Le Dragon (1990)

Le Dragon

En route à Sharmagon,
J’ai rencontré un grand dragon.
Pendant tout le temps que j’ai vu des dragons,
Il était le plus grand (et j’en ai vu beaucoup dans mon temps)!

Le dragon, il avait l’air très faim,
Comme s’il survivait sur juste du pain.
Ses yeux était rouges comme un pommier,
Et sortant de ses narines, des bouffées de fumée.

Quand je lui ai regardé,
J’ai essayé de me cacher.
Le dragon, avec sa grande bouche, a dit,
“Tu ne peux pas courir, je sais où tu vis!”

Il n’y avait rien à faire, je ne pouvais pas courir.
Le dragon m’a regardé et il a dit, “Ha tu me fis rire.”
J’avais très peur, je suis sorti de mon trou.
“Ok, je vais rester,” j’ai dit. “Mais c’est tout.”

Mon cerveau pensait à ne pas être mangé.
“Mais tu ne peux pas me manger. On pourrait s’arranger?”
“Je pourrais faire cet arrangement, “ dit le dragon rigoureux.
“Mais tu dois attraper un autre pour moi. Peut être un d’eux?”

Le dragon me montre quatre personnes qui marchaient dans le bois.
“Ils sont gros et ont l’aire delicieux. Attrape-en un pour moi.”
“Non je ne veux pas!” j’ai dit, en croissant mes mains.
“Ok. Je vais TE manger! J’ai très faim!”

Et le dragon m’a mangé.


Google translated version


Dragon En route to Sharmagon, I met a great dragon. During the time that I saw dragons,it was the largest (and I've seen a lot in my time!) The dragon, he the very hungry air, as if he survived on just bread. His eyes were as red as an apple tree, And out of his nostrils, puffs of smoke. When I looked at him, I tried to hide. The dragon, with his big mouth, said,"You can not run, I know where you live!" There was nothing to do, I could not run. The dragon looked at me and he said, "Ha you made ​​me laugh." I was very scared, I'm out of my hole. "Ok, I'll stay," I said. "But that's all." My brain thought not to be eaten. "But you can not eat me. We could arrange? " "I could do this arrangement," said the rigorous dragon. "But you have to catch another one for me. May be one of them? " The dragon shows me four people walking in the woods. "They are big and delicious the area.Catcher in one for me. " "No I will not!" I said, growing my hands. "Okay I TE eat! I'm very hungry! " And the dragon ate me. 

1990 Resolutions

The past year, I had lots of problems with my attitude. For 1990, I would like to redefine the meaning of 'A Big Change' in my attitude and in finishing my homework. My parents have been a little paranoid and annoying at times, and my anger didn't help. So i would like to change my anger to happiness. I'll try not to beat my brother to a pulp, and not to bug the kids at school. I'll try to oblige by the rules of the school and of my parents. So that's how I believe my personal life will change.

For my community, I won't litter (I've been doing it for the past 7 years!), and I'll try to lower my noise level (the neighbours complained). But the biggest change for my community in 1990 is to bring others into scouting. Scouting teaches self-respect, respect of country and community and responsibility. Scouts really help the environment, so my community will be a better place in the 90's.

Our country Canada is really suffering from problems. First there's the electricity shortage in Ontario. Ontario Hydro has already lowered the voltage by three volts. And if no one conserves energy, Ontario Hydro will have controlled blackouts. No power for 20 minutes per day. I have already started conserving power and I hope that more people start too. I'll also try to stop people from wasting power and to start conserving it.

The second, and one of the biggest problems in the whole world today is the pollution. Pollution takes four forms. The first, water pollution. Dangerous chemicals, garbage and waste are flowing into our lakes and rivers. Chippeowa's part of Lake Superior was closed for that reason. And it's our fault, not someone else's. So we have to deal with the problem. I'm going to try not to dump anything in our waters and I'll also try to stop others from doing it too.

Second is the everpopular garbage pollution. Most of us think it's plastics that are the problem. But really, it only takes up 5% of our garbage dumps. The real problem is paper, taking up 71% of our dump space. Everyone thought bio-degradable was a cure. But poisonous gases escape when the paper breaks down. So what if plastic lasts 300 - 1000 years. That's good compared to killing things. Telephone books are THE problem with paper. 16,970,000 pounds of them are dumped into our landfills every three years. A phone call costs more than it seems! I know it's hard to cut down on using paper, but we must. If we thought the problem was plastic, and we solved that problem with paper, but the real problem IS paper, then we're just making a bigger problem. I'm trying my best to recycle all things I can, but others must help.

Third is air pollution. The infamous CFC's wrecking out ozone. Carbon Dioxide is killing our plants and animals. Smoke (carbon dioxide) is rising into the atmosphere and blocking out the sun. WE caused the problem, now WE better fix it.

We shouldn't use cars as much as we do, when we have perfectly good legs. Some people even drive to a destination two blocks away! Now that's very human-like. But with normal human endurance, we should be able to walk seven miles per day. I walk lots of places, when I can, and I'm trying to get others into it too.

The last is noise pollution, the least of our pollution worries. But it does get people upset. Lots of people play loud music. So do I. But why bother others in the process? That's what headphones were invented for. Also, playing loud music in vehicles. Not only does it bother others, but it distracts the driver. I usually don't play my music loud. But, on the occasional celebration, when I do, I still don't bug the neighbors. I'm fighting against loud music, in fact against all pollution, but I can't do it alone. For 2001, I want Canada to be a better place.

The World is being destroyed by pollution, is plagued by war, and is losing life because of us. If we had never entered on planet Earth, it would be perfect. No pollution. No killing. No harming the ozone. No thought. No speech. No inventing. No worship. No cars. No T.V.s. No discoveries. No air travel. No sea travel. No humans. But the Earth and its creatures would survive.

I plan to take action against environmental destruction, war and killing. The 90's will be the time for decision. We can make the world, or break it. What kind of world do we want anyway?

Homecoming

A bright moon lit up the room as he stared out his bedroom window. Not unlike the light Dr. Merkus shone in his face while he was at North Cathedral Mental Institution. Just after the death of his mother, he had been released and was still under watch by that doctor.

He glanced at his watch. 12:22. He couldn’t fall asleep. The stay at the institution has haunted him for many months since his release.

The wooden chair he sat in grew extremely uncomfortable, so he moved toward his bed. The sheets seemed to be smiling at him, the way the wrinkles and creases were positioned. He carefully pushed back the covers and climbed into bed.

He was almost comforted by the warm sheets and was close to falling asleep when a tree branch hit his window with a loud crash. He jumped up and glanced at the window. A tree branch had broken the window latch and the two halves of the window were swung wide against the wall.

He got out of bed and quickly hopped towards the window, picking up the branch along the way and pitching it out the window. He closed the window and jumped back into bed, looking again at his watch.

1:00. His usual time to fall asleep. He tried to fall back asleep, expecting to do so in a minute or two. But then a ringing entered his ears. It seemed to ring 37 times, although it actually rang only 13 times. Wait. 13 times? No. This is another mind thing.

The old grandfather clock in the hallway outside his door ended its ghastly tune. He covered his ears and tried to fall asleep again.

~

Robert! Robert!

His head flew up. He eyed the room frantically in search of the body connected to the voice.

Robbie! ‘Member me, Robbie?

“Where are you?” He drew the sheets up into his face, still eying the room.

I’m in you. I am you.

“This is unreal. I’m dreaming. Leave me alone.” His voice shook with fear. His eyes stopped at the window, the same one the branch hit. He turned pale. His vision blurred and he started sweating profusely. He turned his whole body toward the image.

The image in the moon.

It was a monster, with small razor teeth that seemed to have been slightly dulled by cutting. Its eyes were nightmares, combined to form everything it sees.

“You’re in my head. I don’t believe in you!” he said, cowering in fear, as a dog to its abusive master.

Right, buddy bot. I am in your head. And you better believe in me, for I’m you’re very existence, your reason for living.

“No. Leave me alone!” He yelled the words, gritting his teeth.

The face disappeared.

This is just another hallucination, he thought and went to bed. After about ten minutes, he grew hungry and decided to go down to the kitchen and fix himself a sandwich.

He walked to the door and opened it. Thinking that the hallway floor would be in front of him, he stepped out. But there was no floor. His foot fell forward and the rest of his body with it.

He was falling. His hands were flying about over his head, he reached out as if to grab something, but nothing was there. He finally hit what seemed to be cold glass. His head never stopped spinning. Then everything went black...

~

When he awakened, he found himself sitting in front of an old grandfather clock. Exactly like the one in his hallway. He looked around. No one was near, but voices filled his ears, all calling his name.

The place he was in was filled with floating multicolour bubbles and grey and black clouds. When he first noticed the clouds, he thought of summer storms from his past. What fun dancing in the rain...

His mind drifted with the clouds.

He was brought out of his trance by a burning smell drifting near his nose. He looked all around and stopped at the clock. A small flame was burning beside the number 12. It then disappeared. He noticed it burned a ‘thirteen’; the big hand pointed at the 12 and the small toward the thirteen.

As he wiped sweat off his forehead, he noticed that his watch read 13:00:00. The date read 00/00/00.

No, this is madness, he thought.

Exactly, he heard a voice behind him say. He spun around and stepped backwards in one quick, smooth motion.

“No, I don’t believe in you!” he shrieked, staring at the same face that haunted him in his bedroom. But this time the face was connected to a body. Muscular, but slender at the same time, and about a head over a man. Tan, leathery skin was stretched over its bony frame. Its hands were clenched in fists, concealing long, sharp fingernails.

“Yes you do Robbie boy. You might as well just admit it. It would make things a lot easier for the both of us.” It spoke without moving its lips.

“Leave me alone!” He started to run in the opposite way, but just in front of him loomed the same horrible creature. He stopped dead.

