And that's the way it is

There will never be another Walter Cronkite, and that says as much about our era as it does about his.

There will be no commemorative issue of People Magazine, no cover story in Rolling Stone, no week of endless speculation by pundits on news channels about his cause of death. And that is how he would have wanted it.

Mr. Cronkite died Friday at the age of 92, after an unparalleled career in journalism.

It is hard to remember in this age of Twitter and internet and 1000 channels of round-the-clock news yammering for our attention, that once, not so long ago, if you wanted to know what happened in the world today, you had to sit down at 7 p.m. EST for a half hour of news, presented by Walter Cronkite. No taping it and watching it later; no surfing the satellite receiver to take in a different regional feed; no CNN, no Headline News, no Newsworld. 7-7:30, or read the paper the next morning. Those were your options.

In our house, Walter Cronkite was God. Most nights my parents and I would eat our dinner off TV trays in front of the behemoth black and white television console with the fairly tiny screen. There was absolutely no talking during the news; if you had a story to tell about your day and it didn't squeeze into a commercial break, it would have to wait another 8 minutes to be finished in the next break. Walter came first.

Sitting in front of the TV, I learned about Vietnam and the space program. He was the person who told us when Martin Luther King was shot, and when President Kennedy died. It is an oft-repeated story in my family that pretty much the first thing I ever saw on TV was Walter Cronkite breaking into the live soap opera As the World Turns to announce President Kennedy had been shot. My mother adored President Kennedy - it was a simpler time, far easier to believe in the image, sheltered from the reality - and she learned her dream died while ironing the laundry, from the most trusted man in America. It was a short, sharp shock to everyone's system, and I was two months old, propped up on the couch pillows, facing the TV.

Walter Cronkite was an incredible reporter. Unlike contemporary anchors, he had no formal presentation training, having started in newspapers before TV had been invented, and while he became a polished presence on camera, he never lost his sincerity or his slightly rough edges. There was no doubting this was a man who had ink under his nails, and who had covered big stories from the ground up. He didn't start out that way, of course - he was a cub reporter in Houston while still in high school, and had a paper route delivering the Houston Post, sometimes with his articles inside. He moved on to announcing football games on local radio, before catching on as a regional reporter with UPI as a stringer. And then came World War II. Unlike the sanitized "embedded" reporting we are now subject to from the front, if we are allowed to see a snippet of what's happening at all, Cronkite rode along with Allied Troops in big events - the invasion of North Africa, the Battle of the Bulge - and every day events, like bombing runs over Germany. It wasn't safe, and he wasn't protected, but he was lucky, and every plane he was on came back to base. He rejected a job offer from Edward R. Murrow to stay with UPI and cover the Nuremberg war crimes trials, but finally accepted Murrow's offer 7 years later and made the move to CBS, and television in 1950.

During the 1960s through the mid-1970s, Cronkite anchored not just the evening news, but every blastoff of an Apollo mission. My father, who was born the summer Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, and was named Charles in his honour, was fascinated by the idea of men going into space, so every time a mission was set to launch, he would get me out of bed - those launches tended to happen around 5 in the morning - and we would watch the live broadcast from Cape Kennedy, Cronkite explaining what we were looking at. And then I would go back to bed for a couple of hours before I had to get up for school.

Those mornings with my dad and Walter also gave me a context and an appreciation of science, and the world beyond my suburban existence. They also indirectly got me interested in reading as a child, as my parents subscribed to National Geographic, which featured the space program heavily in every issue back then. There was a symbiotic correlation between the magazine and Mr. Cronkite in my tiny world back then, and I reveled in it.

I had the enormous good fortune to meet Walter Cronkite once, when I was about seven or eight. My father had been working in New York, as Canadian banks were starting to expand internationally in the 1960s, and my father was part of the Bank of Montreal's team setting up the U.S. head office. He would be gone weeks at a time, and sometimes, instead of flying him home to Montreal, the Bank would fly us to New York instead. On one of those trips, I can't remember where we were exactly, but I know we were getting into an elevator in Manhattan, and as the doors opened, there was Walter Cronkite, going our way. All three of us, my parents and I, were mesmerized to see this icon out of the tiny box in our living room and in the flesh. Evidently used to this sort of reaction, he very politely said hello and started the small talk. It came out that "I" was a big fan, and then he reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a business card, signed it, and handed it to me.

In the four decades since then, I have moved several dozen times, back and forth across a vast country. Yet as I write this, I have that business card tucked into a corner of my computer screen. It says, simply, "Walter Cronkite - Correspondent" with the CBS News address and phone number. It isn't flashy or pretentious. It is the epitome of Walter Cronkite on a 1.5 x 3 inch piece of paper - clear, concise, solid, informative.

He believed a half hour newscast once a day wasn't enough time to truly inform viewers about all the complicated things going on in the world, and after he retired in 1981, he reportedly hated how newscasts were now stuffed full of soft features that told us nothing much about anything other than the reporter's vanity in front of the camera. We now live in world of a seemingly endless information and delivery options, but what are we really learning? Too much of what passes for news now is celebrity gossip, repeated ad nauseum between commentators who pass as reporters, or opinion based on nothing more than ignorance, fear or polling results. Television news, at least, has become a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Hardly a meaningful tribute to the remarkable legacy of a pioneering newsman.

Excuse me?

Sometimes entries just write themselves.

I was reading the New York Times this morning online, as I so often do, trying to wake up and be useful, when I happened upon a story about odd road signs in England, and this photo:


I was now fully awake.

The story http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/europe/23crapstone.html?_r=1&em went on to examine, as it were, a number of quirky and suggestive place names in the British Isles, including Titty Ho, North Piddle, Crapstone, and Penistone. My inner eight-year-old started to giggle.

It seems most of these names date back to when words had different meanings than they do currently. I could have written a serious post on the evolution of language, but the eight-year-old wouldn't let me.

Butt Hole, it turns out, probably referred to a well. Not nearly as much fun now, is it? Damn reason. Gets in the way of all the best stories.

So I got to thinking about Canada's equivalent, and of course, Dildo, Newfoundland popped into my head. It is not terribly far from the trio of Heart's Delight, Heart's Desire, and Heart's Content, which run down the Bay Roberts coast within about 20 kilometres of each other. (I drove through them last year and they are lovely, if wee.) But of course these three aren't nearly as salacious and provocative.

I'm asking all nine of you who read this blog - can you think of any other risque Canadian place names? We have lots of quirky ones, like Moose Jaw, but are there any other Butt Holes, Dildos, or Penistones out there in Canada? Post your comment below.

And the nominees are....

I am a film geek.

In a prior life I was actually paid to care about these things, but now, as with all the best things in life, I care for free. It makes me happy.

Usually, the Academy Awards make me unhappy. It's an industry, after all. The studios behind a lot of big stars with a lot of crap films throw bundles of money at advertising campaigns, and are rewarded with a laundry list of award nominations that mean nothing other than the box office is suddenly going to blossom, because people generally are sheep who will want, overnight, to see a movie they didn't care about two days ago simply because it was nominated for an Oscar.

Not this year.

