Saturday, February 15, 2025

Canada's National Treasures: Elizabeth May - Craig Baird - Gurdeep Pandher - Wab Kineau, P.J. Akeeagok and R.J. Simpson - Canadian Hockey Fans. And Moose Art


Just a post to highlight some of our most impressive Canadians in these times. 

First, Elizabeth May is a national treasure: Historian Craig Baird is doing outstanding work: Love Gurdeep Pandher!
Premiers Wab Kineau, P.J. Akeeagok and R.J. Simpson: Some day, I expect one or more of these men will be prime minister. 

Hockey Fans: And yes, I would rather see the American players do this too...
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Finally, just ordinary Canadians:
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I loved this -- Moose Art!
And did you know that Parks Canada has a whole website about Canada's National Historic designations -- people, sites, events, lighthouses, railway stations, and so forth? Its a fascinating way to tour Canada.
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6 comments:

Cap said...

What was Hillier thinking? If the Canadian players go stand with the Americans, two outcomes are foreseeable. Either the fans keep booing, in which case, we boo our own team, or the fans stop booing or applaud, in which case, Fox News will be showing the gesture on replay as evidence that we really want Trump to appoint Gretzky as our first state governor. Neither of these outcomes is remotely good.

This isn't the time for policing stadium manners. Hillier's former colleague, Mark Norman said, "Like many Canadians I’ve been watching - with concern - the endless rhetoric and hyperbolic threats to our economy and sovereignty. To be blunt, our reactions to date have been tactical, reactive and transactional. It’s time to 'drop the gloves' and get serious."

7:47 am
Cathie from Canada said...

I guess we aren't used to "standing on guard"are we, but I'm afraid we're going to need to get used to it. Trump is escalating his rhetoric every day.

8:26 am
Cap said...

To be fair, Cathy, it's been over 200 years since we've had to stand on guard. But only one country has ever invaded Canada, and it's the country that claims to be protecting us. Protecting in the same way a mob boss claims to protect. If Trump wants us to spend more on defense, fine, let's do it. We can start by placing an order for Gripen NG fighters with Sweden.

9:19 am
Cathie from Canada said...

Trump thinks he can make us an offer we can't refuse. Just a mob boss, isn't he.

12:10 pm
Purple library guy said...

I think we do need to have a conversation about defense, in the context of defending ourselves from the US specifically. One basic elementary point is we shouldn't buy the weapons from the United States. But we also need to think about just what we emphasize in terms of defending ourselves.

So the thing about being attacked by the US is, fighter planes would be useless--they have vastly more, the planes would just get wiped out. Same for navy ships. What would be useful? Well, maybe air defence, in which case we should think long and hard about continuing to be enemies with the US' enemies, because the best air defence systems in the world are Russian.

But mostly, fighting the US is going to be insurgency warfare. This has lots of implications, but in the current moment the big one is: We'll need drones. Lots of drones. Cheap drones. The United States relies heavily on large numbers of armoured vehicles, which can make effective use of Canada's good road system. And of course they rely heavily on resupply, again typically by land vehicles. Yes, they have those giant cargo planes and helicopters but you can't supply a whole army that way.

Drones, it has become clear in the Ukraine war, are amazingly effective against vehicles. I have been watching, day by day--The ONLY reason Ukraine is still in the war is drones. But, the reason the big Ukrainian counter-push failed horribly is also drones. The basic way of attacking on the ground in modern warfare seems to be, send in some armoured personnel carriers/infantry fighting vehicles, with maybe a couple tanks as protection. If the APCs can get near the enemy line, they unload infantry and then support them as they take the position. For both sides, this basic tactic has become incredibly difficult when the opponent has drones, which just bring down those vehicles one after another. In fact now in Ukraine when either side do pull it off you usually see the vehicles just turning around and leaving after they drop-off, so they don't get smoke; in other cases they abandon the vehicle entirely because they know it will be dead very soon. In the Canadian case, we wouldn't be defending lines, just killing vehicles, but the basic point remains: They rely on vehicles, especially to get around the vastness of Canada, and drones kill vehicles.

Again, we need to re-think who we consider our enemy. The best source for large numbers of cheap drones is China. Do we still want to consider the United States' enemy our enemy?

2:01 pm
Anonymous said...

The words ' Hillier ' and ' thinking ' should never be used in the same sentence .

2:40 pm

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