A for idea, D- for execution

As an idea, you can't argue with it: cyclists shouldn't kill pedestrians. Moreover, cycling culture should take the obligation not to kill pedestrians very seriously indeed, and jurisdictions, from the city to the province, with responsibility for traffic safety should frame a comprehensive strategy to ensure the cyclists who do not understand our shared responsibilities get the message.

So how did the recent Globe and Mail editorial, which tried to make these simple points, do such a bad job? The answer partly lies in the atrocious phrasing the editorial claims cyclists should "know our place". And if we don't, do y'all have a rope, a tree and a bunch of good ole boys to teach us? Some phrases just bring up too many bad memories, and editorial writers should leave such phrases out of their tool boxes. Whoever wrote this particular editorial then added pomposity to their list of rhetorical blunders by writing this: "We do not occupy a planet where cyclist safety trumps all else." I get it: cyclists don't have a right to risk other people's lives to stay safe ourselves.

But this editorial does more than just break most of the rules of effective writing. It asserts a double standard and dares the reader to ignore it. Because anyone who spent much of last year in a conscious state has probably noticed quite a few very public decisions that paid no heed to the safety of cyclists. Fear of traffic doesn't cut it as an excuse for cycling on sidewalks. I don't cycle on sidewalks, and I ride my share of fast roads and heavy traffic. But consider the decision that Michael Bryant's fears absolutely justified all of his actions the night of his fatal encounter with Darcy Alan Sheppard, or the decision to tear out downtown bike lanes so a few residents of Moore Park can get downtown a few seconds faster, not to mention the frequent failure to file dangerous driving charges in many cases where pedestrians or cyclists get killed. I can't help getting the feeling that maybe my fears don't matter, but other people seem to think their fears, and even their resentments, do matter.

I know where I belong when on my bicycle: the bike lane or else somewhere between a meter and a meter and a half from the kerb in a lane wide enough to share in safety, secondary position (the right-hand tire track) in a lane too narrow to share, and primary position (lane center) in a lane to narrow to share where cars cannot pass safely. I ought not to cycle on the sidewalk, and I don't. But in a wider sense, I do not have a "place" any different from anyone else because I option a healthy, non-polluting option for some of my travels. I have exactly the same rights and obligations as anyone else, however I move around. And that sums up the underlying for the failure of the Globe editorial to make what should have been a simple point. Everyone, however we travel, has a moral responsibility to avoid harming other people, and the law should hold us all to account. But that raises a troubling reality: in many if not most cases where errant drivers have killed off cyclists, pedestrians, or even other drivers, the law has failed to apply the standard the Globe's writer proposes for those who bicycle on the sidewalk. Choosing not to deal with this basic contradiction, the writer of this editorial blends some very inappropriate rhetoric with pomposity to produce a very bad editorial.

I consider that sad, because I consider the underlying proposition valid. Indeed, I have seldom if ever seen the truth dressed up as such nonsense.

(Cross posted at I Bike TO; thanks to Yvonne Bambrick for pointing out the editorial)

The ends and means of culture wars

The current battle over library funding marks a skirmish line in a culture war. A culture war develops when people who hold a series of attitudes, often incoherently,  perceive themselves as a group and develop strong feelings of solidarity combined with hostility to others who hold competing attitudes. In Toronto, the culture war lines we all acknowledge include the Gay Pride parade and Mayor Ford's refusal to attend, bicycle lanes, and libraries. Less acknowledged but very real conflicts revolve around the word industrial, and the corresponding attitudes to the presence of actual industry in Toronto, and to existing industrial sites.

Because culture wars tend to involve incoherent clusters of beliefs, lines in culture wars can shift abruptly and without warning, propelled by the whims of popular culture and commercial media. I have written elsewhere of the growing acceptance of Toronto City Centre Airport and the corresponding collapse of the movement against it. In 2003, people calling for the closure of the airport belonged to a juggernaut that handed the mayor's chair to David Miller; a few years later, Toronto Life referred to them as a group of "aging hippies".

I hope I have conveyed my own belief that drawing lines in a conflict of cultures only damages the integrity of everyone's position, and even worse, makes compromise into a dirty word, coherent thinking about policy more difficult, and generally sabotages the process of effective self government. When a substantial number of people  choose to validate themselves by joining or supporting arbitrarily defined factions, the ability of everyone to participate in effective self government will suffer. Over the next while, I hope to produce a series of posts on how to avoid and diffuse cultural conflicts.