“I’ll never leave you.” it’s cold, shrieking voice pounded inside Rob’s skull. It held out a slender, bony hand. “Why don’t you take my hand. I’ll lead you out of here.”

Without saying a thing he turned to run. He didn’t know how long he was running; time seemed to be swallowed to be swallowed by this plane. But soon he encountered a door. He quickly opened it and stepped through.

The room was very familiar. Sort of like the bedroom he had as a kid. He felt warm there. Ilke being cradled in a mother’s arms. He saw a bed near the door.

Sleep.

Suddenly he had the urge to climb into that nice, warm bed and sleep. Sleep his thoughts and cares away. Which he did.

Sleep.

~

“Damn kid. I should never have had you.”

He awoke staring into the face of a woman. Woman? “Mother!” He was about to hug her when she slapped his face.

“You made him leave you little bastard!” She slapped him again and again, until his cheek reddened and his nose started to bleed.

“Mom. No. Please!” He dodged her left hand only to be hit by her right. That final hit knocked him onto the floor. Tears ran down and burned the buts on his cheeks.

“Stop crying!” She picked up a small glass figurine that his father had given to him on his first birthday and threw it at him. It bounced off his shoulder and smashed on the wall. “If you don’t stop crying...” She broke into tears and collapsed onto the floor.

Robert stared at her through teared and bloody eyes, then towards the shatterd figurine. Both were broken.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

~

“Daddy! You’re home!”

“Bob. Where you a bad boy while I was gone?”

“No. I was good, Dad. Honest!”

“Kidding. I’m kidding. I missed you!”

~

“Bob! I’m home! Melissa, are you here?”

White.

“Is anybody here – Oh! Melissa.”

White.

“Where’s Rob?”

“He’s in his room. He’s been there the past few days.”

White.

Tremors in the Night (1988-89)

“Now let’s play Pet Sematary. Load it into the Beta.”

A crowd of seven people surrounded the 28" T.V. Bruce Hewat, Andrew Gibbon, Derek Shantz, Carson Cook, Mark Hayashi, Ryan Oryniak and Quintin Hewlett were at a birthday party.

“We’ll save that for later.” Quint said. “Now let’s...”

His voice was cut dead by a loud rumbling coming from down the street. A sudden burst of light bled through the window in multicoloured streams, followed by a second blinding light and a gale wind. Three windows burst apart; the glass spraying the teens, ripped their clothes, punctured their skin, and blinded them. The bright, white light grew brighter and brighter. Then suddenly exploded.

“What the heck happened?” Derek asked as he dusted himself off.

“Earthquake!” Bruce exclaimed.

“No. It’s the spiritual entering of the Devil onto the Earth.” Mark said matter-of-factly.

“Shut up, Mark!” the group yelled.

“C’mon! Let’s see what happened!” Quint ran for the door followed by six people, the glass falling off them as they ran. Outside, the night was cold. She sank her cold teeth into her children.

“Geez, it’s cold out here!” Ryan protested. He tried to warm himself by running on the spot.

“You have good fun on your birthdays, don’t you?” Carson asked. Quint looked down the street towards the hospital, and noticed the house on the corner was well lit. he started running towards the black house.

“Hey! Where you goin’?” Derek asked.

“Come on! Come with me.” Quint continued toward the house. His guests followed.

The house was pitch black, except for the candle-lit windows. All was in perfect order, save for the garden. The plants had died, the path was twisted and torn, when once it was so tidy. The room on the third floor had no lights on, all the windows were broken and there was a man-sized hole in the west wall. The porch had holes in the floor, boards splintered and cracked, and the door was kicked in.

“What happened to this house? Derek and Andrew asked simultaneously.

“Earthquake!” Bruce exclaimed.

“Don’t think so, Bruce. A guy named Jack Spence lived there. He was a grandchild of the McKellars and a C.I.A. agent. He used to own half of the homes on this block. But he was murdered on November 27th of ‘82. Some say his ghost did the damage to the house and Jack was killed earlier than the 27th. But it was the murderer who did it. He was never found.”

“Do you think Spence’s ghost caused the rumbling and the light?” Andrew asked, intent of finding a ghost.

“No, it was the Devil.” Mark responded.

“Shut up, Mark!” Derek and Carson yelled.

Bruce walked up to the door. “Let’s go in,” he said.

“No!”

“Not me!”

“Don’t think so!”

The group started arguing. “Shut up! Either we enter or we don’t. Majority rules. Now who wants to enter?” Andrew said, leader-like. Four hands shot up. “Let’s go!”

The door creaked as Bruce and Ryan opened it. “What happened here?” Bruce asked. Chairs were knocked over, tables splintered, bottles broken and walls cracked.

“Don’t break anything” Ryan said.

“Not much chance of that. Everything’s already busted.” Carson said.

“To the stairs!” Bruce said as he did the dog-point.

“Shut up, Bruce. You’re so dumb!” Andrew said angrily.

“Yeah, c’mon you little...”

“Bruce!” Quint said.

The gang headed toward the stairs. They plodded up the stairs, the oak steps creaking with each pace. When they reached the top of the stairs, they were greeted by a big oak door.

“Who would use a door like that?” Mark asked.

“Good for keeping murderers away.” Quint answered.

Bruce bashed the door with his shoulder and it flew open. He cackled. “Shut up, Bruce!” the group shouted. They filed into the room.
“Holy. Who is that?”

A small man was huddled near a corner writing on a piece of paper. He was dressed all inblack, and his facial expressions were cold as the room he was in.

“Mr. Spence. Or his ghost,” Quint answered. He was just as scared as the rest of the group.

“I’ll never steal again. I promise.” Mr. Spence talked without moving his lips.

“Too late to plea!” A well-built muscular man stood by the window. It seemed as though he had just entered from the outside. He was shadowed and could not be seen.

“No please! I didn’t do anything!” Mr. Spence pleaded as the big man stalked forward, his huge hands clenched in fists.

“What a show!” Bruce said.

“C’mon, stop it. This is probably how it happened,” Quint said. “The police know not what happened.”

“Could we get on the news?” Mark asked.

“If we prove this is right.” Derek answered.

The excitement of the group built up as the big warrior picked up a chair and launched it at his victim. Mr. Spence dodged the shot, and the chair burst through the west wall. “Now you die!” the big assassin charged Mr. Spence and pushed him out through the hole. Mr. Spence screamed and suddenly stopped as he hit the ground with a thud.

A loud rumbling came from the heart of the house, and again a bright light blinded the group. “Not again!” Ryan shouted. The light exploded with a bang.

~

“I’ll never steal again. I promise.”

“Oh! My head.” Quint said as he stood up.

“Geez, not again,” Ryan said, angrily.

“Oh lord that hurt!” Andrew spoke with a touch of anger in his voice. He rubbed his arm. Carson and Bruce stood up and rubbed their sore muscles.

“Too late to plea!”

“We have to stop him, or this could go on for ever.” Mark said as he looked toward the spirit. He stood up. Mark’s hair was pure white with plaster dust.

“I’ll stop it!” Andrew said as he marched forward.

“Andrew, no!” The gang yelled as they reached to grab him, but he shooed their hands away.

“No darn ghost is going to stop this party.” He marched up to the big spectre and grabbed his arm firmly. Andrew finally saw the features of the assassin’s face. His nose was rounded perfectly at the end, and his mouth was curled in a wicked smile.

His smile left as he looked down at the small teen who held his arm so firmly. “Puny wimp!” the assassin said as he lifted Andrew off the ground.

“NO!” Carson yelled as he tried to run toward the big man. But his friends held him back.

“We can’t help him! No one can now! We aren’t superpowered. We’ll die!” Quint protested. The group held Carson back until he finally gave up.

“Um, please could you put me down? I have some homework to do.” Andrew asked, his arms tight on the spectre’s hands.

“You want down?” the spirit asked, his eyebrows poised questioningly. “Then go down!” He raised Andrew even higher and threw his arms forward.

Andrew flew through the wall and fell downward. “Oh sh–“ He screamed until he landed on a spiked flagpole. The bronze maple-leaf punctured his little chest. The leaf was covered in blood.

“NO!” the group cried, their voices echoing through the oak halls of the house.

“Thank you.” Mr. Spence’s spirit said. A bright light suddenly engulfed him, then he disappeared. The assassin then jumped through the window and landed on the second floor roof of the house, then disappeared.

“Darnit! Andrew was so nice.” Derek said, as tears fell from his eyes. “Stupid party. Andrew dies!”

The group sniffled for a moment, then Quint spoke up. “We mustn’t worry! We’re trapped in this house until we kill that spirit. He’s trapped too. Mr. Spence isn’t, at least we saved him!”

“We’re not the Ghostbusters! This won’t be easy.” Mark said.

“I could make a ghost trap, if Spence has the parts.” Quint said.

“Let’s do it!” the team yelled.

~


“Holy! This dude loves weapons!” Bruce said.

Racked up on all four walls of the second floor den, was a ton of guns and explosives. Bruce grabbed the first SAR Galil assault rifle and a .45 Magnum that he could see. Quint headed straight for Spence’s electronics lab. It took half an hour to complete their arsenal.

Bruce was covered in bullet belts. His two guns were at his sides. Quint and Mark had finished building their ghost trap. Derek and Carson were planning the attack. Ryan was on guard for the ghost.

“Let’s go kick butt!” Bruce started cackling again.

“Shut up, Bruce” the group said angrily. They marched off in two groups of three in search of the ghost. Carson, Derek and Mark took the first floor and the basement. Quint, Ryan and Bruce took the second and third floors.

~

“Cars? You there Cars? Carson!” Derek searched the room for his friend. A crash rang in Derek’s ears. “Is that you, Cars?” He pulled out his sub-machinegun. “No more games, come on out of there.” He tensed, and almost pulled the trigger of the 9mm Uzi.

