Toronto Hamilton Pan Am Games & Edmonton Expo 2017 update

OK so this is how our "Major International Events" are shaking out. Hamilton/Toronto wins the Pan-Am Games. To be honest, I don't remember even seeing a report on the Pan-Am Games since I was a kid.

One thing's for sure though, these Pan-Am Games (in 2015) are about to become the biggest thing that ever hit us now that they're in Toronto!

BTW Toronto invested millions into *considering* a bid for the world expo 2015, before finally missing the deadline to confirm intention to bid.

There is still a hopeful section on a Toronto website entitled Major International Events that continues to give the impression Toronto has a bid alive for it.

Then Toronto/Hamilton looked into hosting the 2017 (smaller) Expo in conjunction with Canada's 150th birthday. Also interested were Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, and perhaps others.

When it came time to confirm intentions with Heritage Canada only Edmonton and Calgary announced, Calgary's announcement coming as a surprise. Calgary pulled the plug on its bid a couple of days ago.

* * *

Edmonton's Gigantic Challenge
The Alberta Tar Sands Public Relations Disaster

Edmonton is now the only city in the running to become Canada's official applicant for Expo 2017 and needs to put a proposal in to Canadian Heritage by the end of November.

If done right - it could be a great thing. Expo 67 added $2.5 B to our tourism balance sheet over 1966. Expo 86 added $1.5 Bil over the previous year. There could even be more to it than that, with the 150th birthday tie-in - but Edmonton has a weak underbelly.

Normally, you would understand that Edmonton would have a somewhat tougher time to promote itself than, say, Montreal or Vancouver. But you would start off thinking about stuff like gateway to the north, land of the Klondike, land of the midnight sun and soon your imagination would be rolling and Edmonton could be made to look pretty attractive... and it is, truth be told.

That was then - this is now: The real challenge for Edmonton going forward is going to be the public relations disaster that is the Alberta Tar Sands. Canada was royally skewered in Barcelona this past week over its greenhouse gas emissions policy - and if people in Edmonton think anyone watches Fox News in Europe to get the "pro-tar" "pro-smog" "pro-carbon" propaganda side of things, then maybe I could get you a good deal on some beautiful oil rights in the Ottawa Valley.

If anyone at Canadian Heritage is awake, they may even just pass on ratifying Edmonton's bid. Save them the expense and embarrassment. Although this is unlikely under a Harper government, of course. So, depending on which cities are bidding against Edmonton, we will see what happens. I have a feeling there will be a lot of international resentment towards Alberta - it will be interesting to see how Edmonton plans to overcome this.

X&-cuse me& Can Someone Please Fill in the Wikipedia Page for Iain Baxter& Thank-you&

N. E. Thing eye Candu 4U?

yeah

Fill in the wikipidi Ah entry 4 Iain Baxter& OK.

"This courage business is important because I think we as a people, even more than the Americans, lack it. We are clever, imitative(?), but we seem to wait for someone else to show us the way, then we follow him, instead of carving out a path for ourselves. Just at the moment I can't think of a single creative work that can be credited to a Canadian... in art, architecture, literature, engineering or anything else..."

- David Milne, Palgrave Ont. Jan. 7, 1932

Iain Baxter& has always been an artist who showed the courage to search for his own way ahead and Canadians can learn a lot by following his career.

No need to even mention that, in these days of twentysomething youtubers racking up millions of hits, it might be worth saving a couple of minutes for the achievements of one of early pioneers and practicioners of conceptual art.

Cultural Resplendence: Re-Affirming Art as an Economic Force in Canada

Does art have the power to drive a country's economy? It is becoming more clear that the answer is yes.

For this post I refer back to my post of April 9, 2009, where I discussed the dismal showing of Canadian visual artists in the context of worldwide auction sales.

Checking the top 500 best-selling artists for the past year, I counted only five Canadians and none in the top 100. I also did a rough calculation showing that the Canadians' sales accounted for probably only .1 % of the total auction sales of the top 500.

