As well, listen for the best trumpet impersonation you will ever hear on Bill’s song “The Colours of Ernesto.”

Listen to the interview here.

Average Temperature of the Earth's Surface vs. Average Temperature of the Ocean's Surface

Asides from the clever cartoon this graph is important for two reasons.

1) The Economist is a magazine which openly advocates pro-trade policies and is generally on the right of the political-economy spectrum. However they are willing to publish an article which serves to refute one of the claims Global Warming Deniers rely on. This certainly isn’t some lefty-hippy magazine preaching to the already converted, that alone should carry some weight.

2) Many Global Warming Deniers rely on a number of myths when refuting the claims made by groups like the International Panel on Climate Change. One of those is the heat island effect. The theory in essence states that the reason the world is warming up is because a greater percentage of the earth has become urbanized in the past 160 years and since urban areas are on average warmer then the surrounding countryside this effect is what accounts for most of the increase in temperature. This is where the above graphic comes in. It shows the average temperature of the Earth (influence of cities and all) then on the right shows the average temperature of the air above the Earth’s oceans.  While the average temperature of the oceans does not rise to the same degree, it does demonstrate the same trend as on the left-hand graph.

However I’m sure someone has some clever quip to deal with this evidence as well, so what is it this time?

This graphic really demonstrates the problem North America has with sprawl. While it is applied to the United States, Canada is no better. Certainly everyone who lives in Canada (33 Million people) could fit into an area the size of Nova Scotia with room to spare.

“My speaker, we saw the Prime Minister’s attempt to sing a new song on the weekend.

“While those in attendance at National Arts Centre’s gala enjoyed the Prime Minister’s show, the question is will he honestly change his tune when it comes to supporting the arts? Will he take a sad song and make it better?

“For example, will he check the math of his heritage minister? This Minister has inflated the costs of the proposed national portrait gallery by 50 million dollars. Money can’t buy you love, but you can invest in a portrait gallery with many fewer notes.

“Will he clarify the minister’s Twist and Shout on the portrait gallery? Or will the Prime Minister allow disharmony to continue and simply Let it Be?

Millions of dollars have already been invested in preparing the former US embassy for use as our national portrait gallery. Canadians want to know what the government is planning to do with this space now that they have decided to cancel the gallery. Do they have a plan or is it just a Magical Mystery Tour?

Mr. Speaker, if he truly wants to sing a new song on the arts, and not just be a Day Tripper, I ask the Prime Minister to stop “hiding his love away” and start supporting the portrait gallery.

However in November 0f 2008 the Harper Government abruptly cancelled the competition via a late Friday afternoon press conference with Heritage Minister James Moore. The rational given for the decision was that none of the bids were acceptable to the government and that “it was important for the government to act prudently in a time of economic instability and the project could not go ahead.” However none of the bids were ever made public and the entire process was done in secret. The Canadian public was assured that the Portrait Gallery collection will continue to be available for viewing in travelling exhibitions and other public programs.

With todays news however, it becomes clear that this simply was not true. NDP Ottawa Centre MP received an e-mail from Portrait Gallery Director Lilly Koltun that the gallery would simply be folded into Library and archives Canada. No press release, no public announcement, just an inter-departmental e-mail and the Tories hope that nobody will notice. Given the events over the past two years though, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Despite Tory talking points about how they have increased funding to arts and culture, events like this indicate otherwise. Two years ago an architect was hired and a plan was in the works and now it seems the Portrait Gallery is dead for good, hacked away piece by piece.

Common political wisdom would dictate that issues like this aren’t election issues and except for the voters in Calgary and Edmonton (which barring exceptions will go Tory anyway) and Ottawa Centre (which will not ever go Tory) that nobody else cares. However if the Liberals were smart they would seize on events like this. Sure it is small in scale however it represents two ideas. The first being part of a pernicious trend by the Conservatives to remove the government from being involved in funding arts and culture. As was seen in the last election, lines like this play well in Quebec and even if the seats Harper loses in Quebec are picked up by the Bloc, it still means less seats for the Conservatives.

The second idea is more powerful I believe. The majority of scholarly work done by Ignatieff focuses on the idea of national identity and nationalism. In my mind the Liberals should play to their strengths. The Portrait Gallery is one way to effectively build Canadian identity through the apparatus of the state. There are many other ways to do this as well, relatively cost effective ways to do this as well. All are possible election platform issues and the notion of celebrating Canadian heritage and values plays well to traditional Liberal values of multiculturalism and progressiveness. I am not advocating that the Liberals push some hyper-nationalist view of Canada but rather play up how they are the party best able to promote values which Canadians identify with. Rather than leaving this up to the individual, the Liberals can argue that the best way to do this is through the mechanism of government. The portrait gallery merely becomes a symbol for the Tories disregard for traditional Canadian values and instead an embrace of more American and Republican values.

