Of mattress, tires and Cruise ships

Tags

Canada., Charlottetown, cruise ships, Dealerships, mattresses, PEI, tall ships, Tires

As we prepare for our impending move to PEI, we now have a new 3 bedroom apartment and will now have for the first time in five years an actual bona fide guest room with guest bathroom, we ordered furniture for that guest room and bought over the phone, long distance, a mattress yesterday. I knew what I wanted to buy but I wanted to see it before with my eyes, so I went into one of those mattress shops and looked around, I cannot imagine what a terrible job selling mattresses must be, if all work is noble, selling sleep ware cannot be that exciting. I did see the mattress I wanted in the price range I was willing to pay for, took down the details and then went home and phone the mattress and appliance shop on Mount Edward Road in Charlottetown.  The daughter of the owner took my order and date for delivery, so all is arranged.

What I cannot understand is the unit pricing on mattresses, it makes no sense, prices are all over the map, sale prices are even more strange. How can you offer a top of the line mattress at $4000 dollars and put it on sale at $1500 and still make a handsome profit.

Any mattress at $1000 can be sold on sale at $499. really? How? Well it is all a crap shoot as far as I am concerned. I also saw a line of mattresses which sells for $300 called memory foam and comes in a small box. This is a Queen size mattress stuffed in a small box, how can this be. The salesman showed me that once the mattress is out of the box, you lay it down for one day and it will, like by magic, reach its actual size, like some kind of giant soufflé just rising to the occasion.  It is good for 5 years apparently, I was not convinced.

The tire story is even more bizarre, I will not go into the pricing for tires because that is also a huge fraud on consumers. Prices fluctuate wildly depending on the Season and when and where you are buying.

Since I have no room at home to store my tires (winter or summer with rim) for a fee I leave them with the dealership to store for me until it is time to change them. Now two years in a row the dealership lost my tires and rim. No explanation given, they are lost, we do not know what happened to them. How can this be? They are stored with you and I paid you for the service. The first time the tires were found within one day and all was well. This time after 7 days of being lost I was told to come very early, in fact before opening time. I showed up at the appointed hour has the Sun was rising over the horizon, the manager was just unlocking the door. I am told to just have a seat in the waiting room and all will be well, why all the drama. One hour later, big smiles all around, all is ready, handshakes and I go out the door. The car was parked right at the door, now that is strange, usually the car would be in the lot, in row 4590 about 3 Km from the garage, go find it, amongst a sea of parked car. Not this time, it was at the door, how nice I thought. The only problem was… these were not my tires or at least not those I purchased with the car 5 years ago. The tires are brand new, they still had the white sticker usually found on tires when you purchase them. They also came with new rims, my winter tires stuffed in the trunk of my car.

At that point I thought better not ask any questions, it would be pointless, the dealer silently admitted that he had truly lost them and preferred to avoid a scene like the ones in the movie Godfather part 1 in a waiting room full of customers. I simply drove away thinking good for me. I am not returning to this dealership anyway since we are moving.

The port of Charlottetown, PEI

It was announced this morning that the first Cruise ship will arrive in Charlottetown on Monday. In total 60 cruise ships are expected this Season (May to October). They usually stop for 2 days and excursions take the happy wanderers all around the Island. This means some 180,000 people will come up Prince Street by our house on horse drawn carriages, it’s scenic they say. Should I open a lemonade stand on my front steps and charge $5 US dollars per thimble full?

In 2017 for Canada’s 150 Anniversary of Confederation we will have the parade of tall ships on the Hillsborough river. That should be quite the spectacle and we will have a perfect view.

 

 

 

Official Portrait

Tags

Anniversary, Austria, Canada., Family, Laurent, life, Salzburg, tradition, Trudeau, vacation, Will

Many years ago my parents were friends with Armenian born Yousuf Karsh, the World famous Canadian photographer who lived for many years in a suite at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa, he offered to my parents on their Wedding Anniversary to do a series of portraits of them. We kept those wonderful portraits and I use to kid my Mother that she had now something in common with Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill, that of having her portrait taken by Karsh. Those portraits are family heirlooms now.

