Fireworks

Here in Canada, this last weekend was a long weekend, celebrating Victoria Day. What this mostly means is that it's the beginning of the warm weather and there are lots of fireworks displays.

When I was a child, fireworks were the most amazing, "sickest", thing ever. We didn't get to see them very often as my parents didn't like the idea of bottle rockets, and even sparklers were a source of burns, but I do remember one spectacular failure.

The youngest of my three brothers was known for his defiance of authority, and one day when I was very young, he brought home a bottle rocket. These were tiny little fireworks that had a long stick so you could prop them up in a glass milk bottle - hence, "bottle rocket" - so you could light the fuse and have it go up without much risk of burning yourself.

There was an overlap in the nights my parents worked - Sundays. When my older brothers headed off to university or into the Army, this youngest brother was left looking after my little sister and I. As a result, events such as the Great Bottle Rocket Launch happened when my parents weren't around.

So with great fanfare this brother produced a bottle from one of the empties set out for the milkman, grandly placed the little firework into the bottle, and gleefully called his little sisters out to come be naughty with him. If there's one thing corruption loves, it's an innocent audience.

With a flourish he lit the fuse. My sister and I waited with baited, excited breath. It sparked a bit, there was a bit of smoke. We leaned further forward in order to better see the magic as it happened...

Then nothing. The bloody thing just sat there. It was a dud, a fizzer that in later days came to represent that brother in my mind. Lots of promise, no spark.

Later in my life there were sparklers on cakes, and those were always a thrill for me. However, things changed in Victoria after one spectacular fireworks show in Melbourne. As I recall, though research hasn't allowed me to find the actual reference yet, the last straw was when one of the grandstands at one of our big and at the time new sporting arenas caught fire from a professional fireworks display. It was a very hot summer, and a stray spark melted the seats. Fireworks were banned in Victoria soon after, with only New Year's one of the few days that you could see fireworks at all. You certainly weren't allowed to buy them for yourself anymore. Not that we were when I was living with my parents, but that never stopped my stupid brother.

I used to love going to SkyShow near Albert Park Lake on Australia Day. I think I only went twice and the crowds were horrendous, but it was a fantastic show. They'd do firework displays to music they played over the supporting radio station, EON FM (which is now Triple M and I am really showing my age here). Even when I didn't go I'd still listen in on my little radio. Ahh, the innocence of youth. Now I suppose I'd stream it online, or wait for the podcast, watching simulated fireworks on my PC.*

It's a different story in Canada, and I suppose that all this time without them in Australia has turned me into a fearful spoil-sport. When I walked into my local grocery store and saw ranks upon ranks of fireworks for sale, my first thought was not the joyful "Oh boy oh boy! FIREWORKS!" I once would have felt, but instead it was more like "OH GODS, WE'RE SURROUNDED BY TREES AND ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Too many Total Fire Ban Days, I suspect.

There were ranks and ranks of 'em.

RAAAAAAAANKS!

Ranks and ranks and ranks of 'em. RAAAAANKS.

The Husband and I did go to a professional pyrotechnics show over the weekend, though, down in a teeny town some ways from here. It was a small show, but lovely, set in the middle of forests and on the shores of a large lake. The setting was idyllic and the fireworks glorious. Alas, I cried through it thinking about all the cute little animals I'd seen there and what would happen to them should there be a misplaced spark.

My friends, I have become that most scary of creatures, The Old Fart. That's right. Get off my lawn.

* The end of this piece was going to be a chuckle at the expense of Australia's capital city, Canberra, which was the one place fireworks were still legal. Alas, research for this piece has found that after the last big bushfires there, Canberra too has outlawed the sale of fireworks. Ah well, at least you can still legally make your hardcore porn there. Gotta love our pollies.

Spring Sprung Sproing

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdies is?

Spring has arrived in this Great White North, and it's been rather a noticable change. Gone are the banks of endless white, replaced by shy buds of greenery. There is, contrary to popular outside-of-Canada belief, sunshine. Ooooh.

The difference in the seasons here is a bit of a shock to someone who is used to the Victorian climate. We fool ourselves into believing that we have four seasons, but according to our stereotype Melbournians have to carry umbrellas and coats with us on even the brightest of sunny days as those changes happen within an hour or two.

Here the seasons are quite distinct from each other, and it's fun to actually see it as we move from one to another. Victoria in comparison really only has two seasons - "Hot and Dry" or "Cold and Wet", without the (cold) extremes that happen here.

I keep getting told about how Canadians have coats for everything, and it's true. Winter coats, Fall coats, Rain coats, Spring coats. I'm sure there's a Summer coat in there as well. That being said, the moment there's even a touch of warmer weather, all coats are off and out come the lighter clothes. Weather that would make the average Victorian shiver and reach for the heater has many Canadians out and about in T-shirts and shorts. People are even barbequing in the rain.