Racing toward Derek in a blind fury, the spirit roared. Derek’s lithe body shivered as he looked up toward the spirit. His fear turned to anger.

“You killed my friend, you son of a –“ He fired his gun at the spirit. The bullets passed right through the spectre, but did blow holes in it. Or so he thought. Blood raced through Derek’s body, as through the spirit’s wounds.

The spirit backed off, but then charged at the little teenager that hurt him so. Derek fired again, this time with no effect; he missed the target twice. The spectre roared with anger and continued toward his enemy.

Derek tried to duck but the spirit slashed his throat with his sharp claws. Derek’s limp body fell to the ground, blood spurting out the large wound.

~

Carson could feel the pounding of his heart. Adrenaline pumped through his veins. The Ingram Model-10 he carried was getting heavy.

“Funky party this is. Geez it’s cold in here.” Carson did not know if the cold was a spirit or from outside. A small breeze blew his hair around. He gazed at a west facing window. Its curtains fluttered in the wind. His body shivered.

I wish Jeff were here. Nice of him to date his girlfriend, Carson thought.

~

“Bullets won’t hurt this thing unless it’s an effeetamo. This trap is designed to catch this ghost. Then we’ll be free! Mark helped me with the design.” Quint showed his invention to his two partners. “It only works once. Mr. Spence had no more D-cells. If we miss...it’s over! Bruce, if you break the device, you’re dead!”

“Funky! But will it work?” Ryan asked.

“I hope so,” Quint said.

~

Mark walked quietly through the basement. He held a Model 3000 Smith and Wesson shotgun. His grandmother had taught him basic weaponry; he knew how to fire a 3000.

I’ll find that mutha! I’ll find that mutha! he kept telling himself.

A small cup fell over and landed on the floor with a crash. Mark spun around and fired toward the noise, all in one clean motion. He hit a wooden crate and it splintered, then blew to pieces. Mark quickly reloaded. His pockets bulged with bullet cartriges.

“Stupid gun,” Mark said. “I wish I never agreed to take the basement.”

The spirit raced around the room unseen, bumping bottles and containers on the floor. Mark spun around and pointed his gun at each sound. Suddenly, the spirit raced toward his next enemy.

“You stopped y job! Now you’ll pay!” The spirit dove into Mark’s body, his claws protruded outward. The sharp bone ripped through the little teen’s flesh. He screamed until the claws punctured his lungs. His body tore in hald and fell to the ground, his gun falling with him. Blood gushed out of the large holes, splashing a book lying in the corner.

~

Carson searched the dining room for the spirit.

“Darn thing won’t show up,” he said. “I’m wasting my time.”

He lifted a plastic cover off a chair. He sighed.

~

“Don’t bump the lamp!” Quint said as he, Ryan and Bruce marched the hallways of the second floor. Bruce’s arm tapped the brass lamp, and it fell to the wooden floor with a bang.


“Geez, Bruce! I said don’t touch it!” Quint spoke, angrily.

“But I didn’t touch it!” Bruce protested.

“Oh be quiet, Bruce.” Ryan said, his eyes filled with laughter.

Screams rang in the group’s ears. “That was from downstairs. C’mon!” Ryan spoke. He dragged Bruce and Quint through the hallway and down the stairs to the basement. As they reached the bottom of the basement stairs, they saw the spirit race away from the dead body of Mark.

“After it!” Bruce yelled. He sped off toward his enemy, followed closely by Ryan.

Quint walked up to Mark’s body and noticed a leather book lying in the corner. The blood on its red bindings was still fresh. Quint picked up the thick book and read the title: The Useful Book of Spiritual Entities.

“Who would write something like this?” he said to himself. He flipped through the pages and stopped at a sub-titled named Effreetamos: The Living Dead. Quintin started reading.

~

“Get that thing!”

Bruce and Ryan ran through the rooms of the large basement chasing the spirit ahead of them. The spirit stopped and turned around. “Now you die!” it said. The spirit charged the two.

Bruce raised his SAR and fired at the spirit. All the bullets tore though its body, and the spirit was blown backwards through a window. But its curse did not allow it to leave. It bounced off a forcefield and smashed into a table.

“I am ruler! I am BRUCEBO!” Bruce yelled as he raised his gun in the air.

“Keep shooting, Bruce!” Ryan yelled as he fired at the spirit. His gun jammed. “Darn gun!” he yelled as he threw it on the ground. He pulled out his M-01 and Uzi 9mm and fired at the spirit. The spectre rolled around, screaming, bullets entering his body.

Bruce stopped. “No bullets left.” he said. Then he threw his SAR at the spectre.

“I didn’t run out. Funky guns have lots of bullets.” Ryan said, still firing. Then he ran out of ammo too. “Crud! These funky guns are dead!” Ryan dropped them on the ground.

The spirit got up, slowly. “Darn you, mortals! You shall suffer!” It charged the two, arms in a V position. His claws protruded outwards. The two humans tried to dodge the blow, but the spirit’s sharp claws ripped through their arms. They screamed out in pain, blood rushing down their arms, washing off the dirt.

The spirit turned around and charged the two.

“IMSH NAT MINEJEK BKORSHAB”

The spirit suddenly stopped.

Bruce looked toward the sound. He saw a figure standing near a doorway. “Quint!” he yelled.

Quint ran out under the spirit and dropped a small device on the ground. As he did, three old looking papers fell out of his pocket. Bruce picked them up. “Dropped something?” he asked.

“Thanks” Quint said as he grabbed the papers and started running from the stunned spirit. The two huddled in a corner near Ryan, who was lying on the floor in great pain. The spirit still held its place, frozen in time.

“How did you do that?” Bruce asked as he stared at the spirit.

“Tell ya in a minute,” Quint replied. He pulled a small remote from his pocket. “Watch this!” he pressed down on a red button. White light poured out of the ghost trap, then disappeared. “Darn! Didn’t work!” Quint said. “Have to rely on the papers.” He pulled three papers from his pocket.

The spirit awoke from the stun spell and continued his charge toward the humans.

Quint started reading. “MINATH ZINK QUEAZYN BNJKOGW! QUI ZITH YIATH JBORK!”

Just before the spirit hit the frightened teens, a vortex appeared behind it. It howled as it was drawn back by the powerful wind. It flew into the centre of the whirling mass. Then, as quickly as it came, the vortex disappeared, swallowing the spirit.

“Wahoo! It worked!” Quint yelled.

Bruce and Quint jumped up and rejoiced. They ran over to where Ryan lay.

“Ohmygosh! This reallyhurtsitreallydoes!” Ryan spoke fast because of pain and excitement.

“Slow down. We won!” Bruce said.

“Let’s leave. Ya, you too,” Quint said as Ryan moaned. Quint and Bruce picked Ryan up in their arms and carried him to the door.

“Hey. Anyone know where Cars is?”

“I bet he’s sleeping!”

~

Carson patrolled the hallways of the second floor, searching for his friends.

“They probably made this up!”

He entered a book-filled den, and sat on a wooden chair in the corner.

“I’ll just wait here for them.”

Music Reviews

Janek Schaefer - Extended Play


Stars of the Lid - And their Refinement of the Decline


Exploding Star Orchestra - We Are All From Somewhere Else


Deerhoof - Friend Opportunity


Boris with Michio Kurihawa - Rainbow


Leafcutter John - The Forest and the Sea


Joanna Newsom - Ys


Bonnie Prince Billy and Tortoise


Audion - Suckfish

some great albums of 2005


Deerhoof - The Runners Four


Black Dice - Broken Ear Record


Xiu Xiu - La Forêt


Wolf Parade - EP


The Juan Maclean - Less Than Human


Sufjan Stevens - Illinois


Keith Fullerton Whitman - Multiples


Four Tet - Everything Ecstatic


Jamie Lidell - Multiply


Clem Snyde - End of Love


Pita - Get Off


M. Ward - Transistor Radio


Shuttle358 - Chessa

best music of 2004, reductionist stylez

Various - Grammy Nominees 2003 ;-)


Sogar - Apikal.Blend


Tim Hecker - Radio Amor


Black Dice - Beaches and Canyons


Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow


Jan Jelinek - La Nouvelle Pauvreté


Mouse on Mars - Rost Pocks


Brokeback - Looks at the Bird


Fennesz, O'Rourke, Rehberg - The Return of FennO'Berg


Venetian Snares - Winter in the Belly of a Snake


godspeed you! black emperor - Yanqui U.x.O.


Manitoba - Start Breaking My Heart>

video associated with this site

O/H @ whatnext? festival from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

talking on james street north, episode 4 from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

talking on james street north, episode 3 from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

talking on james street north, episode 2 from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

talking on james street north, episode 1 from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

Electroluminescent -- New Harbours Music Series Vol. 2 from Quintin Hewlett on Vimeo.

Sun Circle at New Harbours Music Series vol. 2




Deerhunter at Lee's Palace in Toronto, Nov. 12, 2008



Holy Fuck at Pepperjack's Cafe, 19.09.08



Slither plays Christ's Church Cathedral as part of New Harbours Music Series 1.3, June 13, 2008



30/30 - Thirty Years of Hamilton Artists Inc.



Michael Snow and Matthew Boughner play Christ's Church Cathedral, New Harbours Music Series 1.2



Woodhands at Pepperjacks, May 3, 2008



a brief document of the closing performances of T H & B, May 3, 2008



Stars of the Lid @ The Music Gallery, March 18, 2008



Cursed @ Casbah



Polmo Polpo @ New Harbours Music Series 1.1, April 11, 2008



Orphx @ New Harbours Music Series 1.1, April 11, 2008



Justice Yeldham @ Casbah Lounge, February 27, 2008

QZH vs LDI interview

Quintin Zachary Hewlett: First of all, I want to thank you for meeting with me. I wasn’t sure that you would want to afford my questions after our email exchange. Let’s just leave the past where it is – I am not going to bring up Red Hill or any other bugbears. Let’s just get to the Green Shift plan. I like it, and I have to say that for the first time in my life I’m considering voting Liberal.


