PDP #83: Pie Nine

In the city of Montreal, not too far from Olympic Stadium, there is a street and a Metro station which are both named in honor of Pope Pius IX, the man behind the dogma of Mary's immaculate conception. Apparently this went over rather well in Montreal, and so they named all this after him.

Yet French doesn't just leave Latin be like English does. This is, remember, a language that has named the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation "Vladimir Poutine." In French, the boulevard and Metro station, and the primary bus route along the boulevard all have the same name: Pie-IX.

Though, in its defense, it is pronounced more like "piyeh neuf."

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For Safety's Sake

Once upon a time, Western society was enterprising and bold. Back in those days, when life was difficult and full of privation, ordinary men and women went across thrashing oceans and vast continents in pursuit of a better life, regardless of the risks or dangers that stood in their way. We are the beneficiaries of that indomitable spirit.

Now look what we've done with it.

The Toronto Star ran an article today wherein Christopher Hume criticized the number of potential tourist attractions in Toronto that are closed to the public due to "safety concerns" - chief among these being the observation decks in City Hall and Commerce Court East. Both have been shuttered for decades for what strike me as poor reasons.

Both the City Hall and Commerce Court observation areas apparently have open areas - I can't tell for myself, as they've both been shuttered for decades - and the people in charge are treating this as some sort of insuperable obstacle that will forever stand between the public and the fulfillment of its quest to get a better view. I can see what they mean; after all, there's no such thing as an open observation area anywhere in the world. All bridges are completely enclosed For Your Convenience, and open-air skyscraper observation decks simply don't exist anywhere in the world. Nor can they possibly be retrofitted to increase safety.

wait a minute...

To me, this is a reflection of the metastatizing safety-consciousness of Western society, a society in which ever-greater "safety" has become its own reward. No price is too high, they say, in the name of safety. Should these attitudes endure in their present form, or continue to grow stronger, I'm greatly concerned about the shape of the future. I can't think of any better way for people to have their self-determination taken away by mechanical or digital assistants than to for it to be imposed from above in the name of safety.

How far, I wonder, would we be willing to take this? Is it possible that, in the future, someone walking along a sidewalk would be considered to be practicing an unsafe habit - presuming, that is, the sidewalks hadn't already been ripped up to discourage it? "Dangerous jobs" are often the first to be replaced by robotic labor, but should robotics continue to improve, how many jobs will come to be labelled as "dangerous" - and what will that do to society?

Life will never be safe. The world will always have sharp edges. As a society, it seems like we're doing all we can to pretend that's not the case, to sing happy songs that with enough sandpaper all the points will be smoothed into happy curves.

The only honest world is one in which your safety is not guaranteed.

PDP #82: They're YEARS Ahead of Us

Though it was knocked back to the status of Canada's second city back in the 1970s, when the rise of the Parti Quebecois sent many of its corporations and Anglophones down the 401 to Toronto, Montreal is not letting that stop it from being better than Toronto. Case in point - the BIXI system. This pay-per-hour bike-sharing network launched in May of this year, and it's the sort of thing Toronto had better be copying in the near future, if not sooner.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden was singing BIXI's praises in a panel discussion about the City of the Future earlier today; it's just a shame that the weather tomorrow is set to be so damn uncooperative. I wouldn't mind giving it a go.

This particular BIXI station was near the intersection of rue Fabre and rue Jean-Talon, which to my mind was roughly reminiscent of St. Clair West without the interminable right-of-way construction. Of course, it's the Communist propaganda poster on the advertising board that just clinches the whole thing.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Pas nécessairement un touriste

I've always been a generally mild-mannered sort. It may be that the experiences of elementary school and early high school taught me this, as the more I stood out the more likely I was to be the target of even more taunting, teasing, and worse from the local bullies. I've got a talent, it seems, for slipping beneath notice, and the only problem is that I have difficulty turning it off when I don't want to be noticed - say, at Worldcon parties and the like.

Nevertheless, sometimes it's useful. I don't like being the center of attention because in my experience, that means someone is probably laughing at me.