This may be true but I suspect there may be more bang for your stimulus buck by giving the $155 000 to The Divers/Cité Festival then the $345,900 going to The Cloverdale Rodeo and County Fair. However, the affair gets even more suspicious. First Diane Ablonczy, the Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism, who was previously in charge for dishing out the stimulus pie pieces, had the file removed from her office and re-assigned to Industry Canada shortly after announcing funding for Toronto’s Gay Pride Festival. While the Harper government officially denies this was the reason the file was re-assigned, unnamed Conservative MPs who talked to the Montreal Gazette disagree. What is even more incriminating is that a similar ‘Gay Pride’ event in Vancouver also was denied funding after the file was switched over to Industry. It seems to indicate a pattern, a very disturbing pattern where the Tories believe gay voters won’t vote Tory anyways so they get the money cut off to satisfy the social conservative wing of the party.

A defender of the current Conservative Government may say that it makes sense to deny funding to the Montreal event as Montreal is already over-subscribed and the program is intended to be a national program. However taking a look at the amount of money per person spent already it becomes clear that this is now the case.

Vancouver: $0.33

Halifax: $1.23

Toronto: $1.35

Ottawa: $1.81

Calgary: 2.05

Montreal: $2.12

Quebec City: $5.13

Charlottetown: $19.37 (Even including all of PEI it still comes out to $8.08 per person)

Montreal’s funding is in line with the funding received by other cities such as Calgary and Ottawa. When the numbers for PEI are added it becomes very clear Industry Canada is not concerned about over-subscription. Even if Montreal was over-subscribed, it is a world class city that attracts over 14 million visitors a year. It would make sense to spend a large amount of the money there. Also, of all the major metropolitan areas to receive funding, Vancouver’s is by far the lowest. Even in absolute terms, the total amount of money it received ($712 500) is far less than the $1 million plus received by Charlottetown. You would think the Tories would be funding any proposal to come from Vancouver even if it was written on a napkin.

It is actions like this which make Canadians think the Harper Tories have a hidden agenda. It makes Canadians afraid to trust them with a majority government and when they pull stunts like this, that fear seems very legitimate. Although judging by the actions of the past week, the agenda doesn’t look so hidden.

Listen to the interview.

At the end of the interview I throw to the song “I will never see the sun” from the band’s self-titled debut album. Since this isn’t live radio you can hear the song by clicking here.

At the end of the interview I throw to the song “You’ll go far.” Since that doesn’t work when not listening to Mike and I live on Tuesday morning I have included a couple of videos of the song.

1) Jenn playing the song at Westfest that night.

2) A live version of the song at Verge Fm studios. The audio on this one is much better.

Adam Talks with Jenn Grant

Algonquin Park: Creating Wilderness in Eastern Ontario Since 1893

The Tragically Hip’s song “Three Pistols” tells the story of iconic Canadian painter Tom Thompson who died under mysterious circumstances on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park. Thompson’s death in the wilderness only served to deepen the mystique surrounding the man.  In the minds of many past and present Canadians, Thompson and his paintings of Algonquin Park served to best represent a unique element of Canada, that of a country defined and born in the wilderness. For many Canadians, Algonquin Provincial Park still maintains this mystique as a stretch of unspoiled wilderness in Eastern Ontario.

It is the very conception of wilderness as an area untouched by humans, as represented by the iconic Ontario park, which William Cronon attacks in his article “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” Cronon’s thesis is that wilderness as western society now conceives of it is actually a product of western civilization and so can’t be destroyed by human presence because humans have created the very idea of wilderness itself. Cronon describes the contradictory nature of this idea by writing, “Wilderness hides its unnaturalness behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it seems so natural.”[1] Cronon’s idea can be effectively applied to Algonquin Park to explain how visitor’s perception of Algonquin Park as pristine Ontario wilderness is a creation of park managers over the previous 116 years of the park’s existence.

The initial impetuous to create Algonquin Park was multi-faceted and included such diverse factors as preserving timber stands and protecting important watersheds. As the popularity of the park as a leisure destination increased, pressure mounted to preserve Algonquin Park as unspoiled wilderness. In order to meet visitor’s expectations during their visit, the park adopted numerous strategies leading to the experience now enjoyed by today’s hikers, car campers and day trippers.

The initial creation of the Park was inspired by numerous ideas, only one of them being creating a space for people to engage in restorative, leisure activities. Even the current location of the park was determined based upon industrial considerations. The plot of land surveyed for the park was determined to be useless for agriculture and was deemed by surveyors to have sufficiently valuable timber reserves to warrant setting aside the land as a timber reserve.[2] There was also concern that despite the marginal productivity of the land for agriculture, the insatiable appetite for land of Ontario farmers would eventually clear the land for farmland or pasture. If this happened, it was suspected the farms would eventually fail, leaving behind a barren and desolate land.[3] Hence lumber interests were very supportive of the creation of a provincial park which the lumber companies saw as functioning as both a mechanism for protecting important watersheds for rivers required to run logs downstream to Ottawa and to preserve valuable timber stands.[4] Lumber interests even served to shape the shoreline of Algonquin Park’s many lakes. Lumber companies dammed many lake outlets to store water for use in running log rafts down stream after harvesting. This consequently dramatically raised water levels in the lakes, flooding the shorelines and killing much of the vegetation close to the former shoreline. Thus the wild and ragged shorelines which inspired Tom Thompson and other canoeists are not a natural feature, but rather a creation of human agency.