Ottawa being the Capital many Politicians have their picture taken by photographers but some shine above the rest and one is Jean-Marc Carisse who came to prominence in the late 1960’s with his portraits and action shots of our then Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau, the father of Justin. Carisse then took pictures of all manner of famous people and his work was in great demand. He became identified with the Liberal Party of Canada, the natural governing party of Canada. His skill was to take perfectly natural photos of his subjects and their humanity just shine through. Jean-Marc Carisse is an award winning Canadian photojournalist. He has photographed the political, cultural and social scenes in Ottawa and around the world for over 40 years, including stints as official photographer serving the Prime Minister’s Office (Pierre E. Trudeau, John Turner and Jean Chrétien) and as a freelancer. His photographs have appeared on many covers of magazines including Time, Paris Match and Maclean’s.

One of the more famous portrait of Prime Minister Pierre E. Trudeau with a dedication by Trudeau to Carisse. A Prime Minister in 1969 as a young Caesar. One of our truly great Prime Minister’s

I always wanted to have a picture of us taken by him and we went to see him at Studio Café Carisse on Elgin Street in Ottawa just a few steps away from our house. At Christmas time our puppies Nicky and Nora arranged a gift certificate, they are such clever Dachshunds.

Here is the result of Carisse’s work. This portrait is to mark my 60th and Will’s 70th Birthday.

Wearing our Traditional Austrian Trachten jackets a souvenir of the many vacations spent in Innsbruck, Salzburg and Vienna and of many happy memories of our long life together. This year, 2016 is an anniversary year for us and the beginning of a new adventure.

 

 

 

Moving on

Tags

Adriatic, Atlantic, life, Mediterranea, PEI, sailing, Sea

People asked me why are we moving to PEI, I tell them that I do not want to die in Ottawa. Now that is a dramatic statement, people look at you and wonder maybe I am dying and they asked the wrong question. Funny how people are never prepared for the answer to their questions, a rule of thumb I learned was never ask a question if you are not ready for the answer, because once it is given that is it.

But it is true, I do not want to die in Ottawa, I came here 40 years ago, I just realized that on my birthday, that is a lifetime. I came here for University and then work, but with work this was only HQ City and not a town in which I lived. I lived abroad for 22 years in various capitals of the world. So Ottawa has no special appeal for me. Time to move on, no sentimentality about it, again maybe my past life in the Foreign Service prepared me for that, since we often moved from one Capital to another without coming back to Ottawa. Everything was temporary and transient. So my thinking is, if I have let’s say 25 years left might has well be somewhere I want to be. We will forge new attachments there and look to the future.

I always wanted to live by the Sea since I was a little kid. When I was quite young one of my first memories was of vacations by the Atlantic sea board in New England with my parents. We spent the whole day at the beach playing in the surf and building sand castles, life was very simple, usually is when you are 3-4 years old, but those were the best vacations for a kid.

In Egypt I would go every weekend to the Villa the Embassy rented in Agami on the Mediterranean coast just a few kilometres West of Alexandria, again it was a deserted beach, we cooked and had fun. In Italy we spent our vacations on the Adriatic Coast at Pesaro, crowded beach but so nice. I like islands for that fact that the sea is everywhere, Capri, Sicily, two places I really like for their natural beauty.

Now as the header of my blog indicates, you can see the Red Sandy beaches of Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic. Long stretches of beach deserted and made for walking, lots of pine trees and quiet.

The ocean is fascinating to me, ever changing, temperamental, powerful, vast, we are so small and powerless in comparison.  I never tire of watching the Sea and I feel great peace.

We will in September have 7 days to admire the sea as we sail back from Europe, another first for me.

So we are moving to PEI for the Sea.