The persistence of (disputes over) memory

I remember the wars of the past and the war we have chosen to fight today  in Afghanistan. I remember the wars that came before that. I remember how one war frequently leads to another, the compromises made for peace in one generation leading to the failure of peace in the next. What aware person with a mind and conscience can forget?

I remember all year long. Every time I participate in the political process, I remember that people have put their lives on the line for my right to do so, and whether or not I believe their sacrifice produced my freedom, I know they thought it would, and I remember and honour their willingness to make it. I remember the men and women who endured the wars, who went to fight and gave up their youth and the soundness of their bodies and the peace of their minds, and I honour the choice they made to do that for all of us, even if I don't agree with the specific cause they fought in.

And at the same time, I face the paradox that confronts everyone who remembers and honours those who fought for their country. As Jimmy Carter rightly said, the necessity of a particular war does not make war any less of an evil. In 1939, Canada and Britain may have had no choice but to fight, and the young men of this country who flocked to the colours then have my full measure of gratitude. But they would not have had to go if Hitler had not persuaded young Germans to flock to the colours of blood and night. Good people only have to fight for good causes because very bad people can deceive others into fighting for monstrously bad ones. Does our memory, our gratitude to the men and women who died depend on our opinion of their cause? If so, should the Germans relegate their World War II veterans to a past they feel nothing but shame for? If not, then what do we really celebrate about the men and women who went to war, and should we temper our gratitude to them with an awareness of the terrible ease with which very bad people can make evil use of the noble impulse to sacrifice?

Changes in technology have forever changed the nature of war, and the way we remember wars, warriors, and soldiers has not changed to keep up with it. We know, as an abstract truth, that the hope and expectation that most of the generations of the past entered wars with, the hope of a final victory, we can no longer expect. As Gwynne Dyer put it, if a nation with a nuclear option ever started to lose a war in a final way, then it would resort to its nuclear arsenal and everyone would end up dead. Europe would lie in ruins before the Russians ever again marched through Berlin, or the Germans marched through Paris. But that has to change the way we look at war; if war, the carnage and sacrifice on the battlefield, can no longer shape history, then what does? And how do we celebrate everyone that makes our history and passed on a heritage of freedom?

All these questions turn around one other hard truth: peace and freedom have never come without a cost. War, as our  parents and grandparents knew it, has come to an end, and our survival depends of recognizing and accepting that. But the end of war does not mean an end to sacrifice. Brave men and women will still need to put their lives on the line for things that matter. More and more of those men and women will never wear a government uniform, but they will fully deserve our thanks and remembrance. How, when, and where we choose to remember will remain a point of contention for some time. Canadian, British and American merchant sailors in the Atlantic convoys suffered together with their naval counterparts and made sacrifices that undoubtedly made as much of a contribution to winning the war as any military person, yet they did not receive official recognition and veteran status until over 40 years after the end of the war. Even today, the day specifically set aside in Canada to remember the sacrifices of merchant sailors, September 3, does not get the public attention that November 11 has.

Maybe at some future Remembrance Day ceremony we will see peacemakers and peacekeepers, those who struggled for justice and those who fought for their nation standing shoulder to shoulder with all people whose valour and endurance made our world possible. Someday, the world may remember Americans such as Ernest Evans, Jean Donovan and Tom Fox, Canadians like Smokey Smith, and Norman Bethune together as brave men and women who gave their lives for justice and a better future for everyone, without making distinctions of uniform, rank, or status. But that day has not come yet.

Today a trademark, that most mundane, commercial, and, oddly, civilian of issues muddies the waters. Since 1948, the Royal Canadian Legion has had control of the poppy trademark granted to them by a special act of Parliament. Since at least the 1980s, they have engaged in legal scuffles with people who have attitudes to war and memory different from their own.Obviously, I disagree with the Legion here; I find the use of trademark law in an attempt to shut down political speech you disagree with highly inappropriate, and I consider it even more inappropriate to try to couple our willingness to remember and honour those who died in wars past to a particular view of war and peacemaking today. That view, that soldiers created our freedom and that only soldiers guard it, will fade into history with the time when wars could end in unambiguous victory, The soldiers who come home from Afghanistan will come home to praise and celebration, but they will almost certainly leave behind a country in turmoil and a still active Taliban. Freedom from the intolerance the Taliban and other extreme religious movements exemplify will not come from military action. To remember and honour the soldiers who gave their lives so we and others might have a better future, we will, in the long run, have to accept this and incorporate it in our way of remembering.

