Brand New U 11:44

The University of Waterloo is experiencing a wicked backlash over their new logo concept. I'll be the first to admit, it's a little laser-y. But isn't that what UW is going for in terms of their policies and corporate practices?

The negative reaction has spawned a large facebook group (you know how I love those) as a discussion forum to blather on endlessly about it, and there's even an "executive blog" by business student Evan Thor ( I know him!) on the National Post website about it. People don't like it. Here's why:

It cheapens the brand. At least, that's the argument. It's not academic. It's not scholarly. It doesn't reflect the tradition of higher education that people revere in a university insitution. Well, guess what, neither does the University of Waterloo. Their policies for encouraging innovation, churning Masters' students through the revolving door of grant quotas, and their corporate partnerships do more to undermine the value of higher education than the logo does.

It's not like they're the only ones, though. My Alma Mater, UniGoo, for example is just slightly behind the curve - their logo is still largely intact, but has already sold its soul to the biomed sector. To survive the coup the profitable sciences have perpetrated against universities, the humanities have turned MA programmes into cashcow versions of a victory lap (a 5th year of undergrad studies) just to keep their department budgets liquid.

So before students and alumni get all up-in-arms about a new jpeg that represents the university, maybe they ought to think about the actual university, because from where I stand, the new logo is pretty faithful to what the University of Waterloo, like so many others, has become: a marketing gimick.

native pride 11:21

It's no secret that relations between Canada's aboriginal peoples and, well, everyone else are a little tense these days. Actually, come to think of it, they have been for a long time.

The earliest memory I have of a native person was seeing a dark-skinned man with long black hair and a studded leather jacket. To look at him, even though I was only five or six, I knew that that man was an Indian. Seeing him in a coffee shop somewhere in Alberta in the mid '80s filled me with enough fascination and fear that I still, to this day, remember the utter need to understand what I was seeing and the anxiety surrounding being seen by him. That's not to say that I had never met a native person before that or met many since who had an entirely different affect on me.

There aren't many aboriginal people in KW. Relatively speaking, of course. Not far from where I work there is an Aboriginal Resource Centre. About equal distance in the other direction is a Six Nations' flag hung in an apartment window that you can see from the sidewalk on King Street if you're walking north. Whenever I'm near I make a point to look for the flag, just to make sure it's still there. I think the flag has the same affect on me as the man in the leather jacket.

So, there is a native community here: at least, I've seen the signs of one. But what kind of community is it? Frankly, I don't know, but I'm going to look into it. What I do know is that Canadians at large really hate native people. I don't know how else to put it: Canadians, in their actions and their words, betray a real dislike for native persons and what they represent.

Now I don't want anyone think that a native person, or native people are living symbols. That's kind of the problem, actually. That's why the man in a leather jacket (who, honestly, may have just been a really tanned biker) exists in my memory and for years was what I thought Indians were like... all of them. Reducing a culture or an ethnic group (there are several aboriginal ethnic groups) to a symbol or a type is racism. Yup, I'm racist. There I said it. But I'm trying to get over it and I think acknowledging it is important. If you haven't yet, you should try it (and if you think you aren't, you're pretty naive).

People with aboriginal ancestry are just people: modern, troubled, each with their own destiny, just like anybody else. But just like everybody else, they're also different from everyone else. One thing that makes them different is the last 400 years of interaction with Europeans. Oh, by the way, that's most of us: I'm second generation Canadian of British descent (that's ethnicity), for example, and that makes my cultural heritage European. In those four centuries aboriginal Canadians adapted to a lot of changes.

It wasn't until about the last 150 that things got really tense because more and more Europeans (and, more recently, immigrants from elsewhere) began coming to Canada and settling in large numbers and using the land in a way it hadn't been used previously. Naturally the people who had been living here weren't huge fans (nobody likes change) and they either resisted, assimilated, or stayed away. Well, there's no staying away anymore and assimilation means giving up significant parts of your heritage (like if I told you that if you really wanted to be a Canadian you'd have to fork over your house, your language, your name, and say goodbye to your family forever), and resistence has never been terribly effective against the might of European firepower or the elegance of Canadian legislation.

