Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
And to my friends in Antigua, Florida, Barbados, Cayman and Calabria: I’m envious.
Countries that recognize Christmas
A Merry Buddhist Christmas in central Bangkok, 2019.
Boxing Day
Boxing Day is the day after Christmas. Its original purpose was to give boxes, presents, to the poor. Now it is a day of Boxing Day Sales. It originated in England and is celebrated in the old Dominions of the British Empire. In the United States they have never heard of it.
Christmas broadcast
On Christmas eve morning I broadcast to five CBC radio stations, a routine where the host from each station interviews me. They were: Kitchener-Waterloo, Thunder Bay, Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Victoria, in the that order. It was -16C here, but -27 in Yellowknife and -41 in a remote town in the Yukon, serviced by CBC Whitehorse. Here is a recording from Kitchener Waterloo. I was a bit sleepy, it was 6:10 am.
Link to CBC Kitchner-Waterloo interview
European Electricity Price per Megawatt Hour. Ouch.
One megawatt hour is equal to 1,000 kilowatt hour. (I had to Google all this, so if there any errors in math, mea culpa.) The average household in France for example uses 6.4 megawatt hours of electricity a year which would be about €2,400 a year
Poland’s electricity prices is half that of most other European countries. The reason: 75% of its electricity comes from coal-fired plants, about the same percentage of France’s nuclear powered electrical output.
Electricity costs in Canada
The chart above measures kilowatt hours so to get to a megawatt hour multiply by 1,000. So the cost of electricity in Poland is double of electricity in British Columbia, which would be the equivalent of €86 per mWh. Only the arctic regions of Nunavut and The Northwest Territories have European style prices. That drags the average Canadian price up to 17.9 cents per kWh, which is €123 per megawatt hour.
The cheapest electricity in Canada is Quebec which would be €50 per megawatt hour.
Electricity costs in the United States
The average electricity cost in the United States is 12.52 cents per kilowatt hour or $125 for a megawatt hour of electricity. That is equivalent to €110, a third of France.
However US prices swing widely from a high of 32.76 cents kWh in Hawaii — €288 per megawatt hour — to a low 9.37 cents in Louisiana — the equivalent of €83/mWh.
Electricity costs in US: click here
Who uses the most electricity?
Canada. Because the country is rich, electricity is cheap and the weather is cold. A lot of houses in Canada — including mine- are heated with electricity. France probably uses a lot of electrify because they have a steady, reliable production from nuclear energy.
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Guest Essay of the Week (Longer Essay Follows)
This is a piece by Alexander Hackett published in the Toronto Star last week. It will be a bit confusing for anyone outside Canada and maybe for some Canadians. There is a law in Quebec, Bill 21, that among other things forbids teachers from wearing religious symbols from crucifies to hijabs. Recently a teacher wearing a hijab was told she couldn't wear the hijab and teach. She was assigned to a non-teaching job. The issue revolves around Quebecers rejection of the Catholic Church.
There is an outcry in English Canada, even the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, wading in. Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, a former federal Liberal party leader, spoke out against it. Quebec politicians went nuts. Alexander, a Montreal writer who speaks both English and French, can take it from here.
On Bill 21, English and French Canada are stuck in separate echo chambers
The two solitudes need to engage respectfully to better understand each other's points of view
Alexander Hackett
Alexander Herzen was an exiled Russian intellectual and writer who roamed around Europe in the 1840s, living first in France before settling in London in 1852.
In his memoir "My Past and Thoughts", there are amusing passages about the differences between French and English culture, notable for nailing certain stereotypes:
"The Frenchman is a gregarious animal... constantly anticipating things, meddling in everything, educating everybody and giving instructions about everything," he writes. "The Englishman is a solitary creature... who does not meddle at all in other people's business. He has not the time: he has to get to his shop."
And on their different political systems:
"The world of self-government and decentralisation ... seems to the Frenchman so savage and incomprehensible that he will never understand England's political and civic life."
I re-read these descriptions with a sigh in the wake of the Fatemah Anvari affair, the teacher reassigned from her job for wearing a hijab in western Quebec.
Underpinning the kerfuffle is a broader debate about the role of government in society, highlighing the same tendencies Herzen observed 170 years ago: a view of collective social engagement versus the sacrosanct idea of individual freedom prevalent in the English-speaking world.