Canonization of Brother André, October 17, 2010

My mother, Elena MacDuffee, told us the following story. As a young woman (in the late 1940s or early 1950s) she and her cousin visited the Oratory of St. Joseph in Montreal. Before entering the building, they strolled in the garden, where they met an elderly gentleman. He told them that he loved to come there every day, to sit in the garden and chat with the visitors.

The two young women said goodbye to the old man, and then entered the Oratory. A display about Brother André and his life caught their eye. And there was a picture of the very man they had just met—brother André, who had died years before, in 1937.

A not-so-scary ghost story in honour of All Saints’ Day.

Privilege (I): Transcending politics

Many of us wish out politicians and commentators could transcend petty disputes about their ideas. Recently, several columnists did transcend their politics, and I learned to think carefully about what I wished for.

After the prosecutor assigned to Michael Bryant's case concluded he had no hope of convicting Mr. Bryant (a reasonable legal conclusion), a number of commentators, including a fair share of conservatives, hailed the decision as not only a legal victory for Mr. Bryant but a moral vindication.

I will have more to say about the question of whether the dismissal of the charges against Michael Bryant adds up to vindication in any but a legal sense; for now, I propose to focus on what the conservatives who expressed relief and satisfaction at the dismissal of charges against Mr. Bryant did not mention: his politics. Before his encounter with Mr. Sheppard, Mr. Bryant had served in the provincial legislature, first in opposition and then as attorney general, where he regularly promoted government as an wise caretaker of public health and safety. He did not just want to control guns, he wanted to control realistic toy guns. He banned pit bulls and dogs that looked like pit bulls. Ironically, he called for draconian enforcement against hazardous drivers, extending police powers to suspend licenses and impound cars without the bother of a trial. In short, he promoted and extended the nanny state in the service of a liberal government. His measures catered to the supposed anxieties of the "soccer mom" voting demographic.

Yet after his fatal encounter with a private sector contract worker, I read no conservative comments about the irony of Mr. Bryant's past stances in light of his predicament. Bryant's middle class status, his polish and accomplishments made him someone they could identify with, even if he had used those advantages in the service of causes most conservatives oppose on principle. They gave Mr. Sheppard no credit for keeping going and refusing to give up on his life after suffering insults and assaults starting from his childhood, and indeed from before his birth.

Our society carries on and awards unjust privilege in this quiet way, often as much by what we ignore as by what we proclaim, by what we do not say as much as by what we do.

Peaches Princess Johnson

I planned to write a post about having a dog in the fight against cancer. My daughter's beloved pug, Peaches, found herself in the fight of her life against canine lymphoma, a very aggressive cancer. We went into the fight right along with her. I planned to say that as long as he body and spirit could keep up the fight, we would fight right along with her.

But today at noon the cancer won. Peaches's joyful spirit never faltered, and our love for her never wavered, but we both ran out of time. We took her to the vet yesterday because the chemo-therapy made her throw up. Today we found her listless and unable to eat; at noon she went into convulsions, and before we could reach the vet she died in my daughter's arms.

We feel so sad that our dog has died, for ourselves and the things we won't get to do with her, and for her and the things she won't get to do with us. We will never forget her; we will miss her joyful brave spirit, and we will do our best to honour the gifts she brought to us.


Peaches Princess Johnson, Feb 29 2008 - Aug 30 2010. We said goodbye too soon.

Radio (3) How to Switch the Station so you Teenager Won't Notice.

If you have ever travelled in a car with a teenager, and become tired of listening to noisy and/or incredibly misogynist music, especially the song where the boy meets the girl in the club and, well, he doesn't want to be disrespectful...but he just has to say that her rear end is [...], then you will appreciate this method of radio sabotage.

This method works only if:

1) you are in the front seat and the teenager is in the back seat;
2) you have push-button radio;
3) the teenager has a friend (or a DS gaming system) with them, making them less vigilant about radio tampering; and
4) you want to switch seamlessly from the noisy rock/hip-hop station to an easy rock/light favourites station (you can't switch to classical music, or to CBC Radio 1, or to the Radio Netherlands Africa Report: it would be too noticeable).

Here's what you do, in 4 easy steps.

1) Wait for a commercial. While your teenager is busy chatting with their friend, etc., slowly reduce the radio volume, bit by bit.
2) When the volume gets down to a whisper, push the button for your favourite easy rock/light favourites station
3) very gradually increase the volume on the light station.
4) enjoy several miles of mildly pleasant music together (perhaps Michael Buble or the Black-Eyed Peas) until the teenager finally wises up and calls out "Hey! That's not my music!"

