Author: Bill

Can an 89 year old peace activist make an impact on the behavior of a major federal institution? Damn right she can.
Audrey Tobias wants Canada to know that Stats Canada is paying tens of millions of dollars to the war machine known as Lockheed Martin. You know, the same people that are peddling F-35 jets to Harper. Stats Canada is buying scanning software and hardware from Lockheed Martin, to handle the millions of census forms it processes.
Audrey doesn’t want to feed into the profits of an arms dealer, so she refused to fill out her 2011 census form. That’s a federal offence and she’s been charged. But you’ve heard all about this already, and that’s the point. Without Audrey’s resistance and her willingness to face a fine (or even jail time, because she won’t pay a fine) who knew that Stats Canada was giving business to an arms manufacturer?

Peter and I got our signals crossed today, so we missed our bike ride. Danica and I decided to take advantage of the day. There may not be many more like this. We rode to Cherry Beach and looked for a bench. Surprise! Peter was sitting on the bench next to ours, so we met up anyway.
Photo credits: Top, Danica. Middle, Peter. Bottom, Bill.

Masks, by Helen Andersen. 1988. Airbrushed gouache on paper, Image approx 18″ x 24″
Although I am about as far from a hockey fan as you can get, why not acknowledge the fact that the national game is back on the box. How else would I do that?
Here, Helen was playing off the hockey mask against West Coast aboriginal masks. It’s a fairly big painting and rather jarring until you’ve lived with it a while. It’s getting a place of honour in my home studio as soon as it’s matted and framed.

This was in a Linux newsletter I subscribe to.

“Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine.”
~Richard Stallman

I guess Stallman singles out Facebook because it is so popular, but doesn’t Google to just as much surveillance? Or Apple, or Microsoft?

Watch a couple of times before you peek at the answer.

Ruth Buffalo’s Father Confronts Her Violator by Helen Andersen. Gouache on Arches paper. Image size approximately 13″ x 9.5″
I have searched for a myth or a story that might explain the subject here, but no luck so far. Maybe there will be a clue in Helen’s journal writings.
Clearly, this small piece is related to the Native Myths and Symbols series. It is also an example of Helen’s occasional use of metallic paint. In this case, she has brushed silver into the background. She used both silver and gold metallic paints on several pieces we have, some abstract, some representative.

I was surprised to find that I captured this butterfly the other day, out on the Leslie Street Spit. When I clicked the shutter, I really wasn’t optimistic, but there it was when I downloaded my photos. Danica and I pay more attention to Monarchs since we launched two of them.

We tested out the car rack today and took our bikes to Kathleen’s house in Guildwood. Kathleen has a nifty new three-wheeler, so she toured us around her neighbourhood.

In the centre shot, you see Danica and Kathleen cruising past the nursing home where Danica used to work and Kathleen still does. So Kathleen can ride to work, and more than that, she can shop at the supermarket which is even closer to home. See that big basket on the back of her Schwinn?
We were not only toured, we were very well fed. Kathleen is an excellent cook and she treated us to a delicious dinner of stuffed ribs with a maple syrup glaze. Having exercised, we also earned pieces of Danica’s banana bread with ice cream for dessert.

Even the most observant of readers would miss a oddity in the background of one of my Leslie Street Spit shots (previous post). White-trunked trees, flecked with black.

The black flecks are cormorants; fish-eating birds whose poop kills the trees they use for nests. The white trunks are probably somewhat bleached by the sun, since cormorants use their beaks to strip away bark, but the trees are also painted with a lot of guano.
“30,000 cormorants destroying lakeside park“, reads the headline of a 2009 Toronto Star item. Perhaps, but maybe the birds are just lakeside developers. Highrise living by the lake is popular with our species, too.

For one thing, we managed to frame a nice picture called View From Our Place, done by Helen Andersen when she lived in Saanichton, B.C. on Vancouver Island. It’s up on our wall now.

After the picture-taking of the picture, we went out to see the sailboats on Lake Ontario… many, may of them out to enjoy the last few days of summer-like weather.

The painting does a better job than the photograph, doesn’t it?