Tuesday 28 August 2012
op/ed-photo radar
Perhaps I should read the Sun Media papers more often.If I did,who knows,I may just find myself in agreement with columnists more often than what I'm comfortable with.Scary thought.But all joking aside,I am in complete agreement with Lorne Gunther as to his story on the County Of Strathcona discontinuing the use of photo radar in favour of more officers on the streets.It is an entirely good thing.Even if it means lost revenue.
Lets face reality here.Photo radar is not enforcement.It does nothing to change behaviour.It is completely useless when someone engages in really dangerous behaviour like going say,one hundred over the limit,as seems to happen with some frequency.The photo radar unit just snaps a picture of the offenders plate and goes"Cha-ching"just a bit louder perhaps than if he offender had only been going ten over.In a tax based model of enforcement,the more dangerous the offense,the better the outcome.
But for as long as I can remember police have been telling us how enforcement isn't about revenue collection.They become indignant every time that we suggest that there may be something predatory about enforcing traffic laws.Really?Then why use photo radar at all.Why hide the police car behind the bushes in high traffic places.Oops,I forgot.Location,location ,location.If policing was really about gaining compliance it seems to me that you would simply park the traffic cops and their cruisers out in the open.Surely that would be a deterrent to reckless driving.So I applaud the County Of Strathcona for replacing tax collectors with real cops,who can presumably not only enforce speed limits,but enforce other laws as well.After all,when is the last time you ever heard of a photo radar unit stopping a rape in progress,or responding to an actual motor vehicle accident?Oh,right.Never!So while it's business as usual in the rest of Alberta,The County Of Strathcona has decided to quit abdicating their responsibilities andget back to some real,old fashioned policing.
Lets face reality here.Photo radar is not enforcement.It does nothing to change behaviour.It is completely useless when someone engages in really dangerous behaviour like going say,one hundred over the limit,as seems to happen with some frequency.The photo radar unit just snaps a picture of the offenders plate and goes"Cha-ching"just a bit louder perhaps than if he offender had only been going ten over.In a tax based model of enforcement,the more dangerous the offense,the better the outcome.
But for as long as I can remember police have been telling us how enforcement isn't about revenue collection.They become indignant every time that we suggest that there may be something predatory about enforcing traffic laws.Really?Then why use photo radar at all.Why hide the police car behind the bushes in high traffic places.Oops,I forgot.Location,location ,location.If policing was really about gaining compliance it seems to me that you would simply park the traffic cops and their cruisers out in the open.Surely that would be a deterrent to reckless driving.So I applaud the County Of Strathcona for replacing tax collectors with real cops,who can presumably not only enforce speed limits,but enforce other laws as well.After all,when is the last time you ever heard of a photo radar unit stopping a rape in progress,or responding to an actual motor vehicle accident?Oh,right.Never!So while it's business as usual in the rest of Alberta,The County Of Strathcona has decided to quit abdicating their responsibilities andget back to some real,old fashioned policing.
Memoir Chapter 1-Continued
While my mother taught school,my father worked a few miles up the road at a military base called Curtis Park,in the community of St.Margarets.He worked there for many years after we left Goose Bay,and even after we moved to Moncton,he would commute the eighty miles to and from work.
The military base was much like every other base I've ever been too.Clean,well organized,well painted buildings and a bunch of houses that all looked alike.You would enter through a gate house with a closed gate.There was a guard posted at the gate,but rarely,to my memory was my father ever asked to present identification before the gate was lifted.sometimes he would stop for a while and talk with the guards.It was a small community and he knew most everyone we encountered on the base.He was very good friends with one of the guards,and occasionally we would visit his place which was maybe a mile from the front gate of the base in the opposite direction from our house.
The guard was a big man,always dressed in a crisp white shirt and dark pants and a kind of a policeman's hat.But when I saw his house I would wonder where he got such clothes as they were completely at odds with the appearance of his house.His house was set just off the road and was nearly strangled with bushes and trees.It appeared long and narrow and only had a couple of rooms.There were no children there.Just a wife,who was nearly as big as her husband,and a scruffy looking dog.The guards wife was a woman I liked right away because she made me a snack of bread and Cheese Whiz,which was something I never had at home.But I ate it happily there while the dog sniffed around,no doubt hoping I would drop some of the sandwich.The guard sat drinking a beer with my father and they were doing some kind of work on his house as well.It seemed that there was something wrong with the lights as he had strung an extension cord across the entire length of the house and attached lights to it at various points.Evidently the guard fancied himself as somewhat of a comedian because while they were working on the lights,he wrapped his fist around one of the light bulbs and asked my father to plug in the cord.When the cord was plugged in,he began to holler and jump around as though the electricity was flowing through him.To me it looked as though something was very wrong.He may have gotten a small jolt from the cord or the light,but really,he was never in very much danger.There was no hair standing on end-unlike most of the military people my father knew,this man actually had some hair.There were none of the other more messy,unsightly aspects of an electrocution either.After a second or two,he let go of the bulb and began to roar with laughter.
