Diebel tips for finding loons
It's Friday, it's summertime and the weather looks good. Let's lighten the mood with this late offering.
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For delicious summer reading (non loon-related): I'm a huge fan of Henning Mankell, the Swedish mystery writer and creator of Insp. Kurt Wallander. I have a lounge chair waiting and a copy of One Step Behind all set to go tomorrow.
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A travel tip for Margaret Wente: You don't have to go as far in Canada to find loons (the feathered variety) as she imagines. First, I should say I like Peggy Wente and think she's totally charming. I write this only out of a sense of duty to my roots. In her Globe column last weekend, she wrote about becoming a Canadian citizen in 1979 and her ensuing romance with the wilderness. Wilderness to her means the Nahanni, Queen Charlotte Islands and Algonquin Park and she says few Canadians experience that. Fair enough, but she goes further: "Even though we've put loons and lakes on our money, hardly anyone lives near loons and lakes, or even sees them."
Them's fightin' words, lady, for somebody born and raised around Sudbury. The calls of loons and whippoorwills across northern lakes made up the soundtrack of my youth. I learned how to do most everything at family camps (not those effete southern cottages, mind you) and have friends across the mid-North - Sudbury, Timmins, Kirkland, etc.- who grew up the same way. I've spent extensive time in both the Western and Eastern Arctic and they're amazing places, but my primeval wilderness experience came in my own north.
Oh, re Pierre Trudeau's line: "A Canadian is someone who knows how to have sex in a canoe." Damn, and here I always thought a Canadian was someone who had sex with a Mountie. Too late.
Joking! Just joking.
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The PM is not our President. With a Global link to the Parliament Hill incident causing all the flap about Harper.
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Allan Gotlieb wrote the following in a recent Globe column (it's my Globe week): "If we are to seek to preserve our comparative advantage, we should now be aiming to deepen NAFTA, at least between Canada and the United States. Our aim should be to achieve a single economic space and a common security perimieter. "
I know, why don't we just get rid of the bother of even having a separate country?
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More fluff: I love reader email (ldiebel@thestar.ca) and blog comments for their richness, great ideas and, occasionally, moral support. Sometimes I even get an unintended giggle - none moreso than with the reader who took my heads-up to readers in a recent post on Honduras that upcoming links were in Spanish to mean I expect foreign countries to write their newspapers in English to please me - one blogger.
Yes, yes, that's exactly what I meant, running dog imperialist that I am. In fact, when I'm working in Latin America, I scream, wave my arms about wildly and make faces in order to be understood. That's what you do, right?
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A Confederacy of Dunces online book club: love the idea!


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