A sure sign of the end of Winter...

You know that winter is officially over, when the cruise ships return to Vancouver.

These colossal ships are a sight to behold: as big as a building, holding as many people as any small village. There's endless eye-candy to enjoy as you stroll from one end to the other.

My timing was a bit off for this visit, since I was not aware that the ship was visiting this weekend; but usually I like to head over to this area to watch these behemoths set out to sea. Every occasion follows the same ritual: everybody waves, ship to shore and back again, whether we know each other or not. All are simply caught up in the moment, as exciting to the many adults present as it is to their kids, all prompted to wave in a moment of shared humanity, all silently agreeing that human ingenuity is a wonderful thing, even more colossal than the physical achievements left in its wake. Who can witness such accomplishments, and not be moved by them?

Canadian Glory

When I was 7 years old, my friend's grandfather visited him for a summer. The memories fade but I still remember the first time my buddy told me of his grandfather's upcoming visit, and the hushed pride recounting how his grandfather was a veteran of World War I. That status meant a lot to us, for even at that age we were both constantly devouring books on history, our playtime spent re-enacting famous battles in backyards and sandboxes: we felt ourselves connected to our nation's past, however shadowy our understanding of it may have been. My friend excitedly filled me in with precious anecdotes his grandfather had previously shared with his family, ranging from gas attacks to crawling under barbed wire fences across no-man's-land to other colorful adventures that made 7-year old imaginations soar.

Thinking back across thirty years to this older gentleman, this first Great War veteran I ever met, I remember that he truly was a gentle man. I remember a deferring humility, a gentleness, a patience for children's incessant (and no doubt impertinent) questions. I remember a quick smile when he would walk past us with our toy soldiers spread out on my friend's living room carpet; God only knows what thoughts went through his mind as he watched us 7-year old generals manipulate our plastic troops across the "battlefield", occasionally singing out in theatrical cries of pain as we would mimic an artillery shell's effects on a column of marching infantry.

But most of all, even after all this time, I remember my friend's delight in his grandfather's very existence, so that today I wonder about the man he grew up to become as a result of his being blessed with his grandfather's presence in his life, as an example of tenderness and strength, to look up to.
I was reminded of all this as I read a letter published this weekend in the National Post, an old letter from a Canadian soldier, to the wife back home he was missing so dearly.
The following letter was written by John Walter Ellis to his wife in Tillsonburg, Ontario, on Saturday April 14, 1917, shortly after his participation in the battle of Vimy Ridge, 90 years ago this week:

My Own Darling Kitty,
Hear I am sitting in my dug out back of the line and have found a minute to write you a wee line, as I know how you'll be worrying & wondering how I'm keeping.
Well darling no doubt the papers will be full of the great Canadian advance & I must say I'm truly thankful & the Almighty has spared me this far & I only trust He will bring me safely through & back to my loved ones.
Our Company were lucky & we were a "carrying party", we had to bring up ammunition & supplies for the attacking party. We were sent up to hold the front line for a while after the advance was over, although since Fritz has retired further back. We had a few boys killed & wounded Poor George Mowforth was killed & a couple more Tillsonburg boys, Stuart & Bolgarters & Hearsy was wounded. I had several narrow escapes but thank God
I'm yet safe & well. I do hope & pray it will soon be all over as I don't want to see anything like it again. Things certainly look better every day & I hope they'll continue.
Now darling I should not be telling you all this as you'll only worry all the more, but as long as I'm well there's no need to. …
… Hows my little darling babe getting along. How her Daddy is longing for the day when he can take both her & her dear mother in his arms again. I live in that hope & pray it may be soon. Well love I haven't much more to say now. I'll write again soon. Give my best love to Mother, Dad & Maggie and little Sonny. Give my darling a big hug & a kiss & accept tons of love & kisses to your dear, dear self!
Ever your own darling devoted hubby
Jack

A month later, on May 14, 1917, another letter was sent to John Walter Ellis' wife, this time not from the soldier, but from a colleague:

5928 Pt. Ellis
2nd Canadians
It is with much sorrow I am writing to you to tell you of the death of your husband he was admitted her & 30 @ C/[?] very severely wounded in his chest - on 3 5-17 he died
6 45 pm 13 5-17 he at first did very well & we had great hopes of his recovery, he got suddenly very much worse, became unconscious & died shortly after. He was always talking about your & his little one & hoping to get home to you.
We all feel so sorry for you hour husband was a great favourite with the interns & orderlies He will be buried at Aubigny & will lie with many other brave men who like him have give all for others.
His grave will be marked by a cross with his name. Please accept my very deep sympathy in
you great trouble
With much sympathy yours truly
Lt. [?]/C JR Harwill

John Walter Ellis was one Canadian name out of many who too often remain nameless, their sacrifices taken too much for granted, unappreciated by current generations reclining in the shallow belief that all our national glory has been eternal, as abiding as the earth under our feet, and as equally beyond cause-and-effect... for what did we do, what could we do, to build the snow-capped mountains in whose shadows we live?

Echoing a sentiment expressed in one of Truepeers' posts from last week: so much of our learning is, in effect, remembering, piercing the shadows to discover the debt which we should live to repay, choosing acts that validate the investment that has been made in us. The day we forget the enormous accumulation of sacrifices made in our name, the long list of lives lost for the sake of lives yet unborn, on that day such a disconnect to our past would bring an amnesia that will surely fill us with despair rather than any relief such "freedom" may be presumed to offer.

Our past fills our lives with purpose, with duty; and it is this burden that compels us to rise up to become worthy of its weight. The young daughter in this letter, whose father did not return from France, grew up without his counsel; her life became one of learning through her mother's memories, what kind of gracious and loving man her father was capable of being. Were she to turn her back on that past, however painful it may be, she would lose much of herself and the reason she was brought upon the Earth: to spread life, and hope, and love.
In the shadow of the anniversary of the battle for the heights of Vimy Ridge, we remember the shadow cast upon us by this loving father's sacrifice. We humble ourselves to remember the towering sacrifices of all the fathers and grandfathers whose actions granted us, through an undeniable cause-and-effect, the blessing to possess memories in the first place. We strain our memories to recall those who returned and lived to bring love and new life into the world. Through such memories we may more clearly imagine the debt we owe to those who, like John Walter Ellis, brought glory to our nation through the example of their unfinished lives.

