You Can Plan On Me

University wrapped-up on Friday with some unit planning time, a gift exchange, and a pot-luck. The weekend was all about reading, packing, and Catan with friends. I'm now sitting at the airport, waiting to board my flight home to Calgary. I have been ready to go for a while, but not before I took my Bromptom for one more festive trip around the seawall last night. I'll be home for Christmas... and I don't get to say that very often.

Christmas in Vancouver

I had a pretty relaxing weekend. I even made a point of napping twice on a Sunday - because dammit, it's Sunday, and I won't be having too many relaxing days anytime soon. I'm trying my best to economize my rest.

In the last two weeks, my room mate and I have taken advantage of some of the holiday merriment that the city of Vancouver has to offer. I'm off to Calgary in just over a week, and I wanted to make sure that I sample what I can before leaving the west coast.


The first was the 2nd annual Vancouver Christmas Market - also known as the German Christmas Market, likely because it appears to be entirely peopled by Germans - except for Arturo, a Peruvian gentleman who was at one of the booths selling his fair trade coffee. I bought a bag of beans from Arturo and he was happy to point out that each biodegradable bag was adorned with a decoration hand-painted by his wife. I chose one with a lovely colored ornament for the tree and told Arturo that every time I looked at the ornament, I would think of his wife. Arturo and I thought that a completely fine comment to make, but my friends thought it was weird. Awkwardness ensued, but now I have a nice bag of fair trade beans for a gift exchange on Friday.

The market itself I would imagine is usually a lot more lively than it was on the day we went: Saturday before the Grey Cup, rainy, and with the market opting out of liquor service for the night for fear that German Grey Cup revelers would overtake the carousel and start another riot. The market was okay. It could have been better. I say this for two reasons:

1) It's expensive. There is a $5 cost to even get into the thing and what one can buy inside is mostly far too expensive for a "day at the craft sale" kind of feel. Granted, most of what's available is actually hand-made and imported from the German, Austrian, and Swiss artisans who are there to sell. There are plenty of food booths as well, and if you're up for it, on busy days there is reportedly a pig roasting on a spit. How Christmassy. Anyway, a family of 4 would be looking at $20 for entry, $12 for a carousel ride, $40 for food, and a significant amount of money for any of the wooden, metal, or blown-glass ornaments available for sale. There really doesn't appear to be a cheap way to experience the market.

2) Okay, there's only one reason. This place would actually be a pretty nice place for a unique Christmas date. The market is erected each year on an empty paved lot beside the Queen Elizabeth theatre downtown, and the theatre has December offerings of Sting, The Canadian Tenors, and the Nutcracker. Just bring lots of money.

That was last weekend. This weekend was the real treat: the "Bright Nights in Vancouver Stanley Park Christmas Train". Maria and I made an evening out of it with two friends. Dinner, coffee and Catan, and then a stroll over to Stanley Park for a walk through crazy lighted displays and a ride on the miniature railway.

Free entrance to the park (with a donation to the firefighter's burn unit) and $11.75 for the train ticket. Totally worth it. This runs from December 1st until the 2nd of January.


The lands surrounding the railway are completely decked-out with a ridiculous amount of lights and Christmas decor. It's fairly chaotic in terms of theme and style, and it looks as though Davie Hogan chowed-down on every Rankin-Bass Christmas special and vomited all over Stanley Park's Rose Garden. I really mean this in a good way. Pictures wouldn't do it justice, but just walking around there creates the illusion that one is in a Christmas special of one's own making.


Tickets for the train are sold half through ticket-master in advance, and half at the park after 12:00 noon on the day of. It's solidly packed - early evening kid-friendly train times going first. We managed to get tickets for the 9:30 departure. With three trains running on the track, the lines move pretty quickly, and you only need to line-up for your 30 minute window to get the train. Didn't see any issues here.