Radio (2) The Radio Gods

I spend quite a bit of time driving through the western suburbs of Toronto, often taking our dog Peaches to the vet. While listening to the radio, I compose short essays in my mind--mostly about the radio. Every night this week I am contributing a little "radio" essay.

I have a theory that there are radio gods, who govern when we will get to hear our favourite songs on the radio. To please the gods, we must treat them properly. To cruise rapidly through the dial is not the way. For one thing, you will have to hear a lot of sub-par hip hop, gushing contest winners, Celine Dion songs, suggestive pizza ads, and--worst--the celebrity news as delivered by Ryan Seacrest.

Besides, do you really want to hear only the second half of your favourite song? I didn't think so.

So this is what you do. Push the up arrow to a new station. If you hear an advertisement or someone talking, move on to the next station. If it is a song, take a few seconds to recognize the song, and then decide how much you like it on a scale of 1 to 10. If you give a rating of 5 or less, move on.

If you rate the song at 6 or more, stay put. Most radio stations play a consistent style of music. This means there is a good chance you will also like the next few songs. And because you have found a congenial station, there is an excellent chance that, after 3 or 4 songs (and maybe a pizza ad or two) the radio gods will bless you and you will get to enjoy "Brown Eyed Girl" all the way through.

AM radio

There is a station that we get in Toronto, Oldies 1150 (CKOC) out of Hamilton. It's one of the few oldies stations on the dial, so I have it programmed in as one of the 18 push-button options on my car radio. It and the all-news 680 (which I listen to mainly for traffic) are the only AM stations I have chosen to program in.

It's always an odd thing, when I happen to push this button, how the quality of sound is so different than the FM stations. The scratchy sound is like the grainy picture on an old TV with only aerial reception. The (lack of) sound quality, even more than the particular songs, really takes me back to my adolescence, when I listened to the radio on a sturdy battery-operated radio (it even accompanied me during my bath) and sometimes on a tiny avocado-green set that fit into my palm.

Back then, we didn't care much about the sound quality as much as the songs. I got excited the first time a disc jockey (on CKFH) played a request for me--it was 1971 and he played "Brand New Key" by Melanie. I spent most of the 1970s obsessed with the Beatles (yes, I know, I was a decade late, but better late than never). Mostly I listened to then on a portable record player that spun at 39 RPM instead of 33 1/3 (I had timed it). As the songs were speeded up, I always seemed to be getting up to change the record.

Listening to the few surviving AM music stations today, there is an odd time-warp about suddenly being surrounded by the sound texture of my childhood. It's as if I suddenly had a delicious whiff of my mum's "Green Pepper Delight" or plunged my nose into my dad's tin of Revelation tobacco.

A note on clothing...

The people who criticize what some cyclists wear seem to have issues with spandex, complicated by the way cyclists sometimes wear bright colours. I can't think of a better answer than to tell those afflicted with it to keep their minds on driving rather than fashion criticism. Cyclists who wear bright coloured spandex do so for two severely practical reasons: it cuts down on wind resistance, and therefore on the work they have to do, and it helps other road users see them. Winning fashion awards from passing motorists doesn't figure into it-- for any of us. Motorists who think that should worry us should grow up; we have more important things to worry about, and so do they.

On having a sick pet

Our dog Peaches fell ill over a month ago. She's lost weight, suffered from frequent vomiting and persistent intestinal upset. Several visits to our vet and to the emergency clinic have failed to resolve the problem, and the vet now tells us she either has a long term condition we can manage, or else a cancer that will kill her in at most two years.

When I think of her joyfully leaping off the deck into the yard, or leaping back up into the kitchen, or singing as we filled her dog dish and burying her dear face in it the moment we put it down, I feel as though my face and chest have turned to lead-- lead with a great ache behind it. The thought of losing our dog, and losing her so young hurts. The thought of her losing her life, a life she enjoys, hurts more.

I don't have much of any control over all this, but I can at least choose this: to learn from the joyful wholeheartedness of Peaches's life. If I put some of that into my work, then let her live a long and full life, or let her barely get beyond a puppy, that happy spirit will not have disappeared from the world.

And so I choose to face what the next weeks or months or (I hope) years bring us in that spirit. Not that I would have chosen this; I'd rather have my dog with me, joyful and healthy, forever. But time doesn't grant us many victories, and those we can eke out come from joy and learning. I'll do the best I can and take the best I can get.

