Grow-OPS, part 2

Oops. It is really grow-ops, as in grow operations, not grow-ups. And a quick search of my local papers led me to find out this problem is really pretty prevalent. In B.C., they have actually fed a bear dog food to guard a grow-op, which, in case you were considering that, is a bad idea because now the bear is not afraid of humans.  About 300 grow ops were shut down in the GTA last year.

In any case, the day after I posted about our house inspection, I heard a summary of this story on CBC Radio 2 as I woke up:

TORONTO - Children living in grow-op homes are healthier living with their parents rather than being placed into foster homes, a study shows.

The study — published in The Journal of Pediatrics — found the majority of children removed from drug-producing homes after their parents were charged, were healthy, drug free and attended school.

Their health problems were fewer than those in the general Canadian population, the study reported.

The study examined 75 York Region children with an average age of 6 1/2-years-old.

About 80% of the homes were marijuana-growing operations or homes where large quantities of drugs were found, while the remaining homes were engaged in cocaine or amphetamine production or had multiple drugs — including marijuana, cocaine, MDMA or heroin — being produced or stored.

Two out of 75 children did better living in foster homes, while 73 of the children studied did better staying with their parents.

“We concluded kids do very well living with their parents. When kids were separated from their parents for a short of long term, we found the kids became depressed, confused and worried and they did not do well in school,” co-author Dr. Gideon Koren, senior scientist and director of the Hospital for Sick Children’s Motherisk program, said.

Koren said legal reasons or other safety issues may require the child to be removed from the physical location drug production, but there is no medical justification to automatically separate kids from their parents.

“Each case needs to be evaluated individually, case by case, and children should not be separated automatically from the parents,” Koren said.

He said the two children who were not medically well was because their parents were producing crystal meth.

Read the rest of the article at the Toronto Sun.  My favorite part of this article is where they point out there may be other reasons to remove the children from an illegal drug operation, but otherwise it would be OK to leave them in the middle of a pot farm.

And here's a picture of a grow op. I would link but I think copyright issues would get in the way.

Our House Inspection

We had our house in Toronto inspected by the property management company today.  The inspector is a super nice man who we met when we first moved in, but this time I was able to offer him a chair to sit in.

As he sat down, he says, "This inspection is to basically make sure that this isn't a Grow-Up operation, or that there isn't extreme wear and tear on the house."

Say what? Seeing the puzzlement on my face, he goes on to explain,

"A Grow-Up operation is when someone rents your house so that they can grow marijuana plants in it. They cut a hole in your foundation and steal power from the hydro company before it gets to the meter. They start the seedlings on the second floor, the medium size plants on the ground floor, and the full plants in the basement. The problem with these houses is that they have industrial size drums of fertilizer, and lots of humidity, and so toxic mold starts growing. So if we don't catch them early, they cause hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, and most have to be ripped down. They're a real problem in Toronto. We caught two of them last year. They are a bigger issue in Vancouver. But obviously that isn't happening here. We normally do a 3 month inspection as well, but we were in and out of the house for maintenance. If we hadn't been here, we would have done drive-bys, or we have humidity monitors we can walk up and place on the basement windows. Or, they'll vent the exhaust out the chimney, and police helicopters will fly over the city and be able to capture the heat with infrared scanners."

Um. Oh. Right. No, we don't have a Grow-Up operation happening here. The best part? Insurance no longer covers this, because there have been so many claims, so if there is one, you are looking at covering this out of your own pocket.  And when you sell, you have to disclose that this happened in your house.  Everyone likes to buy a house that had mold and an illegal drug raid. Yikes.

Strange Happenings

One of the funniest things I ever saw in Toronto was when the sidewalk snowplow driver almost ran over a pedestrian.  She was standing on the sidewalk, clearly expecting him to stop, or move, or go around her. But hey, he is a *snowplow* and he had work to do, so he powered through. She jumped out of the way into a snowbank at the last minute.  I was driving by so it was OK to laugh.

Another great thing J and I saw were the municipal trash cans being powerwashed, in a rainstorm, around midnight.  They are great trash cans.  Toronto is a very clean city.   Please imagine, for a moment, city workers in D.C. or N.Y.C. powerwashing trash cans at any time.  I'll wait.  Now add on the image of them doing it in the dark, and in the rain.  Delightful.

Yes, they actually warn you at each intersection that you may get a ticket if you run that light. Lovely!

This storm chaser car had hurricanes on the passenger side for all of the storms it had chased: Katrina, Ike, etc. It also had a sticker that said, "Honk if anything falls off."

I took Spanish, but I'm pretty sure "chez" is French. On the Taco Bell* taco sauce. Because everything has to be in both languages.  

This is my favorite. Everyone should commute by unicycle. 

*Note: Taco Bell does not have a full menu here so I only went there once.  However, we did find decent Mexican food in St. Catherine's. I'm still looking for a more local version, though, besides my kitchen. And there are no poblano peppers to be found in the city so far, though I did find cactus. I don't need cactus, though, so it doesn't help me much. 

