Kilborn bike lanes

Inspired by my last blog post, I decided that I will put what I hope is a simple yes/no question to all Alta Vista City Council candidates and see how they respond. I have emailed each of them and will add their responses as they are received.

Question: If elected, will you do your best as Councillor to ensure that the current Kilborn Avenue bike lanes are maintained?

YES/NO

Cloutier: YES (full response below)

Cowan: YES (full response below)

Kit: YES (full response below)

Lang-Dion: Response below

McHarg:

Redins:

Full Responses (verbatim):

Cloutier:

I support cycling infrastructure and the lanes on Kilborn considering I was the one who ensured that they were implemented as part of the resurfacing work.

I began consultation with residents of Kilborn Avenue in September 2017 before the resurfacing began. I notified residents of my intent to install cycling lanes to improve connectivity through Alta Vista. Some residents were not pleased that cycling lanes necessitated the elimination of on-street parking, so I’ve spent the last year working with them to find a solution. 

I’m happy to say that we were able to proceed with dedicated cycling lanes on Kilborn Avenue. I will continue to work to improve our cycling infrastructure. We have some great opportunities coming up, which I will make sure to keep the community informed about.

Cowan:

My support of healthy and active transportion options for our city is longstanding. During my campaign in 2014 my commitment was to add 40km of bikelanes and pathways in our ward, with a special focus on our lack of East - West connections such as Kilborn, Pleasant Park, and the widowmaker Heron road. I stand by this commitment in this election.

Also, to prioritize the hill sections of roads like Smyth to support riders during the long climb with additional temporary material too, like flex stakes. Think Bronson over the canal.

Bike lanes help provide riders safer passage and work to reduce vehicle speeds by reducing the lane widths, playing a part in serving two of our areas ongoing challenges.  For me maintaining them means more than just paint, but the overall up keep of the roadway surfaces as well. 

To support this, while President of our Alta Vista Community Association, I moved to move forward with an Adopt a Road plan for Kilborn Ave once the current phase of repairs are done. This commitment will provide our residents an opportunity help collectively audit the state of Kilborn twice year and identify any parts that need tlc, plus help keep our neighborhood clean while making new friends.

Please let me know if you enjoy the new lanes and where we should connect to next!

Kit:

As a community association president, I sit at Alta Vista Planning Group Committee (AVPG).  At AVPG community association president’s (or their alternates) meet to discuss namely planning issues within the ward.  I remember discussing this issue and making the point that the bike lanes along Kilborn made sense but that we should ensure that signage is clear - so that cars did not stop and park in the dedicated bike lanes.  Just today along Kilborn I saw two cars parked in the dedicated bike lane where no stopping is allowed. This concerns me because cyclists need to then move outside and around into the road in order to avoid the cars.  This is dangerous and puts cyclists in a potentially compromising position. 

One of the traits that I have been told would make me an effective Councillor (and incidentally has made me an effective community association president in the ward) is that I actively listen to people and then deliver results. 

In this light, I will do my best to ensure the bike lanes are maintained because I fundamentally believe and support multi modes of transportation in line with Ecology Ottawa’s principles of an active city.  Further to this, I will take it a step further and state that as Alta Vista Councillor I would be open to discussing how we can continue to make improvements along Kilborn - with the caveat that the bike lanes remain in place.

Lang-Dion:

It is a challenge to give you a yes/no answer about the cycling lanes after speaking with residents on Kilborn.
I am all for cycling and making it easier to get around the city, but I am also respectful of seniors concerns that have been voiced and the real need for parking for those playing sports at Grasshopper Hill Park, so I would suggest the issue needs to be revisited.
You ask 'will you do your best...' and for me that means hearing the needs of many and reaching a compromise that works for all yet in a practical way.

On the responsiveness of municipal candidates on Twitter

**Update**
Lang-Dion has responded, please see below.

So, this post is inspired, by a perhaps seemingly innocuous tweet from a Raylene Lang-Dion, a candidate for councillor of my local ward, Alta Vista in Ottawa:

https://twitter.com/RLangDion/status/1028757948129062917

As someone who lives very close to Kilborn, and regularly commutes on the 48, which goes along Kilborn, I had been following the repaving work being done this summer. It's a fairly quiet, residential street largely with single family homes along it. It has been designed a "bike route" for years, which in Ottawa means that they've added green signs indicating that. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the city had apparently decided to (shockingly) add bike lanes to this "bike route." The lines hadn't been painted in the image above, but signage had begun to go up. And on-street parking had, apparently, been removed.