So, I'm not terribly surprised that Native communities are taking stands on their reservation lands (or the adjascent disputed areas) in places like Caledonia or Akwesasne. What surprises me is the perpetual dragging-of-feet that is the response to these issues by virtually all levels of government. Equally surprising is the attitude of the public who sees these issues as an us-versus-them scenario. Well, surprising isn't really the word that best describes it. Disappointing maybe.

The issue is a deep one and not likely to be sorted out anytime soon. I think people realize this and that's what the frustration is all about. Nobody has the patience (well, we whities don't at any rate) to really figure this thing out. It's been 400 years in the making, if I told it would take 400 more would you want to be the one to deal with it? No. Of course not. We don't function on timelines that long. Some of us can't plan what to do later today. And there's no real need because the status quo is fine for the vast majority of us. But for people whose grandparents hunted for sustainance and lived with no master but themselves, living in a trailer on reserve off government handouts... well, that's murder on your self-esteem.

So, I think what we all need is a dose of Native Pride. It's kind of nervy to even ask, but maybe if we better understood the position of Canada's aboriginal people we'd be able to arrange something that was more mutually beneficial and adaptable to the changing world we live in. Of course, that would mean we'd have to actually listen our Native community members and not just gawk at them from across the restaurant.

they took our jobs 18:49

We are contained. Our lives, generally speaking, take place within things or between things which are often beyond our control. Despite living in a container, many of us experience a great deal of freedom to move around inside it and do what we will. We even invent new dimensions to move around in, like cyberspace or, more primally, our dreams and imaginations.

We aren't necessarily confined within our container, but getting out is almost inconceivable. Depends how you define the container, of course: there are several. There's the physical world: you need several billion dollars just to get out into orbit... and then what? There are our decrepit old bodies which, admittedly, were a lot more fun when they were nubile and young. Of course there's also the tangled web of our social structure, mitigated by the hundreds or thousands of relationships we have with other people. And then there are all the things to which we've become enslaved in the pursuit of getting away from the other prisons the define our lives.

So, now that you're thoroughly (dis)enfranchised, I wanted to ask if you've heard of EnCana. They're an oil and gas company that operates in the Dawson Creek (ha ha, not Dawson's Creek, you nerd) BC where they've been the subject of several terrorist attacks.

Let me back up a little, though. In October 2008 some of their pipelines got blown up by small charges which were deemed deliberate by the RCMP. Other than saying, "Yep, someone's doing this on purpose," the Mounties have squat. Despite the Integrated National Security enforcement team being tasked with this one, they're dubbing it sabotage, vandalism, or mischeif as defined under the criminal code instead of the big 'T'.

So, that's an interesting distinction: deliberately set explosions, not terrorism. Why? Because there's no sign of any intent to harm anybody. Any leaks have been easily controlled by EnCana, and all the "mischeif" took place in unihabited areas, though there was significant damage to property and infrastructure.

Yesterday, the Dawson Creek Daily News received a hand-written, two-page letter to the editor, alledgedly from the bomber, which makes demands and threatens further action, but after a well-deserved "summer vacation" for all parties involved.

The RCMP have taken the stand that the letter is blackmail against the communities in question, while CSIS is looking into the possible political motives in an effort to protect Canada's critical infrastructure.

I know what you're thinking (or at least what you should be) and no, when they say "critical infrastructure" they're not talking about our eco-systems... they mean oil & gas infrastructure. But the talking heads of national security policy never really come out and say they that is because then they'd have to admit that they don't really think of ecology as valuable or critical even though it's the only thing that makes life possible in this little container that just gets smaller and smaller every day.

So yes, of course blowing up pipelines is politically motivated. Everything is. You're grocery list is politically motivated, but you just don't think about it because the politics of the grapefruit from South Africa you bought don't enter into the decision. If you or I can get grapefruit out of season at $1.29/lb who cares, right?

Well, somebody in South Africa might. And to them, if you're supporting a system that perpetuates unfair wages, living conditions, and a heritage of racial oppression (for example), then you or I might be implicit in doing harm even if we just want some cheap, sour citrus in July.

