? Ripped bodies ripping wicked carves. So too, movies show surfers happily bobbing in the water, waiting no more than a handful of seconds to catch a wave.

As I sat on the board, bobbing up and down on the water, I had to balance a set of different priorities. I had to keep away from the shore until an appropriate wave arrived. That meant kicking and swirling my legs and spinning my arms in a way that so illustrates the competence of a duck or goose, and the totality of my own gross incompetence.

Then I had to be ready to totally reverse this action as soon as I saw a wave, paddling like mad to try to match it’s speed.

On top of that were the flags. Black flags lined the shore on certain sections of the beach. They were in place to indicate where sharks had been seen, as if somehow the sharks would view the flags and say “Oh, right, can’t swim over there, that’s the humans area.” So I had to paddle away from that area, which incidentally, is where the current was pushing me.

All of this meant that by the time that perfect wave rolled in, I was so stressed out and exhausted that event standing up on solid ground would have been a challenge. I was so used to the easy access chairlift ski culture back home, and even mountain biking where with each stroke of the pedals, you make progress. Not so on the ocean. And not so in real life.

Sometimes, no matter how badly you want something, or how much you think you’re prepared for something else, it just doesn’t happen, or when it does, you’re left watching the crest of the wave pass you by, realizing you didn’t paddle soon enough or hard enough. Everything can seem to move too fast or not at all. Sometimes you end up drifting a little to close to the sharks for any semblance of comfort.

Of course, just like I imagine and hope surfing to be, with practice you get better at life. You learn to recognize opportunities earlier, you know that even if something doesn’t come your way immediately, your patience will be rewarded. The more you engage life, the more prepared you’ll be when that ideal circumstance rises up from the horizon, and you’ll be up and balanced before you know it, making it all look so good.

At that instant, the waiting, the treading water, watching every direction for shore, surfers and wannabes, sharks and waves, it all just disappears. It’s as if each worry, so significant beforehand, is just one of a million bubbles in the froth behind your board as you glide away.

Make no mistake, I never did make it look good out on the water. I stood up and stayed up perhaps three times in an hour, and went in completely knackered, my arms feeling as if the only thing holding them on to the rest of my body was the wetsuit.

And I’m looking forward to trying again, because I know like life, it was a taste of what would come with time and practice. It was like the first time a cute girl though I was cute too, or that first chance in a new job to prove myself. In those instants I knew what more would come, even if I weren’t sure of all the steps to get there. One day, with enough practice, I’ll perhaps contribute to that great surfing lie of omission, and make it all look good.

My Trek in Egypt

A little over ten years ago, I was enterprising enough to turn a torn shoulder into a new bike.

I had been riding a fully rigid mountain bike on some local trails, when I rounded a corner over a crest, lofting into the air. There in front of me was a massive downed tree. I smiled. I knew I had the time to stop. I was smug.

I grabbed two handfuls of brakes and danced with the threshold to slow my bike down. Everything was going just as I expected it would. My toe clips held my feet firmly on the pedals. Then, in an instant it all went wrong.

My front tire caught the edge of a rock, jarring me, and causing my hand to instinctively grasp hard to the bike. Too hard. My fingers clenched down on the brake levers, and the front wheel locked. Before I could release, I went over the bars, hard onto my right shoulder. My toe clips continued to hold my feet firmly on the pedals, dragging the bike along, and preventing me from tucking and rolling. Instead I went from full tilt to full stop on my shoulder. At least I stopped before the tree.

I stood up, feeling great, as my friends gathered round.

“You went down pretty hard, are you ok?”

“Sure, look, I can move my arm, it’s fine, let’s go.”

“Maybe we should wait a minute or two.”

Five minutes later, my arm hung limp at my side. I could move my fingers and elbow, but my shoulder might as well have belonged to someone else, for all it listened to my inputs.

We snaked our way back up the trail towards the house of one of my friends. We traded bikes for a car and went to the hospital. My parents met me there, and I told them the good news.

“Nothing’s broken,” I smiled. I still couldn’t move my shoulder. The hospital discharged me.