This year's nominations are full of previously under-appreciated talent (usually from TV) acting in small pictures who are being noticed for their skills, and not how much money their films brought in. Because for the most part, their films didn't earn very much at all. I'm willing to bet most of you haven't seen these films, and you probably haven't heard of most of them either. For the most part, big studio pictures got shut out of the categories anyone cares about. Sure, The Dark Knight and Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E picked up a bunch of technical nominations, but will anyone really toss and turn at night trying to pick the Best Editing winner for their office pool? I don't think so.

In fact, of the 30 nominees in the main 6 categories (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress) exactly one comes from a blockbuster, and that would be Heath Ledger, who turned in a riveting portrait of anarchy in The Dark Knight before he died unexpectedly (exactly a year ago today, not that we're keeping track or anything).

Each of the acting categories has at least one nominee who is a working actor (as opposed to a STAR), someone whose face you always recognize but can't quite place, someone who is working all the time but never gets bothered at the grocery store. A few people's lives are going to change quite drastically on February 22, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. Part of what makes each of these actors so good is that, away from the set, they're able to live normal lives and observe society around them. Those days may be over for some of them now.

In the Best Actor category, Richard Jenkins is nominated for The Visitor. You've most likely seen him as the mortician father in Six Feet Under, but he's made nearly 85 movies in 35 years, including this small scale portrait of a regular guy who comes home one day to his New York flat and finds a family of illegal immigrants has moved in. And he lets them stay.

He's up against Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Anyone who remembers him from Body Heat and Rumblefish would be hard pressed to recognize him now, so broken is his face. But it works for the character of a washed-up wrestler trying to make a comeback. Every now and then, an actor's personal story blends seamlessly with the character, and the result is serendipity.

In the Best Actress category, Melissa Leo of Frozen River is up against stalwarts like Kate Winslet, Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie. TV watchers might remember her as Detective Sargeant Kay Howard on Homicide. Approximately 3 dozen people saw Frozen River, despite sterling reviews. Perhaps a few dozen more will make a point of renting it on DVD now.

In the Best Supporting Actress category, we find two actresses - Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson - who you may remember from Century City or Law & Order: SVU, and Boston Legal, respectively - up against a previous winner and two constant nominees.

And over in the Best Supporting Actor category, Michael Shannon earns the only acting nomination for Revolutionary Road, despite all the hype about the reunion of DiCaprio and Winslet. Shannon is usually the bad guy on any number of shows, so its good to see him branching out a little.

The best part of all of this, is that, apart from Rourke, none of these nominations was predicted by the cognescenti. There were no nominations this morning for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, or Clint Eastwood. Instead these skilled, under-known actors earned their spots, mostly starring in small films that came out in the hectic fall season and got lost in the bigger ad campaigns for the films that drew the most eyeballs and dollars.

But the biggest story of this year's Oscar race may well be Slumdog Millionaire, set entirely in India and filmed partly in Hindi. It's a romance about a smart kid from the wrong side of Delhi who wins the grand prize on a Who Wants to be a Millionaire type show, and the resistance he faces from people who think he must have cheated (because poor kids can't possibly be smart). Despite a miniscule budget and a cast of mostly amateur actors, it is nominated for 10 Academy Awards (second only to Benjamin Button), including Best Picture. It is a fairytale story worthy of a film all its own.

In the Best Picture category, it will compete against The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a romantic fable based on an F. Scott Fitzgerald story that is really a meditation on the nature of love when the physical is stripped away; Frost/Nixon, an adaptation of a Tony-winning play pitting disgraced President Richard Nixon against talk show host David Frost; The Reader, a Holocaust drama about the nature of evil; and Milk, about the first openly gay elected official and his subsequent assassination by a co-worker.

All of these, in their way, ask us to examine our perceptions of the world, our views on race, culture, class, and gender identity, and what it truly means to be human. I honestly don't know which film I want to win - I'm just happy someone is still making films like these, when it would be so much easier to make Transformers 42 or Saw 11 and rake in the cash.

OK. Maybe I'm rooting for Slumdog Millionaire. Because I am a film geek, and I love an underdog.

148 years on, a Dream has been realized

It is rare to experience an event and know while it is happening that you are witnessing history in the making. Usually, the historic import of something only becomes clear in the context hindsight brings, but yesterday’s inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States was an exception to that rule. If we didn’t know already about the historic significance of installing an African-American in the White House, there were only too many media pundits willing to hammer the point home again, and again, and again during dawn-to-dusk coverage. So many words were spoken and written, in fact, that it is hard to have an original thought at this point.

One thing though, is clear: after eight years of President George W. Bush, with his ignorance of history and geography, and his inability to speak the English language coherently, a sea change has taken place. America has managed to elect a man who embraces his obvious intelligence and who is a keen student of both history and politics, whose career and public persona has been shaped as much by his own bipartisan ideology as the courage, ideas, dreams and actions of those who went before.

Washington D.C. is a city designed and engineered to maximize grandeur, full of memorials paying homage to the defining moments and figures in American history. None of the 42 previous Presidents has ever understood or been able to harness the visceral power of symbolism and the resonance of history quite like Barack Obama. He and Washington will be a good fit.

Two years ago and virtually unknown, Obama stood on the same patch of Illinois ground where Abraham Lincoln had declared his candidacy for President in 1859, and made his own declaration. 20 months later on election night, he celebrated his victory in Chicago’s Grant Park, previously known only as being the scene of violent riots during the 1968 Democratic Convention.

The pre-inaugural whistle-stop tour train from Illinois to Washington last weekend evoked a bygone era, when the nation did have faith in its leaders and hope for its future, even in the face of crisis, be it a war or a failing economy.

His erudite campaign speeches have brought echoes of Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John and Robert Kennedy to a generation of new ears, building upon their themes of public service, self sacrifice, and small “p” patriotism while infusing them with hope and an optimism not seen in American politics since the devastation of 1968.


On Tuesday, Obama placed his hand upon the same bible Lincoln used in 1861 to take the oath of office on the west steps of the Capitol, witnessed by at least a million people lining the Mall, stretching past the Washington Monument all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, some three kilometers away. It was an extraordinary and emotional sight. As he sat upon the dais facing the crowd, I wondered if he was thinking about Lincoln yet again, or if he was reflecting upon the line in the marble of the Washington Monument about halfway up where the color shifts slightly, because construction was interrupted by the Civil War.


The 20th Amendment to the Constitution fixes the date that the President shall be sworn in on as January 20th. The Martin Luther King Day holiday marks his January 19th birthday each year. The resonance of the juxtaposition of these seminal events this year was palpable. Had Dr. King not been assassinated in 1968, he may well have attended the Obama inauguration. He would only have been 80. This year is the 45th anniversary of the March upon Washington, which culminated in Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:

“I have a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Barack Obama was three that winter. Metaphorically at least, Dr. King’s dream has been realized through him, but there remains so much more work to do if we are ever to achieve a society where a black man taking an oath of office does not have to do so behind bulletproof glass and wearing a bullet resistant suit.

At the inauguration ceremony, Aretha Franklin sang “America”, closing the circle on Dr. King, who referred to it in his Dream speech: “This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.”

And sing they did, up and down the Mall, black and white, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics and non-believers, for one shining moment.