G20 and the police

A great many people have already written about the events of the G20 weekend in Toronto. I participated in the First Nations protest the Thursday before the meeting, a protest which went off without any major problems, largely because the First Nations organizers requested, and expected, peaceful conduct from everyone.

But most protests in the city happened that way, and even the most aggressive demonstrations neither got near the leaders' meetings, nor caused any serious injuries, nor caused a serious amount of property damage. The G20 ended with two or three police cars destroyed and a lot of broken glass; plenty of sports events, and even some rowdy weekends in cottage country, end up with more damage than that.

By any standard, we now have an impressive number of accounts that indicate the police overstepped their bounds, and the police have responded with  evidence of the protesters' evil intentions which, to put it mildly, fails to convince.

At this point, I can only add one comment to this. We have a legal system in Canada, a legal system that includes the police and courts. As Rupert Ross, the Crown Attorney who wrote Dancing with a Ghost and Returning to the Teachings points out, a lot of First Nations people remain far from convinced we have a justice system. A good many poor people, social activists, and others, likewise, have very little faith that we have a justice system. Incidents like this merely reduce that faith. A loss of faith in the legal system has consequences, and those consequences tend to compound. The fewer people believe they can get justice from the system, the fewer use it or cooperate with it. Fewer people call the police, report crimes, or come forward as witnesses.

It may comfort a few people to claim that, as one poster to the CBC wrote (go to page 21 from the start of the comments):

You'll go crying, "Mommy, mommy the bad man took my money and hurt me. Help Police!" I just hope they treat you the same as everyone else and help you out when you need it most. You will take their help as if it was your God given right and then you will whine and complain about the shameful police again once they've helped you.

I can tell you from personal experience that not everyone does that. Nor should this surprise us. The argument that if something bad happens to us, we will go to the police no matter how we feel about them simply goes in a circle: you don't trust the legal system, but if something bad happens, you will. The proponents of this view never explain why we would pick the worst moments of our lives to turn to people we do not trust. I suspect they have no real answer, outside of a comforting daydream scenario. In reality, distrust of the legal system exists and has consequences. Some communities sum up their arguments for refusing to cooperate with the system in slogans like "Stop Snitching". But distrust of the legal system does not merely affect struggling and impoverished communities. It affects everyone.

End the impunity. See what happens.

Jim Kenzie, among others, has claimed that, for no reason he cares to make explicit, Canadians will not stop driving cars and drivers will not change. I think he and people who think like him underestimate the intelligence and decency of the driving public. I think drivers would do the behave much better if the law and the culture around us sent a clear message about the right way to drive. Specifically, I think insisting drivers will never treat other road users respectfully makes it much less likely they will. Whatever the reason, this country suffers from a road death rate that makes it very likely that over a normal lifetime you will lose a family member or friend to a traffic crash. I have a modest proposal to change things.

End the impunity.

Recently, the courts convicted a driver for having a car illegally modified for street racing in a way that defeats important safety features, driving that car at a reckless speed, and causing a death. Having reached all those conclusions, the court sentenced the driver to one year in jail. This would not bother me as much as it does, if similarly reckless behaviour with firearms attracted a similar sentence. Someone who deliberately disconnected the smoke alarms in a house, or permitted someone else to, then behaved recklessly with matches and inflammables would face a charge of manslaughter, if not murder, should their behaviour kill someone.

With the series of judicial and police decisions over the past year, it seems hard to deny that dangerous drivers in this culture can expect a presumption of good faith and a leniency that few others can. If you pull the trigger, the courts assume you meant to shoot. If you strike the match, the courts assume you meant to burn. If you defeat the safety measures in your car, drive recklessly, and kill someone, the courts appear to assume that you meant to arive at your destination will everyone aboard well and hearty. This has reached a point where it amounts to impunity for drivers.

Let's end the impunity. Let's do whatever it takes to ensure the courts cannot presume good faith in the face of evidence of reckless conduct on the roads and tampering with safety features. If judges in this province regularly treat homicidal recklessness with motor vehicles as much less culpable than recklessness with guns or fire, then maybe the law should require minimum sentences. Maybe, then, drivers would treat the responsibility inherent in operating a vehicle capable of causing serious harm with more respect. If not, then at least offenders will receive proportionate punishment, whether they use a bumper or a bullet to kill.

These days, they come for the dictionary first...

Joe at Biking Toronto wants to ditch the word cyclist, and at first sight he seems to have a good argument. Goodness knows, with both the friends and enemies of cycling engaged in a demented race to pile more and more baggage onto this poor two syllable word, it should make sense to just chuck it and start over. Look at all of the attempts to define a cyclist: someone who wants to save the planet but won't bother to stop at traffic lights, an impoverished elitist, an altruistic member of a self-interested minority. Can we save this word? Do we want to save this word?

