Neither functional nor fashionable

Crazy weather the past few days, but I guess it’s the new “normal” living out East. Recipe for crappy icy dangerous streets and sidewalks: take 30cm of snow one day at 10-below, bring to 12-above the next day, then glaze with freezing rain at 0-degrees the day after that. Mix well with gusts of 40km/h winds. Serves 10 855 New Brunswickers without power, and springs transport and police to battle stations. Also brings together two drunk drivers – literally, head-on. (Darwinism at its best – I guess they cancel each other out.)

Keeping off the roads and leaving the car safe at home is a good, insurance-saving thought… but catching the bus isn’t much fun either. The wet slushy weather highlights how unsuitable Fredericton Transit bus “shelters” are for actually providing shelter – completely open to the elements, just a 1m roof that’s not much help if the rain/snow is anything but coming straight down, and only two little flat planks for seats

Weak show, Fredericton – even sorrier than the mess of markings on the buses themselves. Extending the roof just a bit, and even just making just one side of the shelter solid would be so much more useful. Then at least you could hide behind it as oblivious cars unleash torrential waves in their wakes driving past and wash out the sidewalk and anyone unlucky to be standing on it.

Even in ever-rainy Vancouver a one-sided shelter like that works fine – plus they’ve got some style to it, adds to the streetscape and makes public transit less “ghetto”

Patterned glass, location marker, maps, a “City of Vancouver” brand, and a neat “floating” ergonomic hardwood bench that curves to fit your butt – very nice. And just in time for the season

Christmas bows! And who said TransLink was no fun? They’re hip, they’re cool, they’ve even got their own blog! They could even put mistletoe along the shelters too – that could make for some fun bus stop encounters.

Of course the ideal would be fully-enclosed – these new ones in Toronto were the cat’s meow in the breezy urban canyons last week

Like the good old 70s-futuristic streetcars, I love how the shelters are designed to be part of the City’s “signature” on the streetscape

People always say glass shelters become targets for vandalism, but other cities (eg Toronto) have these all over in ghetto neighbourhoods and they survive fine – I was waiting for buses in Scarborough uh… “East Toronto” in places I was basically fresh meat for the grinder, but sure enough, intact glass bus shelters. I would’ve taken a photo if I wasn’t so scared of getting jumped as a tourist.

Toronto actually seems like it’s getting its act together with transit identity since I was last there – still more ghetto than grace, more egregious than elegant, but at least the iconic subway font previously confined to the station walls

and endangered with station “renovations” and “improvements” is now breaching out to the surface signage too: where the signs used to just have the TTC logo and “Toronto Transit Commission” – what did that mean? This is the TTC HQ? Or some other office? – now it tells you what and where this actually is

Nice. Fredericton: see and do.

Ottawa to Québec City

Day 12: Ottawa to Québec City

Ottawa to Québec City via Montréal. I lived in Montréal for four years but never once drove in it, so I have no idea what to expect. All I remember is that, along with New York City, it’s the only place in North America that bans right turns on red lights, because drivers were killing pedestrians all the time. And, highway overpasses tend to collapse in the area nowadays, because of the growing heavy traffic overloading the 50s-60s era design capacity and loads. Plus the signs will be in French.

The first overpass…

Phew.

And ahead – a double-overpass. Double-danger…

Phew, phew.

Actually, like Calgary was it’s a pleasant surprise driving on the Montréal autoroutes. Maybe I just lucked out on the timing getting in. As long as you keep up your speed and can keep traffic moving in tight packed spaces, you’re fine. Other drivers seemed to recognise the out-of-province plates and give a little – little – chance to squeeze in and join the lane. Again, as long as you’re keeping it moving, c’est parfait!

Circulation fluide – smooth sailing, easy-peasy.

The welcome sign sets the mood – fêtons nos 400 ans, Happy Birthday Québec! The rain might’ve thinned the crowds but it couldn’t dampen the charm

Definitely the best way to take the place in is just to walk around, soak up all that UNESCO World Heritage Site ambience.

Where most cities put their dumpsters and throw their garbage, Québecers put sculptures and art – only at a leisurely walking speed do you pick up on these little details that make this place so special

Though if you look hard enough, there are bus shelters camouflaged amidst the fortifications – OC Transpo red definitely wouldn’t fly around here

but if you can manage the steep hills, bikes are best for the narrow streets – wish I had mine along

Not that buses can’t get around 16th-century carriage width streets though – Québec has its own fleet of minibuses just for that. You can see they’re not much longer than a regular minivan or Toyota Camry. How cute! And better still, they’re free! And even better, they’re eco-friendly and electric-powered!