One of the things I have discovered since being here is that zero degrees Celcius really isn't as cold as you think when you're coming back up from the deep minuses. One looks forward to it through the depths of a white winter, and even starts refering to it as a "heat wave" when it happens with tongue only partially in cheek. When zero is only the halfway point on the great journey of the seasons, it's bloody cold going down, but nice and warm coming back up. I suppose it's all relative.

We're still being asked why the hell we came back, though. These cold inured Canadians just can't imagine why we'd have left the supposed paradise of Aussieland. I should be facetious and say that it's because Doctor Who comes out a week later back home. That'd fix it.

A Prisoner Island

I think one of the best known things about Australia's history is that we were originally an English prison colony. Actually the Federation of Australia was comprised of several of them. New South Wales is arguably the best known, but Tasmania and Western Australia were quite large as well.

Victoria, where I'm from, simply didn't. Oh, I think they tried with a few small holdings, but we had nothing on the scale of Sydney Town or Van Diemen's Land. Victoria is much better known for being a goldfield - Ballaarat (now just "Ballarat"), California and later the Yukon were the big places the gold miners went to back in the 1850s.

Yet we are all known as being convicts, and Australians on the whole are very attached to their convict heritage in that weird cultural cringing way we've developed. The rest of the world may deride us for it, but by all the Gods above we're going to be proud of it! Finding a convict ancestor in your family tree is something to be cherished and gives you bragging rights over those dirty, not-true blue enough Aussies who only have scunging Free Settlers in their background. And heavens forbid you should find a trooper in your family tree. Back to England you go, screw!

So I suppose it comes as no surprise to realise that in the Australian way of things, at least the piece of it I came from, the police aren't regarded particularly highly. The underdog rules in the Australian heart, which also leads to our infamous "Tall Poppy Syndrome". If anyone seems to be getting too big for their britches or a swelled head, there's nothing more than an Australian likes to do than cut them down and put them back in their supposed place*.

Historically, there was no one better at getting too high and mighty than the troopers. Most didn't want to go to the colony. It was a place of exile for the troopers as well as the convicts, though at least the troopers could potentially go home again after their tour was done. They were usually bachelors, and often the troopers had been thrown out of their old detatchments for misconduct and so were assigned as far away as they could get them. That meant Sydney Town. These prime pieces of dross tended to take their frustrations regarding their situations out on the convicts. They also had one main escape from the harsh realities of the colony - rum. They drank a lot of it, and pity the governor who tried to stop the manufacturing of it.**

One can only imagine some of the atrocities perpetuated by these isolated fellows. After all, tales are told of how so many female convicts on the First Fleet arrived in the fledgling colony pregnant, when they hadn't been that way when they started out.

Things didn't really get better as time went on. Even in Victoria, on the Goldfields we had horrors such as The Eureka Stockade and the infamous shoot out at Glenrowan. Neither of these events shine a particularly good light on the troopers, though in the latter case at least Ned Kelly did have a reputation as a bushranger. He and his family also have a reputation for being victims of police persecution, and amongst certain circles in Australia, he is a legend for standing up to authority and not taking it lying down.

So Australia is a prisoner island, standing at the limits of an endless ocean.*** We don't really like authority, and we don't trust our police. Even today in our newscasts, if the police have dared to shoot at someone, it's immediately reported nation-wide, usually in terms of "They don't need to do this to those poor innocent people!" The Victoria Police in particular have a reputation for shooting to kill, even though I can only think of a handful of times they actually have killed someone.

I like to think I'm a rational person, and suspect that with the restrictions they have on even drawing their weapons, those people they've shot were presenting a danger to those around them. I may be wrong - I know the Australian in me is screaming, "But they probably weren't! They just shot them because it was easier!" See? The history is telling.

Why am I writing about all this in this blog? Isn't this supposed to be about my experiences here in Canada, and not reminiscences of half remembered Australian History lessons and societal issues?

The attitude to the police is quite different here. It's quite telling that one of the most famous figures in Canadian literature is an RCMP officer. I can't see the equivalent happening in Australia. In fact given Ned Kelly's iconic status, it's the opposite.

It's a thing of pride to have a family member in the police here, while I remember the worst insult one of my brothers would throw at we younger ones would be, "You're going to be a bloody copper when you grow up, aren't ya?" We were supposed to be ashamed of that thought, and the quickly spat back, "No I'm not!" indicated just how well we had learned that lesson.

The brother who said these things wasn't really the brightest spark on the bonfire, and nor was he known for his acceptance of authority, but though he was something of an extreme case and not indicative of the whole family's experience, he is illustrative of the difference between the Canada and Australia.

Australians aren't criminals - well, no more or less so than any other Western country - but there is this underlying current of distrust and fear of the police, rather than the respect I tend to see here. I married into a Canadian family who have solid ties to the Ontario Provincial Police so perhaps we go too far the other way, but the media coverage isn't as suspicious of its law enforcement agencies as the Australian ones tend to be.

Of course there are Canadians who are distrustful of the police and their policies, but on the whole, it is one of the major ways the Australians and the Canadians are dissimilar from each other.  It's been interesting to watch.