It is by affirming that memory, and acting upon it, that we can begin to prove ourselves worthy of their glory.
May God Bless them all, and may we continue to keep Canada Glorious and Free.

Remembering the Canadian victory at Vimy

Easter Weekend marks a special moment in Canadian history, as we look back and remember our triumph as a nation during the World War I battle of Vimy Ridge. Ingenuity, forebearance, the urge to surpass those that have come before us... these Canadian traits were called upon to work in unity over a fateful week, as well as our four Canadian Corps divisions, fighting together for the first time. The battle that followed wasn't just a victory for the allies, it was also a victory for Canada:

The German army fortified it with tunnels, three rows of trenches behind barbed wire, massive amounts of artillery, and numerous machine gun nests. The French and British had suffered thousands of casualties in previous attempts to take it; the French alone lost 150,000 men in 1915.

The Allied commanders decided to launch another assault in 1917. The duty was given to the still relatively fresh, but previously successful, Canadians. For the first time, all four divisions of the Canadian Corps were brought together. ...

The Canadian Corps' commanders were determined to learn from the mistakes of the French and British and spent months planning their attack. They built a replica
of the ridge behind their lines, and trained using platoon-level tactics, including issuing detailed maps to ordinary soldiers rather than officers or NCOs alone. Each platoon was to be given a complete picture of the battle plan and given a specific task, rather than vague instructions from an absent general. ... They also employed older techniques such as the detonation of large mines under the German trenches, as well as the digging of long "subways" (tunnels), the ends of which were detonated at zero hour, giving waiting platoons closer access to the German line.

On April 2, 1917, the Canadian Corps initiated the largest artillery barrage in history up to that point. They shelled the German trenches for a week, using over one million shells. The German artillery pieces were hidden behind the ridge, but by observing the sound and light from their firing, the Canadians were able to locate and destroy about 83% of the German guns. ... The German troops called this period the "Week of Suffering". The attack was so loud, the sound of guns could be heard plainly in southern England, some one hundred miles from the front.

At dawn on Easter Monday, April 9, the 27,000-man Canadian Corps attacked. ... Nearly 100,000 men in total were to take and hold the ridge.
The first wave advanced behind a creeping barrage, known specifically for the battle as the Vimy Glide. This tactic had been used earlier by the British at the Battle of the Somme, but there it had outpaced the soldiers. The Canadians perfected the technique. The troops walked across no man's land, just behind a continuous line of shells (an improvement over previous battles, in which both sides had often shelled their own troops). …

The Canadians also used a new technique, indirect fire with machine guns, which pinned German troops down in their trenches and provide cover for their own troops. After less than two hours, three of the four Canadian divisions had taken their objectives; the 4th Division, however, was held up by machine gun nests on the highest point of the ridge, known as Hill 145. The 87th Battalion suffered 50% casualties. The 85th Nova Scotia Highlanders, who had been intended to function in a supply and construction role, were sent in as reinforcements and the hill was captured by the end of the day.

It is said that upon learning of the victory, a French soldier exclaimed, "C'est impossible!" ("It's impossible!"), and upon learning it was the Canadians who had won it, replied "Ah! les Canadiens! C'est possible!" ("Ah! The Canadians! It is possible!").

This is the Canada whose accomplishments we must prove ourselves worthy of inheriting. We are not born great because of our great predecessors, it is a greatness to be renewed each generation. As our predecessors did on the eve of their battle, we can look to those that came before us and, animated as we are by our civilization's belief in progress, we can resolve to improve upon their legacy, by adding to it. We do this not to shame our ancestors, but to honor them; it is our Canadian tradition to do so, much as a parent expects his child to surpass him, as a sign of the parent's success, as well as the child's. That's what it means to be Canadian: out of gratitude for our European heritage, we commit to prove worthy of it, and offer ourselves as its steward. To honor our Canadian past, we aspire to add to their achievements.
But first, comes remembering them.

Supporting France's Blue Revolution

"Cheese-eating surrender monkeys"; that has become the standard joke in North America today when speaking about France’s ongoing cultural and economic decay. The slur is a tempting one to adopt, given the abundance of examples of ignoble acts performed by France’s self-aggrandized political and academic nobility who profane their cultural treasury, aided and abetted by their complicit statist media who cannot bear the dis-illusionment that would come with an honest appraisal of their suicidally flawed belief system. It is truly despairing to bear witness to how the delusion of socialist dirigisme continues to debase France, its elite classes willing to sacrifice layer after precious layer of reality in order to preserve the falsehoods they need to derive their sense of self-worth.

While last year’s anti-CPE protests reveal that the rot has set in to a frightening degree within their system, it takes a second look to discover it is not a universal madness: there are many who reject the noxious fumes from the smokescreen their media and academia cast before fellow citizens. There are a growing number who look beyond the platitudes of their political class, and demand accountability. In sweeping these good people into the same category as their bad, we weaken our own attempts in North America to conserve valuable traditions and restore the pride of achievement that is Western Civilization’s proper due.

In France these citizens have formed a movement known as the Blue Revolution. They exist, they act, they work to breathe a life worth living into the husk of their nation’s future.

It must be pointed out over and over again, so that it is not ignored: not all France has forsaken its past, nor given up on its future. Not every Gallic citizen has chosen to live like alcoholics besotted by desires to live for only the present moment. There are a brave few that struggle against the tide, their numbers growing daily as isolated voices find each other through the internet, and sporadic resistance gains more formal shape. Do we do ourselves any favors in pretending these fellow allies do not exist?

We in Canada complain of our left-leaning media, but at least here the overwhelming bias is balanced out by resources on display by our neighbors to the south: American talk radio, Fox news and the tapestry of American blogs all within such easy reach, and probably being taken far too much for granted. In Canada we can juxtapose two views and emerge with a measured judgment, but what about our brothers and sisters of France? Where do they go for their alternative diet of information? So little French conservative media exists there, in either print, television or radio format.

