The Maple Leaf Lounge

Tornado Warning in Ottawa-Gatineau. Thunderstorm is definitely underway!

Update 315 PM EST: Two tornado warnings in three hours. I am in my basement.
 
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Hope you're safe DEWLine. a tornado went through my neighbourhood but our house made it through unscathed.
 
Honestly, to me it's like if you've seen one pony chuckwagon race, you've seen them all - and far too many horses get injured/die in those.

That happened last night. A horse fell over during one of the races. :(

They raised a huge tarp so no one could see the vets tending to the horse. At least it had some privacy.
 
That happened last night. A horse fell over during one of the races. :(

They raised a huge tarp so no one could see the vets tending to the horse. At least it had some privacy.
There's a <jerk> (I really want to use a much stronger word) posting on the premier's page on FB who laughed and mocked me for caring about the rodeo horses and claimed that they're "like family" and "treated like royalty".

I told him to tell that to the dead horses, who die for no good reason. He then claimed that I don't know anything about animals and should let the adults do the talking.

Typical POS for that political party. It's actually unusual to have a Stampede where horses don't get injured or die. As far as I'm concerned, chuckwagon racing should be banned.
 
It's actually unusual to have a Stampede where horses don't get injured or die. As far as I'm concerned, chuckwagon racing should be banned.

TBH, I thought they already had. I thought I remembered a big public uproar a few years ago, and they were banned as a result. So obviously I was surprised to see MLB’s post about them. I guess my memory was playing tricks on me. Or perhaps just wishful thinking.

Agreed that they definitely should be banned.
 
I’m not aware of the chuckwagon races ever being banned.

Various groups have called for them to be done away with, but it’s never actually been done.

Me, I have more of a problem with the tie-down roping. I can hardly watch.

Edit: Being on the CTrain during the Stampede is, I think, worse than the 4 train in Manhattan during rush hour. I am totally exhausted. :sigh:

I mean, I had a great time in Calgary, but I’m ready to come home! :lol:
 
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At the stampede today I saw a kid with a T-shirt that said:

“The Eh Team”. :guffaw:
The only times when I ever use "eh" is when I'm making lolpics, and it depends on context.

"Eh" is perfectly good lolpic grammar, using "teh" instead of "the". There was a time 12 years or so ago when I would not have said this. It took EFFORT to type "teh" on purpose, because of the many years I spent typing and editing papers for college/university students, and I prided myself on having perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

So if I look out the window right now and say, "Teh skies is clowdy today," it's grammatically correct if you're making a Cheezburger-style lolpic. It's not entirely accurate, though, because part of what looks like clouds is actually smoke from the wildfires in BC.

Q.: What do you call a litter of kittens?

A. An itteh-bitteh-kitteh-committeh (itty-bitty-kitty-committee)

TBH, I thought they already had. I thought I remembered a big public uproar a few years ago, and they were banned as a result. So obviously I was surprised to see MLB’s post about them. I guess my memory was playing tricks on me. Or perhaps just wishful thinking.

Agreed that they definitely should be banned.
There's an annual uproar about them, moreso when an egregiously bad accident happens/more horses die that year than usual.

And that's bad. There should not be a "usual" number of horse deaths at a rodeo.

I’m not aware of the chuckwagon races ever being banned.

Various groups have called for them to be done away with, but it’s never actually been done.

Me, I have more of a problem with the tie-down roping. I can hardly watch.

Edit: Being on the CTrain during the Stampede is, I think, worse than the 4 train in Manhattan during rush hour. I am totally exhausted. :sigh:

I mean, I had a great time in Calgary, but I’m ready to come home! :lol:
Most rodeo events are actually pretty abusive, when you look at them from the animal's point of view.

But I will admit to an occasional bit of amusement, such as one particular CTV newscast in February 1988, when news anchor Lloyd Robertson was doing his nightly report about the Winter Olympics in Calgary.

Calgary is world-famous for the Stampede, and a lot of international visitors seem to have the notion that the Stampede runs year-round. A couple of tourists from Arizona told me this when I chatted with them during a road block in the Kootenay area (fatal traffic accident up ahead; traffic was stopped for a couple of hours so the emergency vehicles and coroner could deal with everything). I'd decided to take the dog for a walk and see if there was anyone interesting to talk to, and this older couple were up for a chat.

They told me they were looking forward to the Stampede, and were dumbfounded when I told them they'd missed it by 3 weeks (this was in August). They said, "We thought it went year-round!" and I told them, no, it's just 10 days, every July. On the bright side, they'd be there well on time for next year...

Anyway, the Calgary Olympic organizers realized that the international visitors would really like to see some rodeo action, so they arranged a mini-Stampede, held indoors.

Lloyd Robertson reported all this, and continued on, "and today's featured event was ladies' barrel wrestling..."

I literally fell off my chair laughing. LITERALLY. I must have laughed a good 10 minutes on my living room floor.

Lloyd Robertson continued on, blithely unaware that he had said anything that must have caused many people in Western Canada to react the same way I did. One of the columnists from our local paper wrote a satirical editorial about it the next day. It's not that anyone was angry, just a "smh" reaction at the silliness of Eastern Canadians who don't know much about rodeo.

If you haven't visited The Sentry Box, I highly recommend it. A significant portion of my books and Mayfair rail games collection came from there, along with some artwork. I remember one print of the cover art for a fantasy novel that had sat in the store for about 3 years. Nobody wanted it. It was high up on the wall, so I never knew what the cost was. But then they brought it to the July SF convention and had it on their table in the dealers' room. I checked the price, silently kicked myself as I could have bought it years earlier, and bought it right then and there.

Whereupon the guy running the table said in a grumpy voice, "We should have put it in the art auction." I told him that I knew how many years it had sat in the store unbought, so this was likely the best they'd get. It likely wouldn't have gone past minimum bid. But it was a pretty cool piece of art, so it's mine now!