Speaking for myself, yes I do want to save the word cyclist. I want to cut the straps and let all the baggage fall off, but I want to keep the word. A cyclist can vote BQ, Conservative, Liberal , NDP, or Rhinoceros. A cyclist can obey all the laws with great care, or can proceed through the world making up his or her own laws. A cyclist can believe in capitalism, anarcho-syndicalism, or any other economic system; in representative democracy or absolute monarchy. A cyclist can love the planet, hate it, or believe it doesn't matter because the world will end next Tuesday. Only one thing makes a cyclist: the use of human-powered, wheeled transportation. Anyone who has used a bike reasonably recently can call themselves a cyclist.

The word "cyclist" describes those of us who ride bicycles with an elegance and brevity that the words "people who happen to ride bicycles" will never achieve; but I have two more basic reasons for not wanting to give up the word.

First, to the noisy minority that shows up in newspaper and blog comments after every story involving cyclists and whips themselves into a froth (and they do constitute a minority), the problem has nothing to do with words. I do not know what many of those people really object to, but they focus their venom on human-powered vehicles and those who ride them. Just as advocates for people with cognitive impairments gave up the word idiot, imbecile and retarded when these words each evolved from a medical diagnosis into a schoolyard taunt, if we start calling ourselves people who happen to ride bicycles, we'll start to read abuse directed against PWHTRBs. These days, before they come for the communists or the trade unionists, they come for the dictionary. Let us not kid ourselves: the ultimate target has nothing to do with the words we use, or even the actual technology that moves us. They want our freedom.

This brings me to my second point. Some years ago, on a visit to the ancient seaport of Marseilles, I encountered a young street tough who asked me for money. When I had none to give him, he snarled "Juif". What should I have told him? The truth? Je ne suis pas un Juif would hardly have sounded dignified. In the end, I had no good (verbal) answer for him and just treated his comment as a stink in the air, not worth acknowledging. The point for us: when someone attacks us, it may seem to make sense to separate ourselves from the kind of people we think our accusers must really dislike. But that kind of denial preserves neither our dignity nor our rights. If we propose to drop the word cyclist as a way to distance ourselves from those dirty lawbreaking anarchists, we might as well forget it and preserve our dignity.Maybe I see myself as better than cyclists who ride badly, arrogantly or confrontationally; maybe I don't. But to many of our opponents, just riding a bike makes me just the same as all the cyclists they criticize. Maybe we need to debunk their stereotypes, but we sure shouldn't surrender to them.

A thumb in the eye for a courtesy...

View Windermere Route in a larger map

When returning from the waterfront to Bloor West, I frequently take Windermere Avenue; it provides an easier and safer ride. Recently at the intersection of Bloor and Windermere, I had yet another experience of the factors which make for friction between motorists and cyclists. The Windermere/Bloor intersection has two northbound lanes: a right/through lane and a left turn lane. I reached the intersection on a red light, the first in line. I noticed the driver behind me wanted to turn right on the red, and the traffic conditions would allow him to do so safely, so I moved to the left to let him through. He made his turn safely and waved his thanks. Then the next car in line moved up and when the light turned, the driver went straight through the intersection on my left. That didn't cause me any great problem, since only one car went through the intersection that way. But If a whole line of cars had decided to pass me on my left, particularly if I also had cars going southbound, I might have found myself in a very uncomfortable position as a result of my courtesy to the driver turning right. I don't blame the driver who passed on my left; in Ontario, we don't train drivers to look out for cyclists.

The moral? The next time you see a cyclist and think that person could let you go ahead but won't, don't take it personally. Look at the situation from the cyclist's point of view. They may have no trouble letting you through safely, but they can't predict what the car behind you will do. Keep in mind also that the cyclist in front of you can probably do nothing to get you home sooner; if we let you through, or you pass us (safely, please) we'll probably see you at the next red light. Also, where you have crumple zones, seat belts, and air bags, we have a half millimetre of cotton or spandex. The other moral? If you want to speed up your actual travel time, well, get a bicycle. But if you have a load you have to move by motor vehicle, and you want to get through the city quickly, behave courteously to vulnerable road users, and encourage other motorists to do the same. For every driver who blows through a crosswalk, some pedestrian will push the button and wait for the lane to come to a complete stop. If you want crosswalks to work better, watch for the lights and obey them. If you want cyclists to offer you little courtesies, then make sure we don't find ourselves in dangerous situations when we do. If I move left to let a motorist make a right on red, that does not give you permission to pass me going straight. I try to treat other road users with respect and I expect respect in return, and respect and tolerance have to start with the people behind the wheels of the two-tonne steel bombs.

