pretty random

This weekend I happened to be near Parc Downsview Park with some time to kill, and I decided to try and find the Canadian Air & Space Museum, as I had never been. In fact, I didn't even know it existed until it hit the news a couple months ago, when its landlord (the federal government) served them with an eviction notice. Apparently their site is slated for redevelopment as a 4-pad hockey rink.

Members and volunteers at the museum are understandably upset about this. Hurting for funding and volunteers, and now losing their home, they're fighting back with letters to decision-making politicians and influencers, a petition, and an information campaign to help people realize what's happening. They even got some help from Harrison Ford! One challenge: they compete, in a sense, with the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, plus other aeronautical museums out in western and Atlantic Canada on and off military bases. All of these museums have amazing stuff to offer and funding needs, so it's very hard to figure out whether they all should be kept.


One thing the Canadian Air & Space Museum has that none of the others have is an historic building at 65 Carl Hall Road that hosted some amazing elements of Canadian aerospace history. It's the original 1929 home of de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd -- maker of the Dash-8 and many many more incredible aircraft. This building and others beside it (long gone now) were home to warplane and engine design and assembly, even satellites were built here. The Downsview site was hugely important in Canada's war efforts (and therefore Britain's too), and the building itself is really in good shape due to good construction. Sadly, the museum's funding is almost nonexistent -- over $100k behind in rent, for example, though the situation was improving when the eviction notice came. When I drove up there was an engine part sitting outside in the rain - a big problem for any museum that has more history to display than it has space to store.

I can't say for sure that I believe that building should be saved. It would be easiest for the museum, and Downsview has a LOT of space -- surely a hockey rink could be located across the parking lot, for example. Being forced out would result in the loss of several amazing pieces of history that would be damaged in the move, and if no storage could be located who knows what could happen to the many one-of-a-kind mid-restoration aircraft? It's scary to contemplate the death of a museum.

If a new location and sufficient storage space, and stable funding, were to be found, then I'd be OK with them changing locations. The building holds great meaning, but if the choice is die a slow death there or potentially grow and find new visitors elsewhere... it's all awful timing since the new York University subway extension will have its first new subway station only a couple hundred metres away. So many potential visitors! But that makes the land worth even more as something else of course.

Without official heritage designation, 65 Carl Hall Road is at risk. The locks have been changed, and a lockbox sits on the front door, but there are still volunteers and staff inside maintaining the museum. When I found it Sunday morning I tried the door just in case it was open. It wasn't, but a volunteer quickly ran to the door and let me in. He explained that the museum was closed to the general public by order of the landlord, but that members were still welcome... would I like to become a member? It took be about 3 nanoseconds to decide that I would like that very much indeed.


I'm so glad I went. I spent over two hours wandering the museum, photographing as much as I could. I knew that the chances of getting back to the museum soon, or ever, were slim. My photographs and captions can be viewed in this Facebook gallery. Sorry, non-Facebookers, but it appears to be accessible to all even logged out.

All photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151021988855593.767591.610245592&type=1&l=3e576d5ff0

I highly recommend a visit. Buy your membership online, throw in a small donation maybe, and head up there soon! TTC bus route 101 will take you right there from Downsview (soon to be Sheppard West) station. Let me know if you want somebody geeky to join you - I'll clear my calendar!

After seeing this page on US State mottoes, I thought I'd look up Canada's various provincial mottoes. First, let me say that mottoes is a word that looks wrong no matter how one spells it. Second, seriously! (most translated from Latin, Nunavut translated from Inuktitut)

Newfoundland & Labrador	Seek ye first the kingdom of God
Nova Scotia	One defends and the other conquers
Prince Edward Island	The small protected by the great
New Brunswick	Hope restored
Quebec	I remember
Ontario	Loyal she began, loyal she remains
Manitoba	Glorious and free
Saskatchewan	Strength from Many Peoples
Alberta	Strong and free
British Columbia	Splendour without diminishment
Yukon	none
Northwest Territories	none
Nunavut	Our land, our strength

I can't decide if these are collectively better or worse than the US ones. Michigan has them beat in hubris of course. ("If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.")

In 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1909, 1911, 1920, 1921, 1923, and 1927, the original Ottawa Senators (a.k.a. the Ottawa Silver Seven) won the Stanley Cup. This ties the Senators with the Detroit Red Wings for number of championships won, with Montréal (24) and Toronto (13) ahead, and Boston (5), NY Rangers (4), and Chicago (3) rounding out the Original Six.

Unfortunately, the current Ottawa Senators, who started playing as an expansion franchise in 1992, don't get to claim this history as their own. While I understand the idea of a franchise remaining in operation for 80+ years being different than a franchise that took sixty years off, it's still a bit annoying. Other teams have changed owners, arenas, logos, and players, but still get to claim they're the same team. Toronto, for example, last won the Cup in 1967, but that 41-year-and-counting* gap is always going to be less significant than the unfortunate Depression bankruptcy of the original Sens.

Oh well. In my heart they've won plenty of championships, and we'll see another one pretty soon**.


* They missed the playoffs this year, so it's already at 41 years. And let's be serious -- it's not going to stop at 41.
** Soon does not necessarily this year, but I can dream.