Something bigger than 5 championships

Well, we can all take a deep breath and sit back in our chairs now that Team Canada has pulled a fifth consecutive Junior World Championship out of the hat. It's amazing how exciting hockey can be despite the broken plays, undisciplined penalties, puck chasing and dicey goaltending. Usually teams making so many mistakes never advance to the medal round, but somehow, Team Canada dodged the big bullet against both the U.S. and Russia, and steamrollered the Swedes tonight to take the gold. Despite all the mistakes and sloppy play, those three games were incredibly exciting affairs. I caught myself on more that one occasion actually speaking to the TV, most particularly when there were 14 seconds to go in the Russia game with Canada down a goal, and the Russian defenceman got fancy clearing the zone, aiming for the empty Canadian net and ending up icing the puck. All he had to do was carry the puck into the neutral zone, and it would have been the Russians facing Sweden for the gold, but no, he had to try to be a hero, which backfired big time, resulting in a Russian zone faceoff and a Canadian goal with 5.4 seconds left in the game to force overtime, and eventually, a shootout win for Canada. That mistake will follow the kid around for a very, very long time.

I was heartened however to see big #5, P.K. Subban, voted top three Canadian players by the coaching staff, and making all-tournament first team. For my money, he was consistently the best Canadian every single game, an offensive rushing defenceman who makes big plays and knows how to move the puck.

Subban, who currently plays junior for Belleville of the OHL, and was a Canadiens second round draft pick in 2007, happens to also be black. I mention this only because it is still unusual to see black players in the NHL. Currently, there are about two dozen, most prominent being Jarome Iginla, Donald Brashear, Georges Laracque and Dustin Byfuglien. But up until the 1990s, black players were pretty much non-existent in the entire NHL. Hockey has not diversified nearly as rapidly or as completely as the other three big professional leagues in North America (interestingly, two players on this year's Swedish junior team are also black, demonstrating once again that no country's culture remains homogenous forever) .

When I was in high school, our class jock was a fellow named Hilton Ruggles. He was an amazing physical hockey player, who played left wing in the Quebec Major Junior league for four seasons in the early 80s. We all expected him to end up in the NHL, but despite racking up major points in QMJHL, including 113 points in 59 games in 1983-84, he wasn't even drafted. And that was probably because he too was black. The verbal abuse he would take at games was breathtaking, and it was all based on the colour of his skin. Opposing players and coaches would call him all sorts of horrible things, and there was an incident that made the papers where fans brought bananas and threw them on the ice after he scored a goal. He often also took crap from his home crowds, which is unprecedented in trash-talking annals.

By 1985, he'd had enough, and set off for Europe, playing for pro teams in Italy, France, Germany and Austria before settling into Britain in 1988, where he played for a half-dozen teams through 2002, racking up 2102 points (1122 goals & 980 assists) in 1052 games. Now retired, he is the general manager of the Cardiff Devils, where he had some of his best seasons in the early 1990s (including 1993-94, when he played 62 games and scored 243 points). But he never did get a chance to play in the NHL.

Last week, the Governor-General of Canada made Willie O'Ree a member of the Order of Canada. Mr. O'Ree was the "Jackie Robinson of hockey", the first black man to play in the NHL, in 1958, for my faves, the Boston Bruins. His pro career was short-lived and ended for good in 1961, but he played in the minor leagues until the age of 43. There was no other black player in the NHL until 1974, when Mike Marson signed with Washington. So perhaps it shouldn't have been a surprise when Hilton was passed over just a few short years later. A generation later, P.K. Subban is poised to enter a very different NHL, one where more teams than not have at least one black player, and where all players and staff are subjected to a diversity education program developed by the league, and run by Mr. O'Ree. I hope we are moving towards a hockey future where players will be judged on performance, and performance only. The world is becoming ever more diverse, and our sports leagues need to understand that and show some leadership, since so many kids look up to the pros and emulate their behavior. Subban, with his play and his outgoing ebullient personality, looks like he'll be an important part of that ongoing evolution.

Sarah Palin is no Hillary Clinton. She's not even a pale Geraldine Ferraro

I promised myself I wouldn't get sucked into this.

For the entire Labour Day weekend, I tried to summon enough energy to blog about the Republican National Convention, to no avail. I really just didn't care enough about Sarah Palin to take the time out of my hectic schedule to blog about her.

But then the media frenzy about the pregnant daughter and - gasp! - Palin being a WOMAN took hold and - catnip time. My bad. On one side, we find the folks who say having a second female v-p candidate is a great step forward for women. Obviously, these folks think Palin can steal the pro-Hillary vote from disgruntled female Democrats, largely because anyone with breasts will apparently follow others similarly endowed around without worrying about what's they're actually thinking or doing. Being a woman, it seems, is all the qualification a candidate needs for these votes (by this criteria, I would have blindly supported both Kim Campbell and Maggie Thatcher in the 1980s. Hey, they're chicks and I am too - solidarity forever! (fist pump - "whoooo!" Maybe I should wave a lighter?)). These are probably also the people busy critiquing Ms. Palin's "style" - hair, clothes, and shoes - on TV tonight. Let's not worry about what she might say in her big speech, as long as she looks pretty doing it - just like a good little woman should, beside her (figurative) man. This is progress?

These are also the pundits who are shocked - shocked! - that the media would criticize Ms. Palin for anything. Having breasts apparently also makes you bulletproof (breasts - the versatile accessory!). Imagine. I mean, why would the media possibly be interested in a conservative, pro-life, anti-choice, "kids should practice abstinence and there should be no sex ed and birth control" Republican who has a pregnant, unwed teenage daughter at home hooked up with a self-professed redneck boyfriend? Can't see anything interesting there. Move it along folks, nothing to see here - except a big old train wreck of hypocrisy. If she can't control her own house, should she really be next in line to control the country? If her kids won't listen to her, why should anyone else?

Spin doctoring the media is a big business. Consultants on presidential campaigns earn hundreds of thousands of dollars to see these things coming. It's not like it was a stealth attack out of nowhere. The woman is campaigning on a moral superiority, "family values" ticket. That just begs to be examined with a fine tooth comb. But that examination should apply equally to men and women, Democrats and Republicans, not just the only woman on either ticket.

Which brings me to the other side of things. Related to the "What will she wear? How will she look?" breathless line of media ridiculousness and sexism (why doesn't anyone care about Obama's suits? They're really nice suits, probably handmade) is the overtly sexist questioning of whether or not a mother of five can be vice-president and hockey mom at the same time. No one asks Obama if he can balance work and home life and he's got a pair of kids, 10 and 7. I'm not saying the question shouldn't be asked - but it should be asked of all candidates (OK, Biden and McCain's kids are all grown up, but still). And to be fair, I would expect the men to have their contradictory family lives explored if they made family a campaign issue (did I miss the articles on "family values" partner McCain's infidelity, the screwing around that led to the demise of his first marriage?). Because these issues raise interesting questions about priorities, judgment, and personal ambition, which I think ARE important considerations when choosing a President.

What kind of parent - mother or father - accepts a job offer, fully knowing their kids are going to get dragged into the media spotlight and knowing that because of the parent's espoused politics and the child's contrary conduct, that kid is going to be a lightning rod for public debate?

As we all know, I have no children. But I would like to think that if I did, I would sacrifice my personal ambitions and put protection of my child first, last, and centre. Ms. Palin's daughter is five months along, 17, unwed. Mom's a pro-life, born-again Christian who believes in abstinence. Is mom really so naive/daft/arrogant as to really not understand that the media were going to have a feeding frenzy off this contradiction? Whether they SHOULD have such a feeding frenzy is a totally different issue, but politics is not a nice, clean Sunday afternoon sport. It's right up there with gladiators and bloodletting. And it didn't just start 10 days ago. Mom knew what she was getting into, and she leapt in anyway.

