Yukon Chatter Bug

The headline in this morning’s Globe & Mail caught my attention and got me thinking about our own airline. It’s a story about WestJet and SouthWest, both discount airlines, agreeing to sell seats on each other’s flights. To read the above headline in our local paper would be, to say the least, a dream come true. Why? Immediately, I can think of at least of three advantages to this kind of arrangement.

For starters, with one phone call, or one click, you could book your trip across North America.

Imagine being able to go to Air North’s website, and book a flight to, say, Halifax, Thunder Bay, or Regina, with just one click. Of course, it’s still possible to do so with services like Expedia [Expedia doesn't list Air North as an option] or through a travel agent, but I’m not a business traveller, and prefer to book my own flights.

Also, an agreement between airlines has the advantage that their connections would be better synced.

When booking a flight out of Whitehorse and across the country, the problem usually encountered involves connections and wait times. It’s easy enough to get to Vancouver, Edmonton, or Calgary with our beloved airline, but, unless you only have one connection, (i.e. travelling to a major city centre), it’s next to impossible to connect to WestJet without spending a night en route. Air North doesn’t get to Edmonton and Calgary until late in the evening.

Maybe it’s just my problem, because I usually have to connect at least twice to travel home. Plus, the only airlines that travel south from my hometown (Timmins) are Air Canada (to Toronto) and Bearskin Airlines (to Thunder Bay). Last year, when I travelled to Thunder Bay to visit relatives, I had to go through Toronto on the way there (further east) and had a 9hr wait on the way back in Edmonton. I ended up going to THE Mall for a bit and visited a friend, but it still was a long wait.

Finally, an agreement between airlines would surely include the service of baggage transfer.

When booking my mom’s and mother-in-law’s flight to Whitehorse for my graduation this past June, I booked with Air North for the YVR-YXY portion of the flight. Little did I know that Air Canada recently pulled out of the agreement between the two airlines to transfer luggage (shame on them). For most travellers, it’s an inconvenience to have to leave the secure area to get your luggage and check-in again. Plus, you have to allocate more time between connections to do this. I hadn’t considered this when scheduling connections and thinking about wait times, because I was under the impression that the luggage would be transferred by the airlines. As a result, I ended up sending her luggage home on Greyhound to avoid the hassle. This is the only issue I’ve ever had with Air North, as I felt that these new requirements (updated link June ’09–They’ve revamped the page, and I’m pleased to see the information more clearly laid out.) for travellers to transfer their own luggage (when connecting to AC) wasn’t made clear enough when booking the flights.

I HAVE A DREAM!

Blowing my nose, coughin’, spittin’ and sneezin’, are from an old song, one that describes my current condition. Those words are pretty slang for any French-speaker, but they sure get the point across.

I grew up in Northern Ontario, where a lot of people are bilingual. I went to French school as a kid and spoke French at home and English on the streets. As a result, I’m fluent in both languages, both written and spoken — a blessing nowadays.

In my experience, French people in Northern Ontario are just, well, people. They don’t care where you’re from: Québec, the Maritimes, Manitoba, or Europe. French is French, some people just have different pronunciations or expressions, that’s all. Who cares? As long as you can communicate with each other, all is good.

It wasn’t until I moved to Toronto, and later Whitehorse, did I realize that there’s a whole hierarchy in the French-speaking world. You may disagree with me, but here’s how it goes:

Highest on the ladder: Parisians, then other Europeans, then Québecois, and then the rest of us in no particular order: Franco-Ontarians, Maritimers, pods of Francophones in the prairies, Louisiana, Haiti, etc…

Every time I have had the privilege of working with Parisians, it seemed like they always felt the need to correct me. I don’t mind if I ask, but in regular conversation, it can get annoying very quickly. I must say though, that any French person from other parts of France that I have worked with are far more laid back, and don’t have this annoying habit.

As for Québécois, I love the place and its people. Growing up a short drive from its border, I spent much time in “La belle province”. In terms of the hierarchy, however, here’s a little story:

I worked as a teller in a local bank, and one client had a very thick French accent. So, I reverted to French. She was pleased and quite impressed, so much so, that she thought I was from Québec. She asked: “What part of Québec are you from?”