Too much fun in the rain forest...

A new cafe has opened on Annette Street called "Good Neighbours". Their lattes add a whole new layer of meaning to the phrase "guilty pleasure", and the decor of the place mixes contemporary art with traditional touches in a pleasing way.

When I lived in the United States and visited Toronto regularly, I always noticed the vibrant diversity of Toronto's business community. In all but the very largest American cities, the tried and true, the franchises with nationally known names, tend to dominate the landscape. Here in Toronto, a hundred thousand flowers have bloomed. Not for the first time, I feel the business climate resembles nothing so much as a rain forest, in the vibrancy of its diversity and its sheer sensuality.

In Toronto, we celebrate creativity with festivals: Luminato in the spring, Nuit Blanche in the fall. But we seldom seem to take the opportunity to celebrate the creativity all around us, in the simple act of opening a new cafe, or a store, or a restaurant. But when we honour creativity only in the official artists, we close our eyes to a wonderful bloom in forn of us every day.

...and a bad argument against cyclists

Jason Henderson wrote an alternet article making the reasonable enough point that driving cars creates a demand for oil, the demand creates the impetus to drill, the drilling leads to disasters such as the one currently in the Gulf og Mexico. He proposes, as a solution, that we should accept driving as an activity fundamentally at odds with the environment and the values that progressive people hold. His prescription: don't drive. Not even a "green" car such as a Prius.

The comments attracted a set of fascinating defences of the car and denunciations of bicycle culture. One idea stands out: we shouldn't cycle, because "bohemian" cyclists oppress the "true" working class. Consider the following:

I see "progressives" like Jason Henderson every day. People who ride their bicycles inside highly electrified cities benefiting from wealth and privilege that made high education possible, while others in the vast service industry grew and shipped their food, made and shipped their clothing, maintained the day-to-day infrastructure working long hours for pennies and built the gigantic buildings required for a privileged few to have sufficient free time to pursue being "progressive" by cycling to a university.

It would take too much time to unpack all of this for one post, so I will focus on the central fallacy here: the assumption that bohemians in general, and perhaps cyclists in particular, partake of some privilege that renders them (us) at odds with some vague notion of an "authentic" working class. That, in turn, depends on a single (false) argument: that cycling necessarily requires so much time that only those people with both flexible and undemanding work schedules can manage to use a bicycle for practical purposes. I know from experience that at least in an urban centre, where most people now live, bicycles provide a more efficient way to get around. Whether from an economic, resource, or time perspective, the bicycle simply works better in the city than the car does.

Cycling requires organization and a measure of physical fitness. It does not require a "bohemian" or academic work schedule. Those people who want to suggest they drive in order to express solidarity with working people will have to think up a better excuse.

A challenge to the cycling community....

In my opinion, the best challenge to cyclists seldom gets made. The best possible argument against the cycling community would go like this: you (we) have the potential to achieve genuine excellence in the way you (we) travel, so why don't you (we) do that? The answer, of course, would go like this: we do come much closer to complete excellence than motorists allow. But we still make to many excuses for our own and each others' mistakes. We still settle for a lower standard than we could potentially achieve.

Too often, we can't find a good way to say to the world that we exist, we have an unquestioned right to the roads, and at the same time to say to one another that we fall short too often. We have the potential for genuine excellence: we can make our journey through the world a positive thing for our bodies, our minds, for the world around us. Motorists can never do that, or as with cyclists (most of us) who also drive cars, I need to say that when we drive, we can never do that. Behind the wheel of a car, we can only seek to limit the damage we do. But on a bicycle, we can grow our bodies, calm our minds, and travel peacefully and lightly in the world.

So why do we so often accept all the anger and frustration of the motorist, and return it to them with a little interest of our own? Why do even those of us most gifted with privilege, most able to forgive, sometimes cycle with a chip on our shoulders? Why foster a cycling culture that ratchets up the impulse to confront, to accuse, to respond to the violence motorists do, to themselves, to us, to the world, with anger and accusation? Can we find a better way?