* I think that ultimately that is why Australians don't like Americans very much. The bold and brassy confidence a stereotypical "Septic" has really rubs Aussies up the wrong way. Loudness as a lifestyle really gets on an Australian's nerves. "Pull ya head in" really is the Australian way of doing things.


** Gotta love William Bligh; first his crew mutinied on the HMS Bounty, then this Rum Rebellion. It's interesting how in movies about this incident Bligh is portrayed as the high and mighty English Overlord with all the privilege and arrogance that might imply, while MacArthur was the Little Aussie Battler, just trying to make a quid in an unfair world. In reality they were probably just as heinous as each other. At least MacArthur moved on to sheep after all this.


*** From "Great Southern Land" by Icehouse, ©1982 Iva Davies. Lovely imagery, but how are there limits to an endless ocean? I love this song though, so pull ya head in.  ;-b

Elections!

It's been a big week in news, and for Canada it's not quite over yet. There have been three big news stories here - the Royal Wedding, Osama Bin Laden and last but not least, the Canadian Federal Election. I think I'll address the latter one first.

It's been interesting to watch the Canadian political process at work. If nothing else, it's made me feel quite at home given we'd just gone through this same thing in Australia before I left. No matter where I go, politicians and their tactics are all the same.

It was initially quite confusing getting a grip on the different parties here. It's not the kind of big two party thing that the US is known for, it's more like the Australian "anyone can have a go" kind of deal. I'm not yet certain if Canada has Independants (people not affiliated to any party) the way we do or not. They do have a broadly similar system, though with radically different names.

Our big two parties are the Liberals and Labor (ALP - Australian Labor Party. Yes, there's a lack of "u" in it, and it really cheeses me off. Bloody sellouts).

The Liberals ally themselves with the smaller Country Party to become the Coalition. These Liberals, despite the name, are what the Canadians would call Conservatives and the USicans would call Republicans. They're the Right Wing, the ones for business and development.

The ALP are the Left Wing, the ones for the people, who are more on the side of welfare, health care and education programs. These are what the Canadians would call the Liberal Party (now you really start to see my confusion), and the USicans would call the Democrats.

How the hell the Australian Liberal Party got all turned around from the meaning of the word and from the rest of the world, I'm not certain. Probably to confuse immigrants to Australia, but they aren't allowed to vote!

Anyway, here in Canada there are obviously more than the two parties. There's also the NDP as I mentioned above, the Greens, lots of lesser known ones, and Bloc Québécois. This latter one is a uniquely Canadian thing, and even though I don't know French, I kind of get the feeling from their site that this is a party for the Québécois who would love to get away from the bulk of Canada and be their own country. I have it on good authority* they tried it a while back, but stopped the proceedings when they realised they'd have to produce their own currency and the like. I would love to visit Quebec sometime.

Every party slags off all the others. It's almost refreshing (in a sour, world-hating kind of way) to know that no matter where you go, politicians and political maneuvering doesn't change. I can't recall seeing any TV ad where they addressed their own policies directly (though I do have a tendancy to fast forward through the commercials, so I might have missed the one that did). There was at least one Liberal ad that had an address to their website inviting one to see their family plan, though when I got to the site last night it took me a while to find the link in the midst of all the pics of Michael Ignatieff and the blog posts about his life on the bus (He went to the Stoney Creek Dairy! I've been there! I wonder if the icecream quality has changed now that the manufacturing of it has gone to Montreal?).

Most of what I've been seeing reminded me quite strongly of the Australian Liberal Party's (not the same as the Canadian Liberal party! See above) campaigns. Both at a State and Federal level, these ads were all about blasting the leader of the Labor Party on a personal level, then the party as a whole, while never once mentioning their own policies.  In fact I have a dim recollection of Tony Abbot, the leader of the Liberals, being pressed about their policies, and them being released only very late in the game.

At least the Canadian ones seem to have given voters some credit and have at least addressed how things were going to be different if their party got in power, though never in any depth, and all I can seem to recall of them now was that the Conservatives believe that "The Other Parties (not us!) Will Raise Taxes" and "Michael Ignatieff Is Not A Canadian". Oh yeah, and that angry two headed coin thing. Meanwhile the Liberals hated the NDP (New Democratic Party - what happened to the old one?) even more than the Conservatives, which really doesn't seem to gel with what I know of their stances on things.

I also recall a whole hell of a lot of Maple Leaf Flags fluttering patriotically in the background, particularly on the NDP ad.

I suppose that after *cough*teen years of being of age in a country where voting is compulsory, it's hard not to get interested in the local political scene. In fact, if I was allowed to vote here I would have.  Even if you people are weird and hold your elections on weekdays instead of our weekends and you don't have to vote if you don't want to, I would be out there at the polling places with you on this one. No, I'm not telling you who I'd vote for.

If you're Canadian and eligible, go vote. If for no other reason than for me to vicariously vote through you. Gods, I never thought I'd actually want to vote. I must be going mad.

* Ok, so it was hearsay and vague memory. I dunno, I was living about as far away as I could get, ok?