But if you have to have a car, I think these European streets are where my Rabbit feels at home

And of course, checking in at the Delta Québec – throwing hotel standards to the wind, distinct society that it is: no bedside table lamps at all!

I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Those wall-mount lamps are just off the wall, I’m totally thrown off!

Ottawa

Well, I didn’t make it out to the hospital. It’s ok – I still have pictures from earlier in the year

and knowing how hospitals change with time (ie get overcrowded and dirty and worse), it’s probably best to remember it as the squeaky-clean contagion-preventing newest-in-the-country Critical Care ward it was when I was rotating through two months ago. My ProxCard probably wouldn’t let me in anymore anyway. And come to think of it, since I always bussed it to work, I don’t even know how to get there by car either. It really was quite a sight to behold though, if you’re used to working in hospitals in under-funded health systems. (Yes, Alberta hospitals still rule the roost.)

Glass sliding doors and anterooms at every bed – you can doctor and nurse without passing contagious diseases from patient to patient now! And computers at every station mean you can actually follow-up on all those tests you order by rote. (Yep, there’s that Saskatchewan landscape on the desktop – maybe that’s part of why being on the ward always felt like home…)

Every ward bed has natural light – it’s been proven to help cut down on Critical Care delirium, when patients have natural light to keep their day-night cycles normal; older wards with no windows always led to prolonged admissions just because of that. Of course, making every bed face the outside just to have a window would mean obscenely-long hallways – not good when you’ve got unstable patients rolling in from the OR or Emerg – so there’s a skylighted “alley” terrace to let light into the “inner” ward

Just step down the hallway and you’ll see how quickly hospitals show their age – this section is about as old as me

It’s broken up into “modules” – blocks within the hospital megastructure, divided by a grid of hallways. Depending on which way you enter and which way you turn, the blocks may or may not come to you in any particular logical order, so they tried to make coloured trails to help you figure out where to go – not exactly the most elegant system, and not so helpful if you’re colour blind either

One reason to have gone back though – I used to pass by this door all the time

“Clinical Decision Unit”. I have no idea what that is, and I was meaning to take a peek beyond that door but never got around to it. I’m picturing some sort of inner sanctum – a Fortress of Solitude amidst the chaos of the Emergency Room, where staff got away from the din and mess, conferred with their colleagues over a dignified cup of coffee, comfortably reclined in leather club seats, a library of medical reference tomes at their fingertips, with busts of famed doctors physic presiding over the ceremony. Dilemmas would be discussed and options hashed out – admit/transfer/turf, medicate/operate/show-the-gate, live/die, etc – and staff, re-armed and re-moralised thus, would exit thence again into the fray, Clinical Decision in hand. And all is well in the world.

Whatever it is, I know that none of the other hospitals I work at have “Clinical Decision Unit”s… I guess it’s just laissez-faire medicine outside of Ottawa General; the rest of us don’t make decisions at all, we just hem-and-haw and let things happen.

Could’ve also gone and checked to see if they ever update this sign

I did, however, make it out to Westboro – if I ever have the chance to live in Ottawa, this would be my ‘hood

I always loved the pattern on the MEC store – it’s just corrugated aluminium sheets, the same thing you use for roofs on shacks and outhouses, but it’s such a neat and clean and simple solution to an otherwise blank wall

Though if you have the skill, resources, and some worthy subject matter, a proper mural can’t be beat – I can’t believe I never noticed this Ottawa Fire Department one before, I must’ve passed it a hundred times. Then again, I’ve never had to enter a parking lot in Ottawa ’til this visit

You really do miss out on so much when you have to drive around – at least, in a city where walking, biking or bussing is a feasible option, and you really don’t need a car to do anything or get anywhere. Eg, driving down Wellington St you end up in tunnel vision, and you’d have no idea the nation’s centre of government and democracy is just a few metres to your left

It really didn’t feel right at all, so I parked the car back at the hotel and got a bus day pass instead. Back on the Big Red Limousine, and the Big Red bus shelters to match – not the prettiest, or the easiest to keep clean, but they’re unmistakable OC Transpo

A nod to official bilingualism – all OC Transpo signs have to appear in both English and French. I’m just not sure which one is which is which here: “Lebreton” vs “LeBreton”. There’s also a third station sign there, to show this is the station for the War Museum.

