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Kitchener-Waterloo

• Bow, James Bow: Make Perogies, Not Prorogation
• Right of Center Ice: “A crowd of 350+ citizens (the majority of whom were over the age of 30) gathered at Waterloo Town Square to celebrate democracy and protest the proroguing of our 40th parliament of Canada.”
• Mr. Sinister: “Everyone was in a great mood and the weather was perfect”
• Canadian Cynic: “And Now its Huether Time”.
• A contrary view from Christian Conservative
• More Pictures….

Guelph

• Far and Wide: Off to the Rally (reported a turnout of around 300).

More responses? Please let us know in the comments.

(Crossposted to Bow. James Bow)

As impressive as it is for a Facebook group to gather over 200,000 Canadians united in opposition to Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue parliament (especially compared to the 127,000 Canadians who joined the Facebook group against last year’s coalition proposal), a question has to be asked: where do we go from here? Because, as impressive as that number is, it doesn’t take much effort to express one’s opinions on Facebook. Although you have heard some people signing up to Facebook specifically to join this group, for most participants the task was as simple as clicking a link. Democracy requires more than just that.

Which is why some people are paying attention to the rallies planned across Canada this Saturday (the Saturday before parliamentarians would have returned to work, if Stephen Harper hadn’t intervened). A grassroots effort has sprung up and a lot of people have worked very hard to get venues scheduled in dozens of cities across Canada, but how many bodies will show up? Blogger Shireen of Talk Talk Talk worries that there won’t be as many as organizers would like. Previous Facebook activism hasn’t been so successful in generating a large response in the physical world.

If the people who joined the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group want to keep the momentum of their efforts going, they need to make the effort. They have to show up on Saturday. If they don’t, and this protest fizzles, they will only have themselves to blame. There is little I can do about this, except to make the effort myself.

So, I have promised myself that I will be attending Waterloo Region’s rally this Saturday (at Waterloo Public Square at the corner of King Street and Willis Way at 11 a.m.), and not just because I care strongly about the issue of prorogation. I think it’s time that I stand up and march alongside my fellow Canadians because Canadians everywhere need to be reminded that this is how democracy is done. It isn’t enough to sit behind your desk and click on Facebook links. If you want change, you have to make change yourself, through campaigning, through writing letters to your MP, through voting the bastards out when feasible, and even getting up and marching along our public streets and making our voice heard.

There will be people out there, including Conservative supporters and government MPs, who will dismiss our activities as frippery, and our activists as frivolous, but they forget that this is how we’ve won most of our hard fought-for rights in this country, even the right to speak. As valuable as the right to speak is, simply speaking behind the walls of your home isn’t enough. Sometimes, to be heard, we have to speak loud, and in public.

So, I will be attending the local rally against prorogation this Saturday, and I’ll be taking Vivian with me. Will my presence there may a difference? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not the important reason why I’m going. I’m going because I think it’s important for Vivian to see what a peaceful demonstration looks like and what it sounds like. I’m going because I think it’s important for Vivian to learn the benefits and responsibilities of living in a democracy. I’m going because I think it’s important that she understand that she has a right to speak and, more importantly, she has a right to speak loudly, and sometimes that right is an obligation if she wants to make change.

I think it’s important to remember that all democracy is exercise, and without exercise, our democracy, like our muscles, will atrophy.

Time to shape up.

Local blogger, podcaster and entrepeneur, Will Spaetzel, is organizing a meet-up for people interested in social media: blogs, podcasts, twitter, and so forth.

I have been attending the London Blogger/Podcaster Geek Dinner for over two years now and have always had an excellent time at the meetups. There is always great conversations and I’ve made a number of close friends from the people that I’ve met there.

[…] So I have created the Kitchener-Waterloo Social Media Meetup. We will meet on the third Wednesday of every month. The first meetup is on May 20, 2009 at 7:30 PM at Symposium in downtown Waterloo.

Link.

