What a time to be alive! Seriously guys. This is the best news I’ve heard all week. I love your country and I can’t wait to return!
It's about the freedom convoy remnant (TUPOC = The United People Of Canada) holed up in the old St. Brigid's church in Ottawa. I believe they originally agreed to rent it, but then refused to actually pay any rent. (Paying rent impinges on your freedom, I guess.) Today a judge ordered them to be evicted. https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/judge-ord...affiliated-group-from-ottawa-church-1.6081522
My heart goes out to everyone dealing with Fiona in the maritime provinces. I don't know if we have any board members out that way, but if so, I hope you and your families are all safe.
Nova Scotia was hit, but I don't know about Truro specifically, sorry. I think the worst-hit parts were in the eastern end of the province, like around Sydney and Cape Breton areas. Last I saw, hundreds of thousands of homes were still without power in NS, and they're saying it could take days before service is restored.
From what I've heard on the news, Cape Breton was hit hard. They've had to set up emergency shelters. The rest of the province otherwise fared okay. Or at least, that's the case in HRM, where I live There're power outages all over, though fortunately, I kept power at my home, though I was without internet for Saturday. The grocery store where I work is without power and is expected to be without power until at least tonight. Really not looking forward to the mess I'll be walking into when power is restored, but I realize I came out of this storm really lucky and things could be much worse at the moment. To end things on a somewhat lighthearted note, we had a phone call at my store yesterday morning from someone wanting to know if we were open. When told we weren't, the person then asked "if I showed up at the store, do you have a cake you could give me? It's for an emergency wedding." I guess someone was living out a real life Hallmark movie in which they decided to get married in the middle of a hurricane?
Could be that a guest or even one of the couple had to be somewhere very soon and that was their only chance. Or on a sad note it might be that one or the other has a medical issue going on and they wanted to be married ASAP. Who knows? I hope you were able to provide a cake.
No, we didn't provide the cake. Even if we were inclined to do so, by that point, the power had already been out for over five hours so food safety regulations say we would need to throw any and all refrigerated or frozen products out. If they needed a cake badly enough, I know our competition had all their stores open, their stores have generators.
That was wonderful news. @LaxScrutiny, they are indeed full of something very toxic. So glad to see the backs of those...people. Bikers' Church in Vanier, next?
I dunno. After all, Alberta gets a new premier in just over a week. Depending on who it is, Alberta may refuse to follow federal rules and laws. Our idiot justice minister is already refusing to allow the RCMP to deal with the illegal gun situation. It's a catch-22. Danielle Smith is insane, and would be the best one to get in because there's no way any sane person would want her long-term (she enthusiastically sides with the convoy protesters, the separatists, and teachers setting up literal one-room schools in their private homes so there would be no more need for public schools). She would be so stark-raving BS!C that there would be a chance of the NDP getting in and the province would return to sanity. But on the flip side, the next election - if there will be a next election - isn't until May next year. That's time to do a hell of a lot more damage than has already been done.
I'm just pointing out that hockey is not at the top of a lot of people's list of priorities these days. I wonder if any of these separatist idiots have realized that if Alberta does separate (not suggesting we will), that would mean the end of Edmonton and Calgary's positions in the NHL? Hockey is important for bread and circuses here.
NHL HQ will not be happy about the situation if the Danielle Smith faction entrenches itself that much further in Alberta, to be sure. Especially if Albertan separatism goes full-tilt. Same for Montréal if Québec goes.
Nobody said you weren't. But going by the location in your personal information, you live a long way from the utter mess here in Alberta, and so you don't need to worry about getting a premier who wants to ram through legislation that says her government can ignore any and every federal law it wants to ignore. Even the Lieutenant-Governor has gone public and said that if she was asked to give Royal Assent to such a bill, she would consult constitutional experts to judge how badly it would affect our constitutional rights. Well, given that this government has already caused significant harm to people and done end runs around the Charter of Rights, I'd be very pleased if the L-G carried through with that and refused to sign the damn thing. I used to say that the only people who take Alberta separatists seriously are Alberta separatists, and they were scattered among several right-wing fringe parties. But one of them was on the federal ballot here last fall. Not that they got more than a piffling number of votes, but the game is different when it comes to provincial. We have no Liberal party here provincially; in fact, the party had to throw up its hands and walk away after they couldn't even get anyone to run for the leadership after the last one left. So our only hope is the NDP.
I don't dance around concepts on this forum. I tend to be rather blunt and speak my mind, given that there's more leeway here than on a lot of other forums I belong to. I've just come from a gaming forum where a white supremacist from South Africa posted a photo of Jagmeet Singh and expected me to take it as a profound "gotcha" that he hadn't "assimilated." Apparently he thinks Canada is officially Christian and didn't know that Singh was born in Ontario. I'm relieved to know that you care about Alberta in a positive way. I get so much mockery and abuse from non-Albertans in the CBC comment sections; they see us as an entire province of Conservative-voting, beer-swilling, truck-driving hillbillies with no education or culture. (I've been upfront there about where I'm from, though I wasn't stupid enough to meekly comply with the "real names" policy they put in several years ago - some of my views are definitely NOT in keeping with the majority here and I don't need the potential harassment) On the flip side, the username I did choose is a character from one of my favorite science fiction novels. The name sounds a bit Asian - possibly Indian, and there was a time when some twit snarked at me to "go back to where you came from". I told him I am already where I came from - I still live in the city where I was born and raised... third-generation Canadian, thankyouverymuch. My family isn't "old-stock" enough to please Stephen Harper's lofty standards, but we've been here a century or so on my grandfather's side and a bit more on my grandmother's side. Going back 20+ years, I was in the hospital for an extended time, and encountered some people from Toronto who were visiting a relative. We were in one of the lounges and one of the men said he was surprised at how modern everything is here (Central Alberta). This really rubbed me the wrong way. I assured him we'd had electricity and running water for awhile now - it's a similar snooty attitude to how some Americans perceive Canada. For instance, you should have seen the wailing from some American fans of "The Handmaid's Tale" when one of the characters escaped to Canada with another Handmaid's baby. The general consensus was "How will she feed that baby - do they even HAVE baby formula in Canada? That baby's gonna DIE!!!!!" Honestly? GMAFB. So yes, thank you for not being like that.
I've got other friends and relatives in Alberta who also put the lie to that stereotype. Regularly. Solidarity!