When Ms. Palin was considering the offer, she ought to have also considered what effect this incredible cauldron was going to have on her family. Her daughter hasn't chosen to be involved in any of this - it's been thrust upon her, and she keeps looking like a wounded deer waiting for NRA-mom to finish her off and put her out of her misery. What kind of parent does that to their kid? Where is her judgement? Her sense of priority? To me, that naked ambition is the biggest judgement issue to come out of the past week.

I would feel the same way regardless of Palin's gender. I think it's an incredibly selfish thing for a parent to put their personal ambition above the well-being of their family. I was taken aback when John Edwards continued his run for the Presidency after his wife's cancer recurred (I'm not even going to get into the whole affair thing), and I would have a problem with any candidate who went full steam ahead regardless of the impact on their spouse and kids. I thought the whole point of being a parent was to put your kids first. Apparently that concept of family hasn't caught on with the "family values" crowd.

I'll believe we're making progress when women are chosen because of their capabilities, not their breasts (and there are dozens of American women in the Senate, the House of Representatives, Gubernatorial mansions, and private industry who have wonderful credentials to be vice-president or President, of all political stripes), and when we spend more time evaluating their ideas and their records, and not whether or not they have the right shoes. Wake me up if that ever happens.

Olympic flame extinguished; fire burns still

Well, the Olympics are over, the flame has been extinguished, the athletes are home with their medals and memories, and the world turns its attention to Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012.

Over the past 17 days, we heard a lot about the exploits of Michael Phelps, Dara Torres, and Usain Bolt and their ilk, each of their accomplishments touted in the press as "historic achievements". What we didn't hear too much about was the real history in the making, 24-year-old South African swimmer Natalie Du Toit, who placed 16th in the 10km open water swim.

Normally, placing 16th in a field of 24 wouldn't get too much attention. But what makes Ms. Du Toit interesting is that she is the first amputee to compete in the Olympics. Last spring, her countryman Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who uses a pair of high tech blades for legs, got a lot of press when he lobbied the IOC for permission to use those high tech prosthetics to run in track events. Although his argument eventually prevailed over those who thought his bionic legs gave him an unfair advantage, he rather anti-climatically failed to meet South Africa's criteria for inclusion on its Olympic team and stayed home. While he got all the headlines, Ms. Du Toit was quietly plodding along, coming fourth at the World Open Water Championships in Seville last May, earning her berth on the swim team with minimum fanfare.

It wasn't always like this. Eight years ago, when she was 16, Ms. Du Toit was a promising junior swimmer who had competed in the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia and had been identified as a potential star in South Africa, a country not known for its swimming prowess. She just missed qualifying for the Sydney Olympics in 3 events, and was determined to make the team for Athens in 2004. But leaving practice one day in 2001, she was riding her scooter down a Cape Town street on her way to school when a motorist taking a shortcut through a parking lot plowed into her, damaging her left leg beyond all repair. Although doctors tried for the better part of a week to save it, Du Toit has said in interviews she knew her leg was lost at the accident scene, before the ambulance even arrived, such was the damage.

A lot of people would have given up their Olympic dreams after that, or focused their attention on the Paralympics instead. She did not. Within 18 months of the amputation at the knee, she was back on South Africa's swim team, having qualified for the 800m event at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. She became the first "disabled" person to compete at an elite able-bodied meet.

It soon became apparent to her though, that the loss of her leg would be a problem for short, pool-based distances at such an elite level, since the margin of victory is measured in 100ths of a second, and a strong launch into the pool, turns, and kicks throughout a race are vital to success. She needed an event that depended more on endurance and upper body strength, and less on pushing through with her legs. When the open water event was added to Beijing's lineup, she found her place.

She went to Beijing hoping for a top 10 finish, but, as is so often the case, things didn't go exactly as planned. She had equipment problems and got hung up for a bit on a marker buoy that cost her valuable time. As it was, she finished in 2 hours, 49.9 seconds - a minute 22 seconds behind the gold medalist. Still, she outpaced 9 able-bodied swimmers, and was given no slack by any of her competitors, who lauded her tenacity and ability in the lake. They don't see her as "disabled". To them, Du Toit is simply a fierce competitor, who, on any given day, has the potential to leave them all behind and win.

Du Toit is staying on in Beijing for the moment, preparing for September's Paralympics, where she will defend the five gold she won in 2004. She has become the first athlete to compete in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, a truly historic milestone in an industry that often manufactures history for marketing purposes. She will also have to deal with the politics of some, who feel she should not have competed in the Olympics, because the Paralympics are just as important (but for the differently-abled). While she may well take home more gold in the coming weeks, she is already looking towards London in 2012, determined to show that a "disabled" athlete has just as much potential to be on an Olympic podium as any other elite athlete. I'm looking forward to seeing her realize that dream in four years time, and achieve yet another historic milestone.

Duh da duh da da...NOT

Oh my sweet God.

Not only did the Mother Corp orchestrate the biggest management blunder of the decade earlier this year when, in a fit of pique over paying an old lady more than $500 a night, it let the revered Hockey Night in Canada theme slip through its fingers - and right into the hands of their biggest hockey broadcast rival, CTV-owned TSN - but it has been spending the summer holding a contest to find a replacement theme song.

So far, this is the frontrunner: http://anthemchallenge.cbc.ca/mediadetail/257425

As the Globe and Mail incredulously described it this morning, "The Internet has spoken: The next Hockey Night in Canada theme should sound a lot like a baby riding an unco-operative sheep through an industrial grinder."

You may have a hard time imagining what that sounds like - I did - but once you click on the link and listen to the entire thing, you'll find it's actually a pretty accurate encapsulation of the frontrunner. Some of us may only hear a collection of random sounds. Apparently, many others who probably also like early Phillip Glass and the sounds of Iceland think this is stellar, avant-garde work.

Either that, or the Facebook crowd is perpetrating the biggest internet hoax since "Bob" was the runaway winner in a contest to rename the Northwest Territories in 1999 after the creation of Nunavut.

Will some patriotic Canadian who understands both music and hockey please, please, please whip up some 30 second theme song we won't cry over every Saturday night?


***UPDATE****

Many of the Globe's loyal readers seem to feel the inclusion of the bleating sheep is a tip of the metaphoric hat to the Toronto-centric nature of the HNIC broadcast. Of course, many of the other posters had quite rude suggestions about the sheep, Don Cherry and CBC top brass. There may also have been a goat, and possibly Woody Allen.

Anyone and Everyone

Flipping around the TV tonight after coming home late, I happened upon a riveting documentary on PBS called "Anyone and Everyone". It was made by a Colorado mom with no filmmaking experience after her son came out to her. As a film, it is no work of art, but the interviews it features, with parents and young adults from communities that have a particularly difficult time dealing with the issue of homosexuality - Chinese immigrants, Mormons, Catholics, Puerto Ricans, Cherokee, Baptist, and more - are so incredibly moving, it is impossible not to watch.

