text:
We are no longer updating this page and it is not optimised for mobile devices.
Consulting and contracting services
The Museum is committed to achieving the best value for money in its procurement practices, including contracted services for internal audit, information technology hardware and support, advertising, transactional banking, cleaning, catering, security and exhibition design. Its purchasing practices and procedures are consistent with the Commonwealth Procurement Guidelines and are also in accordance with the National Museum of Australia Act 1980 and best practice principles. The Museum annually reviews its Procurement Guidelines to ensure consistency with Commonwealth policy.
The total number of consultancy services provided to the Museum in the period 2008–09 was 26, and the total expenditure on consultancy contracts during the year was $443,307. Major services included exhibition research, information technology and facilities services.
Facilities management
During 2008–09, the Museum exercised options to extend two major facilities contracts: the provision of facilities maintenance and cleaning services. These were extended for three years and one year respectively.
Major facilities management projects commenced or completed during the year included:
- refurbishment work at leased premises at 9/13 Vicars Street in Mitchell to alter the laboratory area and provide shower facilities for staff
- a fit-out within the Medical Superintendent's Building at Acton to accommodate visiting conservators, students and professors
- ongoing fire upgrade projects at the Museum building at Acton, including revised exit signage and emergency lighting works
- a continuing program of energy management works, including the installation of more energy efficient external lighting. This saw the Museum convert outside display up-lighting to new generation LED lighting and the retrofitting of the Shop display lighting to LED units
- ongoing works within the Museum building at Acton to validate and document the operating relationships between the fire system and the building management system and the Building Code of Australia (BCA) requirements
- provision of storage space within the lower level of the Museum building at Acton to provide approximately 200 square metres of floor area that will be used for Museum storage
- revision of chilled water plant programming to provide better environmental conditions within the Acton exhibition areas while reducing energy consumption. This was achieved through improved sequencing of the HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) plant and has resulted in significant reductions in energy use and operating costs
- a feasibility study of the Museum's Broadcast Studio to determine its suitability for conversion to a temporary exhibition gallery.
This year the Museum completed a proposal to extend the main Administration building at Acton. The proposal is to build a two-storey extension to the existing administration wing of the main Museum building using, where possible, best practice in green building materials, plant and systems. The extension, if approved by Government, will provide an additional 920 square metres of floor space.
The primary aim of this proposal is to free up 650 square metres of existing space, currently used for administrative purposes, so that it can be used for exhibitions. This will allow more of the Museum's collection to be on display and accessible to the public. The extension will also provide more efficient and functional work space and staff accommodation for the Museum.
Asset management
The Council's Audit and Finance Committee monitors the financial management of the Museum's assets.
During 2008–09, the Museum continued ongoing training and implementation of changes to its Asset Management System, to streamline and strengthen some procedures within the system. The Museum enhanced asset tracking by implementing the electronic interface module to enable data capture with barcode scanners.
The Museum has also redeveloped its Asset Management Plan, revising its life-cycle maintenance and replacement program of plant and equipment.
Major assets added to the database during the year included the refurbishment of Museum buildings, the Annexe, the Medical Superintendent's Building, Limestone House, 9–13 and 90 Vicars Street, the redevelopment costs of Circa and assets associated with the Australian Journeys gallery.
During 2008–09 the Museum's Security section continued to maintain a safe and secure environment for visitors, staff, contractors and collections, including the National Historical Collection, and all Museum buildings and infrastructure.
Upgrades to security infrastructure undertaken during the year included:
- installation of additional cameras to provide further security for objects that are displayed in the Museum's Hall
- provision of additional storage for the Digital Video Manager system, giving the Museum more flexibility in managing material recorded by the security cameras.
The Museum worked with the Australian Federal Police in providing specialised security for visiting luminaries. Security was also provided for Museum events and after-hours functions throughout the year.