The RCMP, CSIS, EnCana, the Government of Canada: these folks are all implicit in the successful operation of oil & gas mining in what was once pristine (or as near as it gets) wilderness in one of the last places where it exists in abundance. EnCana does it for profit. The government lets it happen for the employment and subsequent tax revenue. RCMP and CSIS do their best to keep the bombers at bay so the rest of us can carry on as usual. Their position is firmly rooted on the bottom line of a financial container in which the value of the natural doesn't figure because it doesn't fit on their spreadsheet.

The problem though is, as I mentioned, the container---economic, ecological, whatever---is getting smaller (well, actually there are just more of us in it).

So there's less and less to go around. Less oil & gas, for sure. Even though there's more oil being produced than ever before, we're consuming it at such a rate that the demand increases at a greater rate than the production. We've reached (Thomas Homer-Dixon will tell you this) the point of peak oil production which means oil prices will only get higher as demand goes up and supplies run lower and lower (and what's left gets more expensive to process).

It's big business, which means jobs jobs jobs!

Pity there's an inverse relationship between the amount of new oil production sites and unspoiled eco-systems in the world. Like I said, we live in a container and all that spent fuel goes somewhere, but it stays inside the container. And it's hazardous for your health, don't ya know. Of course you do. So do the oil folks. And the government. And the RCMP and CSIS. And yet, none of them are stopping it. In fact, they're very interested in keeping it going. IN FACT, they're VERY interested it doing even more of it.

But, there's at least one guy (or gal) out there who's taking a stand and hand-writing letters and setting off dynamite and stirring the pot and doing their best not to hurt anyone in the process (even though I can't say the same for EnCana, who wouldn't do anything illegal, no, but there's plenty harm you can do to people before anyone, even the RCMP, will call you a terrorist). This particular vigilante is someone who's breaking out of one of their containers probably because they recognize that a much bigger container, one they can't get out of, is getting crowded and kinda hazy.

behind the waterfall 14:56

Do you hear what I hear? No? I didn't think so. 16:33

I'd like to send out a challenge; something that requires only a few moments' contemplation for you Waterloovians and Kitchenerites, past and present, out there.

The task I'm about to set out has to do with soundscapes, but with a more listener-friendly approach. It has to do with how we think and feel about this city - how it affects us and how it lives in our memories. It's a difficult task, too, because there isn't likely to be much consensus out there about this task. I'm hoping at least to get an auditory handle on this town.

There are lots of ways to identify a city: architecture is usually a big one, because it lasts and encapsulates creative energy and occupies such a huge part of our visual imagination. Food, too, because we all eat, and because recipes are often passed down through families or ethnic groups and because it has all the improvisational gravitas of live performance. Culture, of course, is another important aspect: from language, theatre, festivals, and conventions (customs, not comic book... although that's culture too), and music.

Music is very much a part of my life. I make it, I listen to it, I think about it a lot. I walk around, like a jerk, with my earbuds in and bop along on my way to work, or the bookstore, or wherever (if you see me, feel free to stop me, but I'll only take out one earbud). The stereo-aural experience shapes the way I engage with my day. I'll hit 'next' on my iPod (set to random) as many times as I have to just to find a song that fits the moment. R. Murray Schafer, who hosted a number of soundwalks this spring at the rare conservation area as part of the Open Ears Festival, would probably hate the idea of moving through space while listening to pop music (or whatever) stuck in your ears, but it led me to wonder:

Does our city have a soundtrack?

Which brings me to the challenge. If you could pick song for Waterloo, what would it be? Why?

I'd like to compile a list for scrutiny and debate and maybe even the making of a mixed tape. It doesn't need to be music about Waterloo, or for Kitchener; just something that fits for whatever reason.

Leave your pick in a comment on this blog post and once there's a decent selection I'll post a top 100 from which we can select the 12 best (because the best albums have 12 tracks, don't they?).

I need your help with this project, too. Link to this blog post anywhere you think is appropriate, tell your friends and enemies, or just spread the word. Let's see what Waterloo sounds like in our collective head.

awake (in a strange place) 15:34

Kitchener and Waterloo are twin cities. Despite being historically separate municipal areas, there is no perceivable break between them. King Street (the only street I know of with an East, West, North, and South designation) runs through them, connecting them like water does the points along river.