What unites these diverse stories is both the hopefulness of the parents who have embraced their children, and their incredible sadness when their extended families are unable to join them there, for cultural or religious reasons. It was absolutely gut-wrenching to watch a middle-aged Republican Mormon mom talk about how her eventual acceptance of her son's homosexuality created a deep rift with her own parents, who just could not bridge the gap and understand that their grandson, upon whom they had doted until he came out, was now a gay pariah in his own church. The division was so strong, that when their daughter was married, the grandparents could not be invited because the bride did not want to deal with their prejudice about her brother on her wedding day. The mom also described going to a funeral with her daughter for one of the girl's high school friends, a young man who had struggled privately with his orientation but who just couldn't come to terms and come out, and who finally killed himself from despair. She says that as she sat in that church watching the friends and relatives of this young man truly grieve his loss, she wondered if they understood how their powerful attitudes about homosexuality had constructed the societal box that eventually suffocated him.

It shocks me that such a film still needed to be made in 2007, but as one Seattle lesbian put it, not everyone gets to live in a big city on an American coast. This film is for those folks and their families. For the 25% of gay youth who are thrown out of the family home when they dare to reveal their true selves to the very people who should most protect them. For the 40% of homeless youth who are on the street because they have been abandoned by those who should love them. For the Matthew Shepards who are beaten to death by their peers simply because they are different. For the kids who get stuffed in lockers and called "fag" and "queer" in high school. And for the kids who despite all of this, are still able to be honest and true to themselves. And for the families who sometimes have to choose, and who choose their child over all others.


The trailer for this extraordinary film can be seen here: http://www.anyoneandeveryone.com

Make It Stop!

AARRGGHHHHHH!!!!

This is what I'm talking about. Quick, how many aggravating features can you find in the photo?

Taking a bite out of history

This morning I joined friends for brunch at the Wildcat Cafe here in Name of Town Withheld. I love the Wildcat - so much so, that I have made it a point to eat there as much as possible, every summer for the past 19 summers. Today, however, I made the trip down to Old Town against my better judgment, because I intend to boycott the Cafe this summer, in protest of management's arrogance in tampering with a valued historic site.

The Wildcat Cafe is a landmark. It was the first restaurant anglo-Canadian settlers to these parts built, back in 1937. In the early days, bush pilots, prospectors, trappers and miners gathered at the Wildcat for a good meal after days or weeks out in the field. The hotel next door was where these guys usually stayed, and the Wildcat was the centre of the small Northern universe then expanding between the Wars.

As the city prospered, the Cafe fell into disuse, eventually closing up in the 1950s. It was about to be demolished in the 1970s when the Old Stope Association was founded by a group of volunteers to refurbish the Cafe and recognize its historic significance in what had been the commercial heart of the City back in the 30s and 40s. Since 1979, the Cafe has been open from Victoria Day to Labour Day, serving Northern fare to locals and tourists alike. Such is its place in Canadian history that a full scale replica can be visited at the Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.

In 1992, the Wildcat was designated a City Heritage Building, and there is a bronze plaque affixed to its outer wall recounting its history to all passersby. The City owns the Cafe, and the non-profit Old Stope Association handles the operations side. The City also receives input from the Wildcat Cafe Advisory Committee, whose mandate is to promote the successful, cost effective
operation of the Wildcat Café as a living heritage dining establishment.

Every couple of years, the City puts out an RFP asking local business persons to bid to operate the Cafe. Last year, a fellow who markets himself as "Chef Pierre" and who owns several other Gallic-themed establishments in Name of Town Withheld, won a two-year contract. What has irritated me (and not just me, I'm discovering), is his insistence on Gallicizing the Wildcat to become "le Wildcat Cafe" in all his promotional materials, including menus and T-shirts, and his advertisements in the local paper.

I understand that he is doing this in accordance with his bigger "branding" approach, so all his businesses conform to the same French theme. And if this were a new establishment, I would have no problem with it, because I do like his other operations. No, what irritates the bejeepers out of me about this move is the complete lack of respect for the history of the place. French people have never played a significant role in the Wildcat's history. It's original founders were anglo-Canadians. At its most popular, in the 1940s, it was owned and operated by a Chinese fellow who did not change the name from its original. In fact, through all of its various incarnations, ownerships, and menus, it has remained steadfastly the Wildcat Cafe. Until now.

Had Chef Pierre bought the Cafe, perhaps I wouldn't take such offence to his arrogance, but he doesn't own the Cafe, the City does. It is already a brand - a tourist-friendly log cabin seen in hundreds of photos all over the world. There is no room for him to squeeze out a tried and true brand to insert his own. His failure to understand why people have their knickers in a knot is the most annoying of all. Perhaps in addition to boycotting the Cafe this summer, we should take to referring to all his other businesses by anglicized names - it wouldn't completely have the same effect, but I expect it would irritate Chef Pierre that we were messing with his marketing brand. Perhaps then he would come to understand some of what the fuss is about.

So where is the City in all of this brouhaha in the local media? Is it asserting itself as owner and insisting Chef Pierre conform? Nope. As per usual practice, the City has been incredibly quiet through the spring, making no public comment, and sitting on its hands while the citizenry objects. Surely a living heritage establishment deserves better than this abdication of responsibility by its public owners?

A parting word to Chef Pierre - for a man so interested in Gallicizing the North, surely you know that, if you're really serious about making the Wildcat French, it really ought to be "le chat sauvage" ? Do it right, or don't do it at all.

At long last, an apology

On the other side of the planet yesterday, something most Australians thought would never happen, happened.

Their national government apologized to the Indigenous peoples of the country for the century-long, state-wrought destruction of entire families and communities whose children were forcibly removed in a vast eugenics experiment inflicted upon those who didn't seem "black enough" to be fully accepted in their Indigenous culture.

These "Stolen Generations" of Aboriginal children were essentially kidnapped under paternalistic British laws and made wards of the State, not because they had bad parents, but because the State arbitrarily decided their lighter skin put them at risk of harm from their own communities. Lighter-skinned children, the thinking went, would be more likely to be fostered or adopted by non-Aboriginal parents, and they stood a better chance of being assimilated into White Australia. In reality, most of these children weren't adopted or fostered out. Instead, they grew up in orphanages and internment camps, stripped of their language, their culture, and their spiritual practices. Many also endured years of physical and sexual abuse, compounding the emotional torment and devastation of being torn from their families and all that was familiar. One woman from Alice Springs told the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday that she could still remember the names of her three playmates who were scooped up by Lutherans one summer afternoon sixty years ago. The four children were playing in the Outback dust while their parents were at work when suddenly, a white car pulled up, men got out, grabbed the other three kids, and then were gone. For years she lived in fear that one day, the men would be back for her, too.

In 1997, the 700-page "Bringing Them Home" report was published after two years of public inquiry, setting out personal stories that vividly capture the horrors experienced by tens of thousands of children, and the lingering effects this treatment had upon them throughout their lives.

Despite this report, which called for both an apology and reparations, the Conservative PM of the day, John Howard, steadfastly refused to apologize for the actions of preceding governments, going only so far as to issue a Statement of Regret.

Howard's government was finally defeated by the Labour Party late last fall. Yesterday's apology was the first act of the new PM, Kevid Rudd, when Parliament opened (it opened, by the way, with an Indigenous "welcome to country" ceremony, the first time local Aborigines have ever been included in the opening ceremonies). Howard's successor as Conservative leader endorsed the apology, meaning the motion passed unanimously.