On Tuesday March 24, 2009 the Grand River Conservation Authority is holding a charity event. It’s the President’s Gala - A Celebration of Youth and Conservation, where you will be able to hear from the renknowned Severn Cullis-Suzuki, daughter of environmentalist David Suzuki. Severn, active in environmental causes since age 9 speaks around the world, encouraging youth and adult alike to think hard about our world and how we treat it.

Tickets are $150.00 each. For details, check out the information page at the GRCA site.

I hadn’t heard of Heartwood Place until an e-mail was sent through my workplace. Formed in 2001, this charitable organization was created to “address the serious need for more affordable housing in the Region of Waterloo.” Heartwood Place holds several fundraising events throughout the year including a blues concert, an amazing race and the “Homes, Gardens and All That Jazz” dinner that raised over $24,000 last year.

Reading their “Why We Need More Affordable Housing” page, I was surprised to find that “over 47,000 Waterloo Region residents are living in poverty”.

Be sure to check out their website and support this worthwhile cause.

http://www.heartwoodplace.ca/

Guelph is playing host to its first anime convention this weekend. Con-G is being held at the Ramada Inn on Stone Rd E, across from the university.

I’m going. I have friends who enjoy dressing up as obscure Japanese cartoon (and video game) characters, and these conventions are the mecca for that sort of behaviour. Not that I do any of that sort of thing, of course. Oh ho ho no. I’m much too dignified.

If you’ve never been to an anime convention before (anime, incidentally, broadly refers to animated works and comic styles from Japan or based on such—you probably know what I’m talking about), you can expect to see things like animated Japanese movies and TV shows being shown on meeting room projectors, dealers selling paraphernalia of all sorts, people dressing up in impressively elaborate costumes, panel discussions on fan fiction or traveling to Japan, people playing Dance Dance Revolution, crafts and artwork for sale by enthusiastic amateurs and a big, nerdy version of the traditional high school dance, but with dancers dressed in said elaborate costumes dancing to frenetic Japanese pop music.

It can be a little bit wonderful.

Con-G runs today (Saturday, Feb 21) and tomorrow. Admission is $25 at the door.

The above photograph is entitled GO Locomotive 603 (Redux) and is by Glenn at portcredit.ca. It is used in accordance to his Creative Commons License.

GO Transit has set up Public Information Centres (PICs) discussing the possibility of extending GO Train service west from Georgetown into the City of Kitchener. The first session took place this past Thursday, but two more sessions are scheduled for the following times and locations:

Thursday, February 12, 2009
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Evergreen Seniors Centre
683 Woolwich Street, Room 4
Guelph, ON

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Halton Hills Cultural Centre
9 Church Street
Georgetown, ON

All locations are wheelchair accessible.

These PICs are related to further studies by Metrolinx, a provincial agency mandated to set up a regional transit plan for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Areas, to expand service on the Georgetown GO line, southwest from Brampton to hourly service, seven days a week.

You can find discussion of these proposals on a number of websites. This post from Steve Munro contains a review of a PIC on the Georgetown improvements. There is also an excellent discussion of the Kitchener proposals at Urbantoronto.ca, including pictures of some of the panels at the Kitchener PIC.

Early plans call for six inbound and six outbound VIA trains per day, plus four inbound and outbound GO Train trips per day between Kitchener and Union. Stops include the current stop at the Kitchener VIA Rail station and a new stop just west of Breslau, plus a staging area for Kitchener GO Trains near Ira Needles Blvd. The Breslau station would likely have the bulk of the parking for the region.

And, from the PIC:

“Depending on the completion of the EA and with support from the province, the EA proposal could see GO trains to Kitchener as early as 2011. The province would ultimately decide on the appropriate timeline for the extension.

The website GOKW.org continues to follow this story.

The final of my three launches, in my home town of Kitchener-Waterloo, went very well. It certainly pays to hold these events where you can count on friends and family to turn out (which is the secret behind why I always launch in Ottawa, Toronto and Waterloo). About twenty people turned out, I read from The Young City and copies were sold and signed.

I’d like to thank everybody who came out, and I’d like to thank Cathy Matyas of the Waterloo Public Library who arranged the space and the snacks and gave me a nice introduction to start the event. The Waterloo Public Library has always done a great job to reaching out to the literary community with gestures like this. I’d also like to thank the people at Words Worth Books who came out to sell copies of my books. They too are great supporters of the local literary scene.