I just missed the opening for the Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race exhibit last time I was here, but I definitely wasn’t going to miss it this time. It’s about the role of doctors and medicine in Nazi Germany and supporting racial policy: starting with the measurement and recording of things like head size and skin shades and eye colour (to first classify the races), then to marriage and child-bearing restriction (to prevent mixing and preserve purity), then to forced sterilisation (to stop the passing on of unfit traits), and finally euthanasia and outright murder (to remove inferior races entirely).

It’s a touring exhibit from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, so under copyright they don’t let you take pictures in the gallery. On the one hand, that kind of goes against the social interest in learning about such history, and passing on the message to others; but then again, it’s set up not by a regular museum, but a memorial museum, so there’s an extra dimension of ceremony and dignity in visiting the exhibit. Plus you’re struck by the gravity of the displays and objects, you’d probably have a problem taking a photo anyway.

Horror – you feel it when you approach the artifacts: a set of calipers, the measuring notches counting out a patient’s race, and thence life or death; a genetics manual, illustrating the flowchart of the permitted and forbidden lineages; an escape-proof asylum door, chipped from the inside with scratch marks and fist-sized dents; a beige, steel crib, used to hold babies for gassing; surgical instruments for medical experimentation; an order on Adolf Hitler’s personal letterhead to proceed with the programme.

All layed out in order from the start to finish – once you get over the horror of it, you realise: there’s really a logic to it all, method to the madness. If you’ve come in with a science or medical background, it really, chillingly, cruelly, makes sense. One leads to the next; one cannot happen without that before it. It’s argued that people didn’t see things coming, that it was impossible to know how far things out would go. But when you see it in hindsight, it’s hard to believe anyone – especially physicians and medical staff – couldn’t see the progression of things and where they were going.

And – I guess this is my trying to make a positive spin – you see there are so many places that people in medicine could’ve organised themselves, stopped the programme and prevented it all. Which is why it’s so important for people, especially people who claim they see “the big picture”, to get involved in things like research and government programmes and the military, especially when they disagree with it. Sometimes people on campus protest against government and the military recruiting at universities for people into research, which makes no sense at all; programmes you disagree with aren’t going to just shut down because you “boycott” and keep away from them. You need to be in the system to do anything about what’s going on. Silly. [rant off]

Being a travelling exhibit, it’s Canadianised with official French translations, and references to local history and politicians and policy on top of the original American-written content. I think this is actually the most important part of the gallery: it’s easy to blame everything on the Nazis and Hitler, but these same ideas grow close to home too. There’s references to sterilisation programmes in various Canadian provinces in the early 1900s, plus Saskatchewan Premier and founder of Medicare (and official Greatest Canadian) Tommy Douglas‘ master’s thesis, “The Problems of the Subnormal Family” promoting sterilisation for the mentally and physically handicapped – coming out of a province with agricultural roots, the concept of separating healthy stock from the weak, and eliminating cross-fertilising isn’t unreasonable. You realise how easily and how quickly a twist of logic, and a willing people, can make the leap from something seemingly benign to something so destructive – which is why remembering this can happen here, too, is so important.

I know that doesn’t do the exhibit justice – it’s running until 11 Nov, so definitely go and see it.

There’s also a related exhibit at the National Gallery: The 1930s: The Making of “The New Man”. I actually did make it out to the opening of this one a few weeks ago when I was here. I’m even less qualified to say anything about art than Deadly Medicine, but luckily they had this French guy, a curator from the Louvre, come in and give the tour

Both Deadly Medicine and 1930 open with the same piece: a glass anatomical structure of a man, illustrating the various vessels and networks making up the body. The logical, technical advanced through the decade crossed over into both eugenics theory and art; the “Fascism” section of the exhibit shows how one was used to idealise and support the other, and vice-versa. The obvious pick: Leni Riefenstahl’s classic, genre-defining propaganda film, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will)

Another Hitler touch, this actually hung in one of his personal residences in Munich: Reich Chamber for Visual Arts president (and Reich commissioner against degenerate art) Adolf Ziegler’s Die vier Elemente (The Four Elements)

The Louvre curator explained Ziegler’s intent (though this quote is from the Wikipedia article since I didn’t take notes)

His static, pseudo-classical nudes depicted ideal Aryan figures. In an interview with American playwright Barrie Stavis, Ziegler explained that a painting of a beautiful nude German woman encourages the ideal of a perfect body and gives German men the incentive to have many German children.

