Intellectual freedom tensions

On the CBC website today there was a story about the Alberta Human Rights Commission dismissing a complaint against Ezra Levant for republishing the controversial Prophet Muhammed cartoons that caused a global uproar in 2005, in his Western Standard magazine. The complaint was filed by the Edmonton Council of Muslim communities whom Mr. Levant refers to as “radical” on his blog. I went to school with Ezra Levant during my undergraduate degree but never had a class with him, thankfully. Even then, it was far easier to ignore his rantings for the irrational crap they were and are. However, having lived in the US for a few years and having worked with the IF community within the American Library Association, my perspective on free speech has changed.

On a personal front, the vicious and delusional rantings of someone like Ezra Levant bother me. As a librarian, I support his right to publish his ideas while staying within the hate speech law which I am sure he understands thoroughly being a lawyer. That doesn’t stop him from skating on the edge on occasion. In Canada hate speech has been criminalized and I agree that, “advocating genocide, publicly inciting hatred, and wilfully promoting hatred” towards identifiable groups justifies criminal charges. Reprinting even controversial cartoons in his personal magazine doesn’t meet this standard even if that was his goal. I think the fact that the Western Standard has ceased publication speaks to the fact that the majority of Albertans and Canadians don’t support Mr. Levant’s extremist positions. Perhaps the best thing that we can do until he can be criminally charged for his evangelism, is to ignore him. That will likely be far more painful, take away an audience for his views.

Something you will never see in Houston

Sitting in my office eating my lunch, I had this alert pop up in my email.  Seeing as it was an after the fact kind of thing, I am not sure what its function is.  I guess it is advising us that the moose didn’t in fact get shot as did another moose who wandered onto Calgary’s version of an Interstate earlier this week.  It took a police sniper to take down that moose.  My question, where the hell are these moose coming from?  I don’t remember ever seeing a moose in Calgary, elk occasionally, deer certainly, but multiple moose sightings?

Campus Community Advisory

Moose tranquilized and safely removed from campus

---

Alberta Fish and Wildlife Officers successfully tranquilized and removed
a young moose from campus this morning.

The moose wandered onto campus at about 8:20 a.m. and broke through a window
in the link between Reeve Theatre and Craigie Hall. Fish and Wildlife Officers
had been in the area and were able to tranquilize the moose shortly after
8:30 a.m. 

Alberta Fish and Wildlife Officers were to monitor and then release the
moose.

Creative Commons crankiness

I was contacted on Flickr by someone developing a travel guide on Hawaii who wanted to make use of my picture. This picture is online with the assumption that if anyone likes it enough they can take it and use it themselves. However, I guess I would not have thought that anyone would want to use my pictures commercially. I realize that is does happen as in a well publicized case involving Virgin Mobile, that resulted in a lawsuit. Now, this group did contact me and did ask for permission so I suppose that they actually went above and beyond what they had to. I agreed that if they wanted to use it, they could with proper attribution of course. As a teacher and librarian if I use an image i try to always give credit to the creator, although on today’s internet it is sometimes hard to determine who precisely created the work. I appreciate that others will do the same.

Fairmont Orchid

Canada humour

Canada rocks!

Oh, how I have missed you extraneous letter u in random words.  I realized that I may not have sounded suitably appreciative about my return to Canada.  In one comic strip Diesel Sweeties managed to encapsulate my complex feelings about Calgary and Canada.

“Punching beavers in the face”

Anyone else get a sense of American paranoia from Steven Colbert’s comment above? It was part of his show that outlined the Hockey Night in Canada music theme being passed around like cocaine at an eighties party in Washington. Watch the clip and decide for yourself who is truly being mocked although Ed Stelmach, Alberta’s premier doesn’t come off as the brilliant politician that we all know he is.

So it starts

I realized that the process of disconnecting from my current POW would happen in fits and starts but it was brought home by a colleague last week. While trying to resolve a matter that I have been working on for over a year now, he asked, “Why do you still care?”. For a few reasons, I don’t want to leave a mess for the next person, I care what happens for my faculty and students, and because I hate loose ends. Perhaps it is this final point that is the most important, at least to me.

Before I left on holidays last summer I created documentation for my new supervisor so that she wouldn’t have to walk into a new workplace without any understanding of what had happened previously. Knowing that I wouldn’t be there when she arrived it was important to me that this process be as smooth as possible. Why is it when people leave positions or workplaces we do such a shoddy job of helping the transition for ourselves and the groups that we work with?