The ride itself was pretty fantastic. Honestly, in terms of Christmas glee, I'm pretty sure that, for my two young nephews, this would have blown away anything Disneyland would have to offer - certainly not in terms of imagineering quality, but in terms of holly-jolliness, this is pretty tough to beat. The miniature trains (20 gauge tracks with guests seated two across) runs through the tall tree forests of Stanley Park, past lit displays over water, through tunnels, and back around again for a new perspective on things. The ride took about 10-12 minutes from what I can recall. There is a great deal of thought put into the displays and the music (piped into the overhead speakers in each mini train car) really adds to the effect.


The ride begins with Mr. Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" and then switches gears into Mahalia Jackson's "Go Tell it On the Mountain" for those who prefer a more non-secular approach to Christmas as the trains leads through choir dioramas and nativity scenes in the trees. The train rounds a bend and we can see dry ice billowing from underneath a facade of the Polar Express while light shines from the open engine door and head light. The conductor (on stilts) marches out to dance and salute the train which slows down for the pass - the music from the film really added to this sequence.

I could go on, but it's enough to say that it was pretty dang festive. My nephews, and specifically my train-loving dad would have gone absolutely crazy on this - the most Christmassy train ride I've ever been on. The sequence when the train runs over a short trestle bridge and across a pond is just ridiculous - the lights reflected on the water are something to see.

I found myself wishing that my family and my rabbit could have been there with me, and I found myself somehow not surprised to notice that, as the lingering odors revealed, some people want to heighten the experience of the Stanley Park Christmas Train even further with the addition of some genuine B.C. bud. Roasted chestnuts and organic popcorn are on hand for anyone who develops the munchies.

The Waiting Room

Finished watching Twin Peaks tonight. It was the 5th time that I have watched the entire series. I may have mentioned this before, but living on the west coast, if one ever was a Twin Peaks fan, it's easy to get sucked back into that world when one's daily setting is as inviting as this. I am hopeful that some friends of mine might be interested in a Spring journey to some key areas in Washington State where we might be able to see a few key sites, just for poops and ha-has: the falls, the Great Northern, and the log on the beach where Laura's body was found wrapped in plastic - just to name a few.

So, once again I say goodbye to characters I know and love and I watch as two enter into the waiting room before going through the black lodge and hoping to ascend to the white lodge and I feel, through my experience thus far as a student teacher having finished two short practicums and regrouping before moving on to my third, that I too am in the waiting room in a sense. There are people around me who seem to speak in tongues, the coffee sometimes clots, and strange people seem to come at me screaming from behind couches while I do my best to focus on why I crossed the threshold in the first place.

I'm going to take some time, and it will be valuable, and I need to brush my teeth.

Last Month of the Year

And in the spirit of the season, a descriptive paragraph from a grade 9 student. The focus was to be on sensory words to describe a thing, a moment, a person, or whatever one might feel strongly about...

A Snow Day

The sight of snow causes me to go on a rampage, swiftly diving into the snow, knowing I would make a show. No matter if I collapse into a frenzy as long as it occurs on a snow day. I would dance and fall on my face, eat the snow on the way. Construct a snowman with the spirit I have. Then when the wind would take initiative I would feel the snow dashing on my face. The snow melting and being absorbed, forming a smile on my face. Suddenly, getting hit by a snowball which cleanses and glorifies that smile I wear. I am aware of the smell of the air. It is of an ocean's breeze. I am ready to be enchanted by the visually spectacular winter and of snow's grace.

Writing is sometimes about taking risks.

Before I dig-in...

Today is the last "free" day before I dive into my second 3 week practicum, which will be centered around 4 consecutive full days of teaching as per the structure of SFU's student teacher program.

Again, I'm reluctant to say much about the school, itself - at least in part a result of the increased privacy issues in place here in Canada. However, I'll be happy to comment from time to time about certain lessons and how things go with their implementation. The next three weeks will be a challenge, and I'm going to do my best to be mindful of the fact that I work with three different sponsor teachers - each of whom have their own unique set of styles and expectations. Yours, truly is going to need to check himself not only each day, but with each period when I change rooms.