text:
Hubert Charles Brown
Hubert "Bert" C. Brown, 74, of Keshena, died on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2017, at Pine Manor Healthcare Center in Embarrass. He was born on April 11, 1943, in Racine, the son of the late Hubert Sr. and Rose (Geretz) Brown. He graduated in 1961 from Racine Park High School, in Racine. While attending the University of South Dakota, he wrestled and played football. He then completed his master's degree in education at Northwest Missouri State College, in Maryville, Missouri. He was united in marriage to Kathleen Rosburg, at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Vermillion, South Dakota, on Dec. 22, 1963. Bert and Kathy returned to his hometown, where he played and coached semi-professional football for the Racine Raiders from 1970-1974. He also returned to his high school to teach and coach. In 1983, Bert and Kathy moved to Legend Lake. He owned and operated Bert's Place in Shawano for 17 years. He enjoyed golfing, reading, traveling, a dog lover and boating and water sports on Legend Lake.
Bert is survived by his wife, Kathy; sons, Col. Ryan (Essy) Brown, of Wisconsin Rapids, and Lance (Raquel) Brown, of Oak Creek; grandchildren, Samantha, Danielle, Samuel, Tristan, Mateo and Milan; and one sister, Nancy (Paul) Reckamp, of Oxford, Georgia.
Bert is preceded in death by his parents.
A memorial service was held on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017, at Swedberg Funeral Home in Shawano.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|Project by BigRedKnothead
|posted 10-11-2014 03:50 AM
|3184 views
|2 times favorited
|30 comments
Here's a couple saws I made. Well, I made the figured black walnut handles….the plates and hardware where kits from LJ ErikF (dude's a pimp).
I call the big one the Beastmaster (a la Bad Axe toolworks). I attempted a nice big handle with a thumb indention. Turned out alright.
The Dovetail went to LJ TerryR for the recent swap. I really dig the copper Erik offers. Looks great with walnut imo.
I tried to do justice with the sweet piece of burled walnut I had:
Some pics of the process:
Making these reaffirmed that I'm better and building furniture than tools. They turned out alright, but I struggle with small detail work. I enjoy the big stuff more. Still, I gave it my best shot.
Take care ya'll, Red
-- "At the end of the day, try and make it beautiful....because the world is full of ugly." Konrad Sauer
30 comments so far
#1 posted 10-11-2014 04:01 AM
Looks great Red. That burl ought to be a great choice for the handles with the grain running all directions. Less likely to split I think.
-- Bill M. "People change, walnut doesn't" by Gene.
#2 posted 10-11-2014 04:07 AM
Beautiful job Red. That walnut is spectacular. I think you did just fine on the detail work.
-- Bob, Missoula, MT -- Rocky Mountain Saw Works http://www.rmsaws.com/p/about-us.html
#3 posted 10-11-2014 06:04 AM
Those saws turned out great, nice job. The walnut handles are fantastic.
-- Allen, Colorado (Instagram @bobasaurus_woodworking)
#4 posted 10-11-2014 09:29 AM
Wonderful work on the handles Red and that walnut is really spectacular.
-- Mike, an American living in Norway.
#5 posted 10-11-2014 10:13 AM
Handles look real nice Red!
-- "The only limits to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today." - FDR
#6 posted 10-11-2014 11:45 AM
They look fantastic. I'll bet Terry is smiling ear to ear!
-- http://timetestedtools.net - Collecting is an investment in the past, and the future.
#7 posted 10-11-2014 11:58 AM
You know Red, false humility can be a sin, too. You may not like toolmaking and the small detail stuff as much as making furniture, but that doesn't take away from the results.
Those saws are beautifully done.
-- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
#8 posted 10-11-2014 01:21 PM
Nice work, bro Red! I'm still camping in the mountains of GA now, but cannot wait to see that saw!
Thanks again and again! I love your work!!!
-- tr ...see one, do one, teach one...
#9 posted 10-11-2014 01:22 PM
Thanks for the encouragement folks.
Sorry for the pessimism on the project post Jay. I did genuinely find these frustrating to make….but I am too hard on myself at times.
-- "At the end of the day, try and make it beautiful....because the world is full of ugly." Konrad Sauer
#10 posted 10-11-2014 02:05 PM
That's some beautiful work Red with outstanding grain,
well done my friend.
