Virginia Tech Lockdown: Two Countries Respond

Virginia Tech, the scene of a deadly shooting spree in 2007 that killed 32 people in our home state, was locked down for several hours today because some 14 year olds reported seeing someone holding something that looked like a gun. (It is still unclear if there was a gun, and there was no gunperson found today; no one was shot.)

There was interesting coverage, and more importantly, comments, in both the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail about this story.  The Post story focused on the quick response, the possible overreaction, and the ability to carry guns EVERYWHERE in Virginia, even though VT has declared itself to be a gun-free zone.  And, of course, in the home state of the National Rifle Association, if you had your weapon with you, you'd be able to shoot the gunman.  Duh.

The Globe and Mail's article and following comments dealt more with the fascination that this continues to happen at VT, and amazement that they let people purchase guns so easily. The idea that anyone can walk up to anyone at a gun show and purchase a weapon is very foreign.  Why would you allow people to do that? Duh.

It's very interesting how two fundamental approaches to weapons could be so opposite.

Happy Simcoe Day! Happy Canada Day! (Or Canada has tons of holidays.)

Monday was a Civic Holiday. It is a lovely, bureaucratic name for a day off, no?  It is the first Monday in August.

Looking a little deeper into my trusty source, Wikipedia, in Toronto the Civic Holiday is actually called Simcoe day.  It celebrates John Graves Simcoe, who was the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada (Ontario) and abolished slavery in U.C. in 1793, ending the practice by 1810.  He also moved the capital to Toronto, and designed Yonge and Dundas streets.

Before that, he fought for the British in the Revolutionary War, and almost killed George Washington.

We have a lot of holidays in Canada.  (Not that J enjoys them - he worked through most of Monday.)  I counted 12, including: Family Day, Good Friday, Boxing Day, Victoria Day and Easter Monday. The weirdest thing for being such a tolerant country is all of the religious holidays off.  But 77% of Canadians identify with some Christian religion (77%?), so I guess that it makes sense.

A weird thing about holidays is what closes and what is open. For example, most malls are closed on Family Day, in February. What?! What else are you supposed to do with your family in February but shop? Grocery stores are also mainly closed, so you have to be prepared with adequate supplies of food.  But it isn't consistent, and depends on the holiday.

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Which brings me to Canada Day, which was last month. It is like Fourth of July, but in Canada. Actually, it just celebrates the confederation of Canada, not any sort of Independence from Britain, since they are still pretty connected, having the same Queen and all. However, they do fireworks, and picnics, and are as patriotic as Canadians get. Which is... not very.  Our neighbors told us that we were "very American" for putting Canadian flags in our front lawn.  And we went to an AWESOME neighborhood BBQ organized by one of our neighbors.

This is how you get ready for Canada Day. First, you get your kids excited by watching Are We There Yet, World Adventure, Canada Day.

Then, you need to purchase some Canadian festive attire. Fortunately, Old Navy is in Canada for just such needs.  And Canadian Dollar.  We were the only family (ahem, neighbors!) who were completely decked out. (We did actually buy and wear the cowboy hats on the right.)

Then, you walk down the street with your goodies to your park, which your neighbors have thoughtfully decorated and organized. There are a few grills, serving hamburgers and hot dogs, donated side dishes and desserts, crafts for the kids (so they can decorate their bikes in maple leaves, of course!) and alcohol on someone's property, because we are a rule-abiding bunch.  There is also an amazing cake someone made!

Last, but not least, it is important that you have some hippy-trippy friends in your Canadian neighborhood to organize your drum circle.

We did not stay for fireworks, but I hear they were pretty great.  We plan to do something similar around Labour Day, I think, right, NL? 

We have a truly great neighborhood with really fabulous people, and I am grateful every day that we moved to such a super street. One of J's colleagues (nvdb), who has moved all over the world, was in Toronto when we were house hunting and gave us the best advice when we came back discouraged one night.  He said to find the neighborhood where you will be happy, even if you have to wait for it and go into temporary housing. While that didn't happen, we are happy and relieved to have ended up where we did, on a street with fun families, lots of cool kids and a great park. Thanks for welcoming us!

 

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!