I also noted that:

France, for example, is the world's #1 tourist destination. It also has +/-7 of the top 20 worldwide artists, in terms of '08 auction sales...

...you cannot deny the obvious - that France's cultural profile is hugely important for its prosperity and vitality as a nation and that its visual artists are a huge part of that profile.

When I wrote that part I was perhaps overly conscious that some people might consider it quite the stretch to attribute France's world leading tourism position with its world leading cultural position.

The correlation seems too strong to simply ignore, yet... the assumption is completely unscientific and could be a total coincidence, in theory.

Now, I find, my position is shared by none other than one of Canada's leading authors, Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi and winner of the Booker Prize for the same book.

Martel is also the writer of the website, What is Stephen Harper Reading?, and the book of the same name, in which Martel sends a book to Stephen Harper every two weeks, along with a letter giving a brief description of the book and random comments. In the section of the site entitled "The story behind this website", Martel describes how he got the idea for the project.

In a nutshell, Martel and 49 other eminent Canadian artists were invited to Ottawa for the 50th anniversary of the Canada Council. Martel and the other artists noticed how few government representatives made time for the event and how disinterested Harper seemed to be.

"We should have been prepared. How many Members of Parliament do you think showed up at a reception the previous day on Parliament Hill meant to be a grand occasion on which the representatives of Canada’s people would meet the representatives of Canada’s artists? By my count, twenty, twenty-five—out of 306—with only one cabinet minister, the one who absolutely had to be there, Bev Oda. There we fifty stood around, for two hours, waiting. Each one of us was a symbol for one year of the Canada Council’s fifty. I, for example, represented 1991, the year I received a Canada Council B grant that allowed me to write my first novel. I was 27 years old and the money was manna from heaven. I made those $18,000 last a year and a half (and compared to the income tax I have paid since then, an exponential return on Canadian taxpayers’ investment, I assure you)," Martel reflects.

"By comparison, the equivalent celebration of a major cultural institution in, say, France would have been a classy, flashy, year-long, exhibition-filled affair, with President Chirac trying to hog as much of the limelight as possible. No need to go into further details. We all know how the Europeans do culture. It’s sexy and important to them. The world visits Europe because it’s so culturally resplendent. Instead, we milled around, drank our drinks and then petered away in small groups."

This is what really caught my eye:

The world visits Europe because it’s so culturally resplendent.

Culturally resplendent.

That's one thing that Canada is not. It could be. But it's not.

Indeed, in Conservative circles, I imagine the words "culturally resplendent" would be considered profanities!

This is something we will have to get over. This is something for us to shoot for... cultural resplendence.

Canada's endless coastline - what are the benefits?

According to Natural Resources Canada, Canada has 243,042 km of coastline - way more than any other country in the world. The entry goes on to explain that "coastline" is in fact a lower number than "shoreline", because in some cases the measurement of "coastline" may skip over certain small bays whereas "shoreline" gives the more accurate measurement.

According to Wikipedia, Canada has 202,080 km. of coastline and the country with the next largest amount, Indonesia, has only 54,716 km. Anyway, regardless of who or how it is measured, clearly Canada is way ahead on this resource.

This may be the one natural resource that we have in the most abundance in comparison to the other countries of the world. Canada also has more surface area of water than any other country, and is obviously the second largest country of all.

The reason Canada's coastline is so long is first of all because of the large number of islands in the far north as well as the fact that we border on three oceans, not to mention the vast coastline of Hudson Bay.

Anyway, ever since I became aware of this strange phenomenon, I have been thinking that it would be interesting if someone would figure out how we could take advantage of this asset. I must admit I have thought about it a little and haven't come up with anything.

It would stand to reason that we could run a lot of tidal power stations - although a lot of the coastline is frozen over for a large part of the year. Offshore wind generators would be another thing. Maybe fish farms? These are the obvious suggestions. What about innovations?

Another related characteristic: The huge amount of salt water contained within the borders of Canada. Canada's internal marine waters are vastly larger than any other country's.