Larry Di Ianni: Thank you. Hopefully you will like what I have to say. Well, at any rate I’ve come to appreciate the plan. When it was first being talked about, I thought Oh Gosh, how confusing is this? People are going to be totally confused by it. All of the stuff that you hear, that this is not the time, the economy’s bad, energy prices are going up. In fact, this is the answer. This is not the problem. It really is the answer, so I’m quite enthused about it.

QZH: Is that the primary problem that the Liberal Party is faced with? Essentially a PR campaign about this plan?

LDI: Well, I don’t know if it’s a public relations campaign, although PR is always part of politics. Or, at least getting the message out, which is how most politicians would put it rather than public relations. But certainly informing people and dealing with some of the myths. The Conservatives after seeing the plan have ridiculed it. I was sort of offended, personally, by their reaction. I think Dion was sincere when he said Let’s have a debate on this issue, and a good debate. Not...you know, there’s these silly commercials deriding the plan. But not because of substantive arguments, but simply deriding it because it’s Dion’s plan. And I’ve been listening to some of the locally-carried talkshows [such as] The Antler online. And even my friend Roy Green has just gone way overboard in reacting to it. In fact, Roy Green called it an evil plan perpetrated by an evil man. It was strange words to describe a political position [laughs]. Say I’ll disagree with it, and here’s why; I’ll never support it, and here’s why. That’s fair ball. But to say that it’s evil, and to attribute evil to someone–

QZH: It’s a little extreme.

LDI: – a little extreme. So we’ll see how residents react to it. My feeling is, especially in Hamilton – and we’ll get into the substance of the plan in a second – in Hamilton, where we do have issues with pollution. I mean, look at your neighbourhood [at the time of this interview, QZH lived by Gage Park]. When I walked up those stairs with some of my volunteers, our hands had been blackened by soot from some of the emissions that we have been reading about. Just by walking up the stairs and hanging onto a handrail. That’s no way to have to live your life, with that sort of environmental degradation.

QZH: And you can imagine the coating that is in your lungs.

LDI: Well, you can imagine that. It isn’t just a quality of life issue, it’s a health issue as well. We need to deal with this issue. But also the other side of it – and of course this is what makes the plan brilliant – is the reduction in income taxes. The money that we bring to people to help them deal with rising costs and beyond, because, especially for these areas, there will be more of a contribution in terms of a reduction than it will be a cost to them. So it makes sense to me.

QZH: Okay. Shall we get into specifics? Again, I do like the plan. As long as – let me put my cards on the table. I’m not anti-Liberal in any sense. I’m not really a party follower. I’m a position follower. And I think for Canada – well, it’s a shame that we did not get the Mixed-Member Proportional [Representation] passed...

LDI: Yes and no. But that’s another topic.

QZH: There is an expense to it... But Canada as a parliamentary system is good at adapting to a variety of voices. We’re separate from the party politics which we see to the south of us, which means that you always close ranks with your party whether it’s correct or not. You correctly point out that the conservatives up here, for whatever reason, seem to want to follow that line of political strategizing–

LDI: Lawrence Martin wrote an interesting piece in the Globe & Mail this week – I think it might have been on Monday – where he talked about the Karl Rove philosophy: take no prisoners, no apologies, you are always right and they’re always wrong. Canadians by and large have been more substantive than that, and a little more accommodating than that. And that’s why sometimes the lines have blurred between a red Tory and a blue Liberal, a left-leaning Liberal and a right-leaning NDP’er, and so on. Which probably mirrors more where Canadians are than a strict adherence to [one party]. And remember that I have not been a card-carrying member of anything until this, so I’ve been all over the map in terms of following ideas more. Although I was energized by Trudeau in my day, when I was your age and he was in his prime. Mainly it was because of his ideas, and also the socio-democratic philosophy which I have agreed with.

QZH: Well, right before I get into this I want to clear this off the table quickly because frankly I think that it’s a distracting factor more than anything. Just the name: Green Shift. It’s been getting a lot of press because of the stupid lawsuit. What I’ve never understood is that the company which owns the name is itself interested in progressive environmental politics. I’m just curious as to what kind of more positive dialogue than a lawsuit [laughs] can be enacted with this company.

LDI: I remember when I spoke to our leader quite some time ago when they were working on this policy. He didn’t spell it out to me, but said that they were looking at taxes and environmental issues and seeing if they could bring them together. Before they were ready to launch this publically, again with the leader – in fact, he was in Quebec City speaking to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which is the conclave of mayors and leaders from all over Canada. He was very well received, and he said to me Your former colleagues received me well. We had a conference call with all of the candidates and some others, just to give us a heads-up about what was being released. And even then they were debating what to call it. So the label is simply to capture the environmental message in terms of ‘green’, but also the message that there is a reduction in taxes. There is a shift both ways. Should they have done some due diligence and seen if there was a private company with the same name? Perhaps. But it is a distraction. I don’t think it matters a lot. The irony is that this group purports to be an environmentally-friendly group that should welcome this. They are also maybe opportunistic, see if they can make a little bit of money.

QZH: And get their name out.

LDI: I’ve also heard that the Tories are willing to fund their lawsuit. So there’s partisanship. That doesn’t matter. What’s important isn’t the title, it’s the content of the policy, and this is what people need to focus on.

QZH: I’d like to focus on the latter part – we’ll deal with that shift in a second. I think there’s two aspects of it which are important. One of which you just mentioned: the shift in taxation, and I’d like to get to specifics about that. But just before that I’d like to deal with something that’s perhaps on the minds of Hamiltonians more so than those from other large municipalities. Shift of course invokes cars, invokes transportation. There’s a mall in Oakville, one of the larger ones, and there advertising campaign is “Shift into High Gear”, and they have luxury items on display. Of course, you have to drive out to the mall, there’s no real transit to get there otherwise and it’s not near any residential areas. I’m wondering specifically for Hamilton, which is very much predicated on the highway model and has been for a long time – you just have to look at King and Main streets, and from an infrastructure point of view the rapid transfer of people using individual [automobiles] is the ideological framework for this city’s development. I’m wondering very specifically about the Infrastructure Surplus commitments in the Green Shift, how can Hamiltonians very specifically and Canadians in general come to understand that this fund is not necessarily going to go to highway development but instead to mass transit, which is so required for Hamilton.

LDI: Let me refer to this simple and useful book...

QZH: It’s well-produced. I read it.

LDI: You’ve read it. Okay. I think somewhere in here it talks about ... I can remember the broad strokes ... It talks about investing in new technology. Green technology. Which we in Hamilton talked about during my tenure as mayor. We certainly talked about that, and making investments in public transit. Just to back up a second, I would say that not just Hamilton is predicated on this automotive model, but indeed manufacturing in Ontario – I would say Canada, but certainly Ontario – is predicated on steel being used in cars and all the technology related to transportation. Not just cars, but in certain cars it’s the bigger component. And we can see what is happening as the oil prices soar and people drive less. Plants are shutting down, and it’s creating great angst in cities like Oshawa and St. Catherine’s, Windsor. People are shutting down plants which means [un]employment. And we’ll feel it as well, not immediately, but that’s our steel that’s going there. A healthy automotive industry is something that we in southern Ontario have relied on. Should we only be relying on that? Of course not. And that’s part of the challenge for Hamilton, as it has been shifting its economy away from its industrial base. Not because it wanted to, but because it is having to because the industrial base has left us. We need to look at the alternatives. That’s why I wrote a piece in praise of public transit, supporting what the city is doing now around rapid transit specifically and public transit more generally. If had been able to continue my term as mayor, then I absolutely would have embraced and tried to implement it. Bringing it to the entire city – that’s how you make it viable. You don’t just bring it downtown, and that’s what some of them were talking about: downtown to McMaster. You want people to go downtown, not away from downtown. Those are important aspects that can dovetail nicely with this Green Shift. The fact that investments will be made in greener technologies fits right in this plan. For a city like Hamilton, it would be tremendous.

QZH: It’s important for, well, they’ve been the largest employer for a while, but the health and the education system, primarily the university; they’ve got the new Innovation Park which they are working on. But more specifically – I’m all in favour of investment, I’m all in favour of R & D investment – the one thing that concerns me is that we have some solutions available to us right now, and that is the shift that I would like to see. For example regular rail, and LRT [light rail transport, or “streetcars”] fits right into this. We don’t need to work to develop any new technologies. We can certainly work to make them more efficient, to mature the technology as every industrial process, for cost-based as well as resource-based [reasons]. But more specifically, because it seems that we have to act fast, and that’s outlined in the Green [Shift] plan very explicitly. There’s an urgency. There’s two things going on simultaneously. For almost the entire 20th century we’ve ignored out output, and right now we are coming to understand the repercussions of that, in addition to the fact that we’re still producing more and more greenhouse gases and other pollution on a regular basis anyway. But in addition to that you have... let’s say the oil issue. It’s a finite resource, with demand almost exponentially rising. Global production has peaked. We haven’t made more oil this year than we did three-and-a-half years ago. And it’s highly unlikely that we will, because those areas like the tarsands where we are increasing production, the traditional fields like Saudi Arabia are drastically declining. It is unlikely that we are going to find a short-term solution in R & D or new technologies. That’s a pie in the sky kind of thing as far as I’m concerned. And again, not to be combative with the American model – I’m certainly in favour of their country – but the American model is exactly that: let’s put money into developing mythical new technologies which will save us all and we’ll ignore the technologies that exist. So again, I’m wondering–

LDI: Sorry, you want to get your question out. But you know that McCain and Obama have talked–

QZH: They have talked.

LDI: – about this model. My guess is that Obama might carry it a little further than McCain might. But even he, coming from the Republican base that he does, I think understands the need to place a price on carbon and deal with newer technologies.