#11 posted 10-11-2014 03:04 PM
Red I'd classify this attempt as outstanding! I like the thumb groove. The walnut is beautiful and the copper looks amazing. I would not shy away from tool making with the skill you posted today. Well done.
-- Dan, Naperville IL, I.G.N.
#12 posted 10-11-2014 03:24 PM
Yep. I get what you're saying. Detail work is frustrating. Rasp rasp rasp. Mistake. Correct mistake. Rasp rasp rasp. Mistake. Repeat! That being said, the handles look awesome. How did you connect the handle to the plate? Did you drill the handle first and then the plate to match the hole pattern in the handle?
Is the Beast a dovetail, crosscut, or a hybrid pattern? Thx. Tom
-- Tom - Measure twice cut once. Then measure again. Curse. Fudge.
#13 posted 10-11-2014 04:21 PM
#14 posted 10-11-2014 04:46 PM
Red, your tool projects continue to be outstanding! We are almost always our own worst critic. These saws are beauties. I can't decide if I like brass or copper better, which ever one I'm looking at is my favorite at that time! Thanks for sharing!
-- God bless, Candy
#15 posted 10-11-2014 05:12 PM
Great job, they are fabulous. The wood is extraordinary and the details are perfect. Thanks for sharing.
-- Isra, Salcedillo (Cantabria), http://www.lacabraenlaescalera.com
showing 1 through 15 of 30 comments
Have your say...
You must be signed in to post the comments.


text:
Dorian West believes prop Paul Hill has made big strides at Saints during the past six weeks.
And the forwards coach is hoping the youngster improves even further having trained with England during the past few days.
Hill was brought into the national squad on Monday and will finish training with Eddie Jones' men today.
He has not played a part in either of the two Six Nations games so far, but is clearly still in the thoughts of the England coaches.
Meanwhile, Saints continue to try to help Hill improve on a weekly basis, with West clear about the area of the game the 21-year-old needs to work on most.
"We've seen quite a few improvements with Hilly over the past six weeks or so," West said.
"We're working hard with his game and trying to get him up to speed with everything, the main thing being his scrummaging.
"He has improved quite a bit over the past couple of months and he needs to get some experience from the lads he's training with at England and hopefully he'll bring some of that back with him."
Hill started both Champions Cup matches last month, but has been back on the bench in recent weeks, with Kieran Brookes holding onto the No.3 shirt.
And when asked how tough it is to choose between the players, West said: "They are both players of good pedigree and they both offer different things.
"You'd class Brookesy as a more of a scrummager and Hilly more of an all-round rugby player so it's about getting them both up to that standard in the whole game.
"We work hard with them and we're really pleased to have both of them."
While Hill, Dylan Hartley, Courtney Lawes and Tom Wood have been with England this week, Teimana Harrison has been back at Saints.
The back row forward was an unused replacement in the Six Nations opener against France before being released back to Saints ahead of last Friday's game against Bath.
And Harrison was not included in the England training squad this week, leaving him free to prepare for Saints' Aviva Premiership trip to Newcastle Falcons on Sunday.
"You feel a bit for T because he's played really well and deserved his chance with England," West said.
"He's come back in, his attitude is really good, he wants to play every week.
"He's back here and he's playing, and we're really pleased to have him here.
"On the other side of that, it's disappointing that he's not involved in the Six Nations."


text:
Here's a music battle to remember.
In this new high-octane music video for Deadmau5's recent single "Professional Griefers," watch as the Canadian superstar DJ takes on My Chemical Romance's frontman Gerard Way (who is featured on the track) in a futuristic UFC brawl that is set in a world where men don't fight alone.
They fight, instead, with giant robots.
Surrounded by screaming fans as they duke it out in an Ultimate Fighting Championship ring, Deadmau5 and Way control massive mouse mechs that battle it out till the brutal end.
