Monthly Archives: May 2007

Parliamentary Appointment

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For the May long weekend we visited our nation’s capital, Ottawa. I had never been there before, so we were wanting to go there before we move from Ontario. We were pleased to have Naomi’s brother Andrew and Missy (a friend who is a student here at WOLBI and also just happens to be dating Andrew) travel with us. This was the first touristy thing Naomi and I have done for a few years. We had lots of fun seeing the capital with Andrew, Missy and Adelaine (Ellie stayed with some friends). We toured the Parliament Buildings, the National War Museum (a must see!), National War Memorial, Canadian Museum of Civilization.

The War Museum was amazing! I need to go to Ottawa again to see everything in there. We were rushed going through and didn’t have the time I wanted to look around.


This is the gun used for the world’s longest range sniper kill (2,430 meters or 7,972 feet) by a Canadian sniper, Corporal Rob Furlong in Afghanistan in 2003.


A bunch of tanks in a large room crammed with vehicles at the end of the museum.


One of Hitler’s parade cars, an armoured Mercedes Benz. Don’t try to touch it.. an alarm goes off – trust me, I know…


A British cork helmet should protect your head.. from elastics maybe.. Good enough for the Homestarmy!

That weekend was also when the Ottawa Senators advanced to the Stanley Cup play-offs. We came out of the war museum shortly after the game ended and could hear horns honking in the distance.. The city had gone crazy! It took about an hour to get to our hotel, normally just several minutes away as several city blocks were shut down because of the crowds gathering to celebrate. Cars driving around with people and Sens flags hanging out the windows with their horns blaring, people screaming at each other. It was nuts.


That night Andrew and I walked to Parliament Hill to get some night shots and the party was still going. I had never seen that many happy drunk people before in my life.. In order to avoid possibly being attacked, I had to pretend to be a Sens fan.

While in Ottawa there was also a conjunction of the Moon and Venus. I got some photos of this event next to the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.
Gargoyle on the Moon

If you want, you can check out the 40 pictures up on my photography page. Here is a small preview:

Parliament Hill at Night

Ottawa's Tulip Festival

Hall of Honour

Neo-Gothic

First Sale

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If you happen to be in grade 5 and in Alberta you may get to see one of my photos in your social studies text book.

Several months ago I was approached by a company in Canada that wanted to use an image of mine for a school book, “Voices of Canada”. I was a bit surprised.. I didn’t even consider it a good photo.. it was a photo of my beloved Tantramar Marshes, but not one of my favorites. Anyway, they found it on my photography site and wanted to use it. So I scratched my head for a few hours to figure out what to charge. “If I charge too much she won’t buy, too little and and I would be showing how little I know and selling myself short..” After much thought and discussion with a few friends I made an offer and they took it! We just received the cheque last week.

If you see one of the 42,000 copies of this book around, please rip out the page with my photo and send it to me.

So here it is, Early Morning Mist, my first sale.

Fire

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A couple weeks ago I spoke for an evening service we had on campus. Afterwards we invited students over to our place for a fire and s’mores. It was lots of fun just hanging out and talking with the students.

Perils of being Canadian

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I found this entry on andrewcoyne.com (columnist for the National Post) about sunblock rather interesting:

Take off the sunscreen
Classic. Decades of scare stories about the sun’s evil rays, years of alarmist warnings by politicians and others (“for God’s sake keep your kids out of the sun”), and what do we find is the major cause of cancer in northern countries? Lack of sunshine...:

For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.

But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren’t caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations…

For many reasons, Canadians are among the people most at risk of not having enough vitamin D. This is due to a quirk of geography, to modern lifestyles and to the country’s health authorities, who have unwittingly, if with the best of intentions, played a role in creating the vitamin deficiency…

Only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine — of 10 or 15 minutes a day — are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin. But most authorities, including Health Canada, have urged a total avoidance of strong sunlight or, alternatively, heavy use of sunscreen. Both recommendations will block almost all vitamin D synthesis.

Ok, so this is a blog entry about a blog entry about a news article, but I can’t help wondering what else the scientific community and governments might be wrong about that are driving policy and public education…