Sometimes my father would take me right into the place where he worked.The whole reason for the base at Curtis Park was to supply power,and it had a huge diesel generating station.The station was fenced off and was the largest building on base,or,for that matter for miles around.It was topped by some large domes that looked like giant golf balls.All about were army trucks and jeeps and other heavy equipment,and I loved going there as I had a bit of fascination with all things army when I was small We would go right into the building too,to the office where my father worked.It was noisy with the sound of huge diesels and smelled of machine oil and iron There were thousands of tools,it seemed,on benches or hanging on the walls.Some of the wrenches were nearly as big as I was.There were also control panels with buttons and lights-hundreds of buttons and lights.I was always provided with the stern warning not to touch any of the buttons.The place was,to a child,awesomely big and it vibrated with power.
Usually our visits to my fathers place of work was for him to pick up his pay.We would go to the base store too,where we could make purchases,even though we lived off base.Sometimes we would go to the barber shop,or the snack bar which were both in the same building.The snack bar had a rich odor which I came to recognize as coffee.It had a wonderful sort of a machine too,that was green with a huge silver cup beneath it.The man behind the counter would scoop some ice cream into the silver cup and turn on the machine,which had a powerful buzz.After a short time he would turn of the machine and empty the cup into a tall glass.Those things were something my father called milkshakes.He never had a milkshake though.Always he would have a banana split and I would eat ice cream or sometimes just have a coke in a glass.I don't recall that my sister ever went with us on these trips to where my father worked.She was really not much more than an infant at the time,and I'm not certain that my father regarded the power plant as any place for a small girl.Tools and motors were,to his mind ,manly things,so I'm sure this was an early form of role modeling for him.To me,it was huge,amazing ,and to be honest,just a bit scary.I was a little bit afraid of all the noises coming from the power plant and of the fact that the whole building seemed to shake.The army trucks were so much bigger than any other cars I'd ever been close to,and even the thought of stopping at a guard house and talking to a policeman before you could go where you really wanted to go,was a bit intimidating.But going in the car with my father,to the base-there really was no other place to go in the backwoods of New Brunswick-was a favorite activity.
The military base was much like every other base I've ever been too.Clean,well organized,well painted buildings and a bunch of houses that all looked alike.You would enter through a gate house with a closed gate.There was a guard posted at the gate,but rarely,to my memory was my father ever asked to present identification before the gate was lifted.sometimes he would stop for a while and talk with the guards.It was a small community and he knew most everyone we encountered on the base.He was very good friends with one of the guards,and occasionally we would visit his place which was maybe a mile from the front gate of the base in the opposite direction from our house.
The guard was a big man,always dressed in a crisp white shirt and dark pants and a kind of a policeman's hat.But when I saw his house I would wonder where he got such clothes as they were completely at odds with the appearance of his house.His house was set just off the road and was nearly strangled with bushes and trees.It appeared long and narrow and only had a couple of rooms.There were no children there.Just a wife,who was nearly as big as her husband,and a scruffy looking dog.The guards wife was a woman I liked right away because she made me a snack of bread and Cheese Whiz,which was something I never had at home.But I ate it happily there while the dog sniffed around,no doubt hoping I would drop some of the sandwich.The guard sat drinking a beer with my father and they were doing some kind of work on his house as well.It seemed that there was something wrong with the lights as he had strung an extension cord across the entire length of the house and attached lights to it at various points.Evidently the guard fancied himself as somewhat of a comedian because while they were working on the lights,he wrapped his fist around one of the light bulbs and asked my father to plug in the cord.When the cord was plugged in,he began to holler and jump around as though the electricity was flowing through him.To me it looked as though something was very wrong.He may have gotten a small jolt from the cord or the light,but really,he was never in very much danger.There was no hair standing on end-unlike most of the military people my father knew,this man actually had some hair.There were none of the other more messy,unsightly aspects of an electrocution either.After a second or two,he let go of the bulb and began to roar with laughter.