Crime and Terrorism, America, Canada and Abroad

The terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai and Oslo have reminded me of some recent thoughts and conversations that I've had about Canada.

I was out with some girlfriends from our street, and we were discussing coming home on the TTC (metro, for those Washingtonians) late at night.  Would we walk home alone?

Let's consider the statistics for our area in Canada, first.  There have been 25 homicides in the entire Greater Toronto Area (GTA) so far this year. So little, in fact, I counted them on the map.  In our residential area, there have been 1 residential break in.  In the area next to ours, there has been 3 residential break ins.  There have been no assaults, as far as I can tell.  Toronto has been called the safest city in North America.

For fun, let's compare this to the area in Virginia where I lived, Fairfax County.  Putting in my police district into their map application, and looking only in January for Incidents against People (assault, robbery and sexual offense), there were 47 offenses in the month of January, after I moved.   As a comparison, I put in my friend's address/district who lives a little further south of me, and she had 46 incidents.  There were 22 murders in 2008, the last year I could find information for our county.  

Looking at Washington, D.C., they have had 62 homicides to date, down from the high of 300-400 homicides/year totals in the early 1990s.  There were 462 incidents of violent crime in the first month of 2011, down 17% for the same period in 2010, for the entire city.

Crime Type	1/1/2010 to 2/1/2010	01/01/2011 to 02/01/2011	% Change
Homicide	10	9	10
Sex Abuse	24	32	33
Robbery Excluding Gun	196	167	15
Robbery With Gun	115	92	20
Assault Dangerous Weapon (ADW) Excluding Gun	162	120	26
Assault Dangerous Weapon (ADW) Gun	50	42	16
Total Violent Crime	557	462	17

To compare apples to apples, though, we would have to add up all of the surrounding counties outside of Washington, D.C. to get an accurate comparison of the GTA (5.5 million people) to the greater Washington area (5.6 million).

GTA: 25 homicides YTD; in our area: a few break ins.
GWA: 62+ homicides YTD (DC + suburbs); in our area 47 violent incidents/one month

However, I think everyone understands, from these brief examples, the gross differences in safety in America and Canada.  (Can't we do better, America? Come on, BR.)  So yes, I would walk home from the TTC at night.  I  love that the buses let you off, as an unaccompanied woman, between stops at night, even though I just rode the bus for the first time the other night.  And I love that most times I don't think about terrorist attacks.

One of the first times I was back in the states, I was at the mall, and I saw a man in camo pants and a backpack shopping.  My first thought was that he had guns and bombs and was going to shoot up the place, not that he was going green and carrying his shopping bags with him.  Maybe evacuating on September 11 has something to do with this; being separated from J so soon after we were married, seeing the smoke rise from the Pentagon while driving to my mom's, being out of my building for anthrax for weeks after.  I don't have these thoughts in Toronto.  I think the prevalence of terrorism is truly a global concern, but for whatever reason, I didn't realize I don't live with that threat in the same way here until I saw the man with the backpack.  Is it the gun laws in Canada? The way they try to integrate their immigrants? I'm not sure.

In any case, I hope that we can all live in a world with more love, respect and tolerance, and less hate and fear, in whatever form it takes, and wherever you may live.

Why I Love Canada, part 1 million

Today, as I was driving E and S to camp (yeah City of Toronto, for providing cheap and wonderful camp programs!), I saw an ad on the side of the bus.   It was from Peopleforgood.ca.

These have been popping up on the sides of buildings, billboards and buses for the past few weeks as a part of an ad campaign to make Canadians nicer to one another. Um, hello? I don't know if all of you have been to Canada, but these people are some of the nicest on the planet already.

Example 1: I let this woman turn left in front of me, holding up about 7 cars, preventing 5 of them from making it through a green light. Not one of them honked. Can you imagine that in L.A. or D.C.?

Example 2: People regularly bring my trash cans on trash day up to my garage. They don't leave them at the end of the street.

Example 3: When I flew to the states with my kids one time, I accidentally left my van door open, in a huge rainstorm.  One neighbor closed it. Another called me to see if everything was ok.

Example 4: People regularly offer you their extra parking time if they have it when they are leaving the lots.

And those are just a few of the examples. I could go on and on!  People have helped me job search, welcomed our family into their homes and communities, and told us where to go buy everything from ice skates to tires (Canadian Tire, of course!).  So, while I don't really see the need for people to be even nicer in Canada, I do love that they want to be.

So, I encourage you to visit peopleforgood.ca and bring a little happy Canada into your life today.

Love and hugs from the North, which is ridiculously and uncharacteristically HOT today!

Oui, Montreal

We went to Montreal. In May.

Yes, I've been a bad blogger.  Mainly because it has been the end of the school year, though not mine, and the kids and I have been on the road a lot.

J had a work trip and E is enrolled in French Immersion for Senior Kindergarten next year, which is just regular old kindergarten in America, so we thought we would drive the 6 hours and meet him there.  It is actually a great drive up the St. Lawrence River, past the 1,000 Islands along the border with New York state.  E and S watch movies most of the way, so I got to listen to a David Sedaris book on my iPhone and the first part of Bossypants by Tina Fey on the way home.