The real art connoisseurs in the crowd (ie, everyone except Philistine me) took notes and hung on his every word – pronounced in proper, classy France French, of course.

Before I left Ottawa I wanted to get a picture in front of the National Defence Headquarters sign. Being the national capital Ottawa’s the only place where government building signs don’t say “Federal Building” or “Revenue Building” – here, the structures aren’t mere branches or processing centres. No, here, the edifice is the ministry, the be-all and end-all, where respective departmental bucks stop. “Justice”, “Revenue”, and of course, “National Defence”

Our Pentagon isn’t much to look at, just your average concrete office building, but it’s right Downtown, on a nice setting by the Rideau Canal and Confederation Park

and it’s got easy access to transit – it shares an OC Transpo station with the Rideau Centre mall right across the street

Inside, it looks like the 60s-70s prefab concrete you see on the outside lined with terra-cotta flooring to accentuate the heel-clicking

with an array of medals and awards to inspire the staff who work here (and so you can decode each others ribbons too)

I don’t know if they award this one any more: “For Efficient Service”

They have a well-stocked library, with military magazines and defence reviews from around the world

plus some neat historical finds

It’s declassified now, so I can show you without having to kill you!

I tried to find an equivalent uniform recognition manual for the Taliban, but I think they’re still working on it.

Winnipeg to Thunder Bay

Day 7: Winnipeg to Thunder Bay

Welcome to Ontario. This is where the drive is supposed to get long (hence the short segment yesterday): it’s the only province you can’t drive across within a single day!

In case you missed the first sign, there’s another beyond

And just beyond that, Kenora

And just like the provincial signs, every town in Ontario has two at the city limit. There’s the usual local boosterish sign, similar to the ones across BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba so far (Kenora: sail-shaped, “The Famous Lake of the Woods”; not to be confused with the “infamous” Lake of the Woods. Kenora’s is of regular non-sinister fame). But beyond that, there’s also a uniform blue “KENORA POPULATION 16 500″ – standard issue from the provincial Ministry of Transport, in the old Series E face.

You start to feel the pull of the Centre of the Universe (ie Toronto) when you cross from Manitoba to Ontario. Not so much because you’re entering Ontario, but that you’re entering what’s called “Northern Ontario”. You’re actually further south than Saskatchewan and Manitoba in “Northern Ontario”, and there’s actually more people here than both, but to everyone the “Northern” tag is more than just geography: you are in the periphery, remote from the centre, far from civilisation and progress and development, of which Toronto, of course, is the definition.

Back in med school any placements out here would be called “rural”: even in a community of 16 500, that’s still country bumpkin to Torontoner eyes. Which meant you got full funding for transport, and free accommodations too. (Sure, most places were just hospital rooms set aside for visiting staff, but I lucked out at a full-on bed-and-breakfast – how I managed to still show up to the hospital on time every morning, and resisting the urge to linger over a daily full English breakfast, I don’t know.) You also got an allowance for taxis, since, by definition, “rural” places shouldn’t have anything as advanced as a public transport system.

So you can imagine my surprise when I passed this on the way

Whoa – public transit here in the boonies, impressive. Wait a minute – white tops, gray bottom, bike rack, waving union jack by the rear tire… that’s a BC Transit bus!

“Kamloops Transit System”, with the busonline.ca and 376 1216 telephone number. Kenora to Kamloops – now that’s one long bus ride! (I figure it must’ve been making its way west from the Nova Bus factory in Québec. I guess that’s how they break new buses in, on these cross-country delivery runs.)

The varying scenery and occasional construction signal break up the undivided highway (and the heightened state of danger of oncoming traffic at 120Km/h passing within 1m)

Just before bends and along straightaways you get a broken line that lets you pass – this is where that 2.5L 150hp 170ftlb would come in handy

but since I’ve hardly driven I’m still usually wait for a proper passing lane to get around – plus, drafting as long as you can saves energy too

Mum and Dad and I did the same drive 10 years ago on the way to Montréal, and it seemed more of an ordeal back then. Not because of the company (of course!), or because the Rabbit’s any better a car (we had an Acura EL, which was new and pretty good back then), but I think there were just way more RVs and campers and such back then that clogged the highway up. There was an article in the Globe just last week, “The End of the Road” – when a fill-up is $1 200 (from half that a decade ago), that’ll make a difference, for sure.