I should add that there is a North-South bike path that goes up to Smyth Road, which is where The Ottawa Hospital's General Campus is located. The path is the thin green line on the Google Maps image below:

Please also note the community centre (Brian Kilrea Arena) and schools. There's actually a third school at Arch and Canterbury. So, it seemed to me, that these new Kilborn bike lanes would be a nice link to the north-south path, the schools in the east, and Bank Street/Rideau River on the western end. It's not a perfectly smooth ride the whole way (which is typical for Ottawa cycling), but a vast improvement.

So, I was mystified by Lang-Dion's tweet, and responded:

https://twitter.com/jjasonf/status/1028992618519097345

She never responded. So, I figured I would tweet at the other municipal candidates with Twitter listed on their campaign websites (apologies to Clinton Cowan and Mike McHarg):

https://twitter.com/jjasonf/status/1031192848983420929

To his immense credit, John Redins responded quickly via Twitter:

https://twitter.com/john4AltaVista/status/1031257279742586881

I later pressed him a bit about the Kilborn bike lane specifically, and he admitted he didn't know enough to comment on that one in particular, which is FINE. I don't expect candidates to know everything about the ward especially early in the campaign.

Kevin Kit responded by DM, asking me to email him to explain what I meant. He then replied via email that:

"I actually met with a number of residents at grasshopper hill park earlier this week where we discussed this and a number of other issues.
I was wondering if you’d like to meet in person to discuss or chat over the phone about this? I find it more personal than email."

I have replied that I thought that it was a relatively simple issue, but have offered to call him. This blog will be updated if/when I get a response.

Cloutier and Lang-Dion have not responded.

I might have let it end there, but then I came across a very interesting candidate survey from Ecology Ottawa, which Cloutier has not responded to: https://ecologyottawa.ca/2018/06/25/simplified-survey-answers/#Ward18

The first and third questions in orange seem to address this issue directly, so let's look at those responses in detail for Kit and Lang-Dion https://ecologyottawa.ca/2018/08/16/municipal-election-2018-candidates-complete-responses/#Ward18:

Kit:
"...improving connectivity and prioritizing pedestrian, cycling and public transit infrastructure is something that is very important to me."

"I believe that successful cities are those that have neighborhoods where residents are able to walk and bike easily to local parks, transit stations and to access shopping."

Lang-Dion:
"As councillor I will champion safe cycling and pedestrian routes..."

"pedestrian and cycling needs are an integral and foundational part of those projects. In Alta Vista Ward, a lot of basic infrastructure is either missing or is incomplete, such as sidewalks that end unexpectedly or cycling lanes that are unconnected to a coherent and/or existing network."

As mentioned above, Cloutier declined to answer the survey at all.

I'm always hesitant to call people out on Twitter, but Cloutier, Kit, and Lang-Dion all use Twitter as a campaign tool. Is it too much to ask that if you put Twitter on your campaign website that you respond via that medium?

I'm not trying to be too personal here. I am sure these are all hard-working people, doing their best. Municipal politics is a hard slog. I get that. But if it's just a one way stream, don't ask people to use your hashtag, or conduct a poll, or publicly thank your supporters, but respond to your critics in private. If you want engagement on Twitter, then engage!

And can I please get a straight answer on the Kilborn bike lanes?!

2018-08-24: Update! This morning Lang-Dion responded via Twitter. Here is the exchange so far:

https://twitter.com/RLangDion/status/1032966638885191680

L'Avalée des avalés

So, obviously, I haven't continued to write reviews of Governor-General winners, but I have continued to read them. Some have been quite good, some have been less so, but I guess none have particularly struck me like Réjean Ducharme's L'Avalée des avalés, which won in 1966. I think this novel is one of the best and most challenging that I've ever read.

First, a note on language, I consider myself proficient, but notably not fluent in French. I can converse fairly comfortably. I can read generally fairly well, but I find it convenient to have a dictionary handy. That said, I am much more inclined to go with the flow rather than look up every word. So, everything I am writing should be taken within that context

This is an incredible novel and I still can't quite get my head around it. It tells the story via first person narrative of Bérénice Einberg, a young girl growing up in an abbey on an island. She hates both her parents (she believes that they hate her too, but that part is more open to interpretation) and feels alone. Her loneliness is one of the themes that underpin the novel. The narrative often veers from the philosophical to the fantastical to the mundane, which is part of what makes it so challenging. There is generally no segue either, so one has to read carefully, and it leads to questioning what has really happened within the context of the novel and what hasn't.

