#Moncton here i come

[allthecanadianpolitics]

With a pop of colour and a show of support, Moncton’s River of Pride Parade took over downtown Saturday afternoon.

“Today is all about being happy and celebrating who we are,” said Lynn Bourque-Chevarie, the Riverview Pride lead.

“We had an amazing crowd, way more than I think we were prepared for, but that’s good it means there people getting involved in our community and are out here to celebrate with us.”

[...]

“It’s not just Moncton, it’s the tri-community we have Riverview, Dieppe and Moncton all coming together. I’ve had people tell me they came from Fredericton, Nova Scotia, so I think it’s great,” she said.

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Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[crowwolf]

Update on my husband, Neal

Happy Friday morning to everyone - Neal's surgery did not go quite to plan. He is well, and resting but a second surgery will now be needed. They were able to get the lead in on the left hemisphere of his brain. That's good!

When they went to test the lead is where things went wrong. Neal's blood pressure shot up and wouldn't come down. They tried three different types of medication, including nitro, and nothing worked. That's when they made the call to stop in order to prevent any potentially serious side effects (like a brain bleed). They did a CT scan and his brain has no bleeds (*yes*), but they were not able to proceed with the second lead and battery.

What does this mean? Neal will now be going on blood pressure medication. Having that under control means that in three months we will be returning and hopefully getting the second lead in and battery.

Why is the second lead important? The second lead will be going into the right hemisphere of the brain, which controls the left side. The worst of Neal's tremors is his left foot/leg. This means his leg tremors non-stop causing a great deal of pain. The lead will stop that tremor, which will have the cascade effect of reducing pain throughout his body. The Left side lead is non-functional until the battery pack is implanted.

So - hopefully, if everything goes well and he heals well, we will be back in Moncton in three months for the final stage of this surgery! A HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped us both here and otherwise. It means the world to us.

[malcolm-reeds-pineapple]

I thought you were canadian?

I am, yes! I’m also a former politics, philosophy and economics major so I tend to follow whichever news I think is interesting. US current affairs especially tend to affect my daily life a lot since a) I learn US news against my will constantly, and b) culturally we’re very similar, so rhetoric that starts down in the states always finds a way up here to a point where many Canadians don’t understand their own laws and political system. This is a long winded answer coming up, so TL;DR Canadians get fucked by CEOs and insurance companies a lot so we seem to like the Adjuster, and also I have written a borderline essay explaining why I think this event is an indicator of a revolution being on the horizon. Feel free to not read it, I also don’t enjoy reading barely comprehensible essays written by strangers on the internet 😅

Our biggest problem in Canada is a lack of understanding of who to blame. Canada is as much of a victim to identity politics as the US. We’re all stuck in the ideas of everyone falling into convenient little boxes of L and W takes depending on where a person falls on the political compass. The only reason people don’t know this is because there are so many Canadians are deluded enough to believe that “I’m so glad I live in Canada. Nothing like that ever happens here!” when in reality, our country has a lot wrong with it that is largely swept under the rug. We have a lot of issues like any other country, but we have quite a few in common with the US, the key ones being wealth inequality, housing, and perhaps most pertinent to current events: access to affordable healthcare.

While, yes, public healthcare exists here, in recent years, that system has taken a nose dive in many provinces. Due to the BNA act, one of our constitutions, healthcare care is a provincial responsibility. This leads to discrepancies between provinces in terms quality and accessibility of care. One of the biggest problems is conservative provincial governments cutting funding to public healthcare. In New Brunswick, the Higgs conservatives cut funding to hospitals, grossly underpaid physicians and nurses until a lot of them walked, closed emergency rooms in rural areas causing stress on metropolitan hospitals, and covered up a mystery brain disease that’s still killing people. The Moncton English hospital regularly has wait times into the double digits, so high I remember there being a 24 hour wait time not too long ago. These wait times have, on a semi-regular basis, led to deaths either from people getting pissed off and leaving, or simply dying in waiting rooms.