In the decade since the Bringing Them Home report, individual Australian states had made apologies, and some offered settlements, but the symbolic acceptance of the collective historical shame by the national government had been elusive. Although there is no plan to offer any financial compensation at this point, the willingness of Rudd to make a clear, no holds barred apology recognizes what Howard would not: that a country cannot heal itself of a painful and shameful legacy until it acknowledges the truth in all its ugliness and expresses its sincere regret.

This is the full text of Prime Minister Rudd's extraordinary speech to the Australian Parliament:

"Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

Our nation, Australia, has reached such a time.

That is why the Parliament is today here assembled: to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nation's soul and, in a true spirit of reconciliation, to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia.

Last year I made a commitment to the Australian people that if we formed the next government of the Commonwealth we would in Parliament say sorry to the stolen generations.

Today I honour that commitment.

I said we would do so early in the life of the new Parliament.

Again, today I honour that commitment by doing so at the commencement of this the 42nd Parliament of the Commonwealth.

Because the time has come, well and truly come, for all peoples of our great country, for all citizens of our great Commonwealth, for all Australians - those who are Indigenous and those who are not - to come together to reconcile and together build a new future for our nation.

Some have asked, Why apologise?

Let me begin to answer by telling the Parliament just a little of one person's story - an elegant, eloquent and wonderful woman in her 80s, full of life, full of funny stories, despite what has happened in her life's journey, a woman who has travelled a long way to be with us today, a member of the stolen generation who shared some of her story with me when I called around to see her just a few days ago.

Nanna Nungala Fejo, as she prefers to be called, was born in the late 1920s.

She remembers her earliest childhood days living with her family and her community in a bush camp just outside Tennant Creek.

She remembers the love and the warmth and the kinship of those days long ago, including traditional dancing around the camp fire at night.

She loved the dancing. She remembers once getting into strife when, as a four-year-old girl, she insisted on dancing with the male tribal elders rather than just sitting and watching the men, as the girls were supposed to do.

But then, sometime around 1932, when she was about four, she remembers the coming of the welfare men.

Her family had feared that day and had dug holes in the creek bank where the children could run and hide.

What they had not expected was that the white welfare men did not come alone. They brought a truck, two white men and an Aboriginal stockman on horseback cracking his stockwhip.

The kids were found; they ran for their mothers, screaming, but they could not get away. They were herded and piled onto the back of the truck. Tears flowing, her mum tried clinging to the sides of the truck as her children were taken away to the Bungalow in Alice (Springs), all in the name of protection.

A few years later, government policy changed. Now the children would be handed over to the missions to be cared for by the churches. But which church would care for them?

The kids were simply told to line up in three lines. Nanna Fejo and her sister stood in the middle line, her older brother and cousin on her left. Those on the left were told that they had become Catholics, those in the middle Methodists and those on the right Church of England.

That is how the complex questions of post-reformation theology were resolved in the Australian outback in the 1930s. It was as crude as that.

She and her sister were sent to a Methodist mission on Goulburn Island and then Croker Island. Her Catholic brother was sent to work at a cattle station and her cousin to a Catholic mission.

Nanna Fejo's family had been broken up for a second time. She stayed at the mission until after the war, when she was allowed to leave for a prearranged job as a domestic in Darwin. She was 16. Nanna Fejo never saw her mum again.

After she left the mission, her brother let her know that her mum had died years before, a broken woman fretting for the children that had literally been ripped away from her.

I asked Nanna Fejo what she would have me say today about her story. She thought for a few moments then said that what I should say today was that all mothers are important. And she added: Families - keeping them together is very important. It's a good thing that you are surrounded by love and that love is passed down the generations. That's what gives you happiness.

As I left, later on, Nanna Fejo took one of my staff aside, wanting to make sure that I was not too hard on the Aboriginal stockman who had hunted those kids down all those years ago.

The stockman had found her again decades later, this time himself to say, Sorry. And remarkably, extraordinarily, she had forgiven him.

Nanna Fejo's is just one story.

There are thousands, tens of thousands of them: stories of forced separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mums and dads over the better part of a century.

Some of these stories are graphically told in Bringing Them Home, the report commissioned in 1995 by Prime Minister Keating and received in 1997 by Prime Minister Howard.

There is something terribly primal about these firsthand accounts. The pain is searing; it screams from the pages. The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity.

These stories cry out to be heard; they cry out for an apology.

Instead, from the nation's Parliament there has been a stony, stubborn and deafening silence for more than a decade; a view that somehow we, the Parliament, should suspend our most basic instincts of what is right and what is wrong; a view that, instead, we should look for any pretext to push this great wrong to one side, to leave it languishing with the historians, the academics and the cultural warriors, as if the stolen generations are little more than an interesting sociological phenomenon.

But the stolen generations are not intellectual curiosities. They are human beings, human beings who have been damaged deeply by the decisions of parliaments and governments. But, as of today, the time for denial, the time for delay, has at last come to an end.

The nation is demanding of its political leadership to take us forward.

Decency, human decency, universal human decency, demands that the nation now step forward to right an historical wrong. That is what we are doing in this place today.

But should there still be doubts as to why we must now act, let the Parliament reflect for a moment on the following facts: that, between 1910 and 1970, between 10 and 30 per cent of indigenous children were forcibly taken from their mothers and fathers; that, as a result, up to 50,000 children were forcibly taken from their families; that this was the product of the deliberate, calculated policies of the state as reflected in the explicit powers given to them under statute; that this policy was taken to such extremes by some in administrative authority that the forced extractions of children of so-called mixed lineage were seen as part of a broader policy of dealing with the problem of the Aboriginal population.

One of the most notorious examples of this approach was from the Northern Territory Protector of Natives, who stated:

"Generally by the fifth and invariably by the sixth generation, all native characteristics of the Australian Aborigine are eradicated. The problem of our half-castes" - to quote the protector - "will quickly be eliminated by the complete disappearance of the black race, and the swift submergence of their progeny in the white."

The Western Australian Protector of Natives expressed not dissimilar views, expounding them at length in Canberra in 1937 at the first national conference on indigenous affairs that brought together the Commonwealth and state protectors of natives.

These are uncomfortable things to be brought out into the light. They are not pleasant. They are profoundly disturbing.

But we must acknowledge these facts if we are to deal once and for all with the argument that the policy of generic forced separation was somehow well motivated, justified by its historical context and, as a result, unworthy of any apology today.

Then we come to the argument of intergenerational responsibility, also used by some to argue against giving an apology today.

But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s.

The 1970s is not exactly a point in remote antiquity. There are still serving members of this parliament who were first elected to this place in the early 1970s.

It is well within the adult memory span of many of us.

The uncomfortable truth for us all is that the parliaments of the nation, individually and collectively, enacted statutes and delegated authority under those statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds fully lawful.

There is a further reason for an apology as well: it is that reconciliation is in fact an expression of a core value of our nation - and that value is a fair go for all.

There is a deep and abiding belief in the Australian community that, for the stolen generations, there was no fair go at all.

There is a pretty basic Aussie belief that says that it is time to put right this most outrageous of wrongs.

It is for these reasons, quite apart from concerns of fundamental human decency, that the governments and parliaments of this nation must make this apology - because, put simply, the laws that our parliaments enacted made the stolen generations possible.