Quebec, of course, has inherited France's tendency to meddle and get up in everybody's business. For my money, it's a tendency that's intensifying as the province matures and becomes more bourgeois.
From micro-managed Covid protocols to what you wear on your head, the CAQ wants to leave its prints on everything. And in general, francophone Quebecers are more comfortable with a strong government presence than English-speaking Canadians. It's an important cultural difference.
Bill 21 is the wedge issue that no one asked for. Did we really need it? No. Was there political hay to be made by presenting it to Quebecers as an existential identity issue? Absolutely.
Objectively speaking, it has been a political homerun for François Legault and the CAQ.
It does double duty as a promotion of secularism, and as a buffer against Ottawa and English Canada's perceived influence on the province.
It's resulted in a classic Canadian spat, highlighting a clear split between franco and anglo world views. In the coming years this will be hammered home relentelssly by the likes of sweaty separatist bloviator Mathieu Bock-Côté, who refers to Canada as a "régime" and has replaced Éric Zemmour as France's favourite far-right, anti-immigration commentator.
Legault of course knew that if critiqued by out-of-province voices, average Quebecers would close ranks to support their own autonomy.
According to a recent Leger poll, support for the bill currently rides at 64% in Quebec, compared to 28% in other provinces.
But it's important to remember a few things: many Quebecers disagree with the law. Gross generalizations are to be avoided.
The original Bouchard-Taylor commission, set up to study the issue back in 2007, did not recommend banning religious symbols for teachers or healthcare workers. That was a Legault twist that many supporters of the bill still disagree with.
Whether we like it not, this is a law that was implemented after exhaustive debate. Quebecers have not taken it lightly, and it's been a long haul of collective psychodrama.
Existential insecurity has been central to the Quebec psyche since at least the 18th century. This can lead to excesses, and tiresome obsessions. But kneejerk criticism from other provinces can come across as shrill and, as many have pointed out, plays right in to the hands of nationalists.
Opponents would do well to engage calmly, and try to understand Quebec's aversion to organized religion for historical reasons.
Democracy is messy. Sometimes our governments pass laws with which we disagree, and we have to live with them. It happens.
But I don't see how interference from other provinces would be tolerated any more than if the tables were turned, and it was Quebec challenging provincial laws in Ontario or Alberta.
Longer Essay
Chapter 4 of the Harry Steele story.
Family Life
My father looked upon people who wanted to golf or sail with great disdain.
John Steele.
Catherine Steele said she would never marry a man who went to sea. By that, she probably meant someone like her illustrious father, Captain Arch Thornhill, the skipper of schooners and trawlers. Instead, she married a man who spent long stretches at sea, but aboard frigates, destroyers, and aircraft carriers.
The full wedding party. Maid of Honour: Miss Mary Williams; Bridesmaids: Miss Shirley Pope and Miss Shirley Parsons; Flower Girl: Sherril Trask; Best Man: Lieutenant Cyril Kirby; Ushers: Sub-Lieutenants Malcolm Drover and Thomas Cahill; Ring Bearer: Gary Maunder.
When Harry and Catherine returned to Canada after his stint in England, they started a family: Peter was born in September of 1957, Rob in June of 1961, and John in December of 1965. The Steele family moved around, but not as much as some military families. While Harry was at sea, the years from 1953 to 1965, the family home was in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.
When Harry was stationed in Washington and Gander, he could live a normal family life. One thing that wasdifferent was that Harry shared almost nothing of his work life with his family. While many fathers and husbands would come home with tales of what went on in the office, Harry kept that part of his life separate..
“In terms of the military stuff, no, he didn’t talk about that at home,” says John. Though once he was out of the navy, it was a different story. “In terms of business, yes, he would talk about that. He totally lived it, and it was always discussed within our home. As a young fellow, I remember Dad taking me to meetings and having business discussions with people and I’d just be sitting there taking it all in. Some people found it a bit awkward that this seven-, eight-, or ten-year-old kid was sitting there while they were discussing various business issues.”
“Home life, wherever we were, whether it was 6507 Devine Street or whether it was Gander or Dartmouth, it was very normal. We lived at the time in Forces’ PMQ’s, which is armed forces housing — [this housing was] not necessarily on the base but [it was] armed forces housing. I remember when we first lived in Gander, when Dad took up his posting, we lived at 25 Boyd Street, which was an armed forces house, and, as CO, you stayed in an armed forces house,” says Peter.