And so the Blue Revolution was formed, to foster alliances between the liberty-loving people of France, to provide an exchange of information and resources in order to build a consensus for changing that which needs changing, while preserving that which merits preserving. Implicit in its objectives is the expectation that other citizens of other nations, bound together in shared values and shared beliefs, can derive inspiration from the shared Covenant for renewal.
We support France’s Blue Revolution, we gather strength of our own from the faith of its members in the sanctity of their cause. Inspired by their act of faith in their nation, we here in Vancouver British Columbia meet to do our part to renew Canada’s faith in itself, seeking to revitalize the Covenant between that all those who value liberty, starting with those within Canada and reaching out to like-minded allies throughout the world. We stand in unison with our French allies, and reject as they do the tribal divisions imposed upon citizens of the modern world by self-anointed elites whimsically carving us all into groups of "victims" and "aggressors".

We offer them, and you, this video, to affirm that the struggle for liberty is worth engaging in, that there exists many potential allies scattered in corners so far removed from each other that only through effort and conviction will we discover the true scope of our alliance. In solidarity with the spirit of the objectives of France’s Blue Revolution, we meet every Thursday in the atrium of the Main Branch of the Vancouver Public Library, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, wearing as our colleagues in France do for their gatherings, a blue scarf to symbolize the universal longing for an eventual clear horizon.

It probably sounds repetitious to those who have been reading for a long time, but it is for the sake of those to whom it may be being heard for the first time, that we say it again and again: we exist, we act, we are looking for you to join us. Keep your Faith to keep your Nation: support and supply your own version of France's Blue Revolution.

Buying the Montrealistan book online

This is a follow-up to a point I raised at last week’s Covenant Zone meeting, and in the comments section of our initial post on Fabrice de Pierrebourg’s new book, Montrealistan.

With all the notice the book was receiving in the press, I thought it was strange that there did not seem to be any way to actually buy the book online.
Well, I finally found an online bookseller that is carrying the French Montrealistan book, and from whom it can be purchased: The Librarie Renaud-Bray.

According to the site, this is the description on the book’s dust jacket: [my translation]

A few years ago, London’s status as a sanctuary for islamic terrorism earned it the nickname "Londonistan". In observing the scope of Montreal’s islamist network and its deep anchorage, it is undoubtedly no exaggeration today to speak of Montrealistan. Has a famous Montreal islamist terror cell from the 1990s survived the arrest and incarceration of its most symbolic members? What happened to them? Why is the city an ideal hideout for activists of every side, whether they be organizers, simple "soldiers" or financiers? How many veterans of al-qaeda’s afghan camps have been identified? How many Montrealers considered as threats to national security are under permanent surveillance? Leaning on numerous secret and exclusive documents, on meetings with different intelligence and military[? "lutte", in original] agencies, as well as testimonies from several persons involved, mistakenly or for good reason, in terrorist files, Fabrice de Pierrebourg answers these questions. Realist without being alarmist, he exposes troubling facts that demonstrate that Montreal, mirroring Canada, has lost nothing of its attraction for jihadi militants, even if they make themselves more discrete. Yet, awaiting the case where Canada, and Quebec in particular, will one day become the target of this extremist elements, it will be the whole muslim community and the foundation of our multiculturalism that will inexorably pay the price.

The listed price is $24.95 cdn.
And its ISBN number (in case anyone else starts carrying the title)....
ISBN: 9782760410404 (2760410404)

At this writing, the book is not available through Amazon.ca, or through Chapters.ca. Is there another possible canadian book source that I am overlooking here..?

Meanwhile the actual publisher, Les Éditions Stanké, doesn't have an operational website, so they are not publicizing this hot title. Hot, judging by how many people are searching for more information about it over the internet! I hope they have plans to publish an english edition.

Juxtaposing Memories

From this wonderful collection of historic Canadian photos, some Cyril Littlebury scenes from the Capilano Valley, our Charles' favorite neck of the local woods (site of many of the photos he publishes here):










From the poem Coast Range by Pat Lowther (1935-1975):

Just north of town
the mountains start to talk
back-of-the-head buzz
of high stubbled meadows
minute flowers
moss gravel and clouds

They're not snobs, these mountains,
they don't speak Rosicrucian,
they sputter with
billygoat-bearded creeks
bumsliding down
to splat into the sea

they talk with the casual
tongues of water
rising in trees

They're so humble they'll let you
blast highways through them
baring their iron and granite
sunset-coloured bones
broken for miles
[...]
The land is what's left
after the failure
of every kind of metaphor


The plainness of first things
trees
gravel
rocks
naive root atom
of philosophy's first molecule

The mountains reject nothing
but can crack
open your mind
just by being intractably there

And now, if you believe that First Things are really to do with the human, with the birth of the esthetic effect that lets us love the mountains, let's have a look at the conclusion to the poem, Vancouver, I love you, by Stanley Cooperman, who killed himself, in sight of those mountains:

There's no figuring this
town, anything
can float in with
the logs: used books and
ecstasy majors, Indians,
kosher salami and Danish
pastries: hookers
who wait
for French rolls
in the Italian cafe, where Luigi
imports wives and cheeses
for Sicilian brick-
layers
with money or dreams
in their pockets.

How did it get here, this
city,
perched like a neon
thumb
on the edge of nothing?
Listen: whatever nightmare
you carry with you
tonight,
whatever tongue you use
to reach your private
taste,
remember that men have built
a magic moustache
under the nose of the Big Snow,
a trick
bigger than all the icicles
on the other side
of despair.

In this spirit, let us remember the tragedies of the generation of 1968, of romanticism and modernism finally done to death. Let us also recall past victories in the art of the covenant, that we may revive and seek out new ways to remember and to covenant for the future we cannot know until we take the leap and convert to it. As Arthur Lower wrote in the preface to his history of Canada, Colony to Nation (1946):

The main association which Canadians themselves have had with their own history has consisted in the terrifically boring stuff shoved at them in their school days.

