Reading Print Improves compehension far more than lookiing at digital text

Reading print improves comprehension far more than looking at digital text, say researchers

The Future of the CPC.

 This morning the Canadian Conservative Party lead, Erin O'Toole, lost his job. He was voted out by a majority of his House of Commons caucus.

Where does the CPC go from here?

If O'Toole had survived he'd have had a hard time of it anyway with nearly a quarter of his members openly opposing his leadership.

 

Moreover O'Toole had been trying to drag the party to the political centre. If he'd been successful,  come the next Federal election, many party members and even Conservative MPs would have deserted the CPC for ultra right-wing Maxime Bernier and the People's Party which is supported by Libertarians but, also, by the same population of misinformed voters who have opposed COVID vaccination and vaccine mandates, and members of provincial Western Separatist parties.

As it is O'Toole will certainly be succeeded by someone far more right-winging than he. Pierre Poilievre is a possibility. He is an Ottawa area MP but was born in Alberta and was an assistant to Stockwell Day in the days of the  Canadian Alliance.

At least with such a leader the Conservatives won't lose voters to the PPC but they also won't gain any from people who previously voted Liberal and are looking for an alternative.

It seems the merger of the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives was not as successful as it appeared under the iron hand of Stephen Harper. The Progressive Conservative parties are still alive and even governing east of the Manitoba border.  PC party supporters are fiscally conservative but tend to be more liberal on social issues than Conservative voters in the west. 

If PC supporters find themselves seriously disagreeing with the direction the federal Conservatives end up taking it's entirely possible that the two wings of the party might split again. 

Even more likely is that they will simply desert the Conservative party entirely and either hold their noses and vote Liberal or not vote at all.

It's good news for PM Justin Trudeau in any event.

So you think this is cold?

   I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario which is not a city noted for its pleasant winters. In 2001, the city government closed both of its municipal ski hills (due to lack of snow and cold weather, not skiers or hills). We got buried, (as we still do once or twice each year) with lake effect storms blowing east off of Lake Ontario, which effect little of the rest of Southern Ontario. I remember, as a teenager, wondering why anybody could like the winter since all it meant, for me anyway, was wet feet.

     I moved to Montréal and still remember the first winter storm I experienced there. The wind was blowing and the snow was falling and I had decided to walk down to the nearest dépanneur and buy beer. I bundled up in my warmest winter things and set out on foot. It didn't take me long to realize that this was far more inclement weather than I had ever experienced. It was only about 1 kilometre, 15 minutes on foot, to the store but by the time I returned to my apartment the fronts of my legs were blue.

      I lived in a third floor apartment at the front of the building on a main street. I was awakened in the middle of the night to the unmistakable sound of heavy machinery. I pulled the curtains aside and, and to my amazement, was treated to the spectacle of a large snow-blower loading snow, (already pushed to the side of the road by three snow-plows, graders really) loading the snow into a long queue of dump-trucks. I learned later, that the trucks would then dump the snow into the St. Lawrence down by the Victoria Bridge. If they didn't truck it away it would still have been there in April, since Montréal doesn't get winter thaws like the ones I'd grow up with (the ones which give you wet feet!)

     I've since felt -40 degree cold in Amos, in Abitibi, a day so cold in Thomson Manitoba that we just stayed indoors, and a horrifying afternoon walking up Portage Avenue in Winnipeg in February. It was so cold and windy that we went in the east doors of departments stores and out the west ones to avoid walking on the street. That was the coldest I've ever felt in my life.

     Years later I was listening to a colleague whinge that it was too cold to do playground duty.
 "This isn't cold," I told her. "I lived for three years in Montréal, it really gets cold there."

Her reply? "I lived for the first eleven years of my life in Nigeria. This is cold!"

     I take her point.

You been to the RBG recently?

We've been members of the Royal Botanical Gardens for almost 30 years. We went yesterday, in spite of the traffic chaos caused by the closure of the TO bound lanes of the Skyway Bridge, for some quiet time amongst the flowers.

We chose Hendrie Park yesterday (in Aldershot, just over the Grindstone Creek Bridge from York Boulevard) to find that, while the roses are pretty much done, there's lots in bloom.  There's serious construction going on there, too. Footings are being poured, for what I'm not sure. They've also started the major renovations of the Rock Garden which will include a new orientation centre and renovations to the entire garden and the Tea House. And the gardens are far better cared for than has been the case in past years.

It seems they've finally found the money to make the RBG what it always ought to have been: a major tourist draw.

The RBG is most famous for its Lilac Dell which is the world's reference collection of those shrubs, but that's only interesting for a few weeks in the late spring. There are, however, other cultivated gardens like the newly redesigned Laking Perennial Collection. In addition, one can walk  27 km of trails through the various ecosystems within the garden's 2700 acres, that's 11 sq. km, which encompass all of the land around Cootes Paradise, the marsh at the westernmost end of the lake.

Here are a few photos I took in the Hendrie Garden.

A view of the allée leading to the RBG Centre.

Fountain on the path to the themed gardens.

There are two of these infinity reflecting pools.

You can see both of them here. Note the shoes.
Two gardens are in the pools cleaning with a net strainer

Water lilies, about to bloom

These are all echinacea purpurea, Purple Coneflower.
As you can see, they're not all purple.


Text and photos all Copyright © 2014 David S. Fawcett