Right now I'm in Montreal, attending the 67th World Science Fiction Convention, but there's no way I'd travel all the way here only to spend all my time in the Palais des congrès. This is a city I've effectively spent no time in, a city full of photographs waiting to be taken.

It was a heartening realization that today, carrying around a camera and taking pictures of things does not necessarily label oneself a tourist. Twenty years ago, due to the expense of film and film development, the pool of recreational photographers was considerably smaller than it is today, and anyone snapping photos was more likely and not someone gathering up memories for their vacation album. Now, it seems as if every other person has their own Flickr page. Even I do, though I never use it.

What it means, though, is that in my mind, at least, I can go around taking pictures and - so long as I'm not thrust into a situation that calls for more than my extremely basic command of French - pass for some wandering Montrealer taking photos of the city, and not some Anglo Torontonian tourist. It was even more heartening when a pair of tourists asked me for directions to Lionel-Groulx metro station in French.

Photography is an enlightening hobby. For much of the time leading up to my trip here, I was looking forward to the opportunity to explore and photograph Montreal - particularly its subway network - every bit as much as the opportunity to attend Worldcon, if not more so. Edvardian over at Etherwing Studios said that it reflects a documentary spirit, which is pretty accurate. There are all these moments in time and space that deserve to be preserved, and I'm just doing my part. I'm not a tourist - I do the same thing here that I've always done in Toronto. I'm just an observer.

So long as I don't advertise myself, even with a camera I blend in. It's a comforting thought.

PDP #81: No Pain

This picture was taken on St. Clair Avenue West, where the median is still being ripped apart for the new streetcar right-of-way, just east of Dufferin Street. The sign has so many meanings - no heavy exercising between the signs? No self-harmers? No insufficiently-literate Blind Melon cover bands? It's practically endless.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Another Step Toward the Surveillance Society

Originally, I was going to write about Toronto cyclists flouting traffic laws, but James Nicoll made me aware of something with rather darker implications for society. On July 23rd the Daily Express, a British tabloid that seems to write about the same sort of things as the Toronto Sun, ran Alison Little's article "SIN BINS FOR WORST FAMILIES." These "sin bins" are the brainchild of Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families in the current British government, and will place twenty thousand "problem families" under round-the-clock surveillance within their homes.

Let me say that again - the British government is no longer content with placing CCTV cameras in essentially every outdoor spot that can accomodate a camera, it is now extending its surveillance to the privacy of the home.

"They will be monitored," the article reads, "to ensure that children attend school, go to bed on time, and eat proper meals." While I'm sure that some parents would appreciate - nay, clamor for - the Voice of Authority booming down from On High for little Wossisname to get to sleep at a reasonable hour, this is yet another example of a government pushing a project through without any concern for the implications down the road - or, if you're authoritarian-minded, another example of a government turning up the heat on the frog by half a degree. More likely, though, this is an example of politicians looking at the moment and not sparing a thought for any of the potential consequences.

I understand that this is, on its face, an earnest attempt to mitigate social ills. Nevertheless, this sets an extremely dangerous precedent, regardless of the good intentions that created it. Once a government has been granted a power, it is loath to hand it back. For example, the income tax wasn't introduced in Canada until 1917, when it was instituted on a "temporary" basis to finance the First World War, and the government's debt load led to it becoming a permanent fixture.

Governments run on control just as much as they run on money. When all else is stripped away, control is the fundamental purpose of every government, control and organization and demarcation. I don't think there's any reason to believe that with this "foot in the door" validating remote surveillance within one's home, the future will see anything other than an expansion of the program.

What concerns me is that this being done to assist "problem families." Sure, in this context that's used to mean "chaotic" families with children at risk of falling into a life of crime, but who's to say that will always be the case? What if in the future, a "problem family" is one that isn't sufficiently religious or patriotic? Governments will use these tools to their own ends, and we can't blithely assume that every government's end will be a gain for society as a whole.

Is this just a rumor? It hasn't been getting much coverage outside the British tabloid scene, so maybe - but the crux of it is that given what the British government's done before, the whole thing is perfectly plausible to me. I've probably said it before, but I'll say it again - I'm damn glad my family left the United Kingdom in the 1960s. It seems like every week I read a story that suggests the incubator of modern democracy is turning its back on it.