Sometimes my father would take me right into the place where he worked.The whole reason for the base at Curtis Park was to supply power,and it had a huge diesel generating station.The station was fenced off and was the largest building on base,or,for that matter for miles around.It was topped by some large domes that looked like giant golf balls.All about were army trucks and jeeps and other heavy equipment,and I loved going there as I had a bit of fascination with all things army when I was small We would go right into the building too,to the office where my father worked.It was noisy with the sound of huge diesels and smelled of machine oil and iron There were thousands of tools,it seemed,on benches or hanging on the walls.Some of the wrenches were nearly as big as I was.There were also control panels with buttons and lights-hundreds of buttons and lights.I was always provided with the stern warning not to touch any of the buttons.The place was,to a child,awesomely big and it vibrated with power.
Usually our visits to my fathers place of work was for him to pick up his pay.We would go to the base store too,where we could make purchases,even though we lived off base.Sometimes we would go to the barber shop,or the snack bar which were both in the same building.The snack bar had a rich odor which I came to recognize as coffee.It had a wonderful sort of a machine too,that was green with a huge silver cup beneath it.The man behind the counter would scoop some ice cream into the silver cup and turn on the machine,which had a powerful buzz.After a short time he would turn of the machine and empty the cup into a tall glass.Those things were something my father called milkshakes.He never had a milkshake though.Always he would have a banana split and I would eat ice cream or sometimes just have a coke in a glass.I don't recall that my sister ever went with us on these trips to where my father worked.She was really not much more than an infant at the time,and I'm not certain that my father regarded the power plant as any place for a small girl.Tools and motors were,to his mind ,manly things,so I'm sure this was an early form of role modeling for him.To me,it was huge,amazing ,and to be honest,just a bit scary.I was a little bit afraid of all the noises coming from the power plant and of the fact that the whole building seemed to shake.The army trucks were so much bigger than any other cars I'd ever been close to,and even the thought of stopping at a guard house and talking to a policeman before you could go where you really wanted to go,was a bit intimidating.But going in the car with my father,to the base-there really was no other place to go in the backwoods of New Brunswick-was a favorite activity.
Nose Hill Park-Part 3
Monday 27 August 2012
number 100
Well here it is.My one hundredth blog entry.I hope everyone who is taking the time to read is enjoying the blog.Really,I never thought I would get this far with it,but here it is.
It would be really good if I could get some feed back from some of you readers out there,as the comments have been few and far between.I seem to have some readers in some really interesting places.Of course most of you are in North America,but I couldn't help noticing a large amount of page views from Russia in particular.What are you all doing there in Russia?I'm really curious to know.Do you read this blog in English or do you use the translator?Are you Russian,or perhaps Canadian or American Ex-pats?The same goes for you people in China,United Arab Emirates,France,Great Britain and Korea.I really would like to hear from some of you so I can find out what it is about this blog that interests you.
Looking forward to the next 100 entries,I think you can expect more of the same.But I'm always looking to improve.I've finally gotten around to the original purpose for beginning this blog,and that was to write a memoir.It's not to say that this particular memoir will be the finished version.I still need a lot of writing practice and this blog in part serves that purpose as well.So come along for the ride and I will tell you some tales of life in various parts of Canada,beginning from the early 1960's and continuing to the present day.
It would be really good if I could get some feed back from some of you readers out there,as the comments have been few and far between.I seem to have some readers in some really interesting places.Of course most of you are in North America,but I couldn't help noticing a large amount of page views from Russia in particular.What are you all doing there in Russia?I'm really curious to know.Do you read this blog in English or do you use the translator?Are you Russian,or perhaps Canadian or American Ex-pats?The same goes for you people in China,United Arab Emirates,France,Great Britain and Korea.I really would like to hear from some of you so I can find out what it is about this blog that interests you.
Looking forward to the next 100 entries,I think you can expect more of the same.But I'm always looking to improve.I've finally gotten around to the original purpose for beginning this blog,and that was to write a memoir.It's not to say that this particular memoir will be the finished version.I still need a lot of writing practice and this blog in part serves that purpose as well.So come along for the ride and I will tell you some tales of life in various parts of Canada,beginning from the early 1960's and continuing to the present day.
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