So in what feels like no time I’m pulling into Thunder Bay

first glancing look at the Sleeping Giant – it looks like a giant lying on his back, complete with legs, torso, Adam’s Apple and head (though not so much from this angle)

and checked in at the Best Western – half the price of the Delta Winnipeg, and not quite as fancy sheets and pillows, or even a lobby to speak of, but at least the shampoo’s now in bottles instead of tear packs, and there’s still the requisite overkill double nightstand lamps too

No restaurant at the hotel for supper, but across the parking lot there’s a fruit stand

and a ice cream store – not a sissy soft-serve creamery, here in Thunder Bay it’s a bad-ass biker ice cream stand

and of course, a Chinese-Canadian comfort food spot

This combo’s got everything – the Cantonese-style chow mein, fried wontons, and of course, chicken balls! Gotta love that standard diner “Chinese Zodiac” placemat too.

Regina to Winnipeg

Day 6: Regina to Winnipeg

Just a short drive today – 6h to Winnipeg. It’s only the 3rd time I’ve been; for some reason, the family was more likely to drive the 8h west to Calgary (over what was undivided highway back then, no less) than the 6h east to Winnipeg (which was mostly divided at least since the 80s) whenever we needed a big city fix (eg Asian groceries). I guess since we lived in Calgary for a while (my parents’ first home after immigrating) it still has some feeling of “home”; then again, Winnipeg has more Filipinos than anywhere else in Canada (including the first Filipino to be Member of Parliament) so it should’ve had at least a little draw, I’d've thought.

Even with a short drive, I’m not taking any chances: still going in double-barrelled with the Grande Veronas

Between the cupholders there’s a third circular space cut out: apparently it’s sized for one of those Red Bull energy drink cans! I’ll have to try it out sometime. JP swore by the stuff on a jet-lagged drive to Kelowna, so I thought about it on the way out, but I just couldn’t bring myself to. It’s like there’s a line you cross when you go from regular coffee, to something hard core like Red Bull. I don’t think I can do that. Partly out of fear of that post-taurine crash (is it from the taurine?), and I guess it’s the same way how people who’ve gotten through med school without coffee look at me, withdrawing after my 3rd cup of the day – at lunch. If I went on to Red Bull, that would be admitting coffee really is a gateway drug – and of course I won’t let that happen.

Along the way there’s more town gateway signs, some with taglines. Indian Head – “A Progressive Prairie Town”

Grenfell – after the Wheat Pool closures and re-management, the only grain elevator left in town is the one on the sign

Broadview – “A neat and blooming community”

Portage la Prairie – “Proud of Our Past… Building Our Future”. Bonus line – “Visit our island in the city!”

I think I lucked on the weather, and caught up to the tail end of a storm receding away from me – first, the rainbow ahead over the highway

and by the time I got into my hotel room, the edge had just passed the Downtown core, leaving the streets only slightly damp and the clouds filtering a brilliant Prairie sunset

Manitoba and Saskatchewan are about even in size (a million each), but whereas Saskatchewan splits its political, educational and business centres between two cities of 200 thousand, Winnipeg centralises it all in a metropolis of 650 thousand. It once was as big as Chicago as a transport hub for the western US and Canada; now, not so much. But it’s still got bright lights

and a healthy mix of new and old

and – of course – public transit amenities

and that essential part of the big city urban fabric: cops walking – yes, walking – a Downtown beat

The Delta in Winnipeg didn’t have the personalised welcome greeting card and in-room fireplace that the Banff one had, but it’s still pretty nice, and there’s two super-bright bedside lamps to light up the space. I think only in hotels do people ever have two bedside lamps – I can’t say for sure, since I’ve haven’t really been in too many other people’s bedrooms, but two is kind of overkill, no? Even if you’ve got a massive king-size (or bigger; what do you call bigger than king? Emperor maybe?) bed.

The room service menu looked good and reasonably-priced, but it was closed by the time I was ready for supper – shame, it’s the first time I ever thought of ordering. Across the street there’s a pasta place that looks much too clubby and pretentious to actually eat in, but for takeaway it’s delish: a fettucini (or is it linguini?) with a Thai peanut sauce. A very coarse peanut sauce (look at those peanuts! They’re pretty much whole) which made it more filling than the usual piddling sauces you get sometimes.