Everything was fine until we crossed over into Quebec.  As most of you know, Quebec is a French-speaking province, and I took Spanish in high school. Because, I thought, 'Hey, I live in California, next to the border with Mexico. Why would I ever need French? They shouldn't even teach French!'  Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

We stopped at the most inspired rest area ever.  It had... a playground. For small children. Who are restless after spending hours cooped up in the car.  I would show you the pictures I took, but little gremlins deleted them from my phone.  We also ate the most delicious chicken croquettes ever (they are not nuggets in French, no, no!).  St. Hubert was the chicken place we ate at in the rest area. The rest area even had sculptures. As in, real life artwork. Can you imagine that on the New Jersey Turnpike? And the conversation Snookie would have with the Situation about it?

I couldn't understand the French to pump gas, even though I have been pumping gas for my entire adult life, but eventually we figured it out and continued on. And our adventures in Montreal continued.

I know people love Montreal, and it is nice and all, but overall I think I am glad I live in Toronto.  I think that they are underserved as far as the Canadian dream.  Toronto is uber clean. True story: one night J and I drove home in the pouring rain around midnight to see someone powerwashing municipal garbage cans.  Montreal was plagued by a lot of graffiti*, and just overall looked like another large North American city, just one that spoke another language.   They pay a lot of taxes in Montreal, like in Toronto, but it doesn't look like they get the same level of services as we get in Toronto.  Who knows, though?

We went to this awesome environmental museum:

and the kids got to learn all about how water works, different fuels for cars, and how to make a dress out of hair (which was sort of gross).  The museum is in a park in the center of the river, so you get a great view from the lookout point.

There was a station about how most of the world got their water, which included filling up a bucket at a pump and then filling a bathtub. I loved this station. My kids worked so hard to fill it, and they made it realistic enough that is was a real walk.  It prompted some good questions about water usage and the world.  Manual labor is good for kids.

At this station, you could adjust the flow of the water through the community through adding canals, dams, and building or removing shoreline.  It was super awesome.  We could have stayed at just this station all day.  I recently found this toy for home use.

I don't remember the point of this exhibit, except that it poured water out of the toilet when it tipped over and my kids thought it was hilarious!

We also ate poutine in Montreal, at a hot dog bar with some of J's colleagues.  I am not a huge poutine fan.  I tend to enjoy french fries plain, so I don't need to add gravy and cheese curds to them to make them better.  They were fine, but I enjoy other things in Canada more, like skiing and smoked meat at Caplansky's.  Oh, and Olive et Gourmando.  This was my favorite place in Montreal. We ate so many meals there. I actually took a picture of my yogurt and fruit, but it seems weird to post it.  They had amazing coffee.  Delicious baked goods. Amazing sandwiches. The brownies!  Worth a trip back alone. It was always packed and full of people eating food that was making them happy.

    

We saw the church that Celine Dion got married in.  It was big and fancy. They were advertising a light show, so J and I looked at each other, shrugged and bought tickets. Normally we wouldn't really go for the church thing with the two small kids, but a light show sounded OK.  This show was heavy on the God and the history of the church.  Interesting, but not what we were expecting.  We weren't going to go in otherwise, so it was good to know, and helpful to get an overall picture of Montreal, but we laughed at ourselves that we were that gullible.  And then we were also gullible enough to go on the carriage ride around old Montreal, but we have a 5 year old girl and she is into princesses, so what do you expect?

S and E both got to feed the horse, which was an unexpected surprise and perhaps not a welcome one in the end.

We went out to the mountains outside of Montreal one day, where Mont Tremblant and the skiing regions are, to scope it out for next year. It was late May. People were still skiing. Because it is cold in Canada.  This is why hockey playoffs aren't until June.

J had the biggest coffee ever at a little shop that roasted its own beans, and we stopped at another village with the most beautiful grocery store ever (below).  

 

J had to work some more, doing important lawyerly things, so E, S and I went to the olympic village. They have converted the old biking arena into a museum hosting several habitats. Here are S and E in one of them. I think they are pretending to be animals.  It was really remarkable.  It is also remarkable what kind of infrastructure you are left with after the olympics are over.  Montreal has done a great job of turning them into public parks, but losing their baseball team to Washington has meant that part of that park goes unused now. Oh well.

On our way home, I took a wrong turn because listening to Tina Fey and the Garmin can sometimes be challenging.  We ended up in the area of 1,000 Islands, which is so beautiful.  I was on a side road and found this beautiful outdoor shrine/meditation area. I drove away, and then turned around and decided to go back and take a picture of it.  The owner of the house was out this time and gave me permission. Beautiful, eh?

*Including one that in my head I call my first swastika.  Someone had tried to draw one, couldn't get the two pieces to fit together right, and then did it again. Ah, success! If you are going to try some hate graffiti, please practice it at home first.