QZH: Sure. And placing a price on carbon does allow a new market to develop, which in and of itself inspires business and is a kind of business. But let’s get specific about that. I’m very appreciative of the fact that the plan – at least in terms of rhetoric, I mean of course it has not materialized yet – but in terms of rhetoric is focussing on low-income families. We’ve been talking about poverty in Canada for a long time, and there have been some improvements in many areas and there have been some devaluations in others. From a taxation point of view, I think [the Green Shift] is a good strategy, especially in terms of the refundable credits. Because one of the problems low-income families face is that they are frequently given tax rebates, but if they are not refundable and they are not earning enough to even pay taxes, then they just don’t see it. The other issue that I have with low-income Canadians – I shouldn’t structure the sentence in that manner [laughs] – the other issue that comes up for low-income Canadians is that they are not the ones who are able to invest in things like home-retrofitting which would be of benefit to them long-term to reduce their energy bills. Specifically about the tax rate, I’m very appreciative of what might happen. From the other side, from the investment point of view, there’s talk in the Green Shift about a retrofitting fund for houses. I see this as being of benefit to high-income Canadians especially – they can afford geothermal, they can afford $60,000 in solar panels. And a decent amount of the middle-class will also be able to afford this, or at least will be able to get a bank loan to be able to do it. But their house by and large, except for the huge suburban estates, are fairly energy-efficient. They are newer homes using newer technologies. I’m concerned that low-income Canadians will not have the resources to be able to even take advantage of a retrofit program which, in terms of its payment is retroactive. Meaning, a family pays $30,000 for geothermal and gets a rebate a year later.

LDI: Well, the very first platform that the Liberals released – and I have to be careful about being so certain that it was the first; it was among the first – was poverty reduction. The 30/50 plan, where they are targeting families, and they’re targeting youth to reduce poverty by a great amount. All needing to be done within the jurisdiction and powers of the federal government. The provincial government can invest in the [DSP?] and other programs that they run. The federal government is really into income redistribution. The details of that will come out whenever the election is called, but they made it very clear that they want to address that. This plan is the mechanism by which they will do some or maybe even the majority of it. On the website there’s even a calculator that allows you to punch in your own numbers and income and see what you are going to be getting back on a yearly basis. Now is that enough to allow some of the initiatives to be accessed by those in the lower income class? Probably not. But you have to start somewhere, and this absolutely does that. As you say, it even gives credit to those who wouldn’t be able to access the tax system because they don’t effectively pay income tax. To me, the brilliance of this plan and why I think Canadians should embrace it, even though they’ve caught some flak from those right-wing talkshow hosts who I don’t think represent the mainstream of opinion in Canada, is that it’s not a Green plan, it’s a tax redistribution plan.

QZH: Green [rubbing fingers together indicating money]

LDI: Well, yeah it’s a green shift in terms of money shift as opposed to environmental...well, in fact it’s both. We shouldn’t be surprised in a social democracy, which is what Canada is – a welfare democracy, which is what Canada is – that we shift money. Those who can pay a little more, and those who can’t still have a social safety net which they can access so that they are not dealing with some of the problems of the third world. In fact, in a country like Canada we’re dealing with too many of those issues. One of the things that I wanted to bring front and centre when I was mayor was the issue of poverty. I gave a speech at the Chamber of Commerce many years ago and I talked about poverty. I talked about it in a way that it’s okay to talk about poverty. We shouldn’t be hiding behind statistics, we shouldn’t be pretending that they don’t exist. But we need to more than talk about them; we need to marshal resources to do something about them. And the answer for me then as now is that we have to align all levels of government, the private sector, NGOs, everybody, to focus on the same goal, which should be poverty reduction as well as economic benefits for the community. I think that is what [the Liberal] Party and this platform is attempting to do. The Conservatives don’t want to talk about poverty. I mean, they had a candidate who was running against Bob Rae, who wanted to make poverty in Toronto something he wanted to talk about as a candidate and they got rid of him. They chose somebody else because that is not what [they] want to talk about as a party. Now, does that mean they are cold-hearted? I don’t think so. But they have different priorities and they have a different way of dealing with problems. They are also a minimalist government. The reason that Harper got rid of its GST billions was to honour a campaign pledge. But it was also to lower the size of government, because if I don’t have money then people won’t bug me with these pan-Canadian programs. Hell – heck, I said heck – that’s what Canada is all about. It’s about having these grand visions.

QZH: I would agree. Again, I’m very hopeful that the Liberals pull through with the plan if they get in, because as of yet it is still a plan. Much like the daycare plan...

LDI: Well, they implemented that. It was the NDP who pulled the plug on that because they tasted the defeat of the Liberals. They could have waited another six months and the Liberals would have probably gone down anyway given the tenor at the time. And we would have had a daycare program across Canada. Lots of programs once implemented – I mean, look at the gun registry, which the Tories railed against and wanted to eliminate. It’s still there after three years, because programs once implemented are hard to remove. So we would have had a national daycare program. The Liberals were true to their word, albeit late, thanks to Ken Dryden, who really pushed that program. If the Liberals win, and it’s a good chance – if you look at the poll numbers they certainly don’t suggest clear sailing for any party, but if the election were held today the Tories would be in the Opposition benches.

QZH: I think you would have a Liberal minortiy.

LDI: If [the Green Shift] can catch a little bit of enthusiasm, who knows?

QZH: Well that’s what I’m hoping. I’m wondering from the point of view of partisan politics ... let me put it this way. The Earth doesn’t care what we think about it. The Earth is simply a mechanism upon which we’re living. Whether we think it’s a good thing to allow industry to pollute and do whatever it likes, or whether that’s a bad thing, one way or the other we will be corrected. From the standpoint of empirical truth, we need to step outside of party politics. However, within (let’s say) the employment standards of political parties you are naturally going to have some infighting over stupid issues, like the Green shift company which wants you to not use the Green Shift name. How might the Liberal Party address these concerns? Forgetting the Conservatives because we know what their ideology about this is, but working with the NDP and more specifically the Greens, who have their own Green Shift plan.

LDI: Interesting. Of course, I’m new to this level of politics and I find it fascinating. I really do. And I know by virtue of having been around for a long time in various positions that I know the key players in each of the parties, certainly here in Hamilton and to some extent across Canada as well. I remember when Jack Layton was a counsellor in Toronto. I remember when Stephen Harper was leader of the opposition and did a swing through Hamilton; I was mayor and bumped into him at the Sheridan hotel. I remember being at 24 Sussex with Prime Minister Martin with other big city mayors when we hammered out the new deal for cities. Senator Larry Cambell, who was mayor of Vancouver and is now a Liberal senator – a former Hamiltonian who was responsible for the Cities Agenda in our platform, which I helped with. These are people that are known to me, I know the local Tory guys, and they’re all good people. At the end of the day it’s about ideas and the implementation of those ideas. This is why we get into these partisan dogfights, these to-and-fro’s where the bad side of politics raises its ugly head as well. Everybody wants to be up at the top, because it is a political game, if you will. But an important one, not in the sense of a frivolous game as any sporting contest might be – at the end of the day the sun will rise and we’ll all still go to work even though our beloved [Tiger] Cats will lose. This is important stuff. This is generational stuff. Not only for the sake of the environment, but for the first time this is a party who is saying...I mean this is what I find so attractive about this policy. We’ve been taxing income traditionally, and we’ve not been taxing pollution. Let’s flip that around. Forget the income, people can keep that. Let’s tax pollution. That’s where we’ll get our source of taxable income for government. That will create such competition around the boardrooms of these major companies. Now, CEOs will circle themselves with lawyers and accountants to find out how to beat the latest tax loophole, or how to find the latest tax loophole to keep more money. If we don’t tax profits any longer but we tax pollution, they are going to surround themselves with engineers and ecologists and they’ll say how do we keep more money by reducing these emissions? It can be done. That’s the beauty and the simplicity, and I think the power, of this policy. This is not new to the Liberal party. If you read the first sentence, it’s been tried in other jurisdictions. So it’s a wonderfully simple but powerful paradigm that they are proposing to us. And they’re the only ones who are doing it. The Tories are not interested. They’ve been shifting and dodging this whole question. If you read the Globe & Mail today [June 23], they are downplaying the latest climate report that’s been produced by notable scientists in Canada, to have it mirror more their very modest expectations around that. At the G8 meetings, they were–

QZH: It was a joke.

LDI: – the Conservatives, rather than leading the charge in this important phenomenon of climate change problems... I mean, we’ve been experiencing some pretty wild swings locally and across the world. And the Conservatives, rather than leading, have been dodging, bobbing, weaving, and pretending. The NDP, for their own reasons, should be favouring this proposal. I understand Cap-and-Trade, which is something the Liberals want as well, but we need something immediate as well as long-term in terms of creating this carbon economy. But for their own reasons, the NDP have to be different. Also, I think that they intuitively felt that if they could scare Canadians into thinking that their energy costs are going to rise so they’ll never vote for a party that supports it. Right here I talked to my colleague against whom I am running, and he said just that. So it’s not about what’s right, and that’s where Dion is distinguishing himself. Some people are saying that he hasn’t captured people’s imagination around his leadership. But he’s not an unearnest, back-scratcher-type of leader. He’s a man of substance, and he’s been very courageous, despite all of the warnings to him specifically. He said, this is the right thing to do. It’s not necessarily the easiest thing to do, it’s not necessarily the popular thing to do. But it’s the right thing to do, and if you do the right thing then people will make it popular.