I really wish I remembered the names of the places I eat at, other than McDonald’s… There’s some yummy places along the way, and it’s nice to give credit where credit’s due.

Vancouver to Banff

Day 2: Vancouver to Banff

There’s three different flavours to the Vancouver-Banff drive, you can take your pick depending on how much of a hurry you are.

The original Trans-Canada route takes you along undivided mountain highways, through tunnels blasted through sheer BC Interior and Rocky Mountain rock, and is probably the most scenic of the three. Though it’s single-lane each way, I imagine it’s actually the most stress-free, since most people nowadays (esp truckers and loggers) would take the faster routes. But I’m not sure, because I’ve never driven it.

There’s the route through the Okanagan Valley, winding along Lake Okanagan (home of the beast Ogopogo – sort of like the Loch Ness Monster’s cousin) and through picture-postcard perfect City of Kelowna. It’s slightly faster than the T-Can, with proper divided highway on the Okanagan Connector, but still a bit of a detour to get through the valley vineyards. Us Rural Programme residents had the second half of our academic week there, it’s really a gorgeous place – maybe a bit crowded with all the oil-rich Albertans next door building and buying condo getaways, but still pretty pretty.

And there’s the express route – the Coquihalla toll highway. It was blasted through the BC interior sometime in the ’70s-80s – unlike the railroad a hundred years before, no Chinese people were harmed or killed in the making of this transport route. For $10 you shave off a few hours from the Interior passage, and you still get some decent scenery along the way. And even if you didn’t, there’s still plenty on the Alberta side to make the drive worth it

Which gets you to Banff. When I was last here last autumn it was in the middle of some renovations (timed for their slow season, of course)

But nine months later – just like expecting a kid – congratulations, it’s a squeaky-clean pseudo-frontier mountain town!

There’s banners

and new traffic lights – all-vertical, with no horizontal arms to mar the mountain sightlines. Why can’t all traffic lights be like this? They’re just as clear to car traffic, but make the street feel so much less imposing and more pedestrian-friendly

as do new pedestrian crossing signs – cute little “stop” signs to remind pedestrians and bikes to stop and look both ways

and vertical reflectors and proper triangular warning signs to mark the crosswalk (kind of Euro-looking – usually in Canada they’re just the white rectangular panels)

There’s new rubbish and recycling bins – bear-proof, of course

and sidewalk markers

and butter-smooth streets make for easy skateboarding

And all this for the bargain-basement price of (drum roll)… $22,8 million. Hopefully not too much of a tax hike for local Banffers. It’s nice when governments can team up and get something done together – “refreshing” even, as they say

You forget sometimes this is really a working town, and not just a caricature of one. But behind the mountain-y alpine dress-up, it’s still got all the essentials of life: a fire hall

a high school (senior proms at the Banff Springs Hotel – though high school geek I was, if I went there even I would go just to say my prom was at the Banff Springs Hotel. I might’ve even asked someone out!)

the fanciest Safeway grocery I’ve ever seen

and – of course – a public transit system. It used to look like

but now it’s all spiffy in its new branding: “Roam”, with wrap-around nature prints the new livery – no garish racing stripes or dull horizontal bands here. Or advertising, for that matter

Stops are all numbered

with information panels showing everything you need to know: route maps, timings for that stop, and fares. Plus being a map, it’s useful even if you’re just walking around looking for where to go. It’s also a good example of infrastructure being itself a promotional piece – even if a bus isn’t in sight, having signs and stops around keeps transit in mind. “When in Banff, Roam”

Since every hotel in Banff is going to be crazy expensive anyway, might as well splurge… well, Banff Springs at $395/night is still much too posh and decadent for me, but the Delta Royal Canadian Lodge at $225 is a bit more comfy and less over-the-top

They even leave a personalised, signed “Welcome” card on your bed, just to remind you whom to call if you need anything (though it was just signed, “Management”)

and include some ibuprofen with the usual bathroom amenities – in case you city slickers get overzealous with the hiking and mountaineering

Better get to bed early, squeeze in one last hike first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully won’t need that Motrin too badly…

Details, details

House-hunting in Fredericton – random things noticed whilst letting graduation and moving across the country and finding my first “real” place and joining the “real” world sink in:

It’s not called “coffee cream” or “half-and-half” here, but “cereal cream”. (If they really use real cream with cereal every breakfast, I wonder what their child obesity rates must be…)

City trails have random snowbanks along the way – in the middle of sunny, 30-degree July!