I got through this entire post without saying the word "telescreen" once - wait... god dammit

PDP #80: On Deaf Ears

Highway 401, the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, is one of the single busiest highways in North America. Not surprising; it's the spine of southern Ontario, and on it travellers have a straight path from Windsor to Montreal. When it was built, locally it was called the Toronto Bypass, since that's exactly what it did. Now, of course, Toronto's urban sprawl has overtaken and buried it in development.

I took this picture on the afternoon of Saturday, August 1, looking west from the Keele Street bridge. The segment of the 401 that it's part of is actually the busiest highway in North America. I know that sign is doing its best, but - I don't think anyone's paying attention!

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

A City of Villages

While riding home on Wilson Avenue last Saturday afternoon, trying desperately to stay ahead of the dark clouds scudding in from the northwest as a concrete retaining wall rose to separate me from the industrial district and highway to the south, I encountered something so utterly out-of-place that I had to stop and take a photo.

I've been trying to expand my familiarity with Toronto in recent months, but even then, potted plants hanging from a streetlight with no commercial properties in sight aren't precisely common. As it happens, this plant and the others like it along that stretch of Wilson Avenue were placed by Emery Village, a Business Improvement Area anchored around the intersection of Finch Avenue West and Weston Road and, as point of fact, appears to be the sole BIA in the entirety of North York. Founded in 2003, it appears to be one of the newer ones.

What I don't understand is why so many BIAs now have to identify themselves as a village. Beyond Emery Village, we've got Davisville Village and Liberty Village and Mirvish Village and practically anything else you care to name and stick "village" at the end of. Of the sixty-seven BIAs presently listed on the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas website, twenty-three are "villages." While a few of them, such as Forest Hill Village and Parkdale Village, are legitimate in that Forest Hill and Parkdale actually were independent villages before becoming part of Toronto, we've also got names like, say, Yonge-Lawrence Village that have no basis in history.

Is it just because "village" is good for marketing? If that's the case, what does this preoccupation with the village life say about us?

I can see what the average person might get out of a village - something charming, maybe, something quaint, something nice to show off to everyone back home. Maybe it's the idea of a stronger, more interconnected city, the prospect of reconnecting with the people next door, or simply the security of uncomplicated peace that you'd find in a country village where everyone stands up for each other. Villages have practically been fetishized since the beginning of the Industrial Age as reminders of a less complicated, more pure lifestyle, and the rural impulse that villages represent keeps cropping up again and again, most recently in the "decivilization" meme I wrote about back in April.

To me, it's something different. Villages don't suggest security and bucolic happiness to me. They suggest isolation, provincialism and parochialism. The traditional concept of a village hardly even exists anymore - even in the back of the back woods, you can at least get dial-up internet to supplement your satellite television.

In the end, it's an appeal to mythologized history. What's never asked, though, is this: should we be lionizing this meme? Is the idea of the village something that should be supported and evangelized? Shouldn't we be looking not to the past, but to the future?

PDP #79: The Caribana Overcrowd

This weekend, Toronto is flush from the end (finally!) of the city workers' strike - fortunately, Caribana's here for everyone to party down. Caribana is a Caribbean festival that's been held in the city for more than forty years now, and along with the Canadian National Exhibition it's one of the big tourist draws. People come from all over to take part in it, and since parking in that area is more precious than lanthanum to a jump-drive engineer, a lot of them take the TTC.

Soon after I'd moved to Parkdale, it did not take me long to learn to avoid the 29 Dufferin bus on Caribana weekend. I took this photo of one while biking home yesterday, wheezing past Dundas Street West through the symphony of car horns.

In the kilometer between Dundas and Queen, I passed by six more buses crammed just as tightly as this one. The air conditioning on those buses isn't particularly noticeable at the best of times. Those must be some seriously dedicated passengers. Personally, I'd have just walked - it'd be faster.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Common Words #7: The Tragic Myth

I've just come back from a forty-two kilometer bike ride, and my brain is still too fried for me to make the trenchant sort of posts I strive for every other day. I hope instead you may at least be halfway interested in another brief Common Words entry.

