Canada

Steven Wittens announced that he is going to work for Bryght in Vancouver, British Columbia. Boris Mann of Bryght also blogged on this in more detail.

Francis Pitia is a refugee from Sudan, fleeing the civil war before peace was established there. He spent time in a refugee camp in Uganda.He came to Kitchener, Ontario.Last week, he was swarmed by bunch of white young men, and beaten to the ground. What makes this appalling is that Pitia is disabled since childhood, having one leg non-functional because of polio. He has to use a crutch to walk. Those who beat him took the crutch from him and beat him with it.He had to get stitches to his cut lip, his ribs hurt and his eyes were still blood shot.

In a poll of 1,000 Americans, it was revealed that only 4% correctly identified Canada as the largest foreign oil supplier.

Most Americans think that most of their oil comes from the Middle East countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran), and also naively blame their own gasoline consumption as "funding terrorism".

The latter never made sense to me, for many reasons. Now it is proven to be double false, since their largest supplier is Canada and not Middle Eastern countries.

The Calgary Sun had an article by Licia Corbella, where her premise is that Multiculturalism threatens Canada.

She quotes one Dr. Mahfooz Kanwar of  Mount Royal College in Calgary, whom she describes as a "devout Muslim" and "Pakistani-born". He says: "Multiculturalism has been bad for unity in Canada. It ghettoizes people, makes them believe, wrongly, that isolating themselves and not adapting to their new society is OK". Kanwar justified alleged mistreatment in prison because "for accused terrorists, this should be expected". Kanwar also advocates that covering one's face should be illegal.

The Canadian Press is reporting on a study by a Readers' Digest survey. In this study, 35 cities around the world have undercover reporters test the population at large for how polite or courteous they are.Toronto came out #3 with 70% of people taking a moment to do the courteous thing. Only New York (80%) and Zurich (77%) are ahead of Toronto.  Elsewhere in Canada, Montreal ranked as #21. The lowest three were Kuala Lumpur, Bucharest, and Mumbai coming out last.The undercover tester for Toronto said that Torontonians "are the only people in the world that will apologize when somebody else bumps into them".

Here is an example that sticks out: the richest man in Canada, the 9th richest in the world, was known for being shy, benevolent and the atypical rich guy.

Ken Thomson, 2nd Baron of Fleet, died on June 12 in his office in Toronto, age 82. His fortune is estimated at $19.6 billion (US). The son of a rich man, he was an art collector (donated most of it to the Art Gallery), a philanthropist, and an overall nice guy.

He was with the Galt Reporter (later Cambridge Reporter), owned by his father Roy Thomson as part fo the newspaper empier he build.

One of the popular dishes in Egypt, as well as all over the eastern Mediterranean is stuffed vine leaves.The recipe is not a simple one, but it is basically rice mixed with tomato paste, parsley, minced meat that is cooked first. Separately, the vine leaves are blanched in boiling water. The mix is then stuffed in the leaves which are rolled so that the rice does not fall off. It is served with a youghurt dip that has crushed garlic and  cucumbers.Maple trees are all too common in Southern Ontario. The leaves looked very similar to the vine leaves. Since maple syrup is made from the sap of the tree, one can assume that the leaves are safe to eat too.

The recent arrests in the Greater Toronto Area have netted 17 accused person. Five of them are youth.

The Accused

The accused are a very diverse bunch. Two of them, troubled youth of Somali descent, were already in prison for pleading guilty for having guns when crossing the border from the USA. One of them told his mother that "they are changing my story around". One is a widower over 40. A recent graduate of health sciences and the son of a medical doctor. A really "calm and religious" good basketball shooter.

A few minutes from where I live, there is an interesting phenomenon, believed to the be the first of its kind in North America: a single building is used for both Reform Jews and United Church of Canada.

Of course, both are on the moderate/liberal side within Judaism and Christianity, and it would not have been considered if they were more conservative. 

Historically, this is not the first time in that two different religions shared a building, as I will detail in another article on the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria. 

Resources

• Cedars Temple Shalom.
• Westminster United Church.
• Background and history of the Cedars Worship Centre.
• Wikipedia article on Interfaith worship spaces mentioning the Cedars.
  

In an earlier article, I noted the diverse backgrounds of the local candidates for the federal elections.

Today, I will describe the process of the election here in Canada, as a personal experience, mainly for my non-Canadian readers.

The process started by filing the taxes for tax year 2004 in March 2005. One of the questions is whether one would want to be on the elector list. Canada Revenue Agency sends the name and address to Election Canada.