She reads classics and feels isolated from her peers. She is, to put it mildly, precocious, more accurately, a smart ass. When the police pick her and her brother up and ask for their address, she replies:

"Notre adresse, messieurs, c'est : Monsieur et Madame Homme, Planète Terre, Système solaire, Infini. Otez donc vos chapeaux, goujats !" (p. 159)

Likewise, when her father asks her accusingly what love is, she replies:

"Tu ne le sais donc pas, vieux comme tu es? C'est comme toi et ta maîtresse." (p. 177)

In between her witty retorts, she often expresses her loneliness and isolation from the world and society. Ducharme's prose expressed by Bérénice is magnificently rich and vivid. She often expresses how she's feeling or what she's thinking through deep, extended metaphors.

There are some fairly obvious parallels between L'avalée des avalés and Catcher in the Rye. Both Berénice Einberg and Holden Caulfield are rebellious, young protagonists who feel estranged from the world and are resentful towards adults. They are both written from a first person perspective with unreliable narrators. And to extend the similarities further, both Ducharme and Salinger were recluses. That said, although I have a soft spot in my heart for Cather in the Rye from my teenage years, I find L'avalée des avalés stands above through its rich literary style.

The novel was apparently originally refused publication in Québec (https://www.ledevoir.com/lire/329205/portrait-de-rejean-ducharme-a-70-ans) and has taken on something of a cult status (http://www.lapresse.ca/arts/livres/201608/25/01-5013921-livre-culte-lavalee-des-avales-de-rejean-ducharme.php). I can certainly see how it was controversial: the theme of rebelliousness, frank discussion of masturbation, criticism of religion, and some borderline incest: Bérénice is in love with her brother. While I wouldn't say that it ever takes on a serious, sexual dimension, there is certainly a lot of romantic language used (which Bérénice uses at least in part to make others uncomfortable and to get herself in trouble/isolate herself).

I've barely mentioned the plot, and that is intentional. First, I think this novel is more about feeling than events. Secondly, I think it's best experienced for yourself. Third, there is a degree of uncertainty in determining what actually happens and what Bérénice perceives to have happened. Most importantly, when I reflect back on what I enjoyed most about this novel, it's Bérénice as a character.

So, all of this is to say that I greatly enjoyed reading L'avalée des avalés and I highly recommend it.

The Precipice by Hugh MacLennan

The Precipice, the fiction winner of the Governor-General's Award in 1948 is a tremendous novel. The Precipice is an extremely dense novel with well-developed characters that discusses: relationships, marriage, Canada and the U.S., small town Ontario, religion, and war. MacLennan manages to fit all of this in organically and without becoming preachy.

The Precipice tells the story of Lucy Cameron, a thoughtful woman well on the way to becoming an old maid in small town Ontario with her older sister, until she encounters an American, Stephen Lassiter, who sees her as a desirable woman (in stark contrast to the townspeople). Before long, Lucy falls in love with Stephen, who eventually whisks her away to New York. while this may seem stereotypical, the plot becomes more complicated and the characters often comment on and work against the clichés that they knowingly fall into.

As the story develops, the characters come to grips with the harshness of war as well as the consequences of modern capitalism.

A Brief Note on The Government of Canada by R. MacGregor Dawson

The Government of Canada by R. MacGregor Dawson, which won The Governor-General's Award in 1947 is exactly what one would expect: a solid explanation of the workings of the Canadian government with some historical context. There's not really much to elaborate on. The style is effective and the content is thorough. If you want to learn about the Canadian government in the 1940s, it's a good book.

Review of Bonheur d'Occasion (The Tin Flute)

Technically, as with Ringuet's Trente Arpents, the English translation of Bonheur d'Occasion won the 1947 Governor General's Award for fiction. However, as I am reasonably competent in French, I chose to read the original.

Bonheur d'Occasion tells the story of a working class family in the Saint-Henri neighbourhood of Montreal. In particular, the narrative focuses on the eldest daughter Florentine, and to a lesser extent her mother with other family members playing less significant, but sometimes important roles. The story centres on Florentine and her romantic interest in Jean Lévesque and her later relationship with Emmanuel Létourneau.

While the characters are certainly important, Gabrielle Roy's novel speaks to larger issues including urban poverty in Montreal, social class, language issues, and the Second World War. Roy has created a novel full of local colour and larger social, political, and cultural issues.

Beyond the strong narrative and social issues, Roy's use of language is tremendous. She describes scenes eloquently with precision, while not bogging the reader down in endless detail.