Public transit during the Stampede is often a game of spot-the-fake-cowboys. That's especially true if you're at an event where the politicians show up. They wear their jeans, cowboy boots, and hats like a costume, not like normal clothes. There's an especially creepy photo of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper trying to "dress Western". He really didn't do it very well, unless his goal was to look like the villain in a bad movie.

Did you try any of the weird foods on the midway?
 
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^ I mostly had BBQ or perogies. (i tried a burger once but it wasn’t very good.)

And strangely enough, I do know who Lloyd Robertson is… :D


“Do I come to where you work and crunch CHIPS?” :guffaw:

Oh and I totally get it re: the fake cowboys. I didn’t even try to blend in. I just said the hell with it and wore my Yankees cap. :lol:

edit: Ladies’ barrel wrestling? :guffaw:
 
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^ I mostly had BBQ or perogies. (i tried a burger once but it wasn’t very good.)

And strangely enough, I do know who Lloyd Robertson is… :D


“Do I come to where you work and crunch CHIPS?” :guffaw:

Oh and I totally get it re: the fake cowboys. I didn’t even try to blend in. I just said the hell with it and wore my Yankees cap. :lol:

edit: Ladies’ barrel wrestling? :guffaw:
Our older news anchors were really good sports about participating in comedy sketches. :lol:

Dunno if they've been uploaded, but Peter Mansbridge and Brian Wilson (sports commentator; I enjoyed his coverage during the Olympics) did some funny ones on the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

Yeah, Robertson really said "ladies' barrel wrestling" and carried right on, never noticing. :lol: Of course he should have said "ladies' barrel racing" and the editorial I mentioned in our local paper had something to say about what it might be like to wrestle a barrel (lots of splinters, for one thing, and probably painful).
 
article on the news tonight (one of many in more recent times about how crappy Air Canada's service is getting) about a couple who were suppose to fly to California for holiday and family wedding only to have the flight delayed 5 times before being cancelled. In the mean time their luggage had been loaded on different flight and wound up in Florida.

Struck a chord because of my mother's recent experiences.

She'd been in Ohio seeing my brother and was flying up to spend time with me and my wife. Didn't realise that her ticket (which was booked as part of her trip moths ago by a travel agent in Australia) was a standby. checks in a goes to get on the flight only to be told that no she can't travel. Plane takes off and the reps for AC piss off and leaves her stranded. Calls to the airline go nowhere and she only got something something sorted because a rep from United helped her. In the meaning time one her bags was on it's way to Toronto.

Then on the Friday she gets an e-mail that her flight was cancelled but it showed a time change from 16:10 to 16:15 for the departure time on Monday. We'd booked a shuttle to take her to the airport as I'm 2hrs from Pearson. Then late Sunday night/early Monday morning she gets an e-mail that the new flight time is 8:30 am with a reminder message at 6am. Lots of panic and calls to her travel agent in Australia. The agent spent nearly 2hrs on the phone with air Canada before getting her on 1pm flight (which left at 2pm) Fortunately we able to change the shuttle pick up and she got the flight and her international flight (which landed in Adelaide not so long ago).

Be a cold day in hell before anyone in my family travels with air Canada again.
Reall rea
 
^ Ouch. Sorry to hear about all that. Glad that she was able to get a new flight and make it back home OK.

I know I've probably posted this somewhere on the board before, but it never stops being relevant.

(Warning: some NSFW language)

 
article on the news tonight (one of many in more recent times about how crappy Air Canada's service is getting)

Hasn't Air Canada always been rather crappy? Part of the issue is that they really have no competition. And any of the smaller ones are usually either owned by them or smaller regional airlines, and therefore have no incentive to change.
 
Hasn't Air Canada always been rather crappy? Part of the issue is that they really have no competition. And any of the smaller ones are usually either owned by them or smaller regional airlines, and therefore have no incentive to change.

Never had any experience to match what mum went through.

Between my wife and I, there have been 10 between Australia and Canada and they've largely been issue free and the cabin staff have been pretty good (my wife flies as a special assistance passenger and on a couple of trips flew by herself).

Of course when there was an issue it was biggie. Coming back in 2004, they didn't load my wife's wheelchair on to the plane from BC to Ontario but she was re-united with a couple of days later.

And the fun one in 2009 that wasn't entirely air Canada's fault. I arrived in Vancouver but the immigration office wasn't open to process me causing a delay. AC33 flies Sydney->Vancouver->Toronto so I'd gotten off, done customs, presented my buggage to go back on the aircraft and gone on do immigration and by the time I was done the flight had departed (with my checked in luggage).

air Canada put me on to standby for a flight for Toronto and I asked if they could pass on a message for my wife and in-laws that I'd been delayed. Message never got through and at the scheduled time they were in Toronto, had got my bags and wondering where I was. Airline wouldn't tell them anything (privacy you know) - till my mother-in-law tried the wink for yes approach.

Fortunately flights between the two cities were pretty regular and I was only delayed a couple of hours (first flight was 737 so few spare seats but the following was on 777 so more spare seats).
 
I got no real beef with Air Canada, although I'm kind of miffed that they dropped the nonstop service from Omaha to Toronto. Since I liked it, they cancelled it. Story of my life. :lol:

That being said, I had a hilarious experience on Air Canada when I flew to Montréal last May. (the reservation was actually on United but my flights directly into and out of the city were on AC) I have probably mentioned this already but it's so funny I'll say it again. Anyway, the flight attendant was giving out little plates of cheese, and she ended up having a 25-minute discussion with a passenger over what kind of WINE should go with the cheese. I'm like, that is literally the most French thing I have ever seen in my life. :guffaw:
 
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