Something similar is happening between Kitchener and Cambridge, but there is still a big-box limbo that disrupts the kind of flow which justifies the hyphenation of Kitchener-Waterloo. Or, as I like to call it, the Kaydub.

As the fountain outside Kitchener City Hall and my office springs to life at 3:42pm on this warm Thursday, I feel as though I'm stepping out of a dream, shaking from my boots the sparkling dust of that other place... the place that could be Waterloo.

Even though there is no clear deliniation between the cities there exists an indisputible difference. They are like different neighbourhoods in the same megapolis, tethered together, pulling one another towards a shared destiny. What is it though?

Waterloo boasts two world-class universities, a globally competitive (arguable dominant) communications company (you guessed it: RIM), think tanks (one of which keeps promising to bring Stephen Hawking to town), a slough of tech start-ups, and a terrific uptown core. Kitchener is endowed with a nationally praised college, extensions of the universities' campuses, an innovative civic planning and population density strategy, an awesome farmers' market, and, well, my office.

A big part of the difference is visible at street-level. I invite you (if you live nearby) to walk the cities and see if you can't pick it out.

I woke up in Kitchener this morning (a story for another time), and walked to work. What I noticed was how few people there were and how most of them were young women with nametags on lanyards. Kitchener has fewer places for people - lots of places of and for business, but few places you can go and be around people. On the surface, it's suffering from that Canadian condition of the commuter town during and urban decay phase. It's recovering still from the early to mid-90s, when urban shopping centres everywhere sprouted plywood boards and "for lease" signs.

Unless you know where to look, Kitchener doesn't offer much in terms of livability. It's there, I'm finding, in its alternative cafes and used bookstores, amid the construction of summer, but it is not easy to find.

And therein lies the problem: its hard to find life in Kitchener. There's plenty of it, but its like lichen: sturdy and low to the ground. In my opinion, the city needs a wayfinding strategy to go along with its redesigned downtown, to promote the life that's already there to wake up, stop dreaming about Waterloo, and walk around.

who's our city? 10:30

Now that I write about Waterloo and live here (I recently moved from Guelph - can you tell?), I find myself wondering about the identity of the city. I'm not sure if it's the same pursuit as trying to find a Canadian identity; I'm not trying to determine what a person from Waterloo is like based on where they live, rather I want to understand the city itself as a character.

How to approach this query is kind of tricky. Stats and demographies (as much as I adore them...) aren't going to do the trick, since what I'm after can't be expressed as a graph. No, I'm after the zeitgeist of the town: what makes it what it is? Vague, I know.

As I get to know the place a little more intimately - I take transit to work, walk to shop or play (frisbee in Waterloo Park after work, anyone?), and explore via velo (aka bicycle for the uninitiated) when the weather allows - I realise that the people and the cityscape have a symbiotic relationship. Here's what I mean:

it's not just that the people who live here make the city; the city makes them, too. It's difficult for someone who hasn't lived here long to internalise the geography because we won't necessarily have the language we'd need to think about, let alone describe, where something is in relation to anything else.

The fortunate thing about Waterloo, though, is that there is a section in Uptown with several large structures that serve as major guideposts. I'm thinking of places like the Perimetre Institute, CIGI (formerly the Seagram Museum), and the new civic square and Bell sculpture (yes, it's a bell). I'm not sure if these full-stops in the landscape grammar of Waterloo were planned or are just kismet, but they go a long way in establishing a large-scale syntax of place that assists in way-finding as well as forming a visual identity for the city.

There's more to it, of course. The revival of pedestrian culture in KW, a community whose emphasis on high-density population will have more significant affects on the psychology of its denizens than we might realize, presents us with an opportunity to build a city with a very unique character ineed. Think-tanks are great, but I've yet to see a real municipal strategy to develop Waterloo as a place with history and a plan for the future; and Kitchener to a lesser extent if that's possible.

As these twin cities reinvent themselves from the ashes of the industries that made them, will infrastructure spending go into more concrete features and branded green-space, or will the actual heritage of the area be allowed to come through into a "genuine" and organic metropolis?

Iran (along the avenue) 11:56

What a mess, right?