After the event, a group of us bloggers retired to the Barley Mow for drinks and pub grub, including our own Flying Squirrel, and a good time was had by all.

So, with the Waterloo event behind me, that brings my planned events around The Young City to a close. Others may materialize at the behest of Dundurn, and I’m open for school visits, but right now I’m busy working on two website commissions and hope to get work on rewriting The Night Girl soon. As you can see from the slow blogging here, I haven’t had time for much else, but I hope to update this page over this coming week with more posts about my writing, a book review or two, and I strongly suspect that I’ll have something to say about the political landscape of this country by the end of this week.

As they say, stay tuned.

Further Reading

• Dan Kukwa plugs The Young City
• Clare Hitchens’ reflections on the event

Blog Plug: Y-Eh!

There’s a new blog in town, this one focusing on young adult literature with a Canadian connection. Y-Eh! was started earlier this month by Jill Murray, the author of the novel Break on Through. It’s taking on a number of other Canadian YA authors and is building a strong community that bears watching. So, if you’re interested in young adult literature and wish to support Canadian content, be sure to click on over and join the fun.

My third novel, entitled The Young City and published by the Dundurn Group, completes the Unwritten Books fantasy trilogy for young adults. I’m pleased to announce that I will be launching this novel at the Waterloo Public Library on Saturday, January 24, and everybody interested in children’s and young adult fantasy are invited to attend.

The event starts at 2:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the Waterloo Public Library’s main branch, located at the corner of Albert and Dupont Streets in Uptown Waterloo. There will be snacks and (warm) refreshments served, there will be readings from the book, questions and answers, and more. Words Worth Books will be in attendance to sell copies, which I will be happy to sign.

And after the event, around 4 p.m., we will retire to the Red Lion Pub in the basement of the Huether Hotel for a pub grub dinner. If you are a blogger in the Waterloo-Wellington area, you are invited to come out and meet your kinsmen and women.

For further information on The Young City, check out the official Unwritten Books website at http://unwrittenbooks.ca/. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you at the event!

A synopsis of “The Young City”:

Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister think their future is clear: they’re finally heading off for university. They’re thinking about finding apartments, picking courses, living like adults.

But what happens when the future becomes the past? While helping Rosemary’s brother move into an apartment in Toronto, Peter and Rosemary fall into an underground river and are swept back in time, to Toronto in 1884. It’s a struggle to survive and adapt to the alien culture of the late nineteenth century. Peter and Rosemary are forced to work together, to live together, and to become the adults they’ve only been pretending to be.

As the days stranded turn to weeks, then months, Rosemary and Peter begin to wonder if they’re really ready for a future together - and what they will do if they can’t get back.

Then someone brings them a watch, powered by a battery, made in Taiwan.

Reader and fellow Waterloo-Wellington blogger Paul Langan writes to tell me about a public meeting being set up by a group of activists hoping to improve the transportation picture in southern Ontario. In his words:

High Speed Rail Canada has invited representatives from industry, government and the media for a one day symposium on high speed rail in Canada. The date is January 31st, 2009 in Kitchener Ontario.

“The time is right for high speed rail in Canada. The USA government is asking for proposals to build 11 high speed rail, Canada will be left far behind. Its time to reinvest heavily in high speed and higher speed rail in Canada” states Paul Langan, founder of High Speed Rail Canada.

The symposium will be held Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at the Region of Waterloo Council Chambers, 150 Frederick Street Kitchener from noon to 5pm. It is free to attend. Guest Speakers to be announced in early January.

High Speed Rail Canada is a national citizens advocacy group dedicated to the implementation of high speed rail in Canada.

For more information contact - Paul Langan 519-654-0089. High Speed Rail Canada website http://highspeedrail.ca

I personally believe southern Ontario could use high speed rail, especially between Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. More is being done to improve rail transit in the region and, for me, the changes can’t come soon enough. I’ll write more on my thoughts when I’m able.