“I’m not from Québec.”

“Really?” Wide-eyed, she responded, “I never would’ve known. Where are you from?”

“Northern Ontario…Timmins…across the border from l’Abitibi-Témiscamingue, if you know where that is.”

“Oh, so you’re not really French-Canadian then.”

I wanted to knock her out, but instead, I counted her bills, smiled, and said, “Having gone to French school all my life and spoken nothing but French at home, I wonder what more I need to be considered French-Canadian. What do you think?.” We both knew what she was thinking.

In Arizona, a 13-year-old boy was suspended for for drawing — on paper — a gun on his homework. In 2000, four kindergarten boys were playing cops and robbers at recess using their fingers as “guns”; they were subsequently suspended for three days. These and other stories have led me to wonder whether things are any different in the Yukon. So, I decided to pay a visit to a local school to see for myself.

Upon entering the school, I was immediately threatened by a black-masked figure with a flowing cape, brandishing a long rapier. He wasn’t packing heat, but I’ll bet he’ll be suspended.

Trying to find someone with authority to mete out the suspension, I barely escaped a beheading by a Knight Templar in the principal’s office.

Grateful that I had escaped with my life twice, I decided to stay away from the office and make my way down to the gym, where a flurry of activity got my attention.

Instead of being in class, students filled the gymnasium. In one corner, a crowd egged on two students going at each other with pillows. A bystander was recording the whole incident on his cell phone.

A few feet further, suction-cup guns were being aimed at a boy moving about in a cage-like enclosure. The target was the skull-shaped mask being worn by the kid.

In yet another area, students were wielding hunting rifles, trying for a “kill.” Farm animals were scattered about on a flat board and the ammunition was a coin rolling down a slot on a carved wooden hunting rifle. Thankfully there was a sheriff sitting nearby. Surely he had the authority to take care of these gun-toting kids. But wait! He was the one encouraging the whole thing. Isn’t there anyone in this school that sees this behaviour for what it is?

I’d had enough of this and made my way to the nearest exit, which meant going through the girls’ change room and out the other side. As I hurried through the door, I suddenly heard muffled screams. A grizzly discovery awaited me: the change room was a scene reminiscent of a chainsaw massacre. I found myself in the dark, where flashes of light illuminated walls, ceiling, and floors splattered with blood. Trying to paw my way out of there, something (or someone) jumped out at me from a dark corner. I finally managed to find the exit where I needed a moment to regain my composure. We’re way past suspensions now, expulsion is in order!

By the end of day, the school would have been emptied had suspensions been given out. Instead, everyone had a great time. Kids had been talking about this event from the beginning of school in August and couldn’t wait for this day of Hallowe’en festivities. I’m guessing they’ll be talking about it for a couple of months to come.

Funny thing, I didn’t see any kids fighting at recess, nor any punches thrown. What I did see was a group of kids working the whole day before to set up the gym, and working through recess and lunch the day after to clean up. They were scrubbing walls using lots of elbow grease, while chatting about the day before. Could it be that there is a healthy way of letting kids just be themselves and have a bit of fun? No one condones violence, but could it be that because of news headlines, we have pushed the pendulum to the extreme?

I recently came across a fellow blogger’s photograph of some of the garbage blown around near the Dawson City dump. This reminded me of articles I recently read in the Globe and Mail about a couple trying to go a month without producing any household trash; I was inspired. Of course I can’t claim to have come anywhere close to them, but their campaign made me more aware of just how much garbage we produce. Looking in my own trashcan, I realized that the largest portion of garbage turns out to be plastic: plastic wrap, plastic food containers/wrap (i.e. pasta), and the worst culprit, plastic shopping bags. Though I tried to re-use plastic shopping bags, they eventually tear and end up in the garbage. So I decided to buy canvas tote bags, as mentioned in a previous post.

These thoughts prompted a couple of questions:

• Why is it that grocery stores aren’t getting on board with this? Any kind of reusable tote bags are so expensive in grocery stores, that who would want to buy them? If they can charge for plastic grocery bags at no profit to themselves, they should be able to do the same with canvas tote bags. Make it easier for consumers to go green, not harder! (The same applies to all retail stores.)

