Marvin McInnis challenges the widely held belief that Canadian agriculture was adversely affected by the First World War. His talk at the University of Guelph Rural Roundtable yesterday, 
presented a nuanced and revisionary look at the common story that wartime demand drove Canadian farmers to double acreage devoted to wheat and unwittingly create a dangerous monoculture. A situation that led to a massive collapse in GNP when the price of wheat collapsed after the war. McInnis’ earlier paper “Canadian Economic Development in the Wheat Boom Era” sets an appropriate stage for this further discussion. In this paper, McInnis questions the conclusion that Canada’s rapid economic growth during the first decade and a half of the twentieth century rested on western settlement and the ‘wheat boom.’ This has been a persistent and widely accepted view until more recent re-examination has questioned the role of wheat in this growth and determination that other factors were of greater consequence to this growth. This story though has supported the consequent one that envisions wartime demand and response to it as greatly affecting Canada’s agricultural economy.
About a year ago I adopted the French Republican Calendar for my personal journalling. Why? Really for 
no other reason than to be different. It offered me the opportunity to learn the Republican Calendar through practise (a word-a-day sort of arrangement). The upheaval of the switch to a new system in France in 1795, caused confusion, was not widely adopted and in the end was discontinued by Napoleon during the Empire. This was not before such references such as the Coup of 18 Brumaire and lobster Thermidor forever embedded the poeticisme of the calendaring system in our historical memory.
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My apologies if this sounded like I was challenging Jared Diamond to a wordoff ;-) <a href=“http://idlebritishcolumbian.blogspot.com/ target=“_blank”>Michele just pointed me to wonderfully candid article
explaining why office workers should appreciate their surroundings and pity the poor fools that consider the coffee shop their workplace. While I number amongst those blighted souls and blogged last year on why I like the mobile life, Sathnam Sanghera’s ode to office bliss, raises some notable and worthy points.
I was particularly struck by Sanghera’s anecdotal reference to people working at home starting to form groups so they can work at home together. Man is indeed a social animal. I like working in a public space, even if I am not interacting directly with other people. I like having them around. By that I don’t mean to objectify others by any means, as having people in your immediate proximity can often run counter to productivity. But, everyone has their own levels of tolerance, and I sense that Sanghera is accepting this broad stratum of individual workspace demands. He highlights a study by Benjamin Markham1 that underlines the fact that workplaces end up being counterproductive by being too quiet. The silence itself becomes a distraction. Read the rest of this entry »
- Sorry, but I can’t find the source for his reference [↩]
The Wilson Centre in Canadian History officially launched an awesome new learning tool 
destined for the classrooms of local schools last night. The People and the the Bay is an historical environmental documentary created by Nancy Bouchier, Ken Cruikshank and the wizards from Pixel Dust Studios This stunning production brings a vivacity, zest, and probing depth to explore the unique relationship between the Hamilton harbour and the lives of people in the area and the city itself. The occasion was celebrated at the Canada Marine Discovery Centre, a uniquely appropriate site for presenting this production. The centre sits on the harbour and is an interpretative museum dedicated to Canada’s rich aquatic heritage. Read the rest of this entry »
Bill Turkel posted another great thought piece today on the Importance of Infrastructure. This post is, as his others always are, very erudite, well phrased and provoke one to think. In this case, his framing question 
seems to be whether one can really environmentally engineer innovation. His post suggests that letting the right people play in the right sandbox, with the right toys can yield astonishing results. He addresses the nature of how we construct personal space in order to bolster productivity, creativity and all those good things.
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There is a great discussion at Bricoleurbanism on the absence of people-scaled spaces in Toronto’s urban streetscape. The discussion takes as a starting point construction hoarding on two sides of the street near Bloor that inadvertently created a humane street scale not unlike that found elsewhere in the world. Read the rest of this entry »
Kudos to Nokia for adding the smarts to their cell phones to let a user know to unplug the charger from the wall socket. Apparently this simple operation (presuming people actually do unplug the phones — as opposed to leaving them plugged in and charging all night) will allow saving “enough electricity to power 85,000 homes a year”. Read the rest of this entry »
On the flight down(?) to Montréal the other day, it was a sharp and clear early morning so I kept the camera with me in the cabin in hope of catching a few neat snaps from above. There were about 10–15 of the 300 or so I shot that were worth actually keeping. Those of you that know me of course realize that I will keep them all as I am a pack rat, both digital and materially. However, of the ones that were worth keeping, a few of the marginal ones were of something that both caught my eye and on processing scared me. Halfway through the journey I was keeping my eyes out the window and there was this orangey-brown ribbon on the landscape. It caught my eye and on further examination it was not ‘on’ the landscape, but was instead floating above. It was a stream of exhaust from a source that eventually hove into view. I say eventually as the plume was about 10–12 km right across Prince Edward County. I had no idea what was there or might have been creating the massive amount of pollution.
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Its just not my month/week/day for utilities. First it was the night of water and now in the midst of our best blizzard yet this year I seem to have lost half an electrical circuit in my house. If it was a full circuit and involved a fuse…that’d be resolvable by a mere layman such as myself, but it seems to defy logic. I have four electrical circuits for my lights and receptacles. I have mixed and matched fuses and figured out where all the circuits seem to be, but it seems that half a circuit is out. Unfortunately it is my office and full washroom (yes, the one that supplied the carwash that was my carport — and yes, I cannot rule out some connection) so that took out my network and the media centre remains offline now. I ran electrical into one node so I could get the hub and router back online, but the rest is off until I get some more light.
I was oh so logical with the fuses and the like, but I just can;t figure it. Am also used more used to the magnetic breakers from Guelph. Resetting breakers seemed much more simple, but these fuses…they all are functional and yet I can’t seem to get the bloody circuit to reset. Oh well…until the morning…the cold wind is howling.
Now talking
about serious luck ;-) From Michele comes this absolutely amazing story, one which I am sure is just making its way to all the major news outlets, but so visually stunning. Apparently a rabbit farmer in Germany has managed to breed a super sized German Gray rabbit. He has further convinced the North Koreans that this is the staple livestock to ‘meat’ their dietary needs. I attach pictures as this has to be seen to be believed. The BBC has picked it up in video as well the Times. The rabbits weigh in at about 7kg and are more than three times the size of the average rabbit offering surprisingly nutritious and fat-reduced meat. Amazing.