 

 

 

 

 

Joy and Gladness

Such paintings on wood panels in many European Churches are well worth careful examination and study. The back side of them if visible often have unsuspected secrets.

The Bowes Museum's Blog

Following its transformative conservation, The Passion Altarpiece by the Master of the View of St Gudule has rightly become a favourite piece in The Bowes Museum’s collection, and a popular topic in this blog. Chocolate eggs now dispatched, I thought I would reflect on its role in the celebration of the Easter festival, both historically as a religious object and today in the more secular setting of the picture galleries.

The Passion Altarpiece

Today in the museum, its carved and painted figures look over at another fantastic work of international importance, The Crucifixion Triptych by the Master of the Virgo inter Virgines. In their original homes in Medieval churches these huge, multi-faceted scenes were the grand centre pieces of the theatre of feast days. Worshippers would be ensconced in a glittering haze of golden clothing, precious metal objects and polyphonic music.

Crucifixion Triptych

In the more secular space of the…

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A true and strong article

Neil Macdonald is a Senior Correspondent for CBC News, currently based in Ottawa. I have shared this article on FB, Twitter.

Neil Macdonald wrote in his column for CBC News an excellent article at the end of this 6 month trial which resulted in the acquittal of Senator Mike Duffy. We have reasons in Canada to be concerned when the Prime Minister, in this case Stephen Harper uses his Office to get what he wants. As this article points out, the power of the Prime Minister and his Office in Canada knows no limits and no checks, even the US President does not have such powers. Stephen Harper demonstrated tremendous disrespect for the institutions of the land, for parliament, for the Senate, for the House of Commons.

Article by Macdonald:

Anyone who watched justice dispensed to Mike Duffy this week — and that is exactly what happened — should be thankful.

Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt proved that in Canada, the courts are there to protect citizens against the venal machinations of those in high office, and the terrifying power of the police and prosecutors who answer to them.

Vaillancourt fustigated them all, effectively characterizing the charges against Duffy as an abuse of power.

You’d think the RCMP would have a great deal to answer for. As a result of the Duffy case, the force’s motto, “Maintiens le Droit,” is that much more meaningless.

It did not defend the law. It defended the status quo, and genuflected to authority, using police discretion to toss a single newsworthy individual into the nightmare of the criminal system, essentially stealing two years of his life, while ignoring other senators who were doing just about exactly the same thing as Duffy.

And how in heaven’s name can you charge a person with accepting a bribe without charging the political enforcer in the Prime Minister’s Office who offered it? (Nigel Wright)

The force today is behaving as though it is an impassive, disinterested public agency answerable to the law, and only to the law. It always does.

But when every single charge is thrown out by a judge who, from the bench, tears into the investigation the way Vaillancourt did, it takes considerable institutional arrogance to shrug and carry on as though nothing just happened.

That was a judge talking. Judges judge, and the Mounties have now been judged wanting, if not negligent.

The Canadian citizen they singled out for criminal treatment faced prison time, effectively for doing the bidding of former prime minister Stephen Harper and the inner circle of the PMO.

David Scott, a respected Ottawa lawyer who defended another individual many years ago against what amounted to RCMP persecution, says the Duffy decision was a delightful example of real justice:

“I’m frankly proud,” he says, “of the way this turned out.”

“It is completely unprofessional to have such an active animus at work in an investigation. The RCMP was lusting to do this [charge Duffy] because of the high-profile nature of the case. There was a hue and cry to ‘get this creep.'”

And, of course, because Harper had decided Duffy was in the wrong.

“It’s the power of authority,” says Scott. “I have no doubt that this was a case of pleasing the masters.”

Scott has seen the power of authority before.

In 1989, he defended Global News journalist Doug Small after the Mounties charged Small with possession of stolen goods. Small had obtained a copy of the federal budget and had broadcast its contents, robbing the finance minister of his big moment.

Senior ministers denounced it as theft, and the RCMP obediently swung into action. The fact that no other journalist had ever been charged for receiving a brown envelope mattered not at all.