The flurry of internet indignation over the alleged corruption of democracy in that theocratic state was truly something to behold.

Hordes of tweeters were "Tehraning" (changing their twitter status to indicate they were in Tehran so that Iranian security officials would get confused and then... what, get confused and hand over political to the mobs in the street?) in an honest attempt to make things better for protesters.

There were calls to action by bloggers too, trying to get the word out and raise their voices on behalf of Iranians subjected to media blackouts.

And, of course, the tragic death of 26-year-old student Neda Agha-Soltan caught on video and posted to youtube within hours of the actual event sent a ghastly ripple through cyberspace.

For me, it was that moment - the moment I chose not to watch the final moments of a person with whom I would have likely identified if I had ever met - that the democratic impotency of the internet came fully into view.

Here's where you point out the irony that I'm saying this on blog. Good. Now let's move on.

Social networking, for all it's utility, is not action. It's not even a good alternative to action. It has become a surrogate to action that deceptively makes us feel like we're doing something by expressing ourselves and spreading awareness. It's not enough for people to wake up and recognize all the awful stuff that's going on right this second: we have to actually do something about it.

So, the internet was supposed to be this big deal for democratizing the world. Just like TV and radio before that. Did it work? I don't know. It probably did something, but it probably did a lot of things people weren't expecting. Along with mediatized democracy came homogeneity, which is at odds with our precious individualism. With the publishing ability of the internet, the rise of the blogger, citizen journalists, twitterers, etc., we face a democratic model in which all we ever do is vote.

Democracy is good. We need it. It works. But it isn't the endgame. After you talk, debate, disagree, vote, concede you have act. JL Austin tells us that words do things, that they actually perform an action; but there are limits to this. I would revise his thesis in light of information communication technology (which takes words out of a context of live performance and puts them into something entirely novel, or completely primal, depending on who you ask) and say that words make (this distinction will leave francophones a little frustrated, I expect).

Let's make a promise: do something democratic that doesn't involve a computer. Try to reimagine democracy as more than an attitude or a feeling or a series of keystrokes.

If you really want to help Iran tweeting and blogging and getty uppity in your living room (or cubicle) are good ways to start. But don't forget the follow-through...

...this is Q (sorry, but I couldn't resist).

Canada: the nationalitease 11:37

It's Canada Day. A day to celebrate nationality, recognize nationhood, or display your nationalism. Whatever you choose to do, it's like a theme day for Canada.

For years now, I've been trying through writing academic papers and taking trips into the woods and conscientious cultural consumption to get a real sense of what Canada really is. Here's what I know so far:

• Canada is a geographic region
• Canada is a political body
• Canada is the subject of much debate (although, not so much abroad)

And that about sums it up. It would be awesome if there were a more tangible thing to point to and say "that's Canada" or an idea or moment in history that exemplifies what this country is about or is trying to do; but there just isn't. Things here are so varied and contentious and messy that as soon as someone identifies something for its Canadianess we can see exactly how it doesn't apply to everyone who calls themselves Canadian.

Ethnicity, obviously, is a bone of contention in Canada. History, too, since we are so many peoples with different versions of it. Rituals - from spiritual to sport - are barely worth talking about since those of us have and recognize them don't share them with most other people: even hockey. We've got no common ground, except for the literal ground which, if we're honest about it, is stolen anyhow.

And yet, there's this persistence to try and find Canadian Identity. To suss it out and label it and nail it to the wall so we can say "look at how majestic it was." At any given time there are several government funded projects engaged in the business of recording and analysing our national identity according to arbitrary rules that have not a lot to do with the realities of Canadian history, policy, or place.

Between issues of regionalism, language, ancestry, and economics there's no way to conceive of a traditional, unifying Canadian identity. What I like about national identity in Canada is that we don't take it for granted. Sure it keeps us from making claims about this or that as truly Canadian, but at least it can make us think about how we decide such things. What I don't like about national identity in Canada is that we're so lazy that instead of doing the hard work of thinking about why we need it, we turn it into a brand by consensus.

So, for Canada Day, please think about what Canada means to you. And then, think about what Canada means for other Canadians. And then, think about what Canada means for the world. And if you do it right, they should all be very different things, and that's okay.