This needs to be further considered.

Sr. GOP strategist says religion will sink Republican Party

Winds of change blowing in the Republican camp.

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's campaign manager for the run at the presidency, made these remarks at the Log Cabin Republican's national convention a couple of days ago.

"If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party," Schmidt said. "And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party."

He builds a case for a more open Republican Party, beginning with acceptance of gay marriage.

"If you reject [gay marriage] on religious grounds, I respect that," he said. "I respect anyone's religious views. However, religious views should not inform the public policy positions of a political party because... when it is a religious party, many people who would otherwise be members of that party are excluded from it because of a religious belief system that may be different. And the Republican Party ought not to be that. It ought to be a coalition of people under a big tent."

Cool. There's a breath of fresh air.

Don't know what Schmidt's influence will be but clearly he is involved in the conversation as far as mapping out the evolution of GOP policy.

Canada's own religious right, fringe as it is, might also do well to listen up. Despite the fact that they have been "in power," albeit in a minority position, for a few years, our religious right only achieved this because of a perfect storm of Liberal and Progressive Conservative misfortune. Liberal infighting, corruption under Mulroney and Chretien, uninspiring Liberal leadership to replace Chretien, and overflow from the whole massive right-wing brainwashing *campaign going on in the U.S. meant that our rural-Alberta-based "Reform" Party of 19th century ideas was in the right place at the right time.

Now, however, they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't think there is anything they can really do. Canada is becoming more diverse. There are a few political wrinkles that complicate matters for any party wishing to hold power but I don't really see that a party whose mojo is in the religious right has anywhere to go but down at this point in history.

And, time will tell what happens, but I think they have missed their chance.

* who laughably label legitimate news organizations "extreme left" and completely ignore the fact that there is virtually no representation of leftist ideas at all in the U.S. (or Canadian for that matter) media

How to put Canadian Art on the map?

So I looked up the auction sales results for 2008. You can find it on artprice.com or elsewhere.

It has the top 500 artists in terms of worldwide auction sales.

No surprise, the top Canadian is way down the list, in 110th place: Jean-Paul Riopelle had $10 million of sales in 2008 auctions ($12 million in '07)

Next is A.Y. Jackson in 333rd spot with $3.2 million of sales

Then Emily Carr, in 382nd spot at $2.8 million, just ahead of Lauren Harris at $2.7 million (Harris sold $10.5 million in '07).

The last Canadian on the list, the only living artist, Jeff Wall comes in at 487th spot with just over $2 million of sales. A really nice jump into the top 500 after '07 auction sales of $382,000. Who knows I could have missed one or two whom I didn't know were Canadians or just skipped over...

I just want to say that these numbers are a disgrace.

A country with Canada's wealth and creative opportunities should be producing a much larger portion of the world's art, both in terms of dollars and recognition.

Just to put Riopelle's $10 million in perspective, the total of the top 100 is about $4.3 billion... So we see that Canada's total share is probably somewhere below a tenth of 1%!

What's worse is that, to a larger extent than many are aware, I believe the art of a country is related to the international public image of the country, not to mention its psyche and self-image.

This affects prosperity, lifestyle and future prospects in many other ways. Tourism, academics, investment, architecture, quality of life, advertising, creative endeavor of all types are all affected by a country's international profile in terms of art.

France, for example, is the world's #1 tourist destination. It also has +/-7 of the top 20 worldwide artists, in terms of '08 auction sales, depending how you count Chagall whatever...

Obviously there are countless reasons for France to be the #1 tourist destination on the planet ~ many of these, such as a location in the middle of the Europe, have nothing to do with art.

However, you cannot deny the obvious - that France's cultural profile is hugely important for its prosperity and vitality as a nation and that its visual artists are a huge part of that profile.

Canada, fortunately (and thanks in no small part to Canadian content laws), has been blessed with a disproportionately strong profile in music, so that saves us from being a total cultural wasteland.