A few days later, unable to sleep because of the severe pain, I went to the walk in clinic near my house. I had to use my left hand to lift my right arm onto the shifter to put the car in gear. One ultrasound later and I found out the bad news. I had torn nearly every tissue in my right shoulder. I had to give it rest, and no bikes for six weeks.

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I swung into action.

“You know mom, I wouldn’t have crashed if I had a better bike,” I said while we sat around the dinner table.

“What do you mean?” asked my dad, instantly suspicious.

“I don’t need the best bike in the world or anything, but if I had better brakes, I could have stopped more quickly, and if I had suspension, that rock wouldn’t have jarred me so much. I would have been fine. I can even pay for it myself, since I have this summer job.”

“Ok, keep us posted,” said my dad, returning to his meal.

“Well, the thing is… I could get the bike sooner if you guys could front me the money,” I smiled. “I’ll pay you back though.”

The conversation continued over the next few days, and soon I had my parents convinced that spending $1400 on a new bike – money that I would pay back – was no issue at all. All the rest of my earnings would go towards my fall tuition, and it’d be fine.

Within a couple weeks, having test ridden a few different bikes, I settled on a Trek hardtail. Bright yellow, it was going to take me places, I just knew it. I was out on it long before the six week moratorium on riding bikes had ended, but I felt great.

The bike did take me places, exploring new trails near my home. It helped me escape as my parents marriage crumbled, my own relationship with the bike nearly crumbling when I didn’t have the money to keep it equipped with the latest and greatest – an undeserved pressure that I put on that relationship. It took me to work at the very bike shop where we had first met. My bike took me to see my first serious girlfriend, and the two of us took our bikes out for rides all over the place. My bike eventually took me to Africa, where its tired frame got a little bit bent, making it impossible to ride with no hands.

My Trek in Ethiopia

A year and a half ago, I picked up a new mountain bike. My student years behind me, I was finally making the money to buy an even better bike, and dropped down two grand for a bike that a friend had in his demo fleet. My new bike offered up a whole new riding experience, making obstacles disappear. It’s slack geometry, full suspension and disc brakes seemed to melt away even the most scary descents. Meanwhile, the Trek sat in the corner. I could never give it away or sell it after everything we’d gone through. I also couldn’t lock it up for fear that someone might vandalize or steal it. Instead, the tires slowly lost air in a silent, drawn out sigh at what used to be and what was no more.

A couple days ago, I decided it was time to take the Trek out for a ride. I couldn’t recall the last time I had to work on it, but squeaking pivots and squealing brakes on my new bike were highly annoying, and I was too lazy to do the work to fix those issues.

I pumped up the tires on the Trek, carried it down the stairs to the front door, threw my leg over the bike, and started to ride. It wasn’t quite the same. At some point, I’d thrown flat pedals on the bike so I could loan it out to friends on rides. It never happened, but otherwise, the bike was an old, comfortable friend. It squeaked and creaked just a little, the dirt of about 14,000 kms having seemingly accumulated in every pore of every part. The shifting was a touch off, but correctable with a few turns of the adjuster while pedaling down a side street. The grips, worn down from heavy use, were gummy on my gloves, something I appreciated when the going got rough and the ground tried to wrestle the bike from my hands.

I met a friend at a cafe, and locked the bike outside. When we left, it was still there, and ready for more, so we rode for an hour or so before my friend and I parted company. Together, my bike and I spun back towards home, the bent frame, the noises, the sticky grips all saying welcome back.

I’ll still get out on the new bike whenever I head out for a serious ride, but if you see me on a yellow bike, you’re sure to see me smiling as we reminisce over old times.

For more bike love in prose, check out Matt Seaton’s book The Escape Artist

I’ve written once about Toronto, a little checklist of great things about the city, mostly to placate friends who say I rag on this place too much. The things I chose are indeed great parts about this town, but in the balance of performance versus expectations, they only make the level of disappointment a bit smaller.

I was born in Toronto General Hospital, just in time for dinner. Since then, I have called Toronto home – much to my chagrin – and have watched the city grow out and change. I’ve watched the people who live and work here change, and I have to say, a lot of the change isn’t good, and is only going to make this a less livable city.