This all seems to be a way to boost the popularity of what we call the two-tier systems. Effectively, instead of having one public health care system, we now have a secondary private system that people use to bypass wait times. People who have money and/or an insurance plan that covers it can effectively have a medical fast pass for things other people would have to wait months or years for. It’s an ingenious yet entirely morally corrupt plan that the provincial Tories are rolling out right under our noses. Step 1: cut funding to public healthcare that worked fine before. Step 2: make the healthcare professionals all quit and look for other means to pay off their student debt. Step 3: public outcry. Step 4: ‘egads! My public healthcare is ruined! Perhaps I could create bills that support private healthcare and disguise it as an alternative! Delightfully devilish, Doug!’ Step 5: blame the Feds because no one knows what is and isn’t a federal responsibility. Safe to say, no one is very happy right now and every point on the political spectrum is blaming whoever they think sucks more.

With all that said, the current political climate in Canada is one that would highly benefit from an event bridging the gap between the left and right. That’s why the Adjuster has been such an interesting topic to follow. As much as some mf named Luigi killing a healthcare CEO that the cops cannot stop taking thirst traps of is so absurd and hilarious to me, this event is extremely fascinating to me as someone who studied politics, philosophy and economics in university. This is the first time in recent memory that I have seen the fight going up and down rather than left and right. When you think about it, this is what the Occupy Wall Street movement was trying to get at over a decade ago, and on deeper inspection, this is in-line with the makings of a revolution.

Any revolution starts with the same main ingredients, just like a cake; it’s the flavour that’s added that differentiates a chocolate cake from a carrot cake. One of the main ingredients of a revolution is the transfer of allegiance of the intellectuals. Basically means that the ones who think for a living begin to swap to the side of the oppressed rather than the oppressors a few decades before the revolution begins. In terms of the French revolution, that’s stuff like Rousseau’s 1755 Discourse on Inequality, but in terms of our current political climate, I point to the Occupy movement. The next ingredient is the civil unrest and disparities between those who have and those who have not that slowly comes about as the works of the intellectuals gradually gets translated into laymen’s terms. Finally, the spark to the tinderbox is a unifying event where people put aside their differences and decide on a new enemy. In the French Revolution, that was the Estates-General meeting where grievances were aired and no agreement was reached between the three estates. It’s very possible that the United States is here, although I could be wrong.

Then comes the flavour of the cake, or the thing that takes all these revolution ingredients and turns it from plain civil unrest into a living, breathing revolution. In the French Revolution, that’s widely considered by historians to be the storming of Bastille. If the momentum from the Adjuster continues on its current trajectory, there may very well be some version of the storming of Bastille in a few months. Being as Canada often follows in the footsteps of the US, i wouldn’t be surprised if i wake up one morning and see Galen Weston’s head on a pike. I’m not advocating this, just to be clear, but I think that there’s enough civil unrest both in North America and globally for this to be deeply interesting from an academic standpoint. I think that’s why there’s so much outcry in the news about this. I genuinely think there’s a sense of terror in the upper echelons of society because the vast majority of public commentary is supportive of the actions of the Adjuster. People who are condemning his actions are being called a bootlicker and downvoted to shit by all sides of the political compass because the one thing any of us in North America has in common is that we’ve all been fucked by insurance companies. Left-leaning media is trying to paint him as an alt-right whacko, right-leaning media is trying to paint him as a leftist SJW, and yet when you look into this Luigi guy, he’s pretty comfortably a centrist. There seems to be a lot of fear that the rats in the race so to speak will join forces if we can’t get separated back into our identity politics boxes again. For the longest time, Us has been an incredibly narrow word and Them has been very broad; the greatest fear of the elite is being realized right now in that the Us is broadening and the Them is narrowing. We’ve started fully laughing at the plights of the 1% and it seems as though our sympathy has entirely dried up after the home made, remote control submersible incident.

Effectively, through trying to paint this as eye for an eye, media outlets have shown who owns them. Finding anything about this case that hasn’t been sensationalised and spun to throw us back into identity politics is nearly impossible. Primary documents are exceedingly hard to come by to a point where I have seen about four ‘manifestos’ floating around all with different voices and stories. It’s suddenly extremely clear just how much damage control is being done to get people to stop praising the Adjuster as a folk hero and it’s evidently not working, at least not on younger demographics. He’s not a whack job, nor is he deeply disturbed; he’s an upper class guy who has his own politics, he’s well-read, articulate, he’s got a flair for the dramatic, and he carried out a very symbolic killing. This wasn’t eye for an eye, or freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose; this was intentional to a point where it feels staged. For once we’re not outraged over the death of one of us: we’re overjoyed by the death of one of them. It’s very interesting from a political and philosophical perspective and this is the kind of thing I like following. Anyway, Free Luigi, protect your neighbours, seek out primary documents, and don’t let the bastards grind you down.