I’m fascinated by these little skirmishes. In terms of the Green Party, look at the local polls. They’re vying with the NDP for Ontario. My NDP friends are saying that they’re just parking their votes there and will change when the election happens. I don’t know. I think Elizabeth May has captured people’s imaginations a little. She’s bright and she has a message that Canadians are clearly willing to listen to. She’s an admirer of Stephane Dion, and I think it goes both ways. They’re reached some agreements about the politics of things, so we’ll see how it turns out. I think the Liberals have positioned themselves courageously to champion something that is right and timely, but not easy. Part of it will be going to doors and trying to explain it to people. So I’m knocking on doors, I haven’t stopped. I try not to steal anybody’s mail [laughs]. It hasn’t come up yet, Quintin, this issue. It’s on some people’s lips, but not everyone, so I raise it. I raise environmental issues and taxation. I want them to know that. And they say, well if it can do that, great. Some people tell me I don’t believe them. They’ll never do it. Well, we’ve implemented a number of safeguards to ensure that this is going to be implemented. This is to answer your question of it being policy now, or rhetoric as you called it. It’s platform, it’s what we want to do as a party, but with very specific timelines. Here’s what’s going to happen after one year, two years, three years, four years. To ensure revenue neutrality, they will use the Auditor General, and the Auditor General’s not a shrinking violet. Whoever is there in four years’ time is going to look at it to ensure that everything is being implemented. And also, they’re going to structure an office to look at energy prices, because that is what people are concerned with. Energy prices may be camouflaged as the policy is implemented, but there’s going to be a watchdog to make sure that there isn’t abuse.

Even thought the Liberals agree that the spikes in energy costs – and by the way, this is important, the NDP plan, the Conservative plan, the Liberal plan all have energy costs going up. If nobody does anything, energy costs are going up. The Liberals are the only party that is actually going to give some money back to consumers to deal with these rising costs. There’s going to be a watchdog to ensure that there is no abuse by the industry. I think the Liberals acknowledge that there it’s not the abuse, although some companies have been taken to court around the whole monopoly issue of price fixing. But that counts for very little of what’s happening with the spikes. There are other geopolitical issues, scarcity, production, the rising need for oil in developing countries like India and China. I saw that when I was in China. They’re greedier for oil than us because they are developing at such a quick pace.

QZH: It’s the only thing holding back their 13% GDP growth. If they had access to unlimited energy to fulfill their industry, it would be closer to 30%. One thing that I’m – not necessarily concerned about, but one thing which comes up – is an understanding of what energy actually is, as a geopolitical phenomenon but also as a domestic phenomenon, can adequately be explained. I feel that this is key to the popularization of this plan. I think that from an electoral point of view, the Liberal Party has avoided any mention of increased taxes on gasoline. There are taxes already on gasoline which amounts to roughly $40 per tonne of emissions–

LDI: What the Liberal Party has said is that there is not going to be a direct increase in the price at the pump. We’re staying away from that. There’s an existing excise tax on gasoline and diesel, so we’re not adding to that because that is already sufficient to capture whatever taxes are being captured. What is being taxed, and we go into this in great detail, is at the source, the production companies and so on. We’re got a year-by-year formula for that. What I like about this is, well how do you make these rising energy costs understandable to people? Well, they’ve done it, to the point where the average person uses so much propane in a year, and they calculate what the increase in cost of propane to the average consumer might be. If you heat your home with oil, this is the increase that you can expect. If you use electricity, here’s the increase that you might expect. And then we’ll do a tabulation out of all of these energy costs, and I think for the average family it will be around $270 per year, once it ramps up at the end of four years. Then you can calculate based on your income what you’ll get back because of income tax reduction. The average family stands to gain about $1200, net.

I had a friend from Oakville and we got into this. I think that I had [the Green Shift] on the table in the living room as we were watching the Ti-Cats play. He’s sympathetic, I think he votes Liberal. He has a nice home, which backs onto Glenn Abby golf course, so he’s comfortable. A retired school principle like I was. His wife is a retired teacher like my wife is. He’s got two kids, one’s a teacher, one’s a doctor. So he’s done well. He said You’ll never be able to sell this plan because it’s too complex. So I said to him, you’re intelligent, let me explain this to you. This plan is about less polution and more tax dollars in your pocket. What’s so hard to understand about that? And then we got into some of the details. But in the end he said, less pollution, more tax dollars in my pocket; I think I can grasp that. If he can do that after a beer, there’s hope. [laughs]

QZH: Well, the Liberal Party should meet with every citizen, have a beer with them, and have a chat. Maybe get a microbrewery like Mill St. or Steamwhistle to help you guys out. I just want to go back to gasoline very briefly, because I think this is where most people are going to understand energy prices. Certainly they pay for energy everywhere – every product they buy, electricity, etc. But for some reason, perhaps because of the symbolism of the automobile–

LDI: It’s needed either for recreation or work, and it has, at least since I have been a youth, been a huge status symbol as well. Our cars, what you drive, how new it is... all of that is part of our make-up. But anyway, go on.

QZH: Your are right, and a lot of people don’t really want to shake that make-up because they enjoy it. They like being able to take day trips and drive 500 kilometres. Until special fun technologies come out, which are on the mythical horizon, we’ll have to remain fixed on oil. But again, what I’m curious about in relation to gasoline is...Obviously political parties have a tough time being doomsayers, even when there is some doom on the horizon. Perhaps the most famous is Churchill prior to World War II, saying, look if we don’t do something, this is what is going to happen. Nobody did anything, and Hitler happened, exactly as [Churchill] predicted. I’m wondering if the Liberal Party might need to be a little more active in terms of that message. Not lying to people – well, they haven’t lied, but there hasn’t been an honest discussion with all of the cards on the table, saying We know the oilsands development is going up, but there’s massive environmental impacts from the oilsands, at least until we get rid of the use of propane there, used to extract the oil, and build a bunch of nuclear reactors, which have their own environmental considerations.

LDI: I think Dion has said that. In fact, I was a t a fundraiser in Mississauga and he had just come back from the Calgary Stampede. I said Welcome leader, you have conquered the west. And he responded that they had done well, because they had expected to be chased out of town. He did well because he told them the truth. He said to the Albertans – and maybe we should include Saskatchewan, because people are saying those two provinces, using some pretty faulty math to really jack up the cost of what the average Albertan and the average person from Saskatchewan will pay. But he said to them the American mayors, at their meeting or symposium or whatever they call it, called for governors and the federal government not to import oil from the tarsands because of its environmental problems. And Dion said to Alberta I’m working for you, because if we don’t clean up our act here, nobody’s going to buy this oil anyway, even though it might be needed. SO you want somebody who is actually interested in that, because it safeguards not only the resource for Canada but your future as well, in terms of the economy of Alberta. The nuance in your question is that there should be a little more doom and gloom, hell in a handbasket and all that.

QZH: I’m just talking about simple facts. The Canadian government– no one likes false prophets, no one likes apocalyptic prophets, and rightly so. But at the same time we in Canada have been avoiding one of the key issues of oil is, well it’s not that there isn’t any oil out there – in the history of our civilization, we have never produced as much oil as we are producing currently – but barring some mystical development of oilfields, we’re not going to get any more. More importantly, we can only extract at a certain rate every day. Meanwhile, demand is going up considerably. I’m wondering about... the average driver only considers oil as a means to get to work. For them, any talk of a carbon tax is going to be viewed as an infiltration by government into their lifestyle. Can we view it not as an infiltration, namely that the consumers of oil will side with the producers of oil against any government action. I’m wondering if – and this is wholly in the realm of the hypothetical – if a re-nationalization of Canadian, and very specifically with the tarsands, is a long-term solution that we should look at. One of the issues we’re facing is to get the oil industry and other producers to clean up their act, but of course they just pass on the cost of cleaning up their act to consumers. They’ll gladly say that the carbon capture technology which the federal government may mandate is costing them $10 billion. They will then shift that ten billion to the price of gasoline, and suddenly everyone’s paying $2.25 at the pumps and everyone’s going to start blaming the government, not the oil producers. If on the other hand the government is the oil producer, like how Petro-Canada was before it was sold off – a very sad moment in Canadian history – then you can view [the cost] within a realm of jurisdictions that are also contained by government, for example health care. When we look at health costs because of pollution, we can balance those costs in addition to carbon capture costs and suddenly it begins to make a lot more sense. This is obviously not an easy project, especially in relation to the Green Shift.

LDI: [laughs] I’m certainly not going to start making policy for the party, Quintin. Nobody’s talking about that. And of course the experience with the National Energy Board, which wasn’t even nationalizing energy, but that’s how it was perceived, even decades later we hear that the Liberals wanted to rape the west of its resources. However, if the issue is: let’s deal with the big issues that we’ve got and the big challenges that we’ve got, well the very first line in the Green Shift is that climate change is the greatest ecological challenge faced by this generation. And when you drill down – pun intended – to figure out what that is, it’s all of the energy production stuff that needs to be dealt with, and the impact on the country, the Earth, the atmosphere. Not just in Canada, but worldwide, because as we know pollution knows no borders. So how do deal with that in a way that is understandable, fair, and doable? We can have all these targets which may not be doable, both from a political standpoint in terms of understanding and accepting the party that wants to do those things, but also doable in a way that will change our behaviour and our expectations. Or is it going to destroy everything that we have in our society. People are still going to want to drive their cars. They’re still going to need to drive their cars. As we lessen their dependence on that, we get into public transit. Is there investment for that? Yes there is, according to our party’s platform. As we lessen our dependence on oil because it doesn’t exist, or not as abundantly, or because its extraction causes other damages? Do we examine at alternative sources of energy as well? There are companies that are doing that. I think you need to have a reasonable balance, but a bold one as well. To pretend that we don’t have a problem is not acceptable.

In the city of Hamilton, under my tenure, we commissioned a peak oil study that’s working its way through the system now, to see how its going to affect the municipality. Not that we can do things independent of everybody else, but as we move forward with other projects we need to know what the impact of that is, the costs to the environment and other issues as well. I’m pretty proud that we did that. We’re one of two municipalities that commissioned that study. Despite the fact that some people felt that I didn’t believe in the study, I absolutely believed in it. I had faith in Dr. Gilbert, who was a colleague when he was on Toronto city council, and president of FCM in his day. He came out with some great solutions. Some people who enjoyed the energy side of his comments and didn’t like the waste-management side of his comments: should Hamilton become a magnet for that?