The school teacher, however, is mainly effect rather than cause. If Canadians were able to realize themselves as a people and to lavish their profoundest loyalties on their own country, instead of dissipating them in half a dozen different directions, then interest in their own past would come readily enough and the invincible determination to remain in ignorance of all except its superficial aspects would disappear. French Canada, it is true, finds in its history much of the spiritual sustenance that enables it to go on existing, but little of this can pass over to English Canada. There are, as yet, two Canadas, inhabited by two peoples who, as often as not, are at outs...

Writing Canadian history remains an act of faith, the substance of things hoped for.

No doubt if Lower (who was not an advocate of mass immigration and endless racial mixing) could have anticipated the age of "multiculturalism" and its "many Canadas" (ideas which are really a singular and simple imperial ideology that today's schoolteachers shove down students' all-too-homogeneous, largely-ignorant-of-any-but-a-simple-syncretic-pop-culture, throats) he would have had to build an even stronger faith that we, the new Canadian multitude, can still covenant together, building our shared political future ourselves, without need of righteous minders to dictate how we must behave with each other. And yet, if we wish it, we can still learn to understand and write our history in a way to make it so...

Here's the concluding thought from Adam Katz's latest essay:

Our capacities for dealing with reality from any other standpoint than that of the special prosecutor looking for Watergate-style conspiracies in every nook and cranny of existence have significantly atrophied. A fully human reality is based upon mutual promises and covenants and upon keeping faith with them. This means we are obliged to follow 'Abraham, the man from Ur, whose whole story, as the Bible tells it, shows such a passionate drive toward making covenants that it is as though he departed from his country for no other reason than to try out the power of mutual promise in the wilderness of the world, until eventually God himself agreed to make a covenant with him' (Hannah Arendt). The retrieval and extension of firstness is the exercise of this power; it is all that can be holy for all of us today, and all that we need.

Or, we can choose today's current "British" form of oblivion:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

And a final thought from another essay on the spirit of the covenant, lest we forget the importance of overcoming the prejudice that will, if it is not overcome, eventually destroy all nations, leaving the peoples in the chains of an anti-American and Judeophobic empire of post-national, dhimmi bureaucrats:

In the unified way of life that is Judaism, liberation and remembering are inseparable. The problem of the West is that it is in flight from its past, the Jewish root it appropriated only to despise, and thus lusts for the future, for the green light at the end of the dock, for the fantasy image, the digitalized virtual ‘reality’ not the living presence of life simple and abundant. “But the future is empty, a void” Kundera notes correctly. It does not, cannot, will not exist without a present firmly rooted in remembrance of the past, — the essence of identity.
[...]
The powers and interests that rule the world East and West want to destroy Israel for many reasons and have attempted and continue to attempt to do this in brutal synchronicity. As they gather against and war over Jerusalem (Zechariah 12-14; Zohar 32a on Exodus, portion Vaeira) it becomes more and more clear that the war against the Jews is a war on remembrance as the essence of genuine freedom, continuity, honor and faith which is buried by “security measures” as well as bombers. The bonds of the generations that the Modern West has done so many things to trivialize, damage and break reflects its war on Judaism and the Jews, — and its suicidal tendencies.

Remembrance, the sages emphasize is the foundation in holiness, yesod haTiferet, holiness in and through the generations that Esau and Ishmael each in their way corrupt and destroy, the way of peace and joy in a world lost and lusting for war and terror (ibid 200, 203b), lost in pursuit “of the fantasies of its own heart (Proverbs 18:2); and so the earth fills with profligacy and Hamas (Genesis 6:1-13).

The bonds between the generations and the intertwining of grace-education (chinuch from chein the root of Chanukah, “dedication,” also intrinsic to freedom and remembrance) with freedom and memory are at the heart of Passover when fathers are commanded to teach their children the story of metzias Mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt as the primary manifestation of the Eternal One’s faithfulness, remembrance, and desire for ordered liberty, dignity and responsibility as the human state of freedom with teaching and grace through the generations entwining it in a threefold cord.

But the modern world wants to go “beyond freedom and dignity.” Their progressive cult is profoundly regressive, a dead-end street, a lust for chaos and the abyss.

If you are in Vancouver, consider joining us as we remember and seek new covenants for our nation, every Thursday, 7-9 pm, in the atrium of the Vancouver Public Library, central branch. We're in the blue scarves, in front of Blenz Coffee.

Claude Reichman's latest article on the French Presidential elections

Claude Reichman, spokesperson for the Blue Revolution, the French movement dedicated to promoting economic and social reform in France, has a new article out on the current French presidential elections. He addresses the urgent need for significant reforms in their system, and surveys the likelyhood for their implementation following the election.
[translated by myself; clarifications or corrections welcome]

Presidential elections: a marionnettes show

The four principal candidates for the presidential election are partisans of rupture. None announce themselves as part of a continuity. None dare post a track record. And why! Of the four, only Jean-Marie Le Pen at least has coherence going for him. In the case of rupture, he has been lauding it since the creation of the Front National, over thirty-five years ago. Yet for a track record, he doesn’t have one, since he’s never been in power. But the others!

M. Sarkozy is the heir of RPR["Rassemblement pour la République"], of whom its glorious jewel, Jacques Chirac, has vigorously massacred France’s chances throughout his forty years of political life. Mme Royal is the heir to the socialist party, of whom their glorious jewel, François Mitterrand, plunged France into the chaos of deficits, debt, economic collapse, uncontrolled immagration and moral perversion since that party was created thirty six years ago and their first party leader became president of the Republic twenty six years ago. As for M. Bayrou, he is the heir of Union for french democracy [UDF, "Union pour la Démocratie Française"], created thirty three years ago for supporting the actions of its glorious jewel, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who, in order to guard our nation against socialism, judged it prudent to hurry towards it, just like the fool who throws himself into water in order not to get wet.