The reasons for our pathetic placing in visual art are numerous. I couldn't even guess half of them. One reason is probably simply the same reason that our banks are about the safest in the world - we are all about safe, secure, boring and blue chip!

Probably another of the most important reasons is the aggressive defense of the top market positions by those who hold these spots. As if France or Germany or the U.S, etc.,. are the least bit interested in giving up their powerful positions - so they defend from a position of strength!

Another reason, probably the nature of our country. The large distances, small, spread out populations and two languages have worked against the development of a super-fertile source with a critical mass of creative energy. Toronto and Montreal ignore, if not actively disparage, each other. That kind of sets the trend for all the other cities... regional jealousies, etc., blah blah blah... all the way down to the gallery level.

Which, by and large, are also infected with the same diseases... regional biases, laughable pretensions, Asian reproductions, eBay, etc. fighting a losing battle to capture the interest of a conservative, skeptical buying public who see little of interest to them in the Canadian art landscape beyond, you said it, Robert Bateman!

All the well intended and costly (however tiny) efforts of the Canada Council, the National Gallery, provincial initiatives, etc., seem to go for naught...

Beyond that, you have the Canadian artists' individual and collective modesty. They are the antithesis of promoters!

sigh...

what to do... what to do... ?

Call for Papers for a New Economic Theory

At first, I thought that the whole recession/depression was just cooked up for someone's benefit.

Either the Bush/Cheney cabal or some other power brokers who are going to reap a lot of benefit out of everyone's suffering.

This "benefit" might come in the way of simple profits ~ or, more likely, in the way of new, arbitrary measures that would have the effect of putting more controls on people, keeping power in the hands of the already-powerful and rich, forcing people into accepting identity chip implants in order to get on welfare, get a job, etc., - any of that scary stuff...

Now, I'm beginning to wonder. The problems seem to be too widespread for it to be an organized depression, although I wouldn't rule it out yet...

But I am wondering if the economy has simply outpaced our ability to understand it.

The obvious examples being just the complete failure of anyone in a position of sufficient influence to predict or prevent the meltdown, even though it is of such an enormous and widespread nature.

Immediately before the bottom fell out of everything, we had so-called experts at the highest levels of government and the financial establishments, both in Canada and the U.S., declaring that everything was fine.

We had a November (+/- two months post-meltdown) financial report from the Harper gov't, prepared by supposedly smart, well-educated and experienced folks - that was total garbage - not worth lining a hamster cage with.

Now the new budget dares to include long range projections! Who do they think they're kidding??? They don't have an f-ing Clue!!

The Art White North Theory

The reality is that at this point in history it is possible for all of the work needed for a society's survival to be done by a very small portion of the people. i.e. - maybe 10% of the population could conceivably do all the work that needs to be done for survival. That is - grow the food, build and heat the shelters. Facilitate ample transportation, education and health care to service a modest existence.

There simply is not useful or necessary work for most of the people in the modern world.

More and more people are employed in recreational activities, fashion-driven industries contributing no intrinsic value to anyone, or the greed industry, in which bankers and insurance cos. chase their accountants around trying to figure out new ways of leeching off the rest of society... again, without contributing anything whatsoever... In fact, it seems like the American banking industry has only succeeded in going broke after robbing Americans blind for years...

Of course it is unfair and inaccurate to generalize in these statements... the point is, I think we may have reached a point where a new economy needs to be acknowledged. Some kind of a new value system that would differentiate between different currencies.

i.e. Alex Rodriguez is now proven to have fraudulently earned his first $120 million contract. Just this simple sentence is proof that our entire system needs to be re-constructed. It is bogus. It is full of crap. It makes no sense. It is full of cheaters like Madoff, scams like Enron and Bre-X, houses of cards like Nortel. Scumbags everywhere.

Maybe we have to look at supply and demand. Maybe we have to look at the principles of the market. Maybe we have to look at the compatibility of a commodity market conceived hundreds of years ago in the information age.

I think it is time for a new Adam Smith.