We, the parliaments of the nation, are ultimately responsible, not those who gave effect to our laws. And the problem lay with the laws themselves.

As has been said of settler societies elsewhere, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors; therefore we must also be the bearer of their burdens as well.

Therefore, for our nation, the course of action is clear: that is, to deal now with what has become one of the darkest chapters in Australia's history.

In doing so, we are doing more than contending with the facts, the evidence and the often rancorous public debate.

In doing so, we are also wrestling with our own soul.

This is not, as some would argue, a black-armband view of history; it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth - facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it.

Until we fully confront that truth, there will always be a shadow hanging over us and our future as a fully united and fully reconciled people.

It is time to reconcile. It is time to recognise the injustices of the past. It is time to say sorry. It is time to move forward together.

To the stolen generations, I say the following: as Prime Minister of Australia, I am sorry.

On behalf of the government of Australia, I am sorry.

On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry.

I offer you this apology without qualification.

We apologise for the hurt, the pain and suffering that we, the Parliament, have caused you by the laws that previous Parliaments have enacted.

We apologise for the indignity, the degradation and the humiliation these laws embodied.

We offer this apology to the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters, the families and the communities whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of successive governments under successive parliaments.

In making this apology, I would also like to speak personally to the members of the stolen generations and their families: to those here today, so many of you; to those listening across the nation - from Yuendumu, in the central west of the Northern Territory, to Yabara, in North Queensland, and to Pitjantjatjara in South Australia.

I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the government and the Parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.

Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that.

Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing.

I ask those non-indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you.

I say to honourable members here present: imagine if this had happened to us. Imagine the crippling effect. Imagine how hard it would be to forgive.

My proposal is this: if the apology we extend today is accepted in the spirit of reconciliation, in which it is offered, we can today resolve together that there be a new beginning for Australia.

And it is to such a new beginning that I believe the nation is now calling us.

Australians are a passionate lot. We are also a very practical lot.

For us, symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong.

It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history.

Today's apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs.

It is also aimed at building a bridge between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt.

Our challenge for the future is to cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives.

But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.

This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children and, within a generation, to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy.

The truth is: a business as usual approach towards indigenous Australians is not working.

Most old approaches are not working.

We need a new beginning, a new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure; a new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country but instead allowing flexible, tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership; a new beginning that draws intelligently on the experiences of new policy settings across the nation.

However, unless we as a Parliament set a destination for the nation, we have no clear point to guide our policy, our programs or our purpose; we have no centralised organising principle.

Let us resolve today to begin with the little children, a fitting place to start on this day of apology for the stolen generations.

Let us resolve over the next five years to have every indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper preliteracy and prenumeracy programs.

Let us resolve to build new educational opportunities for these little ones, year by year, step by step, following the completion of their crucial preschool year.

Let us resolve to use this systematic approach to build future educational opportunities for indigenous children to provide proper primary and preventive health care for the same children, to begin the task of rolling back the obscenity that we find today in infant mortality rates in remote indigenous communities up to four times higher than in other communities.

None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard, very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.

The mood of the nation is for reconciliation now, between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The mood of the nation on Indigenous policy and politics is now very simple.

The nation is calling on us, the politicians, to move beyond our infantile bickering, our point-scoring and our mindlessly partisan politics and to elevate this one core area of national responsibility to a rare position beyond the partisan divide.

Surely this is the unfulfilled spirit of the 1967 referendum. Surely, at least from this day forward, we should give it a go.

Let me take this one step further and take what some may see as a piece of political posturing and make a practical proposal to the opposition on this day, the first full sitting day of the new Parliament.

I said before the election that the nation needed a kind of war cabinet on parts of Indigenous policy, because the challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football, as it has been so often in the past.

I therefore propose a joint policy commission, to be led by the Leader of the Opposition and me, with a mandate to develop and implement, to begin with, an effective housing strategy for remote communities over the next five years.

It will be consistent with the government's policy framework, a new partnership for closing the gap. If this commission operates well, I then propose that it work on the further task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians, consistent with the longstanding platform commitments of my party and the pre-election position of the opposition.

This would probably be desirable in any event because, unless such a proposition were absolutely bipartisan, it would fail at a referendum. As I have said before, the time has come for new approaches to enduring problems.

Working constructively together on such defined projects would, I believe, meet with the support of the nation. It is time for fresh ideas to fashion the nation's future.

Mr Speaker, today the Parliament has come together to right a great wrong. We have come together to deal with the past so that we might fully embrace the future. We have had sufficient audacity of faith to advance a pathway to that future, with arms extended rather than with fists still clenched.

So let us seize the day. Let it not become a moment of mere sentimental reflection.

Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepest level of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.

It is for the nation to bring the first two centuries of our settled history to a close, as we begin a new chapter. We embrace with pride, admiration and awe these great and ancient cultures we are truly blessed to have among us cultures that provide a unique, uninterrupted human thread linking our Australian continent to the most ancient prehistory of our planet.

Growing from this new respect, we see our indigenous brothers and sisters with fresh eyes, with new eyes, and we have our minds wide open as to how we might tackle, together, the great practical challenges that Indigenous Australia faces in the future.

Let us turn this page together: indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, government and opposition, Commonwealth and state, and write this new chapter in our nation's story together.

First Australians, First Fleeters, and those who first took the oath of allegiance just a few weeks ago. Let's grasp this opportunity to craft a new future for this great land: Australia. I commend the motion to the House."

There is an excellent multimedia presentation of PM Rudd's speech with powerful images of the day on the Herald's website: http://www.smh.com.au

The full 700 pages of the Bringing Them Home report can be downloaded for free at: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/bth_report/index.html

Uno Rules!

Or, the Top 10 Things I Learned Watching the 2008 Westminster Dog Show

1. Beagles are the cutest. dogs. ever.
2. Topiary should be restricted to shrubs. Dogs are not shrubs.
3. It is OK to groom your dog while the judge is examining it
4. Tails make convenient handles for lifting smaller dogs on and off podiums
5. Handlers sometimes "handle" their dogs in inappropriate places
6. 20,000 people will pay a lot of money to watch dogs be judged by people who never explain what they're doing or what they're looking for
7. No matter how smart the suit, if you're a handler, sensible shoes are a must
8. Handlers keep extra dog treats in their own mouths
9. Sleeker dogs are more attractive than overly furry ones (except for Westies and Akitas)
10. There are a lot of breeds of dog most people have never heard of

The final seven dogs (deemed best in each of their respective categories) faced off for Best in Show tonight. Personally, I don't know how you would choose between such disparate dogs as an Australian Shepherd, an Akita, a Beagle, both a Standard and a Toy Poodle, a Weimaraner, and a Sealyham Terrier. Following on point #9, above, however, had I been judging, I would have quickly ruled out the two poodles, who really ought to have been on pedestals outside a manor house rather than actually breathing and running around in circles. There is something overtly ridiculous about shivering & naked animals with random poofs of white fur clumped in weird places on their bodies.


And I don't even want to talk about how they groom their heads! It's like Roman warrior poodles! Embarrassing, for both the animal and all people involved. It looks like the poor things were trying to keep warm and accidentally spilled giant sized cotton balls on themselves.

Overall, I wasn't impressed by the terriers either, many of whom can't see where they are going, and who often have rough and unwieldy coats. As the commentator put it last night, when the Terriers competed amongst themselves, "Terriers feel superior and can be difficult to handle because they're bossy." Um. Yeah. And they aren't attractive either.