Therefore, each being the inheritors, whether they want it or not, of disastrous track records, M. Sarkozy, Mme Royal and M. Bayrou ask us to believe they are capable of a rupture that nothing in their pasts has made the least bit predicted. At least if they had a program! But no, nothing. Roaring words but empty of sense, unrealizable promises without any actual break with the economic, fiscal and social system that strangles France for the last third of a century, in short, just hot air. And it seems that the presidential campaign enthralls the French. Have we become this people without memory that Tocqueville had once perceived when he said that "in a democracy, each generation is a new nation"? It truly seems so.

Yet [,consider this]. There is conscious memory, and there is that which, huddled up within the deepest depths of the cortex, shelters remembrances both sorrowful and grandiose, the craziest of hopes and the most ancestral of fears, the unappeased desires and the most violent impulses. And it is this memory that waits to deliver its terrible exhalations, just as it always had in previous centuries when the nation was in danger.
Therefore, our candidates for the presidential election are but marionnettes in a scenario that overtakes them. When the great breath of history blows over our country, from the inmost depths of the people must rise a man or woman in whom France may recognize itself and to whom France will confide its destinies. For a limited time only, of course; for the rule demands this time once more that the savior is to be dismissed as soon as their mission is fulfilled, so that the people may once again danse a jig of regained happiness and unconcerned joy.

What can you do, happy people have no history. It is true everywhere, even in a nation with a history such as ours, at the same time glorious and tragic, and who primes itself to invest itself with new dramas that their leaders, unconsciously, have so well prepared for them.

Glory, therefore, to the next elected leader of the nation. If they knew what was in store for them, they would flee as fast as their legs could take them. Yet our political class, because they have appropriated for themselves the monopoly of popular representation and have therefore sheltered themselves from every true sanction, for such a long time now, can no longer even know that actions have consequences. A few decades ago, there was a theatrical play that became very successful. It was called "La facture" ["The bill"]. It seems that, together, we are prepared to reenact it. And this time no one will find it funny.

[The play Mr. Reichman refers to is a comedy about a woman that everybody likes, so well in fact that she fears the day she feels she will receive "the bill" for her good fortune.]

Welcoming Home Heroes

We tend to fill our blog with bad news, as it is important to know the depths of the evil we face in the world today. With truth there can be wisdom, and from that wisdom we shall somehow arrive at the solutions we need to win through to victory against the forces of true evil that are arranged against us.
Every once in a while it's equally important to reflect on the good news that exists as well, for there is still much good in the world. It makes it easier to renew the struggle against evil, to acknowledge the good we fight for, and the humility to be grateful for it. With gratitude comes strength, and the conviction that the good must endure. Such are the seeds for greatness.

Especially in the United States of America. Neighbors, once again you set the standard for greatness, for the rest of us to live up to.

This video isn't very long, but it's long enough to show, yet again, the real source of America's greatness: the moral strength of the Americans who live there.

May God always Bless America with such heroes as Bert Brady.

When they come for you....

We must wonder what goes on in the minds of Christians who sit by and do nothing while fellow religionists, Christians, are muurdered for their Christianity and for no other reason. Is it that Vancouver and other places in the West are so safe and comfortable that no one and nothing else matters so long as the comfort level remains high here? Is the important thing in life for Christians in the West to indulge in personal pursuits regardless of the struggles of their fellows elsewhere? Is it nothing of import to witness the destruction of dhimmis in the Muslim world?

What kind of person does nothing?

****

Savagery in the name of obedience to the Almighty. From "We must not let this ancient Church slide into oblivion," by Ed West in the Catholic Herald (thanks to all who sent this in):

"When they cook a dish in the Middle East, it is traditional to put the meat on top of the rice when they serve it. They kidnapped a woman's baby in Baghdad, a toddler, and because the mother was unable to pay the ransom, they returned her child – beheaded, roasted and served on a mound of rice." The infant's crime was to be an Assyrian, but this story, reported by the Barnabus Fund, went unnoticed in the West, like so many other horrific accounts of Christian persecution in Iraq.

Since the invasion of Iraq, Muslim militants have bombed 28 churches and murdered hundreds of Christians. Last October, Islamists beheaded a priest in Mosul in revenge for the Pope's remarks about Islam at Regensburg. But never let it be said that jihadis do not have a sense of ironic humour: that same month they crucified a 14-year-old Christian boy in Basra.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015893.php

****

Poem (1976 version)

Original	Translation
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.	When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.

****

I don't know what kind of person you are. If you're someone interested in acting in defence of the innocent, even if that activity is passive, please join us for conversation on Thursday evening at the Vancouver Public Library in the atrium outside Blenz coffee bar from 7-9:00 pm. You'll recognise us by the blue scarves and Israeli flags on our baseball caps. Speak out before there's no one left to hear you.

We're Number 3!

The annual Mercer Human Resource Consulting Worldwide Quality of Living Survey came out today, and declared Vancouver to be one of the best cities in the world to live in.

According to the report,

...

The analysis is based on an evaluation of 39 quality of living criteria for each city including political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and other public services.

I don't think they are including the taste of tapwater among their list of criteria..! (God help us if they are)

Still, once it stops raining it's not that bad of a place to live, when you come right down to it. Lots to do and see, nice people as neighbors, for the most part ...

The top ten cities are:

Zurich, Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland

Vancouver, Canada

Vienna, Austria

Auckland, New Zealand

Dusseldorft, Germany

Frankfurt, Germany
Bern, Switzerland
Sydney, Australia
Copenhagen, Denmark

Maybe it says something about the cynicism that most of us city-dwellers seem to carry and have a hard time shaking loose of, but my first thought upon reading this list this afternoon, was: "Even with all our city's problems, our crime, our tapwater, we get listed third... How bad must these other places be!"

Now we can be that much more grateful for the peace and comfort, such as it may be, that our fair city offers us.