Overall, this is a very impressive novel. It works on every level and I am at a loss for any serious criticism. It succeeds as a period piece and as great literature.

How Nintendo pulled me back in and then pushed me back away

First off, if you're not familiar with Project Rainfall, you may want to check out http://oprainfall.blogspot.com/ .

From the late 80s to the mid 90s, I was a big video game player, well as much as a kid in school can be. I had an NES and an SNES, and while I don't remember how many games I bought or played, I do remember spending many hours playing games from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Final Fantasy 6 (or 3 as it was known at the time). I actually had a poster of a Moogle in my bedroom.

However, in the late 90s, video games began to take up less of my time. There were probably a lot of reasons. Mostly, real life seemed to take up more of my time, but additionally, two trends contributed to my increasing indifference: the increasing popularity of first person shooters and increasingly complex controllers. For many video game players, Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 represents one of the great first person shooters. For me, it was totally uninteresting. This might not have mattered, except that I found it and games like it were becoming increasingly popular among my friends. I should point out that this is NOT a criticism of first person shooters. I don't find them appealing, but I have no issue with other people liking them. It just became slightly discouraging that the type of game that most people wanted to play had no interest for me.

Probably, the larger issue was the increasing complexity of controllers. The Nintendo 64 controller was daunting and the Gamecube controller only more so. Undoubtedly, for people who owned the system, these controllers became very familiar, but for someone who largely played over a friend's house, competency was challenging.

Years passed, and I found myself busy doing other things. Going out drinking was certainly an important leisure activity at the time.

In any case, I didn't think much about video games until I began doing a lot of traveling. In 2005, I got a Nintendo DS with Mario Kart DS. The DS appealed to me because its buttons were similar to those of the SNES and the touchscreen seemed very intuitive. Plus, Super Mario Kart was one my favourite games as a kid and I had continued to enjoy subsequent versions. The DS hit the proverbial sport. Mario Kart DS was more fun than the original and the DS controls were easy to master. Over the years I bought numerous DS games from popular titles like New Super Mario Bros. to more obscure ones like Avalon Code.

In short, the DS rekindled my enjoyment of gaming. When Nintendo began showing off the Wii, it seemed like the perfect console for me. The motion controller was exactly what I was looking for. Also, it was inexpensive and I didn't have an HDTV. The Wii seemed to be about having fun, which was exactly what I was looking for. I bought one shortly after it came out and I loved Wii Sports and Rayman Raving Rabbids. As with the DS, some of the games I bought were popular hits like Mario Kart Wii, while others were more niche such as Fragile and Zack & Wiki.

However, as time passed, I began to seek something more. There seemed to be fewer and fewer games that appealed released for Wii. I became more interested in HD games and some of the advanced features of the other consoles. I wanted to play Final Fantasy XIII. Eventually, I purchased a PS3 (the reasons why I chose a PS3 over an Xbox 360 aren't important at the moment). While I continued to play both the PS3 and the Wii. I found myself playing more of the PS3.

Nevertheless, I was still waiting for certain Wii games, which I knew for certain that I would want to play: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Last Story, and Xenoblade. Skyward Sword was discussed as early as 2008, but has yet to be released. Meanwhile, despite an announcement at E3 2009, release in Japan, and impending release in Europe, Xenoblade still remains in limbo in North America. While The Last Story was never announced for North America, it too has been released in Japan and will be released in Europe. Tonight, Nintendo of America announced via Twitter that there continued to be no plans to release these games in North America, in spite of a large fan campaign (http://oprainfall.blogspot.com/).

So, to summarize, despite the fact that these two games are completed and available in English (and French and Spanish), Nintendo has chosen not to release them in North America. Moreover, because European and North American video systems are incompatible and Wii games are tied to the regions in which they are released, there is no reasonable way to play these games.

It's probably needless to say at this point, but I am very disappointed. I don't expect a capitalist enterprise to demonstrate loyalty, but I at least hope that it is willing to act in its own self-interest. While I'm not an expert in such matters, I find it difficult to believe that investment in a minimal North American release could be a significant expenditure for a large multinational entertainment company. Moreover, Nintendo could always license the game to another company to be published in North America.

And so I find myself disinterested in Nintendo's current and future projects. Although I was planning to buy both the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, I have lost interest. Why invest in a company that is unwilling to make a minor and likely profitable investment in what a significant number of its customers desire?

Maybe my attitude will change. Skyward Sword should be coming this holiday season. It could reignite my interest in Nintendo, its platforms, and its products. But, most likely, I think it will be the final swan song of my time as a Nintendo customer.