Hypocrisy

Today, the Swiss voted in a national referendum to ban the construction of minarets in their country. They voted convincingly enough that this measure will be added to the Swiss constitution.

Now, I'm no friend of religion, and certainly no friend of one that in many of its manifestations would rather see me dead than alive, but I have to pose that question about subjecting a minority's rights to referendum. The whole idea of human rights protection — and these measures are generally enshrined in countries' constitutions — is to protect unpopular minorities (the popular ones not needing any help).

The ultimate hypocrisy, of course, is to be found in so-called laic societies defending themselves against the expression of a religion that might be newer to their territory while defining the symbols of the dominant religion as 'cultural' and therefore protected from the application of the same norms.

I'm sure that the church spires I have juxtaposed with minarets in the pictures above are seen as 'heritage buildings' or 'cultural symbols', but I really don't see the difference between them. I have read that the four existing minarets in Switzerland are not even used to issue the call to prayer. Can we say the same thing about the bells (or increasingly speakers) in all of those church bell towers?

This all reminds me of our vociferous debate in Québec about 'reasonable accommodation' of minorities, sparked by a similarly intolerant ban on burkas by a by-law of the town of Hérouxville. After a commission that heard testimony from many hundreds of groups and individuals called for the reinforcement of laicism in our society, the members of the National Assembly voted unanimously (unanimously!) to reaffirm the presence of the crucifix above the Speaker's chair as a 'cultural symbol'.

This pretty recognizable symbol of Christianity has not been there since the building was built. It was installed during the 'grand noirceur', the reign of conservative Catholic premier Maurice Duplessis.

I'd say if you are going to ban one, you must ban them all. Maybe we can start by removing their tax-exempt status and see who survives.

One More Long Day

My last night in Toronto, and I am worn out! It has been an interesting conference, but the days have been rather long and I feel like I just need to nap.

An annual general meeting tomorrow and then we will zip off to catch the 5 pm train back to Montréal. (Our choice was to rush less for the train, but take the milk run and get in at almost midnight, which didn’t appeal to me.)

As I promised last time out, here are a couple of shots from my hotel room window in the daylight.

Osgoode Hall, home to the Law School and the Court of Appeal (my Toronto friends will correct me if I mixed up what actually happens in there).

Toronto’s very distinctive city hall, with its curved towers. As many times as I have been to this city, this is the first time I have been in this neighbourhood. I had never even seen the old city hall, right next to the new one (but out of my picture). It is a very lovely brown stone building with delightful gargoyles sticking out from the four corners of its clock tower. Here is a lovely photo of it that I picked from the web, specifically from here:

T-Dot

I am in Toronto for the next few days for the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN) Research Conference and the Annual General Meeting of the Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE). I came on the train with my Board President and amused myself along the way updating my Facebook status with my progress (I had to add back in the accents on the French ones, as FB stripped them away!):

- is headed to T-Dot on the T-rain today.
- est à Dorval...en route vers T-point. Est-ce que ça se dit?
- empiète sur le térritoire canadien...et personne n'a demandé de passeport!
- Cornwall! (Hi Shendah's mother!)
- Kingston, et le train sera complêt pour le reste du voyage, on annonce.
- Farmland...and no sudoku in the VIA Destinations magazine.
- Guildwood.
- 29e étage! (Oui, le monsieur est arrivé a T-point.)

Only 8 updates, which I consider rather restrained. ;-)

Now for the lexical translation… T-Dot being a hopelessly inane name for Toronto. I believe it started with T.O., and then they just dropped the O (did it sound too much like BO?). This is probably all quite passé as well, as I think they are calling it « Metro » since their own municipal mergers, but that will always designate for me a train on rubber tires wending its way through underground Montréal.

To make things worse, I have attempted my own translation of the archaic inane expression, making it T-point in French. All of my FB friends are most confused.

I will attempt some photos of my fabulous view, looking north over Osgoode Hall and the Toronto City Hall, from the 29th floor of the hotel, but that will have to wait until there’s a little light tomorrow.

For now, in a nod to Bob, let me offer you a look at my hotel room. I wonder if his will be looking similar this week?

Verification

How annoying! One of my long-ago posts suddenly had a spammy comment (selling likely fake pharmaceuticals), so I have had to enable the word verification thingy on my comments.

If I get any more I will have to start moderating, even though I prefer free expression. Of course, the kind of expression I have in mind when I think of that isn't trying to sell anything or cheat someone of their money.

Grrrr.

Vaccination

I got my vaccination against Influenza A (H1N1) last Saturday. For the sake of simplicity, let's just call it the swine flu and be done with it.

I was anxious leading up to this experience, but not because of any vaccine fears. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get it soon enough to not interfere with the other vaccination I have coming up. You see, we discovered last spring that I had lost my protection against Hepatitis A and B and I had to restart that process of vaccination (three doses, at 0, 1 and 6 months) to get that coverage back. My third dose will be in the first week of December and I really didn't want to have to choose between swine flu protection and the success of this latest attempt to ensure protection against Hepatitis A and B, especially considering the length of the latter process.

