Jean Charest, Ordre de la Légion d'honneur

The Hon. Premier John James Charest, P.C., M.N.A., L.L.B

Two days ago, Premier Jean Charest was invested as a Commander of L'Ordre de la Legion d'honneur de France in Paris, J.K Rowling of Harry Potter fame received the same honour. This is the third of five levels in the Order. This is similar to the Order of Canada.

I can remember being at the Vancouver Airport in 1998 when Daniel Johnson Jr. resigned as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party. Wondering who would stand up and defend Canada against the PQ and Lucien Bouchard, a few months later some one decided a united Canada was more important than federal politics and made the move to join the "National Assembly." Jean Charestwas the person who decided to step up, I clearly remember that NO ONE in the federal Liberal Party from Quebec was willing to make the move to Quebec Politics. (not Martin, Dion, Pettigrew...) For that, I am thankful and happy that he was able to win the 2003 election and hold on again in 2007 and again last year. 

Having a premier who is a federalist receive such an honour from the French government is quite special as you will read from this excerpt from the Globe and Mail.

For a long time, the official French iteration was " ni ingérence ni indifférence" (neither interference nor indifference), a phrase suitably subtle that it could be read in a variety of ways.

Now that subtle formula has been ditched. Whatever ambiguity attended French attitudes toward this tiresome question has been jettisoned, courtesy of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr. Sarkozy, awarding the Legion of Honour to Quebec Premier Jean Charest on Monday in Paris, repeated in the strongest language yet that he and his country totally oppose the separation of Quebec from Canada - a declaration stunningly ignored by some English-Canadian newspapers.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090203.wcosimp04/BNStory/specialComment/home?cid=al_gam_mostview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charest

Does Canada Really Matter in the 21st Century

Arthur Kroeger (far left) with four of the founding members of AKCESS (Arthur Kroeger College Educational Students' Society) at our first event 

l-r Crispin Bottomley, Ryan Androsoff, Kevin Reichstein, Johnathon Larose

Back in 2001, the Arthur Kroeger College Educational Students' Society held their firtst Policy Conference. The theme was ""Does Canada Really Matter in the 21st Century?" 

We set up three groups Politics, Economics and Social and each worte a paper which we presented. We were able to hear comments from Chancellor Kroeger. Later, one of the Carleton Professors at NPSIA wrote a book called "While Canada Slept" if he was to write another chapter to his book (I think we gave him the idea but he didn't give us credit) this editorial by John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail could easily be substituted for his chapter. Our middle power, peace-broker days are a thing of the past and Mr. Harper putting rookie MP's into junior cabinet positions (Mr. Kent) is evidence that he just doesn't understand Canada in a global sense. Before becoming PM you should have to take some international relations courses. An MA in Economics really doesn't help you that much when it comes to foreign affiars.

I have included the first few lines to peak your interest.

As Obama bestrides the world stage, Canada has nothing to say

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090203.wcoibbi04/BNStory/politics

President Barack Obama arrives on the world stage armed with new approaches to global diplomacy, the environment and, it appears, trade. Never has Canada been less equipped to respond to the American challenge.

A succession of minority governments has left our foreign policy in a shambles and our foreign service paralyzed. On trade, on global warming, on peace in the Middle East, on the emerging Third World powers - on anything that matters, Canada has nothing to say. When we do speak, nobody listens.

To read more about Arthur Kroeger you can read Ryan's Blog @

http://saskprairiefire.blogspot.com/2008/05/in-memoriam-arthur-kroeger.html

Not too much happens in a week up here

Since my last post not too much has happened up here in Yellowknife. The house-trailers across the street almost caught on fire because some one's snowmobile they were fixing caught the garage on fire. My sister-in-law looked out the window and said "that house is on fire" we called the fire department, I put on my coat and headed out into minus forty to see if everyone was out of the two trailers. Thankfully they were and then I helped the arriving quint (ladder truck) hook to the hydrant and stretch the 65mm (4 inch) supply line. The fire crew knocked down the fire pretty quickly and then went about overhaul on the garage and one of the trailers. The flames at one point were about thirty feet in the air. Because it was so cold, once they shut down the lines, the firefighters had to put the hose into the bed of a pickup truck to take back to the station to thaw out and get back into service. I was pretty impressed by the composite response. They sent two quints, a rescue, an engine, an ambulance and two cars (a utility pick-up truck and a chiefs van) The city runs one unit with paid guys and an ambulance and staffs the rest with paid-on-call. 

At work, this past week I started teaching some lessons, I have six sets of private/semi-private lessons and two group lessons. I've been doing a lot of cleaning, guarding, and chemical addition to the pool here. The pool is well used and we are going to extend the hours starting at the end of the month. Right now I am on afternoons from 1pm to 10pm. I am teaching Sunday lessons for at least eight weeks (into March) 

I've been noticing that the days are getting a bit longer (3 minutes in the morning and afternoon) each day. It is still dark most of the day but most of the day I am inside. I still need to get out and do some exploring and picture taking. The weather is supposed to be getting much warmer by the weekend so that might be a good opportunity to get out. 

If you like poetry my friend Jim Slominski has created a website of his poetry. http://niagarapoet.ca

 Jim is an award winning poet and his writing is inspiring. I worked with Jim at JVK  in St.Catharines. Give it a look if you have a minute, you'll be glad you did. 

In other news, a friend from Brock University Allson Forbes (now at uOttawa) made headlines when she took her GEE-GEE's (what's a gee-gee you ask that question will never be answered and who really wants to know it is uOttawa anyways) from trailing 68-67 to Ryerson (is that really a university anyways  thought it was a Poly technical Institute) and ran the ball coast-to-coast scoring the winning bucket with 5.7 seconds left on the clock. I remember her last playoff game as a Badger when Dr. Lowenberger and I went up to MacMaster to watch them play. It is great that she has made her way back onto the court.  

DRIVING FORBES SEALS GEE-GEES WOMEN’S BASKETBALL VICTORY 

http://www.geegees.ca/?q=node/28&sid=23&nid=204

A friend of mine had this up on her blog this link shows where jobs line up for Best/Worst according to their critera. (Thanks for posting this Marilynn)

 

Have a look at 198, 196 and 182.

 

From the worst list, I have been a taxi driver and a firefighter. Chauffeur actually comes in at 162 on the same list. I onder where Yellowknife Lifeguard would fit in?

http://www.careercast.com/jobs/content/JobsRated_Top200Jobs

 

The study, released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.