Perhaps my colleague was telling me in his own way that I need to start letting go of certain things. I do understand that this is occurring and will continue to happen. As a matter of fact I am skipping out on a few trainings in the next few weeks to focus on wrapping things up. I don’t want to leave feeling like I haven’t done everything that I can to help with the transition and right now it is feeling like a very lonely process.

Help needed

I am not a religious person and I am grateful for my parents giving the option of participating or not in organized religion.  However, not having a belief in a higher power is pretty painful right this minute.  My friend, Michelle Boule gave birth to her son, Gideon Ries Smith on Saturday.  Gideon is struggling to live in the NICU unit at Texas Children’s Hospital here in Houston.  He has had a rough start to his short life.  Michelle and her husband Ries are first time parents and do believe in a higher power.  If you have a diety, god, or faith that you believe in could you please say a few words on Gideon’s behalf.

If you know Michelle and would like to know what has happened since Gideon’s birth on Saturday, Ries has outlined it on their family blog Defying Genetics.  I realize that you can’t bargain, argue or demand anything from a higher power but if words have any power they will see that Gideon needs to heal and go home with his parents.

New beginnings need endings

My week started yesterday with my boss’s boss’s boss handing me a sheet of paper granting me continuing appointment from my institution. This is a significant point in my career as I have worked (too hard) towards this goal for 6+ years. However, its import is blunted due to the fact that I am leaving MPOW as of July 1st. I am returning to the Great White North of Canada for a position at an institution that will be named shortly.

So it is with a tinge of sadness that I say goodbye to my first job out of library school which I have to say rocked for the majority of my time here. I will miss colleagues, friends, students, faculty, and random Texans whom I have encountered in my time here. I will miss ALA conferences and all of my conference friends who I will see one last time in Anaheim.

This sadness is balanced by my excitement of facing new professional challenges and creating new goals at my new institution. I will also be able to begin working on some advanced degree work of my own which had been a deferred goal but one that I am equally excited about.

My family and Canadian friends are very excited about my returning to Canada but I leave behind a family here in Houston that I will never forget. Thank you.

Disturbing legislation

If the Conservatives get their way we will see alot more of this.

 

And alot less of this.                                      

I find myself wondering if Canada’s ruling party, the Conservative Party is trying to restrict what “types” of films and television shows receive federal support out of sheer ignorance or to assign nefarious motivations.  Bill C-10 as proposed would allow the Heritage Minister to determine criteria or guidelines for film and television producers if they wish to receive tax credits.  The minister could withdraw tax credits for productions deemed to be “contrary to public policy.”  These guidelines remain nebulous but here is a description from this story on the CBC website.

The guidelines have not yet been established but would cover violence, hatred and sexual content in film and TV productions, or anything else the minister believes should not be financed by Canadian taxpayers. Committees within the heritage and justice departments would be charged with vetting productions and implementing the guidelines. Any film or television program found to have contravened the guidelines could have its tax credits withdrawn and might be asked to repay funding given through Telefilm, the federal film funding agency, or the Canadian Television Fund, the federal funding agency for TV.

This will have a chilling effect on productions who may not find outside funding without these tax credits.  The federal government is well aware of this fact and may be relying on a lack of publicity about this change to longstanding policy.  Sarah Polley, director of “Away From Her” has suggested that her own film would likely not have received this support under such guidelines.  The legislation has passed through the House of Commons and is being debated in the Senate, where if there are thinking members not currently sleeping through sessions, it may expire from exhaustion.  The real kicker is that foreign productions who don’t benefit from the tax credits obtain an indirect benefit through government support of the Canadian film industry infrastructure.

 

 

 

Et tu Trivial Pursuit?

As a former staffer of an independent game store I mourn the recent sale of Trivial Pursuit to Hasbro. I have mixed feelings about what we consider a Canadian success story ending with a multinational game company taking over the future development of Trivial Pursuit. Will there be future Canadian editions of Trivial Pursuit? Is there enough of a profit for Hasbro or we will be condemned to answering questions about presidents rather than prime ministers? (even if 90% of such questions were answered with Pierre Trudeau) It’s bad enough the Disney owns the rights to the Mountie image, yep that’s right. Here’s hoping that there was a contractual codicil insisting that Canadian versions be ongoing and updated. (please no more Bryan Adams questions for the love of God) My family may assume that I have selfish motives in this plea but in truth I can kick their butts at American, Canadian, or any other version of Trivial Pursuit they dare to buy.