When the case got to court, though, a Mountie named Staff Sgt. Richard Jordan took the stand and reminded Canadians what police integrity looks like.

He revealed that, as lead investigator, he’d defied the force’s management and refused to charge Small. First of all, Small had been doing his job. Second, he derived no financial benefit from the leak, and the paper upon which the budget was printed had no intrinsic value.

But Henry Jensen, then the force’s assistant commissioner, wanted Small punished. He yanked Jordan from the case and ordered a more junior officer to lay the charge.

And, just as happened this week, an independent-minded judge pronounced Small not guilty and said the story provided an “important public function.”

The force’s response, and that of the prosecutors at the time, was a few lines of boilerplate about respecting the court, and unfortunately not being able to comment further.

Which is just what the Mounties are doing today, nearly two years after Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud issued a long news release, with his picture, detailing the charges against Duffy and all the complicated sleuthing his officers had put in exposing the wrongdoing.

Asked on Friday what Michaud has to say after the censure by Vaillancourt, a junior officer said: “The RCMP respects the decision of the court. It would be inappropriate to comment further.”

Asked why it would be inappropriate to comment now when it was deemed appropriate to advertise and flaunt the charges in 2014, she replied it would be inappropriate to comment.

Of course it would. The power of authority, and the refuge of the badge.

There is also the little matter of Senator Pamela Wallin, who has been “under investigation” for three years without any charge. Three years? What’s the saying about justice delayed?

I know this, though: If I ever offend those in power enough to merit the attentions of the Mounties and government prosecutors, I hope I am judged by Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt, and I hope someone like former Staff Sgt. Richard Jordan is assigned to the case.

While cleaning out things

Tags

Fairies, fairy, Musical, Pantomime, Tesse O'Shea

We are a month away today from moving, so we continue to tackle the CD’s a great big box of them have been sent out to the Public Library as a donation. Another great big box, heavy too of books was given away, so bit by bit things are under way.

So while doing all this Will came upon this recording of Tesse O’Shea (1913-1995) of this charming little song, which made me laugh on this Spring day.

O’Shea was a great entertainer and worked with Noel Coward and many others.

Here is  ‘‘Nobody loves a Fairy when she’s old.”

 

Let All Who Are Hungrey Enter and Eat Thereof …

Something Will prepared for Passover which starts tonight.

Willy Or Won't He

Last evening, and perhaps days before, in the homes of several of my friends the age old tradition of cleansing the house of chametz – or products of wheat, barley, oat, spelt or rye which is forbidden during the days of Passover – was performed.  This is done to observe the admonition in Exodus 13:3-7: No leaven shall be eaten . . . For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread . . . and no leaven shall be seen of yours [in your possession].

The preparation for Passover, the commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt, begins with this ritual cleansing.  It continues in earnest tonight with the first seder of Passover.  A table will be set for the ceremony with the objects that should be in place before the celebrant:

(1) Three cakes of specially prepared Unleavened Bread (Mazzoth)

(ii) A baked egg, reminiscent of the Free-Will Offering that accompanied the Paschal Offering, and a…

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Some recent photos of PMJT

Tags

Boxing, Canada., PMJT, Trudeau

Our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, one great Leader.

 

He is also a boxer and today in New York he showed it.

 

Gleason’s Gym, 77 Front Street in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Who is on trial here?

Tags

Canada., corruption, Duffy, PMO, trial

Today the trial for corruption of Prince Edward Island Senator Mike Duffy came to an end with a 308 page judgement from Judge Vaillancourt in the Ottawa Court House. He is one of four Senators for the Province of PEI as per the Canadian Constitution Act of 1867.

Senator Duffy a former journalist of National reputation well known to all was appointed to the Senate a few years ago under the Stephen Harper Regime, 10 years which will forever be referred as years of great darkness in Canada where our institutions where under threat from a man who understood nothing and thought he could bully a Nation into submission. Looking on Canadians as nothing more (according to his own words) a people to be governed by a firm hand.