I’ve been interested in architecture and urban design for a long time, and one of my favourite books on the subject is The City After the Automobile by Moshe Safdie. Safdie discusses how to build a livable city. He argues that there should be multiple hubs across the city, each with it’s own specialty and a quality public transit system to link them all. I first read this book shortly  after high school, and just as Toronto and the surrounding boroughs became the megacity. Through a centralising of the new version of Toronto, and the development of the cities outside Toronto – Mississauga, I’m looking at you – bedroom communities and big box “Power Centres” have obliterated any real sense of community and countless local independent business.  What is sad is that this doesn’t have to be the case. Tofino, B.C. has outlawed any chain establishments to help boost local independent business. Sure, it’s a small town, but the idea works elsewhere, like Austin, Texas, where the policy of “Keep Austin weird” has also kept Austin exciting, vibrant and entertaining.

With all the small communities across this city – there’s at least two little Indias and a hand full of Chinatowns – there already exists a great foundations for all these small cores and true communities. The city needs to build on that, and I’m not just talking council, I am talking about the whole citizenry.

As much as Toronto can be defined for it’s vibrant multiculturalism, it is also defined by the way it’s citizens avoid each other with a cold self absorption. Don’t believe me? Walk around downtown, make eye contact – if they’re not wearing sunglasses – and say “hi.” You’ll see exactly what I mean.

Maybe this character has it’s roots in how people experience Toronto. Many who work here come in from outside the city proper, and although they may live in another city such as Oakville or Markham, there isn’t much to do at home aside from stay in and watch movies on a massive TV. Community centres and parks seem small and hard to find amidst a rapid explosion of “Luxury towns and semis” or “Large lots, executive style homes.” There’s no incentive to invest in making Toronto a better place, because these people don’t live here.Because of where they do live, communities disappear and isolation blooms.

On the flipside, those who live in Toronto use “905″ – the dialing code for the area outside the city of Toronto – as a slur against anyone from that area, seeking to differentiate themselves and bolster who they are by putting others down.

What is even more sad is that a city that once was ranked as the world’s best seems content to ride that faded reputation while it crumbles to pieces. At the very basic, one might paraphrase Pulp Fiction‘s Marcellus Wallace and say “that’s pride, fucking with you.”

Toronto could work towards being the world class city it claims to be, but those who call it home, and those who make their living here need to trade combative behaviour for the collaborative.

It’s tough to know how to feel about how and where Canada flexes its military muscle. Of course the troops on the ground have my utmost support, but those making the decisions need to work harder if I am to agree with what our nation chooses as its foreign policy.

The thing is, how I feel about our policy is insignificant next to the people who are putting that policy into action. It’s not news that the people who typically enlist to serve in the military are often those with few other options. My friend is one of those people. After batting around from one job to the next, none of which presented him the challenges and rewards he sought, he chose to enlist, to represent Canada, to represent me in a style and place that many never want to face.

The sacrifice by those with no options isn’t new. My grandfather signed up for the air force after high school. As depression gave way to war, there was little opportunity in Canada, so he left to try to find some purpose and something to do. By the time he was 25, World War II was virtually over, and he had flown numerous coastal patrol and bomber missions before helping track missions as they took off and returned, writing letters to the families of men who never made it back. He said you could only do it if you regarded it strictly as a job. Any emotional involvement would not do.

As the Canadian base in Kandahar recovers from an attack that went on for hours, I can’t help but think of my friend who has been there less than a week. I hope he’s ok. So far, there have been no fatalities listed, and I can’t help but hold my breath as I wait for more news.

Whatever the background of those who represent Canadians on the battlefield, whether you support the cause, a recognition of their sacrifice is a start towards understanding where your own life has come from. The battles of our grandparents helped to protect the world, and some feel the battle of our children and peers now does the same.

The efforts of my grandfather and his generation, and the efforts of my friend and his fellow troops breaks my heart. My own travels and changes mean nothing by comparison.

Come home safe.