I've been so busy and exhausted that I haven't been commenting on the world. I know some of you have been paralyzed in your opinions, not knowing how to think about issues without my two cents, so here you go:

Ignatieff: smart, but not Liberal leadership material. He can't define "nation", doesn't get that the "nation" debate is quicksand with no actual exit, and the Tories will make mincemeat of him in the next election. The Tories even leaked a memo pretending that Ignatieff scared them, just to increase their odds of working against him. Any contest featuring boring, normal, middle-class Harper* versus stuffy, uptight, academic, practically-a-foreigner** Ignatieff is not a contest. Ignatieff is an intelligent and well-spoken person and I have no personal beef with him. I also can't find enough redeeming qualities in any of the other three, but the Liberals need to be realistic. The same camp that thought politically assassinating Chretien and crowning Martin was a good idea also think that running under Ignatieff is a good idea.

* I know he's actually got an academic background and approach too, but that's not visible in the media and therefore is irrelevant to this discussion.

** He spent something like 28 of the last 32 years living in the US and teaching at Harvard, and has been basically absent for all major Canadian historical events which he now speaks on, such as constitutional crises and Quebec's constantly shifting situation/appearance.

US Midterm Elections: I regret not holding a party for this one (the prep work for selling the condo won out) because the results were far more enjoyable than those of the last three election parties I've held. I don't expect a huge sea change in the US, though: the Democrats are only marginally different from the Republicans in many important areas right now, and they've spent 8-10 years reducing the differences. Additionally, the new "normal" in the US of wiretapping, Guantanamo, and Presidential Fiat has already taken hold. They'll want that power for President Obama or Clinton in a few years. Still, awesome work by the Democrats. It's about freakin' time: checks and balances are not optional.

Remembrance Day: I was proud to see a HUGE crowd in Ottawa at the National War Memorial today when I watched the ceremonies on tv. As zedinbed said, there are inherent challenges in honouring wars which empowered and/or maintained a lot of imperial / colonial empires. But recasting Remembrance Day as being about honouring individual sacrifice in the service of freedom, and promoting the importance of that freedom for all, makes the day most honourable and worthy. Wearing a poppy (an ironic symbol wrt Afghanistan if ever there was one) is not agreeing with imperialist adventures, and actually serves to keep Canadians thinking about what freedom means.

Clean Air Act: sadly, while the bill is largely toothless, it's no worse than what the Liberals were doing. It will be interesting to see what comes out of committee, now that Jack Layton and the NDP have gotten it in there (good work!). It's incredibly frustrating that there is still so much media debate on such a scientifically-decided issue. It drives me batty as well that my father is a little more convinced of the "scam" angle than the "actually happening" angle on Global Warming. I read a comment somewhere saying that the term "global warming" should be replaced with a new phrase without so much political baggage, like "climate crisis". Makes sense to me.

NDP stand on Afghanistan: I disagree with the "troops out now" policy of the NDP. It will not help to just walk away. While it's unusual for Canadians to see their members of the Forces killed in action, never mind seeing them in action at all, the work in Afghanistan is no longer just some US folly, but a United Nations-sanctioned rebuild/clean-up effort. It's not nice to see the death on both sides that is involved, but the UN force is making progress and just walking out would leave others doing the same thing, and possibly doing it less... appropriately, let's say. Not all countries approach war in the same way (see Guantanamo BayCanCon.

...and there's nothing else important happening anywhere in the world, so I'm done now. :)

Twenty years ago today, human spaceflight took a big hit, and it really hasn't recovered yet. Separate from wehther you support NASA, or the USA, the seven crew took a gigantic risk in volunteering to leave Earth for a while, and it's unfortunate that they couldn't return home.

From the current Wikipedia entry:

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on the morning of January 28, 1986. Space Shuttle Challenger, on mission 51L/STS-33 (the 25th of the STS program) was destroyed 73 seconds into its flight because of the failure of an O-ring seal in the aft field joint of the right solid rocket booster (SRB). The seal failure caused a leak with a powerful lateral flame from the SRB that impinged on the adjacent external propellant tank and aft SRB connecting strut, and within seconds the flame caused full structural failure[1]. All seven crew members were killed when their surviving and slowly tumbling crew compartment impacted with the surface of the ocean. That compartment and many other vehicle fragments were recovered from the ocean floor. U.S. manned space flights did not resume until over two years later.

Among the crew was Christa McAuliffe, scheduled to be the first teacher in space as well as the first "civilian" (non-aviator) in space. Students worldwide had expected to watch her deliver a science lesson from space on television. Instead, countless people watched the disintegration of the shuttle, either as it happened live, or later that day.

United States President Ronald Reagan postponed his State of the Union address and gave a national address from the Oval Office of the White House where he said, "We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'" The pictures of Challenger disintegrating remain some of the defining imagery of the late 20th Century for many Americans.

I believe that our reaching into space could help us come together as a planet, rather than as warring factions. It's fun to make fun of NASA's dubious track record, but I don't want us to turn inward any more than we already have.

More: Popular Challenger myths, Wikipedia Entry.