I will be teaching the following schedule, with each period lasting for 74 minutes:

Day 1
Period 1 - (No class)
Period 2 - English 10A
Period 3 - Resource Room (for struggling students)
Period 4 - Communications 11/12

Day 2
Period 1 - ESL Senior 4
Period 2 - English 9A
Period 3 - English 9B
Period 4 - English 10B

The days alternate one after the other, and it adds-up to four different classes to prep for as My English 9 and English 10 repeat.

I'm excited to get back into the school, and a bit nervous about meeting expectations for lesson-planning, but the more I get on top of with the next three weeks, the better off I'll be when the long spring practicum comes along - I'm going to need the best head start I can manage.

Met Collins for breakfast this morning, realized how lucky I am to have had three visitors to Vancouver already. Good friends and family will make for a very special holiday coming up in Calgary, though I plan on getting the most out of my holiday time in Vancouver as well. There is a Christmas tree that's lit-up each night in the middle of the Lost Lagoon as one enters Stanley Park. That'll be nice, and I'll be sure to get some pictures.

Further to that...

Reprinted without permission from Slate Magazine (Sunday, November 13th, 2011)

Because Our Fathers Lied: Remembering our veterans and reflecting on the glorious ambiguity of Rudyard Kipling's war poetry
- By Christopher Hitchens

I spent much of this weekend, as I often do this time of year, confining myself to writing and thinking about Rudyard Kipling. This may seem like a pretentious thing to be saying, but if you care about war and peace and justice and life and death, then he is an inescapable subject. The same is true if you care about modern English literature, which for no less inescapable reasons is intimately bound up with the great catastrophe of mortality that overcame British families between August 1914 and November 1918.

There had probably never been such a race for a society to get itself involved in the battle for a perceived moral superiority. Great swaths of young men saw their honor, and huge groups of young girls their virtue, involved in the defense of Belgium against the rape of German imperialism. As a result, a huge and successful post-Victorian people found itself nearly decimated, with a special emphasis on the slaughter of its youth of child-bearing age. And Kipling himself, the man who brought us The Jungle Book and many a school yarn, was desolate because he did not have a real son to lend, or to give, to the fight.

Pay attention when people make use of those terms, about “giving” or “losing” your life in wartime. Often, we have only the uncorroborated word of the losers that that is what they did. Either their lives were offered and accepted—this being the great act of sacrifice and solidarity honored since Pericles and the Gettysburg Address—or they were ruthlessly snatched away. In which latter case we have only the word of the generals and the kings and the politicians that this was indeed a legitimate deal. That, also, would be rather more like an accident.
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Whereas the last alternative, almost too grim to reflect upon, would be that of deliberate theft. In this scenario we encounter cannon fodder, fiddled casualty figures, falsified statistics and all the cynicism of wartime manipulation and propaganda. And again, nobody is on hand to represent the words of the victim. That is what happened to young John Kipling when he was posted “missing” at the end of one of the fiercest early battles of the First World War. His father Rudyard, upset that the boy was disqualified for the military because of his poor eyesight, had in effect smuggled him through customs so as to pass the minimal regulations. His agony, therefore, as to having effectively cheated his boy into vanishing in the trenches, can only be dimly guessed at.

Young John wasn’t properly identified until the 1990s; a dreadful fact about hundreds of thousands of young British men of that epoch who still have not been bagged or tagged from the ditches and drains of the areas of Flanders and Picardy where the supreme sacrifice—another term to watch out for—was actually carried out in those sanguinary years. I wrote about the exhumation, and it seems that he was horribly injured and perhaps blinded toward the end. As a kind of atonement, his father agreed to write the official history of his son’s Irish regiment and also to help design the official memorial to that strange idea, “The Unknown Soldier.” Unknown to whom?

Even as Kipling was repressing his doubts about the nature of the war and the death of his only son, there was a sort of revolution of poets at the other end of the country. In a mental hospital in Scotland were confined, because of their opposition to the war and their “battle fatigue,” men of the stature of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Just contrast what Kipling and Owen wrote. I’ll first cite Kipling:

Our statecraft, our learning,

Delivered them bound to the pit and alive to the burning

Whither they mirthfully hastened as jostling for honor.