[atlanticcanada]

Riders look to turn the tide on Touchdown Atlantic

The Saskatchewan Roughriders will head to Nova Scotia this week for their second consecutive Touchdown Atlantic appearance against the Toronto Argonauts but will look to walk away with the win this year after a 30-24 loss in 2022.

“There’s hope. Even getting beat and COVID and all that comes with that. I think the guys look back and really enjoyed the trip. It’s going to be a lot of fun and we’re really looking forward to going,” said head coach, Craig Dickenson.

Dickenson was referring to the massive COVID-19 outbreak that infected a large portion of the team amid the trip and following.

“It was a tough loss last year losing kind of in the last minute or so. I thought we were going to win that game and this year obviously we want to win each and every game. This one is like any other, we’re 3-3 at this point so we need to get back into winning here. It would be nice to out there against a really good Argonauts team and get a win,” said kicker, Brett Lauther.

Lauther hails from Truro, Nova Scotia and played his university years at Saint Mary’s.

He will participate in his third Touchdown Atlantic. He actually played in his first Canadian Football League (CFL) in Moncton, New Brunswick in 2013 as part of the third instalment of Touchdown Atlantic.

“Excited to get out there [again] but obviously a lot happened out there with the fires and following, other tragedies and stuff too. So thoughts and prayers to everyone out there. There’s still people missing and stuff like that but obviously I’m personally excited to get to go home and see family and friends. But your minds a little bit elsewhere with what’s going on,” said Lauther referring to the challenging climate conditions that took over Nova Scotia in the last week.

“The football game is a little bit secondary now but hopefully for the people that need it maybe it can take their mind of things, maybe it’s something fun in Halifax and can kind of turn things around. There’s a lot of strong people and everyone likes to help each other out there,” Lauther added.

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Last year the team played in Wolfville at Raymond Field, this year it will be Halifax at Huskies Stadium. This will be the first ever regular season CFL game played in Halifax.

Dickenson was asked about how familiarity could help some members of the team who participated in 2022.

“Familiarity, every time you do something a second time you’re usually better at it. Hopefully we play better than we did last year. We know the atmosphere is going to be off the charts. We’re really looking forward to getting out there,” exclaimed Dickenson.

“Everyone has a blast last year and wants to come back,” laughed Lauther on how many personal ‘fans’ he will have this time around.

“I’m guessing but there’s definitely going to be a couple hundred family and friends there.”

Quarterback Mason Fine was the backup last year and is excited for the chance to have another crack at the game and experience.

“[I’m excited about] just being with my teammates, hanging out with them, enjoying Halifax. I remember last year, I loved the food there. Spent my whole per diem there in two days on the food. Probably going to do the same thing” he laughed.

“Obviously the game too and having all the fans out there. We travelled very well last year with Ridernation so excited to see them and there and play in front of our fans.”

It’s not just Lauther’s family that will be a part of boosting Ridernation in the crowd.

“My family is actually making it out there, they’re actually already down there so I get to go explore Halifax with them the night before and honestly looking forward to SMU. It was great playing in Wolfville but was just a little but more of a drive on a humid bus,” laughed defensive back, Jayden Dalke.

“I didn’t get to be there last year, I was in Atlanta and I watched it from afar. So I’m fired up,” said receiver, Brayden Lenius.

“This is special because my mom and her company kind of started out in Ontario and Nova Scotia so they’re all going to be out there and the family’s flying out,” Lenius added.

“It’s going to be one big party. I’ve never been out there, it’s my first time that far. So I’m excited to see. I’m a west coast guy on the water so I’m excited to try some lobster.”

But the big game comes with some extra work.

“You’re going to be out there and it’s a different climate, it’s a different atmosphere, your hydration level has to be higher, just making sure with travel times higher, it’s a lot of preparation,” explained defensive lineman, Anthony Lanier.

Kickoff for Saturday’s game is scheduled for 2:00 pm CST on TSN.

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/FsYjHhr