Jewish graves destroyed overnight in France

What can you say about a hatred so deep that it extends to being unleashed upon the dead? From Yahoo France today we read of the latest desecration of Jewish graves in a Lille cemetary in the North of France [translated from the original French]:

50 graves in the jewish quarter of Lille-Sud’s cemetery were desecrated overnight on Saturday evening through Sunday morning, an act that has evoked numerous condemnations and has led to a large police mobilization to rind those responsible.
No inscriptions were found in the cemetery but “51 graves were damaged…, some were turned over, others were shattered”, the press was told by the District Attorney for the Republic of Lille, Philippe Lemaire, invoking “the first case of this scale in the region.”
At least one grave was broken and the steles of other graves – of whom some were broken – were turned over along a long column over 50 meters long, said an AFP journalist in the cemetery where several members of the jewish community went to survey the damage.
“I feel dread and sadness, when you see this it is indescribable”, said Franck Hanoh, a member of the Lille jewish community, not far from the smashed grave of his great-uncle.
…
“Since 2003, we have had a drop in anti-Semitic acts in the North, this incident therefore shocks us that much more”, underlines [Nord-Pas-de-Calais prefect Daniel] Canépa, who estimages the anti-semitic acts within their department each year as “five or six, especially insults, verbal aggressions or grafitti”.
…

Water Found on Mars - Proof of Intelligent Life

See below...












Well, we had to get something up for April 1. More blogging to come. (Michael T. got me first)

Christian teacher KILLED....

Four articles appear below, the first and last by Judi McLeod, a reporter covering the story of a Christian woman beaten to deathh by her Muslim students; the second article covers the same story, but this time it's a cute story about multiculturalism in Britain, brought to us by the inimitable BBC. Yes, a woman is beaten to death and then ripped to pieces and the BBC makes it cute. The third story is linked at JihadWatch, Christian murdered by a gang of Muslims.

I know, I'm picking on Muslims for no reason. We are all guilty of evils. I even met a woman who claimed to be personally responsible for the death of millions of Viet Namese during the war. Me? Well, never you mind! Later we'll look at just how guilty is the average Western Christian. For now, on to Muslims.

Thanks to X and CGW for the links.
****

Christian teacher horribly KILLED by her own Muslim students

In an exclusive report by Judi McLeod, we learn of Christianah Oluwatoyin Olusase, 'a Christian teacher at Government Day Secondary School in Gombe state, North Nigeria was torn apart, limb-by-limb, by a mob of Muslim students on March 21, 2007.'

In accordance to school procedure, the homeroom teacher collected papers, books and bags before the exam papers were passed around. She left them in front of the class for pupils to retrieve later.

One of the girls responded by starting to cry and was soon telling her classmates that there had been a copy of the Quran in her bag left in front of the classroom.

The girl claimed that because Christianah was a Christian, she had desecrated the Quran by touching it.

The students began to chant in unison, "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great)". These school age girls then beat, stoned and clubbed Christiania to death where she stood.

The deed done, the girls then dragged her corpse outside of the school building and burned it.
****

Armed with microphones, cameras and the trusty pen, about 160 girls at Charles Edward Brooke School in south London took part in School Report.

Year Eight pupils at the Lambeth secondary worked as reporters, producers, runners and editors for a day.

They set their own news agenda and decided what was worth covering.

Assistant head teacher Linda Mann was keen that the experience should open their eyes to the wider world.

"They know all the local news, but we want to widen their horizons," she said.

"We want them to be active, critical citizens and they can't be unless they know what's going on elsewhere."

Choosing stories

Six different classes took part and in each, the editorial process was hectic - just like the real thing.

The day began by reading the newspapers to find out what else was going on other than the Budget.

In class 8C, lots of hands grabbed for the Sun and the local paper, the South London Press, but with a bit of prompting from English teacher Jennifer Watson, some scoured the broadsheets and the BBC website too.

The girls then had to decide what they thought was most interesting - and the choices were often surprising.

Wider world

The girls explained their choice.

"It's about tensions, isn't it? Christian and Muslim," 13-year-old Nafeesah said. "But I'm a Muslim and I never heard of something like that."

Toyosi, 12, said: "When you see that - 'killed over Koran' - you want to read more, why did that happen? It's interesting."You want to read more, why did that happen?

All of them picked topics they could relate to, that affected them, but not always in the most obvious way.

For example, 13-year-old Sheridan was keen to write something on the Phoenix Book Awards, a project she had been researching and that had been running at the school for some time.

But another group picked a story that at first glance seemed very far removed from life in Lambeth.

It was the tale of a teacher in Nigeria who was apparently killed by her pupils because they believed she had desecrated the Koran.

Wider world

The girls explained their choice.

"It's about tensions, isn't it? Christian and Muslim," 13-year-old Nafeesah said. "But I'm a Muslim and I never heard of something like that."

Toyosi, 12, said: "When you see that - 'killed over Koran' - you want to read more, why did that happen? It's interesting."

Themes around identity came up again and again. Some groups chose the debate about wearing the Muslim veil in schools, while others followed on from the recent attention on slavery to ask whether more black history should be taught in schools.

Miss Watson said: "They are interested in things that seem to be to do with their own lives. But getting them to read about the wider world, what they see as adult issues, is more difficult and a lot of them say they find it boring.

"That's why I think today is a fantastic opportunity to make it exciting."

[more.]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6479677.stm
****

Ethiopia: Muslims beat Christian evangelist to death

Christian proselytizing is a capital offense under Islamic law. "Ethiopian Evangelist Beaten to Death by Militant Muslims: Militant Wahabbi Islamists Drag Christian Evangelist into Mosque and Beat Him to Death," from Christian Newswire, with thanks to Tom:
WASHINGTON, Mar. 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Washington-DC based human rights group, International Christian Concern (ICC) has just learned that an Ethiopian evangelist named Tedase was beaten to death by militant Muslims on Monday, March 26th, as he and two young women were on a street evangelism assignment in Jimma, Ethiopia. This marks the second time in six months that Christians residing in Southeast Ethiopia have been attacked and killed by extremist (Wahabbi) Muslims.

On Monday afternoon Tedase and two female coworkers were conducting street evangelism on Merkato Street in Jimma, Southern Ethiopia. Merkato Street runs by a Wahabbi Mosque. As the team was walking by the Mosque, a group of Muslims exited the Mosque and began to run after them to confront them. Tedase's female coworkers ran away from the mob but Tedase continued on. The Muslims caught up with Tedase, pulled him into the mosque, and savagely beat him to death. Sources from Jimma reported that Tedase was beaten with a calculated intention to kill him. This was no accident or case of mob frenzy getting out of control. His body was later taken to the hospital for an autopsy and he was buried Tuesday, March 27.