QZH: We’re doing a reasonable job, I would say. It’s a good start.

LDI: In a long-winded way to answer your question, I don’t know whether striking fear into people is a tactic that anybody should use, at least not the doom and gloom, we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. I think voters want to be given the truth, but they also want to be given some hope that we can deal with things. I think that is what this plan does. It says that there are implications to what we are suggesting. It’s going to change some things. Here’s why it makes sense and here’s why it’s important to do it. And here’s the hope. Here are the resources that we are giving to you to deal with the increased costs and so on. I don’t think other parties are doing that. Certainly, the Conservatives are not.

QZH: There’s no tax on fuel in general. In addition to gasoline, you’ve got diesel, aviation fuel, and my assumption is that, while it is not explicitly stated anywhere, biofuels, which are a separate nightmare in and of themselves, in terms of global food shortages.

LDI: The whole lustre seems to have been removed from the production of biofuels, even though the current federal government is saying that it is producing so little that it could not be impacting food production. I can’t see how it cannot impact food production. It may not impact it in a major way, but it has to impact it.

QZH: Well, the other issue with biofuels specifically... my grandfather was a wheat farmer, in Alberta no less, and while he is in favour of tarsands development he is wholly opposed to biofuels. He did a little math on it, and he understands that there’s no carbon savings whatsoever from turning food into fuel. That is more of a smoke and mirrors game. It’s more about addressing the fact that oil is running out. It has nothing to do with environmental considerations. For example, while a car running on biofuel itself emits less pollution, the pollution produced by fertilizers, the production of fertilizers, the harvesting and combine equipment – as well as the land-use issues – all contribute to carbon output and make it relatively equal [to oil]. So... biofuels aside. One issue which concerns me is about Hamilton’s development, or what seems to be on the table for Hamilton’s development: the Aerotropolis. Flight is currently the most damaging method of transportation that we have, environmentally and in terms of oil use. You take a flight to Europe, and roughly you are using the same amount of oil as you would commuting 50 kilometres per day for the year. I’m wondering how Hamilton, which currently has a lot of its eggs in the Aerotropolis basket – lovely farm land up there, by the way; if food costs continue to rise, maybe agriculture will be worth more to the city than the proposed industry which may go along with the airport. I’m wondering what Hamilton might do regarding a potential alternative, with a few facts in mind. One, the rise in oil prices is harming the aviation industry; they’re laying people off like crazy, they’re cutting flights. Hamilton airport itself has noticed a pretty drastic reduction in flights from 2000/1; Westjet just left, for example. Barring the emergence of some mystical technology which drastically reduces oil use, barring the fact that the infrastructure requirements for Aerotropolis are suburban sprawl and have nothing to do with focussing an energy efficient and sustainable community upon itself – we’re going to have to extend sewer lines up there, power lines up there, there’s a lot of electricity used to get water up the escarpment, etc. – I’m wondering if Hamilton can find an alternative and not have this as its main industrial basket.

LDI: Of course, we started that whole process when I was mayor, and I supported the process of looking at employment-land expansion around the airport. [The current] council has supported it, and even though I’m not there people thought that I was somehow pulling strings to get people to agree.

QZH: No offence to you, but it is a larger issue than you.

LDI: Absolutely! Just like the Red Hill, it started before me and I just happened to be in at the time we had to bring it to conclusion one way or the other. I’m not taking credit for that. But here’s the issue, Quintin. The peak oil study examined the impact of that on the employment-lands development issue, and that’s a smart thing to do. In fact, I think that we need to do that everywhere: the carbon impacts, the oil impacts, the costs, whatever we do as a society. There are several points, and these you’ve heard before. I don’t know if you believe them or not, but these are points that experts have written about and council has been sold on. One, Hamilton needs large tracts of land to attract businesses of a certain size that have bi-passed us. Some were here and left because they wanted to do expansions that they just couldn’t do. Proctor & Gamble is a great example. Within days of becoming mayor, I received a phone call saying that Proctor & Gamble is going to leave and we need to do something about it. I thought, what the hell can I do? Well, I called the president and he said he’d love to stay here. Here are our plans and we can’t do anything. Show me where we can go. There was nothing available for them to move into and to move quickly, so they left for Brantford. There’s a long list of others, companies who went to Brantford as well. So successive councils looked around. Where do we have sufficient land that is not being utilized and that could be employment lands. What we have is stock along the waterfront, in the industrial area, and that’s certainly something we need to look at. So we set up an office under my watch to deal with brownfield redevelopment. But those lands were not contiguous, some companies did not want to be beside heavy industr – Maple Leaf foods comes to mind. They are a food processor, they don’t want to be next to a steel plant.

QZH: The steelworkers may not want to be next to the effluent from Maple Leaf, but that’s another issue.

LDI: We can talk about that as well if you want. There is no effluent. They’re right now in a residential enclave in Burlington, and I was principle of a nearby highschool and didn’t even know they were there.

QZH: As far as I know they capture most of it, in terms of the methane.

LDI: And a new plant would have captured 100% of it with a new plant like the one I saw when I went to Brandon to look at their operation. The point is we need to develop around the airport. Not all of the land will be developed, some of it will but most of it probably won’t be. They need some land. But there are some implications to going up there, and you’ve hit the nail on the head about them. It’s very costly and intrusive to run water and electricity and so on. So automatically: who pays for it, and what are the impacts to the environment? I think there are answers to those, as engineers can find answers to everything. Ninety percent of the cost is paid for by private developers, so the development charges will pay for the $100 million cost. At the same time, we have to look at what’s available, especially now that Stelco’s downsizing and we have those opportunities. And people are doing that as we speak. The port authority is taking charge of that. So, rail: very important, and it would be easy to accommodate that. It makes some sense. In fact, part of the expansion to bus service right now is to go up there. How else do you bring tourists downtown?

QZH: With their luggage. Nobody likes taking their luggage on the bus.

LDI: Exactly. So I think those things could be accommodated. But it’s not a perfect world either. We have to make some compromises and deal with them as best we can. Hamilton needs employment growth. At the end of the day, if we are going to deal with the poverty issue, other than those people who can’t work we’re going to have to provide work for people so they’re not having to drive [out of town]. I’m sure that as you’re flailing about trying to establish your career, you’ve probably looked around: do I need to go to Toronto?

QZH: I’m all over the map.

LDI: Exactly, so we nned to provide these opportunities. My daughter when she comes back is going to teach, and my son will do what he’s going to do after he gets his master’s. In fact, before he went back for his master’s, he was working with a computer firm in Mississauga. He hated the travel and didn’t want to commute. Some of it was rather personal, prices were high, cheaper at home – all that stuff. We need to provide that employment base for people. But do we need to do it in a way that’s destructive? No, we can be in harmony with the environment. We can mitigate, and we can do things differently than we used to do them in the past. I would say to you – and I hate to bring this up now – but the Red Hill [Expressway]. First of all, that road was not to accommodate growth, but to accommodate past growth that had already occurred. The analogy that I use with people is that if you put a 13-year old boy in a barmitzfa suit, or whatever religious rite you might want to choose, and that boy is now a grown man and that suit’s much too small for him. We allowed growth up on the mountain to happen before we looked at the infrastructure. So we’re catching up. Now does it accommodate other growth as well? Of course it does. But we managed to do that road in a way that also looked after some environmental issues, especially with the creek, and we won some awards for that. People were coming in and studying what was being done. Could it have been done differently? Well, if you had done something 30 years ago, then yes, absolutely.

QZH: I agree with that. Two quick final points. One, it’s a personal issue and one which is somewhat lesser, but it follows on policies which were enacted by the pervious Liberal government, namely that there are rebates for the purchase of what gets classified as fuel-efficient vehicles. My ex-girlfriend just got back – I think – two thousand dollars for buying a compact little Toyota. I’m wondering, as a spur to industries which are minorly influential in Canada: cycling industries. A lot of the major bike producers are Canadian, and by-and-large they use Canadian steel, most of it from right here in Hamilton. Perhaps as a two-pronged approach, we could have rebates on bikes in addition to part of the infrastructure fund going to municipalities so they can fund free bike programs, such as exist in Stockholm, where the city owns a bunch of bikes and people just leave them around. They’re called “grey bikes” because they’re painted grey, and nobody worries about theft because everyone knows what they are so if you try and take one to a chop shop you don’t get anything for it. I think it would help in two ways. It would actually encourage people to buy, which seems to be the Liberal approach – a market-based solution to environmental problems. And two, it would somewhat lower health-care costs, as people would theoretically become more fit. One thing that would really help cycling in [Hamilton] – it’s a beautiful city. I teach a lot of ESL students from China, India, and Sri Lanka, and their teachers as well, and the first thing many of them tell me is that it is amazing to see a city which seems to be within a forest. Now that’s a bit of a myth, we are more of a city than a forest, of course.

LDI: But there’s lots of green.

QZH: There’s a tonne of green. And we’ve been recognized by World Biosphere etcetera, and I think that people will not see that aspect of Hamilton because they’re driving down Canon, down Burlington street, down Main and King. By pushing more people into the “forest”, we can promote that. City council seems to be putting some money aside for that. Obviously that’s a bit of a soapbox point. [laughs]

LDI: Yeah, obviously they haven’t put me in charge of developing policy yet. But that’s a good point. I’ll send it up the line.