Not since her birth has our Earth seen such worth loosed upon her!

… But who shall return us our children?

Wilfred Owen decided to rework the ancient Bible story of the binding and killing of Isaac by his father Abraham. If you recall, Abraham listened to his god’s instructions and carried them out until the last moment, whereupon an angel called him out of heaven, telling him to “offer the ram of pride instead” of Isaac. In Owen’s poem, the action follows this form until the angel makes an appearance. At this point, old man Abraham turns remorseless:

But the old man would not so, but slew his son.

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Reading them today, it is surprising how closely the two poems converge. In both cases, fathers grieve in different ways over the slaughter of their sons. They also brood over the paternal responsibility for the bloodletting. This introduces elements of ambiguity into the reflection.

Last week, some mediocre California mayoress announced that she wasn’t going to attend a Veterans Day event in her city of Richmond. Gayle McLaughlin, in fact, was down with the “Occupy” guys and gals instead. You can easily picture the response she got: the city of Richmond insulted, along with the memory of its brave men and women in uniform. Indeed, there might not even be a Richmond if not for those unforgettable volunteers. But if this were true, then the writing of history would always be simple. So would the composition of morality stories. Both Kipling and Owen came to the conclusion that too many lives had been “taken” rather than offered or accepted, and that too many bureaucrats had complacently accepted the sacrifice as if they themselves had earned it.

And this has made a lot of difference. It means, for example, that each case needs to be argued on its own merits. I am convinced that the contingents who went to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, though badly led on a scale almost equal to that of 1914 to 1918, are to be praised and supported. But I take no comfort from the idea that this should be an official position. I must say I think that La McLaughlin expressed herself with awful casualness (because Nov. 11 is, after all, truly—still—a solemn day on the calendar). But it’s still more important on such a day to discuss dissent, and to reflect on whether it might have been your own enemy, or your deeply mistaken father, who brought you bound to the pit and alive to the burning.

Remembrance Day

I realized, just this morning, that I hadn't attended a proper Remembrance Day ceremony since 2006. Each November since that time had been spent in Korea or Thailand, and there's either too much Pepero or too much Beer Laos in those locales to focus on what the day really means back in Canada.

I was pleased the last two years when teaching in Korea however, when I was able to implement a pretty cool poetry lesson using Jon McCrae's famous poem "In Flanders Fields". It was sobering for the vast majority of the students to recognize that British Commonwealth countries recognize their war dead in such a way. The lesson really worked, and it was nice to note that I was able to collect a great deal of Pepero on the day: students who brought me Pepero on November 11th got a Canadian flag pin in return. I was rolling in Pepero for weeks afterward.

Anyway, I was glad to head down to Victory Square this morning to take in my first Vancouver Remembrance Day ceremony and my first one on Canadian soil in half a decade. There was a great turn-out on a soggy grassy hillside - the rain which had stopped before the ceremony had already had its way with the green space.

It was a beautiful ceremony - what always gets to me the most, among the songs, readings, and wreath-layings, is "Flowers of the Forest", the Scottish Lament - and the silence that precedes and follows it.

It's also interesting to see how people react to the day - from a myriad of personal places of hurt, sadness, gratefulness, or anger. At today's ceremony, a woman waved a Canadian flag from an open window that looked down on the parade below. Her sign called for an end to the Canadian involvement in Afghanistan, and she became vocal - with tangible sadness in her voice. Not knowing her, or the place her emotion came from, I can only sit back and respect both her, and the people marching below who fought to maintain a country where she has the right to speak her mind.

When soldiers themselves can be in support of or rally in protest against their wars, it's clear that nobody - not even one directly involved - can have a monopoly on appropriate response. Looking at the variety of those laying wreaths, I see the day being about those who were lost; those who have worn a uniform and survive to continue to do so; and those who have watched others deploy and never come back. There's just something in me that reminds me that I have no right to tell Cindy Sheehan or Richard Tillman to keep their mouths shut - especially on Remembrance or Veteran's Day.