As well as a navy man, Harry was a family man. The Steeles lived at 6507 Devine Street in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Though he would travel a bit, in particular to a naval base in Tampa, Florida, Harry had a desk job, so he spent a lot of time with his wife Catherine and their young family.
“Wherever we lived life was very normal, very middle class. You raise your family and hopefully impart on them the skills and the education so that they can go out and make the most of what they were born with. The same philosophy as so many middle-class Canadians of that generation,” says Peter. It was so normal that he recalls that his father was an assistant coach on Peter’s Little League baseball team when they lived in Washington, D.C.
One of the highlights of navy life for the Steele family was Harry’s posting to the embassy in Washington. It was a time of civil unrest in the United States, and Harry wanted to make sure his children, in particular his oldest son, Peter, knew what was happening. In the spring of 1968, both the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. There were marches on Washington, and Harry Steele took his sons to see some of the drama that was unfolding.
“We lived in Washington and Dad was attached to the Canadian embassy. Black people had come from all over the United States under the direction and at the request of the Reverend Ralph Abernathy. It was called Resurrection City. They built shacks all around the White House and all down around Washington, D.C.,” says Peter.
The demonstrators, led by Pastor Ralph Abernathy occupied the mall in Washington for forty-two days.
“My father took me to that. He would always take my younger brothers and me down to things like that. He tried to impart to us that we’re part of a bigger world, and there’s a place in it for us, and that the more you are exposed to things, the more capable and able you are going to be.”
There were other highlights of living in Washington as the son of a diplomat.
“I remember being at the White House with my mother and father and my brothers when Trudeau was down there (visiting) Nixon. I remember being down there at the assignation of Martin Luther King Jr. and the National Guard cordoning off our neighbourhood,” says Peter. “I was playing Little League baseball at the time, and the riots were so crazy that one of the things that got looted were our team shirts.”
Peter’s younger brother Rob also enjoyed life in Washington. “That was such a glorious time in our lives. I remember when we lived at 36 Richards Drive in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. I was fourteen years old and my parents had two Volkswagens, a blue one and a white one, and I remember my mother telling my brother Pete and I (John wasn’t born then) that we were going to be moving to the United States and I was really excited about moving — why, I don’t know. Pete would have been seven or eight years old at the time, and I remember I drove down with my mother and Pete drove down with my father in the VW bug. We drove in those Beetles to McLean, Virginia, to a house on Divine Street that they were renting. I remember the neighbourhood. I was a four-year-old kid, and we lived there for four years, and I have very strong memories of those years.
“I remember my father — he would have been in his thirties at the time — going off to work in the mornings in his uniform, and we used to go camping, and it was just a fun time. There were a lot of kids in and around the neighbourhood. The Vietnam War was on at the time, and I remember brothers of friends of mine who were over at war in Vietnam and I remember thinking how scary that must have been even as a young kid. That’s where I started school as well.
As an adult, Rob has a strong connection to the United States. He has a house in Austin, Texas, the house once owned by the great rock singer Janis Joplin. Rob agrees that the time spent in Washington left him with a positive feeling about the United States.
Harry’s public persona is that of a tough businessman who never caves. One might think this stern exterior translated in a man who was a tyrant at home. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“With me, he wasn’t a disciplinarian at all. A lot of people are very surprised when I tell them that because the public image of him is one of being stern and a hard taskmaster,” says John. “But in terms of me, he wasn’t at all; it was my mother who did that with us, with me anyway. If you did something and you got busted for it, you’d rather deal with Dad on it because he might yell and bluster and stuff but he would always relent, but Mum would punish us.”
Even if Harry could be relatively easy at home, his business toughness did occasionally have an effect on the family. The strike at Easter Provincial Airways — more on this later — did take its toll. The family was living in Gander at the time, and the workers and their families were their neighbours. So, the boys, who were in school at the time, were forced to spend their days with the sons and daughters of the workers. John says it didn’t affect him. But Peter says he noticed it.
“There was a lot of collateral damage, and you asked if it affected me directly and I would say this: If you are of a family of means in a small town you are always conscious of a distinction between you and the rest of the community. The strike really accentuated that distinction. That is my personal takeaway,” says Peter.