QZH: Merci beaucoup. Maybe another thing that you can send up the ladder – and this may require more of an investment from the federal government than a simple rebate on cycles ($200 a bike is not going to bankrupt the country in any way shape or form – I’m curious as to why Canada is lagging in two key renewable industries in which, based on our geography, we should be leading – also, based on the size of the country, we should be leading here. One is geothermal, and the other is windpower. Both require expenditures, but when you compare it to the Conservatives’ expenditures on the military, they are about on par. When you compare them to health care and education, they’re much lower. Geothermal I see as being of great benefit, especially to low-income and rural communities. Especially rural communities which could function off the grid. You could locate communities where you otherwise couldn’t, more mountainous regions etc, because you couldn’t easily get the power and sewer lines up there. How much of the R & D fund and how much of the tax credit fund...right now it’s stated in the [Green Shift] just as this amorphous “renewable energy”.

LDI: To anticipate the question there, part of leaving it sort of undefined is to leave it up to entrepreneurs to say look, here’s the idea fund it. We don’t want to say that we’ll only fund this, because that will straight-jacket the program. At least in our administering it, I would want some flexibility and to look at some ideas that maybe I hadn’t thought of.

QZH: Could you have flexibility as well as a targeted response? Health care does that all the time.

LDI: I suppose, yeah. You need a little bit of both. You don’t want to be so flexible that you are accused of being arbitrary with the fund. So you need to have some rules. But I’d like to say to people, here’s some money, come up with a great idea. We’ll put it through some rigorous tests to see if it works. But we’ll be open. If I were the Minister of Industry, or whatever governs those, I would be approachable.

QZH: I think geothermal can be very much a solution for Canada.

LDI: Let me tell you a story about geothermal. We were just a bit ahead of our time, I think. I was a principle of Oakville Trafalgar Highschool. A new building, flagship school, very academic, well-to-do community. Even though there are issues and problems like all schools, but it had all the resources. When they built that school, they built geothermal capabilities into the school. Embedded deep down under the football field, there was a geothermal mechanism to cool the school in summer and heat it up in the winter. So it wasn’t the traditional air conditioner and the traditional oil furnace that most schools have. After two years, the system failed, and they had to rush in and put additional air conditioners. I was always a bit chagrined by that, but of course my primary concern was that we didn’t have to send kids home. But I said to the superintendent at the time, you’ve invested I don’t-know-how-many thousands of dollars, see if you can fix it. Here’s what the problem was: the ground was sand beneath the football field, and a few hundred feet down the sand had started to seep into the mechanism and it clogged it up so it stopped working. So I’m thinking who in the hell designed this and why didn’t they test the soil to see whether it would work or not. But then, why give up on it so quickly? Surely there’s got to be a way around this problem to protect the investment. But the practicality of sending 1,400 kids home because of the temperature outweighed any investment.

QZH: With a situation like that, you hope that things are planned accurately from the start rather than having to be fixed after the fact. In fact, Australia is the world leader in geothermal, and the have a couple projects currently underway which are industrial in nature, in terms of generating enough electricity [for a sizeable population]. But in terms of smaller buildings, several of Australia’s leading companies in this field have proven that a well-executed geothermal system located in a non-earthquake-prone area can easily last a hundred years with very minimal maintenance. Now, considering the fact that once you are geothermal you have very little heating and cooling costs, when you mortgage the cost over a long period – it’s about $20,000 to install in an average house – you far exceed [in utility costs] the $20,000 investment price. Nations in general have the capacity to plan on such long-term schedules, more so than individua. One person may own their home twenty years before they retire and move into a condo. At the same time, Canada as a country can say Why don’t we have every single new home built in this country be geothermal? Every single building where it’s feasible, geothermal. Period. No excuses. Not to have a nationalized company do it, but you could certainly have investments given to a private company to do it. Or, frankly, you could have a nationalized government program which deals with this. Because the costs are not really that great. $20,000 per home certainly sounds like a lot, and when you multiply it by the number of homes in Canada, it’s a huge number. But just of the newly-developed homes? Not so huge [a number] at all.

LDI: We have some friends whose two kids live in Australia. One of them was complaining about, not the temperature, which was to us a very nice 21 degrees. But the humidity, as Perth is in a tropical area. She said that she’s used to the humidity now, but it took a while. The husband tald her to buy a humidifier, as that would solve it. But I didn’t know that Australia had made such investments in geothermal, so we talked about that. Now they’re a different climate. But this is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking and new technologies that we need to look at if we are going to create some new industries, but also deal with some of the energy issues which we face.

QZH: Just as a final point, I’m concerned that because we are a northern nation, as energy costs increase people’s concerns are going to shift from driving their car to keeping their family warm during the winter. Frankly, that could be a major issue as under NAFTA, specifically our agreement with the U.S., we cannot decrease our energy exports. Once we have attained a certain level, we can never decrease it without breaking NAFTA.

LDI: Obama’s going to fix that. He’s going to open up NAFTA.

QZH: I have a feeling that is rhetoric. That’s for people who have lost their jobs in Ohio. The U.S. has greatly benefitted from NAFTA, and has easily been the largest recipient of advantages from that deal. So if, for example under an oil-constrained future thirty years down the road, let’s say production has gone down 5 million barrels per day, and that’s a rather conservative estimate. Of course, demand has increased, so prices are exceptionally high, four or five hundred dollars per barrel (which is not beyond the expectations of the oil industry for 20 or 30 years from now). People in non-oil-producing regions of the country, which is most of it – Ontario, the east – we’re still going to have to import our oil. We’re not going to be able to get it from the oilsands. For home heating, for electricity generation – although, in Ontario at least this is not a major concern as we’re nuclear and hydro, for the most part. But a lot of people wtill heat their home with oil, and they will simply not be able to afford it. I like the [Green Shift], but I don’t see a market-based solution to this problem, because a market-based approach will simply mean that those who can afford it will continue to take advantage, while those who can’t [afford it] may simply freeze in the winter.

LDI: I hope that we don’t come to that point. I understand that we have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. And I would hope that any government regardless of stripe would be quick to act when we get to that level. I would hate to think that in Canada – or any part of the world, although there are parts now where people are freezing in the dark and don’t have enough food – I’d like to think that in this country, we adopt more judicious policies and a will to change behaviour. We will rise to the challenge as Canadians have before. This land is not the most hospitable land, and our history is rooted in survival. We have the will and the ingenuity to be able to do that. But we also need a government – this is the partisan side – that has a Canadian perspective and not a regional, let’s-divide-and-conquer, what-do-we-nned-to-do-to-get-votes-in-that-region approach. We need to have a plan, and the Liberals have always risen to that occasion. Not only Liberals – Sir John A MacDonald certainly stands out as having a pan-Canadian viewpoint. But for the past fifty years, the Liberals have been the Canadian party. That’s why it has won power so many times. They’ve implemented vast programs for the benefit of all Canadians, for the equalization payments which bring our eastern provinces up to the level of economic benefit. I would say that the National Energy Program, which was so reviled, was an attempt to deal with the oil crisis in the ‘70s. I just read an interesting article in the paper about how quickly we forget. The shock of the ‘70s was worse, but this one certainly feels worse.

QZH: I think that it will be worse. The shock of the ‘70s was a manufactured shock. The Arab countries just shut off the gas: you are going to pay the prices we want, period; stop supporting Isreal, period. This one’s a little different in that it’s not consciously controlled. I’m not a big believer in oil company conspiracies. I think that like most companies, they want to maximize profit.

LDI: I think there’s a little bit of that. There’s a little bit of speculation. But you’re right, it’s bigger than that

QZH: I think it has to do with oil is quite simply the lifeblood of human civilization at this point, and as such, because so many processes are dependent on it–

LDI: Have you read Dune?

QZH: The Frank Herbert series? Yeah. Actually, when I was about six, I went to see the bad David Lynch version of it in the theatre. Disappointing.

LDI: The novel was better.

QZH: Well, [oil] is definitely our spice, and there’s no easy way to get off of it. Considering that costs are going up almost exponentially, and they’re not going to go down. A good indicator for this can be seen in the tarsands, because while most of the tarsands is deemed “industrially-recoverable”, it’s only deemed recoverable when oil reaches a certain price point.

LDI: When I was a kid, we were talking about the tarsands. This is generations ago. We’ve got oil galore, it’s just too expensive to retrieve it. Once the price reaches a certain level, it will be economic and we’ll have oil coming out of our you-know-whats. We’re at that point now, and the fact that we can make it an economic reality means that things have gotten to an exorbitant level. And then, we weren’t thinking of the environmental impact.

QZH: We’re still not really thinking about the environmental impact.

LDI: Yes we are! The Green Shift certainly thinks about that. [laughs]

QZH: Well, again I hope that it is legitimate. I do believe in Dion, however.

LDI: A decent man. I got to know him last year. I don’t know him well, but we’ve been at many functions together and we’ve had a few chats. He’s chalk full of integrity, very bright, thinks well on his feet. He answered some tough questions at a function a week or so ago about with humour and good solid information. But he’s not a sound-bite type of guy.

QZH: That’s the problem with having knowledge and integrity: you don’t fit the media.

LDI: That’s something that you either have or you don’t perhaps. But I’m hoping that people can see beyond that. That there’s a man with substance here. And there’s strength; he’s not a weak man. I read a biography on him he’s an interesting individual because of his background. How he grew up, the influence of his father, how his own thoughts were gelling as things were developing in Canada. Nationalism was flourishing in Quebec City where he grew up. And he took some principled stands in very much a Captain Canada way. He told separatists that they were not going to break up the country on a whim; there were rules for such things and [Dion] implemented those. He was reviled by the separatists in Quebec because of that, because he made it difficult and you couldn’t fudge things any longer. I quite like him, and I hope that Canadians give him a chance. I hope that they see the integrity in him and the passion. When I was mayor, I went to a sustainable cities conference in Montreal. It was great, and they had environmentalists from all over the world, it wasn’t just Canadian folks.

QZH: Who flew in on their jets...

LDI: Well yes, they had to get there and they were from all over the place. But they’re sincere people.

QZH: Yes.