• Everyone in Whitehorse knows, including store owners, that the city offers compost pick-up every two weeks. Why is it so difficult to find bio-degradable bags in local stores? I can see this being a problem in spring, when everybody’s cleaning their yards, but year-round? What local stores offer is inconsistent. And why on earth would I want to buy huge plastic orange and clear bags to pick up leaves and cuttings that are going to the compost? We need more bio-degradable bags!

Last night, I had the privilege of witnessing a friend of mine getting her head shaved to raise funds for someone who recently underwent cancer treatment. I’ve heard of people doing this, but have never seen it done.

While watching, I was thinking to myself what courage she has to part with her hair. I mean, it’s easy enough for men to go around with a bald head, or at least it’s more socially acceptable for men to be bald. For women, though, it’s another story. Not only is it less socially acceptable, but for those who have longer hair, it takes a long time to grow it back. (That’s why I think we should donate double the amount for women who do this.)

Okay, I know I’m starting to sound gender biased here: men have short hair, women have long hair, yadda yadda yadda. But if you look at it from the “socially acceptable” perspective, you might agree (or maybe not). Plus, women with super-short hair are often accused of being gay, or butch, or whatever term people like to use.

Regardless of all this, I realized that though it took courage for my friend to go bald, it took even more courage and strength for the cancer survivor to undergo her treatment and to keep fighting. I met her for the first time last night, and what a woman! She is beautiful inside and out, and had a smile on her face the whole time.

When I heard on the radio this morning about a local store owner willing to “rent” the video An Inconvenient Truth free of charge to his customers, I was impressed. Apparently, the owner of FasGas in Whitehorse was so blown away after seeing the video about climate change that not only did he decide to “lend” the video instead of renting it, but he’s looking into bringing in biodiesel at his gas bar. I don’t know that the use of biodiesel will be effective in the north’s cold, but this guy’s sudden passion for environmental issues which has prompted him to action is laudable. If you haven’t seen this video yet, get to it! You won’t regret it.
A bonus feature of the video is Al Gore’s top-notch use of a Power Point type of software for his presentation. I always cringe when I see lights go out and the good old PowerPoint come on (or the overhead) because 9 times out of 10, people DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE THEM EFFECTIVELY! The slides become a crutch, rather than adding to the content.

Getting back to the environment, when I visited my future mum-in-law over the holidays, I was a little surprised by the extent to which she re-uses everything: foil paper, coffee filters, saran wrap, bags; in short, anything you can possibly imagine gets washed, wiped, and put away. I don’t think my mother-in-law re-uses things for the specific purpose of “saving the environment.” From what I can tell, she has always done it. She’s from a generation where you simply don’t throw things out if there’s any possibility of life left in them. It was the waste not want not generation. My generation, on the other hand, grew up in the disposable era: diapers, water bottles, individually-wrapped everything and anything. Everything has to look perfect, new, and unused. We definitely need to change our way of thinking if we’re to save this planet.

So instead of rambling on, here’s my list of small ideas/suggestions to start with:

• How about gas bar owners or car manufacturers provide some kind of a discount for hybrid and Smart car owners when filling up with gas, say, for a specified time after purchase, such as one year? What about free parking for these vehicles? There aren’t enough of these on the roads yet for businesses/municipalities to worry about losing money.

• College/university instructors could allow students to re-use paper when handing in reports, papers, and other assignments – that is, using paper that already has something printed on the reverse.

• Why not use this “recycled” paper (printed on the reverse) in some of the printers at the college and at home? I’ve been doing this for two years now and rarely have paper jams. I keep a pile of “good” paper nearby, but my recycled paper is my default paper (always in the printer).

• Buy (or make) re-usable bags for grocery shopping. In Whitehorse, Riverside Grocery currently has nice big green cloth bags with handles for $1 each; I recently bought 15 to keep in my vehicle for my shopping. (Ask for them; they’re behind the counter.)

• Turn down the thermostat at night, when at work, and when on vacation.

• More information about what you can do
  • at home
  • at work
  • and more

Feel free to post a comment to add to this list.

May the earth be with you