^ Ah. Looks like I would have been out of luck, then. At YUL, the transborder jetty comprises gates 72 through 89. But when I flew out of Montréal I got to the airport at 5 AM, so that would have been just a wee bit early to eat a huge Mexican dinner.
In preparation for my trip to Toronto (June 4) I finally managed to register my Presto card. It wanted a Canadian address...so I used the Skydome. Rather fitting, really. Edit: I'm also glad that UP Express starts running (on weekdays) at 4:55 AM. My flight home from Toronto - on June 12 - leaves at 9, so I'll take the train as early as I can get it!
@Timewalker From what little I've seen of these "Take Back Alberta" people - some of them were also probably part of the Convoy Siege of Ottawa, I'd wager - they'll want to seize BC as well.
Oh, they're willing to take the northern part of BC. They don't want Vancouver or the Island, and apparently the interior (Okanagan and Shuswap regions) are not to their liking either. Of course some of the Take Back bunch were part of the Freedumb Convoy, both in Ottawa and at Coutts. There's an idiot in Medicine Hat who prattles on about how they gave everybody "hope." Yeah, right. My friend in Ottawa who was harassed and bullied (she's transgender) didn't feel any hope over this. The people who tried to cross the border at Coutts to see a dying family member before they passed (the death was expected within hours) didn't make it in time - they had to drive well out of the way to another crossing - what "hope" did they get out of these selfish POSs? Did the real truckers who stayed on the job and were stuck on the wrong side of the border with their full loads of goods and losing money while they waited have "hope"? Not that I noticed from the interviews they gave. There were "Take Back" candidates on the friggin' school board ballots in the last municipal elections. There's a FB group of 40,000 teachers, parents, and concerned citizens who banded together to try to keep as many of them out of the school boards as possible (since they supported the new curriculum our demented Minister of Gutting Public Education is determined to force down the students' throats). It worked for a good number of public boards. We weren't as successful with the Catholic boards.
More like fascism slapping the Maple Leaf while blaming it for the slap, then apologizing and promising it'll never happen again, but of course it does. It's the classic behavior of the abuser half of an abusive relationship, but thankfully most of us understand that it's an abusive relationship and we're trying to get out of it.
It gives everyone a bad name. Nobody wants it, yet these extremists think they have an answer for an issue that they themselves are creating. I admit to being amused that they only want part of the province.
Well, there are parts of BC that are firmly NDP and even Green (ie. Elizabeth May's riding). Can't have that 'contaminating' the pristine and pure northern BC and what they want to be all of Alberta, right? /large helping of sarcasm There are some people in BC who insist that they are the only part of Canada that can legitimately be called "Western" Canada. Attempts to explain that the usual definition is that whatever is west of Ontario and south of the Territories is Western Canada is met with hostility. I belong to a FB group called Reboot Alberta. Most of the members are probably NDP, though there are some from the Alberta Party. We get the occasional UCP troll, but they don't tend to say much. If they get out of line with the rules (the group owner doesn't allow personal attacks against fellow members), they tend to disappear. This morning I read a post that characterized rural Alberta as UCP, Edmonton as NDP, the smaller cities and towns likely to lean UCP, and Calgary as "schizophrenic". We have no idea which way Calgary is going to lean.
The far-right of Canada nowadays is willing to buy into any damnfool conspiracy notions that can be dreamed up. One of them in Alberta is that Rachel Notley (NDP leader) is going to go door-to-door and forcibly vaccinate everyone. Another is about the so-called "15-minute city". It's an urban planning idea that would create neighborhoods where people can access all the basics they would need (shopping, doctors, schools, parks/recreation, etc.) within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from home. Back in the '70s and '80s, each subdivision had its own elementary school. There were fewer junior high schools, and even fewer senior high schools. But there are more of them now, and multiples in the Catholic system as well. But kids can no longer be guaranteed to be able to attend an elementary school anywhere near where they live. 15-minute cities would be great for people like me, who don't drive, but they'd have to include sidewalks that are kept in good repair. There aren't any sidewalks on the side of the street next to the parking lot entrance where I live, so I'd have to jaywalk to get to the nearest sidewalk - that's across a busy street with no traffic lights on one of the busiest corners in this part of the city. So I'm essentially stranded here unless I can get a taxi or disabled transit. The anti-15-minute city bunch has this crazy idea that people would be constantly tracked and prevented from leaving that 15-minute radius around their home. That's CRAZY. Yet they seem to believe it.
Most likely the kind that don't actually exist. (Or at the very least, don't exist anymore.) Every time I think I've heard the craziest thing ever, someone always manages to one-up it...
Oh yeah, we drove by a few of them the other day, those who supposedly want 'freedom', yet I had to wonder what the heck they were protesting against as there's nothing of note to be angry about at the moment. They're not real mandates. It's more like it's the flavour of the day of yelling at the sky syndrome. They just seem to like finding things to complain about.
Watching the Alberta election returns. Right now the UCP is leading in 50 seats, compared to 32 for the NDP. 44 seats are required for a majority. Things are admittedly still very early; I think I heard that only 2% of the total vote has been counted so far. It's not like they need a good reason to be angry. It's just pretty much a constant state for them anymore.
Not many polling stations are reporting in yet. Given that most workers would have been hired via UCP agents, it would appear that math is hard. These results don't include the advance polls or mail-in ballots.
So the majority of Albertans looked at Danielle Smith’s record and said, “Yes, I’d like more of that.” And here I thought it was bad when the majority of Ontarians said the same thing about Doug Ford…
Some of them voted for her because of the bullshit lies that are being spread around about how the NDP policies would push elementary-age school kids to identify as transgender and undergo transition without the parents' permission. These idiots actually believe the "litter boxes in classrooms for students who identify as cats" hoax. The UCP is like a cult, and the "Take Back Alberta" part of it is actually dangerous - making late-night "visits" to elderly family members of people whose social media posts they don't like, or threatening to "remove" anyone they can track down who voted NDP. They're not happy that some of us banded together during the last municipal elections to share information about the candidates and try to make sure that nobody who approved (or was ignorant of) Adriana LaGrange's racist, Christianity-pushing, age/content-inappropriate, plagiarized draft curriculum that she's STILL determined to foist on public schools got elected to the school boards. We mostly succeeded with the public school boards. LaGrange is Catholic, though, so it wasn't possible to find enough candidates there who disagreed.
But compared to smith. ford's a socialist. some of protesting witfucks here did wind up with something to be angry about. the cops issues tickets for unsafe operation, stunt driving and failure to provide insurance details so for a little while there's 5 less trucks on the road. couldn't happen to a nice bunch.