This story, if you could call it that, was written in 2001 for the same OAC2 Writer's Craft assignment as "The Worlds Machine," which I posted here back in June. The theme for this one was tragedy, and I settled on some vague, undefined post-apocalyptic world that was probably influenced by Rifts. I always envisioned it as some community elder introducing a fresh young man to the scope of history.

I can't for the life of me remember what kind of mark I got on it.

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The Tragic Myth
by Andrew Barton
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Long ago, before the world became the playground of demons and monsters that it is today, men like you and me held sway over all the lands that could be found beneath the sky. Their arcane arts were beyond the level of even the greatest masters, so was their experience with wielding such magicks which we have since forgotten. The magical talent of the Ancients was such that the tides of the world itself could be bent to their will. Even nature was conquered by their might, as control of the weather, lands and stars passed from spirits to wizards. They could make water appear where none should have flowed, and were possessed of so much food that no one, nowhere might feel the want of hunger. Their grey ribbons stretched across the land, and it is these that you are most likely familiar with. Even as they may appear today, remember that when they were first built, they were as glorious as anything else the Ancients had produced.

The Ancients definitely found their skills in the field of war, although they could not practice their martial techniques against any enemies of the like that we find ourselves at odds with. You have doubtless seen some of the relics of that time, the things they called "guns," and however much they may seem to be a work of a god, know that such contrivances were among the least powerful that they possessed. War in the time of the Ancients must have been a terrifying, horrible thing that split the sky and tore the very Earth asunder, letting loose the tortured screams of Hell. Great metal beasts bedecked in armor rolled across the land, a massive cannon pointing forth that could decimate even the greatest opponent. Craft that dipped through the wind as birds do, their bellies full of fire like dragons animated through metal and magic. And at the very top of this hierarchy of slaughter, there sat the family of devices they knew as "nukes." The fire in one such device was so compacted that when it was made free of its constraints, it devastated all that it found in its path. It is doubtlessly due to engines of war such as these that none were ever seen during the Ancients' rule.

From out of the ground rose hollow mountains, vast monoliths within which even a dozen of our villages could easily be lost. The villages of the Ancients could be called that only in the vaguest sense of the term, with vast ebon towers scraping the sky and family huts surrounding them for miles and miles upon end. Buzzing between these monstrous monoliths were wagons self-propelled, reaching speeds far greater than what even our greatest horses can attain. They had even managed to spin magics allowing them to break the bonds of the earth itself and sail through the air in great ships built like birds. When the Ancients ruled, the Earth as a whole was free and clear of the petty rivalries that tear it apart today. Tribes did not war against tribe, instead tribe was a friend of tribe. However, unfortunately for the Ancients, their dominion over existence would not last forever.

The sky turned black at midday, the color of charcoal before the flames are put to it. The temples were clogged by terrified peasants demanding to know what must be sacrificed in order to put an end to this godly show of force. The great villages began to empty as the great portion of their inhabitants sought an uncertain shelter in the countryside. What then, you ask? Well, no one is quite sure on that regard... except that the skies began to spit fire.

Great firestorms washed out from the moon and stars that had been tamed by magic and sought to return to the natural life again. Villages drowned in lakes of liquid fire that fell from above and rose from below. The boundaries that separated this world from hell became blurred and disappeared entirely, the spirits suffering eternal torment in this world as well as the next. Even the great war machines were hopeless to stem this onslaught. One by one, they fell. The great villages were reduced to melted, smoldering ruins. Most of the people were killed. A handful survived, those who had taken for shelter in the countryside and found it before the world cracked and split. They were those who endured, and they were those who gave rise to us.

Never forget our origins, then. Remember that every time you realize how fulfilling it is for you to be alive, know that uncountable souls had to perish in lakes of fire to make that thing so.

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Previously on Common Words

• #6: The Platinum Desolation
  
• #5: The Worlds Machine
  
• #4: Tranquil Fragments
  
• #3: The Software Market on Rainier
  
• #2: Sixty-Ton Payload
  
• #1: To the Gallows