Our sources also reveal that Jimma Christians were conducting an evangelism campaign, and news of the outreach was spreading among Jimma residents as well as militant Muslim groups in the area. The Muslims that belonged to the Wahabbi sect purposefully beat Tedase to death as a message to Christians that they are ready to combat evangelism.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/015856.php
****

Muslim intolerance and violence

Teacher beat to death by mob of Muslim students in her classroom

By Judi McLeod

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Googling the name Christianah Oluwatoyin Olusase brought no hits 3:30 p.m., yesterday.

Christianah, a Christian teacher at Government Day Secondary School in Gombe state, North Nigeria was torn apart, limb-by-limb, by a mob of Muslim students on March 21, 2007.

Details about Christianah's life are scarce. We do know that her life was dedicated to spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We don't know how long she taught at Government Day Secondary School, her age, or who are the loved ones prostrated by grief.

The information of her death comes from Compass Direct. And were it not for The Persecution & Prayer Alert, The Voice of the Martyrs Canada, Christianah's passing would otherwise have gone unnoted.

The details of Christianah's death are shocking.

Christianah was supervising an all-girl class while they were taking an Islamic Religious Knowledge examination, a routine job by any teacher's standards the world over.

In accordance to school procedure, the homeroom teacher collected papers, books and bags before the exam papers were passed around. She left them in front of the class for pupils to retrieve later.

One of the girls responded by starting to cry and was soon telling her classmates that there had been a copy of the Quran in her bag left in front of the classroom.

The girl claimed that because Christianah was a Christian, she had desecrated the Quran by touching it.

The students began to chant in unison, "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great)". These school age girls then beat, stoned and clubbed Christiania to death where she stood.

The deed done, the girls then dragged her corpse outside of the school building and burned it.

There were no flowers or cards left at the burial site as sometimes happens in the outpouring of grief in western culture. No candle vigils were held for Christianah. In fact, it is not even known if her loved ones will be able to give her a decent burial.

There was no outrage of the teacher's horrific death in any western media, still busy these days following the life and times of the late Anna Nichole Smith.

What happened on March 21, 2007 is life for Christian believers in Nigeria.

On June 28, 2006 another Muslim mob in the town of Izom in the Nigerian state of Niger first overwhelmed police, then clubbed a woman to death for participating in street evangelism. The murdered woman was reported to be between 18 and 20 years of age.

Unidentified--even in death--the woman had met with a group of Muslim youth outside of the Jumat Mosque in Izom and shared the gospel with them, leaving with those who would take them some printed tracts to read.

When Muslim leaders learned what she had been doing, they were outraged, claiming that she had insulted Islam and Mohammed. A death decree was placed on her head and posses of hundreds of Muslims went out on the hunt for her.

When they found the woman, they seized her and began to beat her, but police took her into protective custody. The mob threatened to take down the police station if she wasn't turned over to them. Then as police tried to smuggle her out a back door, they were caught. The police fled the scene and the woman was seized again, clubbed and stoned to death. At least two police officers were injured in the attack. Several arrests were made and the investigation is on going.

Then there's the case of the missing students.

Two Christian female students from the Ahmadu Bello University in Kaduna State, Nigeria went missing after they were severely beaten by seven Muslim women in their own dormitory on March 18, 2006.

The two students, Joy and Priscilla, were preparing to bathe when the seven students, veiled in Islamic robes, attacked them. They were harassed, intimidated flogged and left unconscious.

Compass Direct reports that the two were taken to the university clinic and have not been seen since.

Because of the attack, the university closed its doors for a period of two weeks. During that time, the university took action against the Muslim Students' Society by removing their leadership for failing to maintain control. According to the Daily Trust news service, when the university reopened on March 28, 2006 there was added security and each student had to sign a pledge to maintain peace and obey the university's rules and regulations. The university has promised to investigate the attack and punish the Muslim women.

"Nigeria is strongly divided between Christian and Islam," says The Voice of Martyrs in its Country Report. "Statistics differ whether there are more adherents to Islam or Christianity in the nation as a whole. Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim and several of the states have adopted Sharia law for all civil cases.

"In areas controlled by Muslims, Christians frequently face opposition. Churches have been burned and Christians killed in riots. In February of 2005, the predominantly Christian village of Demsa, Adamawa in northern Nigeria was attacked. According to Compass Direct, 36 Christians were killed and their property destroyed. About 3,000 survivors fled to a neighboring state. Also, for the fourth time in five years, the Conquerors Chapel of the World of Faith Ministries in Kaduna, Nigeria, was destroyed by fire on April 10, 2005. The attacks began after Sharia law was introduced in Kaduna State in 2000."

No blossoms or candles mark the graves of either Christianah Oluwatoyin Olusase in Gombe state, or the unidentified woman stoned to death in Izom.

By cruel circumstance both women died lonely deaths, and remain lonely in death.

But prayers from the heart are more lasting than any flower or flame.

The Voice of the Martyrs asks you to "pray for peace and strength for Christians facing opposition from Muslims in Nigeria."

God protect all Christians in Muslim nations everywhere. ________________________________


Canada Free Press founding editor

Judi McLeod Judi can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/cover032907.htm
****

Are you John Doe?

We who are average and ordinary citizens and residents of Vancouver, Canada invite you to join us each Thursday evening for coffee and discussion of dhimmitude, da'wa, jihad, and Left dhimmi fascism. We meet every Thursday evening at the Vancouver Public Library in the atrium from 7-9:00 p.m. We are Johhn Does. If you are too, stop in and spend a few hours with us in the covenant zone. We sit outside Blenz coffee bar, and we wear blue scarves and Israeli flags on our baseball caps to let you know who we are.

John Doe! Come and sit with us.
****

The John Doe Manifesto
By Michelle Malkin
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Send an email to Michelle Malkin

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to "report suspicious activity."

I will embrace my local police department's admonition: "If you see something, say something."