Lumber however wasn’t the only factor taken into account when creating the park. The park was also envisioned as serving as a game preserve. Emphasis was put on catching poachers and increasing stocks of large game animals such as deer, but also of valuable fur animals such as mink. The idea was to allow game to breed in the relative safety of Algonquin then to disperse into surrounding areas.[5]

Game management also extended to the two large predators in the park, wolves and bears. The park staff initially put a $10 bounty on wolf heads, designed to reduce the wolf population thereby allowing the deer population to flourish.[6] As well, the bear population in Algonquin has been managed since the park’s establishment. Bear management has largely taken three strategies: killing dangerous bears, educating the public to avoid either feeding or encountering bears and, more recently, restricting access to certain areas of the park where the bear population concentrated during certain times of the year.[7] Such efforts to manage both predator and prey populations in Algonquin Park served to create the ecosystem visitors have come to associate with the park.

As Algonquin Park became more popular as a tourist destination the demand for the wilderness of the park to be preserved increased. These debates began to come to prominence in the early 1930s as many people sought to escape the economic woes of the Great Depression by retreating to the wild. The issue is best represented by the controversy surrounding the construction of the first permanent road into the park in 1933. When construction was announced, the Canadian Press was flooded with letters and editorials condemning the decision. Most were concerned with the possibility of spoiling the park as a wilderness and game sanctuary. Ultimately, the economic interests of lumber companies and local inhabitants trumped the concerns of Ontarians and the road was built.[8]

In the 1930’s concerns over logging activities infringing upon the recreational use of the park surfaced as well. Many canoe travelers were concerned with evidence of logging being visible on canoe routes and portages as they felt this would decrease their enjoyment of the wilds of Algonquin. This resulted in Superintendent Frank MacDougall banning cutting on islands, shorelines and portages.[9] While most of the park could still be cut for timber, the appearance of conservation was created.

The current incarnation of Algonquin Park began to be formed in the late 1960s. In 1967 the Ontario government pledged to create a system of wilderness parks where human activities such as logging would be prohibited. Groups such as the Algonquin Wildlands League pressured the government to classify Algonquin as such a park, however the economic importance of logging prevented such a classification. Such debate though brought to prominence the idea that people’s quality of life was determined by access to wilderness and as such, logging should be limited or removed from the park.[10] In response to increasing pressure from lobby groups and the general public, the Algonquin Master Plan was passed which divided the park into different use zones. In 75% of these zones, logging was allowed, while the other 25% was set aside for park visitors.[11] This strategy has been combined with the creation of no-cut corridors around trails and roads to prevent visitors from seeing clearcuts.[12] Management of the park’s forests since the 1970s has largely been determined by balancing economic interests with providing visitors with a rewarding and enjoyable experience. This involves creating the perception of natural forest, unaffected by people, as opposed to replanted areas or woodlot. Furthermore the visitors seek the perception of being surrounded by wilderness and frequently rate their satisfaction of their visit based upon these perceptions.[13]

Consequently the sections of Algonquin Park which appear to be the most authentic wilderness are actually the most tightly managed and regulated areas of the park. They are the product of an evolving policy which arose out of protecting game and timber stocks but was later transformed as people began to view the outdoors and provincial parks in particular as a source of recreation and spiritual renewal. Much as Cronon argues that present day society seeks solace and renewal in wilderness, many visitors to Algonquin sought to experience what they perceive as pristine, untouched woodlands. However the wilderness they experience has been painstakingly created and is as altered by humans as the clearcuts the forest hides.

[2] Otteley Addison, Early Days in Algonquin Park, p. 8

[3] The Globe, 11 November, 1893

[4] Dan Strickland, Algonquin Logging Museum: Logging History in Algonquin Provincial Park, p. 2

[5] The Globe, 18 August, 1893

[6] Ibid

[7] Eagles, “Environmental Management in Parks,” in  Parks and Protected Areas in Canada, p. 105

[8] Addison, p.35

[9] Strickland, p.4

[10] Killon, “The Development of a Wilderness Park System in Ontario, 1967-1990.” In Temagami: A Debate on Wilderness, P. 150

[11] Strickland, p.10

[12] Douglas Haferkamp, Assessing the Impact of Forestry Operations Upon Visitor Satisfaction in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park, p.108

[13] Ibid, pp.95-100