Senator Duffy stood accused under 31 counts of fraud, corruption and breach of trust. A scandal which shook the Senate of Canada. Launch a national investigation of all Senators and their expense accounts and the rules and procedures of the Senate. The investigation revealed that the Senate had operated since 1867 as a sort of Private Club, where a gentleman’s word was good enough. The Senate is our House of Lords, the Red Chamber and Upper House of Parliament and the Crown has its privileges in our Constitution.

The whole matter started a year ago when it was revealed in the newspapers that Senator Duffy and others had problems with their expense accounts, all of them appointees of Stephen Harper.

Stephen Harper thought that he could stack the Supreme Court and the Senate with his friends and sycophants and that they would in turn do whatever he wanted. That is not how it turned out to his dismay and anger. On the Supreme Court the new appointees showed their judicial independence which bewildered Harper how could this be. In the Senate unfortunately partisan politics showed its face and we had a dysfunctional institution. The Senate in Canada has a very special role to play in defending minorities representing regions of our Country and correcting excesses in Legislation sent to it from the House of Commons.

The Harper Regime sought to pervert this process and control every aspect of the functions of the Senate from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), something unseen in Canadian history. Duffy was the tool of the PMO and he did everything he was asked to do and more. Harper could not be more happy with such a well recognized journalist, a lap dog doing tricks for his master.

However the day the expense account scandal erupted Harper sought to bury it but could not. Comes in his Chief of Cabinet Nigel Wright an asexual aesthete and Christian religious fanatic who has movie star good look, runs 10 K every morning at dawn.  A straight arrow as the Press likes to describe him, he is also a millionaire. So the Media speculated un-corruptible Nigel, the real story is always different, Wright devised a plan to magically bury the expense account scandal by handing a personal cheque from his own bank account to Duffy and have him say it was all a big mistake and he is repaying back what he owes. The Press knew that Duffy did not have this kind of money, where did the money comes from? they asked. The problem here Nigel  was trying to corrupt a Senator by hiding the truth from auditors. He also tried and so did his boss Harper to lean on the audit company and interfere with the text of the final audit report with the help of Conservative Senators. Harper went to the leadership of the Conservative members in the Senate to get them to do his dirty work and of course they agreed.

Wright’s plan was to advise Duffy on what to do with his expense problems, etc and accept the cheque for $90,000 dollars to cover all the money he owed to the Treasury. Of course he told his boss Harper what he was doing and Ray Novak the head gofer and bum boy of Harper was the go between. A very unsavoury affair where Novak at the Trial testified that he was present in the room when the plan was hatched but heard nothing, everyone laughed at that and Novak has not been heard of since.

When the Justice Department started its investigation they were told that Nigel the right hand man of the Prime Minister was off limits, the RCMP complied also, the old management covering their ass as it were, disgracing himself in the eyes of the public.

Judge Vaillancourt today in Court in his judgement sorted out the mess and uncovered the truth, he acquitted Duffy of all 31 counts, so he can now resume his work in the Senate, the judge did not find any of his doing criminal since he was following naively the direction advice and suggestions of the PMO, Duffy did ask a lot of questions on what to do with his expenses and received advice which he followed from other Conservative Senators and the PMO. The judge then pointed the finger at Harper and Wright for their deviousness and efforts to suppress the truth. Judge Vaillancourt wrote quote Could Hollywood match their deviousness it is interesting to see that no one in the PMO suggested doing the right thing, the legal thing unquote.

This only goes to show how corrupt the Harper government was. Stephen Harper subverted Parliament, politics, the inner workings of the Senate and his own party during his one-man government. But thanks to a fearless defence attorney and an unblinking judge, he was not able to subvert justice.

 

 

 

EIIR

Tags

Birthday, Canada., EIIR, Sovereign

Imperial State Crown

Happy 90th Birthday to Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada 

 

The Queen with her great-grand-children at Buckingham Palace.