Which is great to cool down passing tourists (like me)

and passing wildlife (like this guy).

Having a town in Thailand as your sister city means you get neat Asian-style sun shelters. (I wonder what they got from Fredericton?)

There’s historic buildings from almost every architectural period since European colonisation

but also lots of high-tech too: free Internet all over Downtown!

Like most good Downtowns, there’s great window shopping

and patios

and live music

but stuff you won’t find anywhere else: croquet!

and big band concerts!

and if you happen to be around, you get to inspect the Guard!

Ever wonder where they keep the flags after they take them down?

You just stuff it down your tunic… “Does this flag make me look fat?”

Police cars look like proper police cars – no cheesy racing stripes, and no need for “POLICE” in 2-foot-high letters on the doors (cough, cough), it’s obvious what they are

though buses are a bit harder to figure out – no actual marked bus stops or shelters or stations with transit logos or branding, just poles with numbers on them

but if you stick around long enough (every hour?) there they are

Still not much in the way of branding – take your pick of “Fredericton Transit” in a serifed font (is that Souvenir? And is it even laid on straight?)

Or sans-serif, mIxEd cApS – now that’s l33t

Or if you can’t decide – both!

(Yes, they switched it up mid-word – that is a Souvenir “T” and a sans-serif “RANSiT” – guess they really couldn’t decide!)

I like picking up on random details in a new town like this. It means I can avoid facing the reality of leaving academia and entering “real life” and “real responsibility” just a little while longer.

Only on the bus

Seen on my daily bus commute – a public service announcement:

Brittany M– has CLAP! BEWARE.

Well, the clap (ie, gonorrhoea; “clap” from the French clapier, or brothel – where back in the day one would tend to get the “clap” in the first place) is a reportable disease to Public Health, like chlamydia and HIV/Aids and most other sexually-transmitted infections. Anyone and everyone who could’ve given the clap to or gotten it from the unlucky subject clapper has to get tested and treated, and same with each of those contacts’ contacts, and so on – it’s really no fun at all. And believe me, I speak from experience. (As a physician, of course. And it wasn’t the clap but TB, but same idea.)

This one case I was following – I was only at it for a week, and plotting out the cases I was imagining those documentary maps of World War II battles, with the sweeping red Axis curtain swallowing up all of Europe. First the jail, then a halfway house, then one family to the next, then the school… Eventually every neighbourhood in town has a case to trace back to the index patient, and everyone knows at least one or four people caught in my dragnet. You end up thinking it’s probably easier just to check everyone – which probably wouldn’t be too big a deal for TB, just a skin test and a spit sample. But probably not so easy for gonorrhoea, I imagine – it’s a bit more “intimate” of a test.

Anyway, maybe Ottawa Public Health will have an easier time now that everyone on the 85 St Laurent bus knows to watch out for Brittany M–.

Also on the bus:

does a^2 + b^2 = c^2?

It was actually kind of heartening to see a good-old notebook doodle. I noticed it at my feet after dropping my hospital ID on the bus floor whilst digging around for my pager that was LOUDLY announcing a code blue I couldn’t do anything about, being both not on-call, and still on the bus on the way to work. Maybe half of the passengers are nurses or med students or residents on the way to the hospital too, so we all share a knowing glance. (I’ve only once ever seen a staff doc take a bus, my Family Medicine preceptor in Toronto – I guess if a physician is trying to be environmentally-conscious, they walk or bike instead.) “Hope you’re not the closest doc”; “maybe it’s faster to get off and run from here”.

Anyway, I assume the doodle’s from a high school class, though I guess it could also come from a university course too (the 85 does stop at Campus station, after all). Heartening to see, partly because of the nostalgia value – it’s my 10th anniversary of high school grad this year, apparently there’s a reunion that no one I know is going to next month – especially in a moment where the inconsequential world of high school algebra would be more comfortable than knowing there’s a code I’m totally helpless to get to.