So that left the Shepherd, the Akita, the Beagle, and the Weimaraner. Each of them was appropriately handsome and well-behaved. The Akita had spectacular fur, but the Beagle (a 15" Beagle - I guess there are different kinds) had personality. Lots, and lots, of personality. He was certainly the crowd favorite, running laps around the hockey arena to the cheers of the crowd. Considering this is basically a beauty pageant for dogs, there is A LOT of running, for both dog and handler. Ergo the sensible shoes. You wouldn't want to trip and draw attention away from your animal. That would be a career-ender. (And yes - people do apparently have careers as professional dog handlers. Funny, I don't remember that being on the high school aptitude test.)

I only started watching the Westminster show last year. I like dogs, but I still don't understand why you groom and fluff them up only to run them around a hockey arena in the hopes of scoring a four foot long fancy ribbon (seriously, the prize was three times the size of Uno, the Best in Show Beagle). It's not like they're being evaluated for their effectiveness as working/herding dogs, or their suitability as family pets. In fact, to the casual observer (like myself), it's not entirely clear what the criteria are. There's some vague talk by the colour commentators about the standards of the breed, but no one ever tells you what those are or even puts a chart up on the TV screen so you can armchair evaluate each animal for yourself. The judges don't seem to talk, or if they do, they aren't miked, so we don't know what they're saying. They spend about 20 seconds with each dog, looking in its mouth, running their hands over its chest and along its back, and then having the handlers run the dog back and forth and then pose the animal, one presumes to assess their lines. It's pretty much as mysterious a process as watching someone else assess a used car. This is particularly daunting during the class competition, when there are dozens of say, terriers, and a viewer has absolutely no idea what makes one a winner, and one, well, a dog. And no one ever explains how the dogs get ranked after all these 20-second evaluations either.

All in all, it's an odd process. Not quite as odd as the National Cat Show held every October, also at Madison Square Garden, where virtually ever entrant is fluffed and groomed until the "greeting cards for five-year-old girls and elderly grandmas" quotient is off the chart, but it comes close. I prefer my pets au naturel, thank you very much, looking more like they'd enjoy a romp through the park on a Sunday afternoon, and less like princesses afraid of a wee spot of dirt. More like Uno, or as he's formally known, K-Run's Park Me in First:



UPDATE: I learned today from reading the press coverage of Uno's victory that he is the first Beagle in the 132 year history of the Westminster Dog Show to win Best in Show. Excellent! Here he is enjoying his prize:

Is violence entertainment?

This past week, my colleagues and I have been engaged in a running debate over the nature of North American filmmaking and whether or not violence is truly "entertainment".

OK - that sounds incredibly pretentious, when in reality, we're really just an office full of film geeks trying to figure out why the American film rating system is so screwed up that torture porn films like Hostel and Saw barely merit an "R", while the latest offering from Academy Award winner Ang Lee apparently merits an "NC-17" because of some graphic sex scenes.

As a film school grad, I am conflicted about all of this, but as a regular viewer of all sorts of movies, let me just say I would far rather watch a thoughtful, serious, and yes, adult film about governments in peril and subversive spies trying to overthrow them that happens to have a few scenes of seduction, than a gratuitously violent film with virtually no plot or other redeeming qualities where an abundance of characters (almost always female, or a visible minority, or both) are graphically tortured, flayed, or dismembered for our entertainment. Is this truly entertaining? Really? To whom? And why?

Each summer, the magazine Entertainment Weekly does a week-to-week running count of the number of people killed in popular summer movies. Between mid-May and Labour Day this year, a shade under 20,000 characters were killed in U.S. theatrically released movies. 20 thousand characters. In probably 150 or so movies. What in the hell is going on here?

"Torture porn" earned its nickname because of the structural similarities between those movies and regular porn films - there's little to no plot or story to be told, and what there is exists only to connect the "action" sequences, which are in turn frequent, excessive, and often filmed in extreme closeups to maximize their graphic content. Unlike sex porn films, there is usually an element of raw hatred in torture porn - of the character being tortured, of society as a whole, and of the particular audience who have plonked down $12 to be entertained by this twisted crap.

Don't get me wrong - I don't object to violence that is situational. I take no issue with war movies like Glory or Saving Private Ryan, despite their often explicit violence. I usually don't even take issue with movies by folks like Martin Scorsese ( although The Departed really tested my patience on this front - once you kill a guy, do you really have to throw him off a roof, and then have him run over by a car? Really? Isn't killing him once horrifying enough? But - I digress). Violence in context can make a powerful statement that is central to the theme of any particular movie. My problem is with the gratuitous, sadistic violence inherent to torture porn films.

What does it say about us as a society that those people who rate films for a living are more willing to accept graphic depictions of sadistic, explicit torture in movies than they are graphic depictions of sexuality, making the former more accessible to children than the latter by virtue of the more lenient ratings they assign to each project? This is how the Motion Picture Association of America, creator of the ratings system, defines each of these two ratings:

"An R-rated motion picture, in the view of the Rating Board, contains some adult material. An R-rated motion picture may include adult themes, adult activity, hard language, intense or persistent violence, sexually-oriented nudity, drug abuse or other elements, so that parents are counseled to take this rating very seriously. Children under 17 are not allowed to attend R-rated motion pictures unaccompanied by a parent or adult guardian. Parents are strongly urged to find out more about R-rated motion pictures in determining their suitability for their children. Generally, it is not appropriate for parents to bring their young children with them to R-rated motion pictures.

An NC-17 rated motion picture is one that, in the view of the Rating Board, most parents would consider patently too adult for their children 17 and under. No children will be admitted. NC-17 does not mean “obscene” or “pornographic” in the common or legal meaning of those words, and should not be construed as a negative judgment in any sense. The rating simply signals that the content is appropriate only for an adult audience. An NC-17 rating can be based on violence, sex, aberrational behavior, drug abuse or any other element that most parents would consider too strong and therefore off-limits for viewing by their children."

In practice, getting an NC-17 rating is a commercial kiss of death for a movie. Studios would rather re-edit a film to try and get a softer rating, than release an NC-17 film. Wikipedia has a list of about 100 films, including such diverse fare as Eyes Wide Shut, Clerks, Boys Don't Cry, and Brokeback Mountain, as films originally rated NC-17 that were then re-edited and re-rated R. While the MPAA says an NC-17 rating is not a negative judgment, in the marketplace it certainly is. Large media conglomerates refuse to accept advertising for NC-17 movies; you will not see ads for them in magazines or newspapers on either side of the border. You won't see TV advertisements either. Some theatre chains won't book an NC-17 film. And websites like Apple and iTunes won't carry the film's trailers. So it's a little hard to build a blockbuster when no one knows your film exists, and anyone who does know it is out there can't expect to just amble down to the local megaplex to see it Friday night.

As an adult of a certain age, I'd like to think sex and all its complications is a lot more in keeping with the human experience than violence is, especially sadistic violence. Maybe I'm wrong and I lead a sheltered life. But I'd certainly rather see a film that has an honest depiction of sex in it than one where the primary goal is to kill, maim and humiliate others. If the goal of entertainment is to reflect us to ourselves, then which image should we prefer to see in our cultural mirror?