I am John Doe.

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing "scholars."

I will petition against your hate-mongering mosque leaders.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

I will combat your violent propaganda on the Internet.

I am John Doe.

I will support law enforcement initiatives to spy on your operatives, cut off your funding and disrupt your murderous conspiracies.

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderates' clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about "profiling" or "Islamophobia."

I will put my family's safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

Imagining a better world

Those living in fear of the "inevitable" wave of global destruction "caused" by we parasitic human beings living only to suck the limited life out of Mother Earth, may want to read this Technology article on a wholly unexpected and unpredicted source of bounty and creative fulfillment, unimagined 10 years ago.

I take from this piece a reminder that there are two features to the human experience that tend to remain outside the bounds of predictability; one of them will be readily conceded, I think, by the global warmingers, and is our tragic capacity for destruction.

The other, however, is rarely granted equal measure, and that is our undeniable capacity for creativity and innovation. And renewal.

Human ingenuity can be a wonder to behold, and from its undeniable existence, reaffirmed in the article below, I can derive some faint stirrings of comfort that even if we were causing the slow destruction of our atmosphere, we remain an ingenious enough species that it should be possible to imagine us adapting towards a more harmonious balance with nature, through an increase of our prosperity, and not necessarily through the pauperization of our civilization, as the povertarians would demand of us.

Read this and see if you can imagine a positive future, where prosperity grows exponentially. It's easy if you try...:

Companies are flocking to market themselves in virtual worlds, game-like and usually three-dimensional online universes, but the long-term shape of this fledgling industry is far from clear.
"We're pretty much where the Internet was in the mid-90s," said Steve Prentice, a vice president at technology research group Gartner Inc., echoing a view held by other participants Wednesday at the Virtual Worlds conference in Manhattan.
Joe Laszlo, analyst at JupiterKagan Inc., said the virtual worlds are "like the early days of the Victoria's Secret Webcast, where it was crappy, but hot, so everybody went."

MTV executives touted their TV-show spinoffs "Virtual Laguna Beach" and "Virtual Hills," which have attracted 600,000 registered users since they were launched six months ago. Almost like the real Southern California, these 3-D online spaces have perfect weather, but in an improvement on real life, its users are all represented by attractive, slim and young online embodiments known as avatars.
These avatars can interact with each other via text chats and commerce, providing a social element that virtual-world pioneers see as more realistic and engaging than chat rooms and MySpace pages.

"When you get people deep and passionate in a community, money just comes out of it in so many ways," said Matt Bostwick, senior vice president of franchise development at MTV Music Group, which is part of New York-based Viacom Inc.

As an example of the branding opportunities, Bostwick said MTV has sold more than 11,402 virtual cans of Pepsi. The buyers can't drink them,
since they exist only on the screen, but they act as a form of decoration for their avatars.

MTV's "Nicktropolis" is growing even faster, with 2.4 million registered users who have logged 7.5 million visits since its launch two months ago, according to Nickelodeon's executive vice president of digital media, Steve Youngwood.
MTV's endeavors are "closed" virtual worlds, entirely controlled by the company. Every tree, building and piece of clothing is approved by MTV, though the underlying technology for "Virtual Hills/Laguna Beach" comes from another virtual world, "There," which was created by San Mateo, Calif.-based Makena Technologies Inc.
The virtual world "Second Life" represents a dramatically different approach. There, users can create, out of thin virtual air, almost any object they can imagine, if they're skilled enough with 3-D modeling and programming tools.
The freewheeling and in many places sex-oriented spirit of "Second Life" is reminiscent of the early days of the Web. The company behind it, San Francisco-based Linden Research Inc., says its goal is nothing less than a 3-D Internet.

As amazing as all this is, there is still more growth to come:

But given the wide range of uses for online worlds - games, communication within
companies, flirting, self-expression - it's not clear that a single world is going to dominate.
"There is not going to be one metaverse, there's going to be a multitude of them out there," said Corey Bridges, a Netscape veteran and co-founder of The Multiverse Network Inc., based in Mountain View, Calif.
His company is creating a program that will give access to multiple online worlds built using its technology, much like Netscape's browser gave access to multiple Web sites, kickstarting the Internet boom of the 1990s.
The technology will include the option to make avatars portable between different
worlds, providing a middle road between MTV-style walled gardens and a wide-ranging "metaverse" like "Second Life."
"Once you can move from one virtual world to another, the growth we have today is going to look pretty stagnant," said Gartner's Prentice.

Of course, going through this article, one can also conjure up a vision of the future where the outside world grows so distasteful that citizens flock to escape it by immersing themselves within the walls of false fantasies, living out their lives entirely within "second lives". Like most things about our covenant with nature, it can drift towards the bad as easily as it could towards the good, but that this drift comes by choice, not fate. The trick is to hold on to the vision of the good, and work towards it.

That act of commitment to the good, that purposeful act of faith, is a daunting challenge when the weight is carried by one person alone. Therefore the connections we can make with others, starting in the physical neighborhoods we inhabit, and perhaps also now extending to that of the extra-physical worlds we seem to be busily creating throughout the ether of the internet, these connections with others help to turn the ethereal into the physical, into the tangible.

An act of faith is an invisible, parallel action to my getting out of bed in the morning, heading to face a day of grueling labor; an act of faith uplifts the parallel actions of our day-to-day physical movements and behaviors, ennobling it all with a sense of purpose and value.

Maybe these parallel worlds can serve as reminder that when we're off the internet, walking physical footsteps across a physical world, an unseen one exists around us as well.

Beaver visits Vancouver

We interrupt our usual discussions for some late-breaking news:
I finally saw my first beaver here in Vancouver, as the spry little fellow shopped for a new home.

I thought at first that it was one of the frequently-seen fur seals that visit our coastal waters (much to the consternation of local fishermen). But something about the way he was swimming made me quickly realize that this was some other visitor than a seal.

"Too big for an otter" I thought... "looks almost like a beaver." I've never seen beavers around here before; where do they usually hang out? And why is this fellow downtown? Do they build dams in Stanley Park, I wonder?