And heartening also, to find that kids today still know how to doodle in school at all. I guess I feared by now pencil and paper had gone the way of PowerPoints and laptops in classrooms; and notebook doodles and hand-written and -passed notes replaced by ASCII art and instant messaging. What would teachers do now? Have their own laptops “intercepting” IMs, so s/he can read them in front of the class? Or better yet, some programme that reads them out loud automatically? And how else will people objectively measure how boring a lecture is, other than the lopsided doodle vs notes ratio on the page at the end of the hour?

(Edit: as I write this at the university, outside a lecture hall running a night course – I guess people could write their blogs in class, that would be one way to measure it.)

I remember AH and I joking that for our high school Art Week, we should just frame our notebook doodles and caricatures – random overdrawn arrows and letters and boxes; random cartoon characters calling out wistfully for German physicist Otto Frisch (Mr S was talking about him in class); random nonsensical atomic structures – and call it “art”. Who knows, if technology does end up taking over everything and no one knows how to write or draw or doodle anymore, there’ll be a place in a museum for all that marginalia.

Going my way?

Looks like Regina’s finally getting around to fixing the public transit system – or at least, “reviewing” it, whatever that will mean. About time – I remember trips to and from high school taking at least 1h15 each way. For a trip that would be a mere 10-15min by car, if you were lucky (and old) enough to have one (I wasn’t). And that’s only if the transit gods were nice and gave a fast (1) bus to Downtown from the south end and a slow (19) bus that got Downtown just late enough to make the transfer. More often than not, it was a two-hour long ordeal of winding loops in middle of nowhere isolated suburbs called “Gardiner Heights” (no actual heights) or “Woodland Grove” (no actual woodland or groves) Mum and Dad (and most Reginans) think make for great places to raise kids and teens.

It’s actually a bit of a misnomer, “public transit system” in Regina. It’s not really “public”, only a tiny minority of car-centric Reginans actually use it. (Guess what top billing the U of R gets in national university surveys – not scholarships, not faculty awards, not the library, not research, but… student car ownership. Woo hoo.) Not really “transit”, because on the loopy dizzying routes, you’re more likely heading away from where you actually want to go for most of the ride. And not really a “system”, in that any trips you do make, seem more according to the random whim of said loopy dizzy routes and your luck in making a quick connection Downtown (by law, you have to go Downtown… ugh) rather than a simple, unified way to get from point A to B around town.

Last year they tried to kick start some fresh interest and ridership to public transit. By making it faster or more frequent? Nope – by putting on some stickers and make a bus look like a cafe. Huh?

So they’re bringing in some new blood from Timmins, of all places. Not exactly the first place you’d think of finding a new head of Transit to revamp the system into something more useful: Timmins is less than a quarter Regina’s size (45 000 vs Regina’s 200 000), has a fleet of only 25 buses (vs Regina’s 100 or so) and route frequencies no more frequent than 30min. But they did get a 43% increase in ridership between 2001-05 (twice the national overall increase over the same time), without any city population growth, and pulling that off in Canada’s largest, most spread-out city (~3 000 sq km, vs Regina’s 115) must mean there’s at least a few good ideas that’ll come with the new hire.

Right now, taking the bus is, as fellow veterans would agree, “just not a practical thing to do if you can avoid it”. I’ve yet to meet anyone who actually says it’s anything less than abysmal. Not that it’s hopeless – I always thought revamping the routes from the current spaghetti dizzying mess of long, winding routes

to something more streamlined would be useful. Think like a driver: if you had to go somewhere, what roads would you take? The main ones, of course. Would you wind around the suburbs along the way? Yeah, because Regina suburban design is so creative and worth the detour… right. Would you stop Downtown? Of course not – not if you weren’t actually going there. Luckily Regina’s gridded roads actually lend well to a big-city style (ie, “useful”) system, like, well, most everyone else: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton… It could look like

Simple, straight routes. Need a bus? Just walk over to any major street. Need to transfer? Get off at the next major intersection. Need to cross town, but don’t need to go Downtown? Then don’t. Shorter routes mean buses run faster, and can turn back more often – quicker rides and more frequency without buying more buses or hiring more drivers. No more buses on residential side streets – no more people complaining about noise and traffic on their back roads. No more buses on narrow Downtown streets – more space for wider sidewalks, planned two-way traffic and Reginans’ endless appetite for parking. Maybe more transfers, but every intersection becomes like a “neighbourhood station” – a chance to build a community focus, concentrate business and condos, bike racks, etc. And maybe more walking – but it’s good for you.

Regina Transit – grid system, please.