A thumb on the scale

Over the weekend, someone put up a poignant protest at the courts: a white bicycle protesting the lack of justice for cyclists in Ontario courts. While I agree that Canadian courts have, in recent years, treated cyclists appallingly, I would go much farther than this. It seems to me that in virtually all cases where anyone, whether cyclist, pedestrian, or motorist has fallen victim to homicidally bad driving or roadside violence, someone, somehow, has put an obliging thumb on the blind lady's scales in favour of the errant motorist. Two young men kill a taxi driver by speeding on a downtown Toronto street at an estimated 30 to 90 km/h over the speed limit. They plead guilty of dangerous driving causing death, an offence which carries a maximum penalty of fourteen years in prison. They get a sentence of one year under house arrest, followed by an 11 pm to 6 am curfew, which their parents can override by giving them a note. Toronto drivers kill fourteen people un a little over three weeks, including one woman who runs a red light, kills a woman and very nearly kills the infant in a stroller. The police lay only provincial driving charges. An ex-politician tries to shake a cyclist off his car, battering him to death, and a prosecutor sees no prospect of conviction. A driver in Quebec hits a group of cyclists from behind, killing three; the police have yet to lay charges. A homicidally reckless, possibly drunk driver hits a car with his cement truck in Calgary. He kills five people, including three children, and virtually wipes out a family. The court awards a sentence of eight years, of which the defendant will serve five and a half. While heavier than most sentences for driving-related offences, this falls far short of the life sentences usually imposed for homicide, particularly in cases of multiple homicides with violence.

Not all of these cases represent the same level of leniency, and you could argue that in some of these cases, the courts have simply served justice based on the facts. But I challenge anyone to look at the overall record and maintain that the same trail of mayhem committed with guns or knives would elicit a similar response from the police and courts. The evidence that the legal system in this country treats the same harm very differently when delivered through a motor vehicle seems overwhelming, and it also appears equally clear that in too many cases, air bags, seat-belts and crumple zones do much less to mitigate the harm done by recklessness than car companies would like us to believe.

Some councillors and others have taken to whining that Toronto has embarked on a "war on the car". It seems clear to me that homicidally reckless drivers have long ago declared war on all of us: pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists. So far, dangerous driving has killed more North Americans than al Qaeda and the Islamist movement, the Communist party (all communist parties), the government of Hideki Tojo, and the national socialist german worker's party. Combined. Maybe the time has come to stop mourning our dead, and instead to do something serious about the deaths.

...a long time coming

Jeffery Goldberg ascribes the recent events in regard to Gaza aid flotilla to military and short-term political incompetence. I think that does the Israeli politicians and generals a disservice. As long as Israeli forces maintain the Gaza blockade, by all accounts a popular policy in Israel and a very unpopular one elsewhere, people willing to risk death can make Israel look bad. The Gaza relief ships simply have to keep steaming toward port to compel the Israeli military to either abandon the blockade, or to use force and risk subsequent casualties.

Rather than blaming the Israeli Defence Force, it helps more to ask how the Israeli government got their tails in this particular crack. It seems to me that Israel blockaded Gaza in despair, because they had run out of options. Having beaten the corrupt Fatah party in the election of 2006, Hamas had a earned, by the normal rules that govern these matters, a right to govern. But governing the Palestinians meant working with the Israeli government, and the Israelis could find no way to work with people dedicated to their destruction. Here, I believe, two quite understandable impulses in Jewish life collided with disastrous results.

The first impulse, which for convenience I will refer to as the ADL impulse in honour of the Anti-defamation League, holds that the Jewish community cannot ignore or condone hostility. The second impulse, which I call the IDF impulse in honour of Israel's defence forces, says that the Jewish community can never afford to rely on goodwill alone, because enemies can overpower even the most sincere of friends. Both impulses make sense, given Jewish history, but they lead to fatally contradictory policies. If you have power, you can dictate to your enemies what they can and cannot do without having you punish them for it, but you can't try to force them to like you. A policy based on the IDF impulse would have ignored Hamas rhetoric, but punished any government led by Hamas for hostile actions against Israel. A policy based on the ADL impulse would have deplored the hostility to Israel shown by Hamas, but not used force in response to it. In fact, it appears the impulses collided, and Israel refused to recognize the results of the election both because of the past terrorism by Hamas and also because of the ongoing hostility of Hamas to Israel.

If Fatah had taken control of Gaza by force, then Israel could have released the blockade. But since Hamas won the election and the subsequent power struggle in Gaza, I can see few good options for the Israeli government short of a more general settlement with the Palestinians. In the meantime, blaming the situation on Israeli commandos, or even on the planning staff of the Israeli Defense force, strikes me as a less than useful simplification.