My experiences of Hepatitis A and B vaccination now number 3. The first time, I produced no immune response. This was in the lead-up to my diagnosis with HIV, so I probably had no immune system to mount a response (remember I was diagnosed rather late, with a CD4+ cell count of only 4). The second time around, in 2000, it seemed to have worked, right up until seeing the lack of protection in my routine blood tests last spring. Now is time number 3. May it work in a more lasting way.

The experience of the swine flu vaccination was a relief. Our many governments seem to be somewhat disorganized in their response, with fluctuating supplies and changing lists of who is eligible/prioritized for vaccination. The weakness of devolving the organization of health care to the regional level has clearly shown itself: there seem to be no two regions in Québec that are proceeding in the same way, leading to increasing confusion in the population.

The situation is also evolving rapidly, and these changes confuse, too. Our public health authorities across the whole country worked really hard to create a sense of urgency for the whole population to be vaccinated, and then when events — particularly the death of an otherwise healthy teenaged hockey player in Ontario — helped to illustrate the potential seriousness of this virus and really sold people on the vaccine way that the public health messages had not, they all seemed to have been caught unaware. (I would have said 'with their pants down,' but this vaccination is delivered to the arm!) Long lines and frustrated, panicked people were the results.

In that context, I was a little trepidacious about my own trip to the vaccination centre. Would they respect the order of priority explained in the flyer we got in every household (children under 5, women in the second half of their pregnancy, pregnant women with underlying health conditions, and people who are immune suppressed) or the list published two days later in the newspapers (all of the above, except the immune suppressed)? Would my vaccination be pushed back to a date uncomfortably close to my final dose of Hepatitis A and B vaccine?

All of the worry was for naught. I arrived at about noon and they were still giving out tickets marked 11 am. I went right into the building, had a form printed and within minutes was upstairs watching the informational video (with English subtitles, even!). I completed the consent questionnaire (did I feel sick today, did I have allergies to eggs, etc.), had a brief visit to a nurse to verify my reason for getting the vaccine (they didn't even want to see the proof I had brought) and then I was in front of another nurse getting injected. Statutory 15 minute waiting period, and I was out the door a mere 40 minutes after arriving. Done and done.

And I didn't even cry like the other kids being vaccinated next to me, not for the needle nor for the putting back on of the coats to go outside (which seemed traumatic for many of my young co-vaccinés).

Magic!

Tonight's performance of the Magic Flute by the Opéra de Montréal was very lovely, one of my most enjoyable opera experiences yet. This is one of the first German operas I have seen produced by the company — they usually stick to the Italian side of things — and I would heartily recommend it.

Let's talk about the sets for a minute. Not fabulous, but they still worked. I'm not sure if they intended for us to laugh as Tamino and Pamina endure the trials by fire and water, but it was so cheesy as to be very funny indeed. In the big scene at the end, I thought the set made Sarastro look like Raël or maybe the high priest of the Order of the Solar Temple. Either of those would be comic in a kind of tragic way. The spirits floating across the stage on a cloud were inspired and the periodic appearance of props from on high (bird, noose) also made us laugh out loud and worked quite well.

Costumes? Fabulous animals, including the serpent at the beginning and all number of creatures brought out by the flute, including a … camelcorn? Tamino had a lovely outfit through most of it, until he donned the Solar Temple robes at the end, and the Queen of the Night's tiara was to die for, or to die of if she had decided to use it for evil, which I wouldn't put past her! The best of all were the costumes of Papageno and Papagena, most birdlike indeed.

And while we're on the topic of Papageno, I have to salute the fabulous job that Aaron St. Clair Nicholson did in the role of Papageno. Not only does he sing beautifully, but his comic acting abilities, including great timing, had us rolling in the aisles. The Queen of the Night aria, sung by Aline Kutan, was also very beautiful and well executed.

Of course, some of the content of this opera is not for the feminist of heart. Memorable lines like "A woman does little, chatters much" and "A man must lead your hearts, for without him every woman is misguided" are not exactly cut from the pages of a Gloria Steinem book. But I guess we can all agree that Mozart was not a feminist, but a product of his time and move on from there.

Good fun, this one, and even better in good company.

At Least It Was a Moral…Defeat

Lovely aftermath of our municipal elections, which took place yesterday.

The mayor, whose administration was mired in a few ethical scandals, was returned to power, and with a majority of seats on the city council. At least a few of the big names in his party, including his brother (there's that high school look again — mayor's brother occupies important post in the city) lost their seats.

The progressive provincial politician who unfortunately chose to take a run at municipal politics with the most right wing of the municipal parties came second.

The leader of the new progressive party (the only one that ran mainly on the party's ideas and not on the personality of its leader) came third, but almost tripled his showing from four years ago. In fact, the party — Projet Montréal — has complete control of the Plateau neighbourhood and made some gains in other parts of the city, too, ending with 10 city councillors this time in comparison to the lone one last time out.

Ah, but the real moral defeat was suffered by our democracy. Overall voter turnout was extremely low by Canadian standards — between 30% and 40% — even after all the hot ticket issues that came out during the campaign. The mayor got a whopping 14.2% of voters to turn out and support him. The others did even worse. There were no more than a handful of areas in the city where more than half of the electors turned out to vote, and those were squeakers with just over 50%.

We'll see if there is any impact on the things that really need to be changed.