The video is fast, frenetic and unabashedly over-the-top — which, as MTV points out, is likely what Deadmau5 was going for:
For the uninitiated, the term "Griefer" refers to the folks in multiplayer video games who deliberately harass other players in the game, usually in the most annoying ways possible (verbal insults, intentionally killing other players, siding with the enemy, crashing servers, etc.). They are basically the bane of the video game universe, bold and brash and unapologetic about their actions. And this video…is all of those things and then some.
In a behind the scenes video posted on YouTube, Deadmau5 claimed that this was the most expensive electronic music video ever made. Though the veracity of that comment has yet to be verified, there's no question that the production costs of this video — with its myriad special effects and props — was hefty, to say the least.
Who wins the clash of the music heavyweights? Watch the video to find out. More mau5 below.
by Dominique Mosbergen


text:
Playboy has released their first 'non-nude' issue of the magazine, as was promised last October, when Playboy's marketing team announced they would be making changes to the brand in order to become more accessible to readers (see 'Playboy Will Soon Be Nudity-Free' for all the whats and whys). Now, this description of 'non-nude' models is a misnomer for me. Alright, technically the models are wearing some clothes, but this is not anything different from what the models wore in the previous design of Playboy! Below, the picture of Miss March, model Dree Hemingway is wearing a sheer top…
… which seems like a very similar concept to a 2007 shoot of actress Garcelle Beauvais, shown below.
I'm failing to see the difference, other than the out-dated feel of this one. I know that Playboy was notorious for portraying models in a much more erotic manner, but trying to market themselves as 'non-nude,' when they still have this content is just misleading.
Playboy announced their change last year, apparently to become a more family friendly 'entertainment' magazine (as opposed to pornography), and therefore, become accessible to people because of the less offensive concepts they are designing. Perhaps the new shoots are more tame in comparison, but I say that the fact that their new magazine is boring will be the most offensive thing by far to their readers.
This image is a part of Hemingway's photo-shoot. I don't find anything about this photo visually interesting to look at. I would also argue that this contradicts Playboy's -non-nude' policy. She looks pretty nakie to me. Well… Ok. She's wearing shoes. You win this round, Playboy.
I feel as if Playboy has missed their mark on their quest for a re-brand and increased revenue. They spend thousands of dollars on on concept teams, wardrobe and lighting, and the series that I have seen are all tired. Sheer tops and and underwear? Cheeky bedroom scenes?
This has all been done before, and in fact, I think that I have have even seen more interesting photos on amateur models' Instagram pages. From what I see, this change for Playboy has not been worth the hassle.


text:
Clue: A beret covers it
We have 1 answer for the clue A beret covers it. See the results below.
Possible Answers:
Related Clues:
- Henri's head
- Where le nez is
- What a chapeau covers
- French bean?
- ___ de pont (bridgehead)
- A head of France
- Where les yeux are
- Guillotined part
- Béret holder
- Pied's opposite
Last Seen In:
- New York Times - December 02, 1997
Found an answer for the clue A beret covers it that we don't have? Then please submit it to us so we can make the clue database even better!


text:
A blog from Nick is always a tough act to follow, but here goes. Two days ago we got back from our five-day trip to Shanghai, which was an incredible change of pace from our rather slow life in Qufu. It was both comforting and exciting to be in a more Westernized city (think Starbucks, pizza, a night life of any sort...) but it is also nice to be back home in Qufu (I've noticed I've been calling Qufu "home" quite a bit lately). However I am not going to post about Shanghai but I am sure other teachers will soon.
Lately I have been struggling to pinpoint my feelings towards China thus far. I guess the best way to put it is that I have a love/hate relationship with China. For example, I love my students, I love teaching and I love the jidan bing egg sandwich that I eat 1-2 times daily. For the most part, I love my life in China. But I can't help but feel frustrated towards my new "home" when I realize that I am denied some of the things I previously assumed to be universally available. For instance, about a week before we left for Shanghai, our Skype stopped working. One by one, we all eventually lost the ability to log on, receiving only a message stating that there was a problem with our server or network. Frustrated, many of us have been writing to Skype and filing complaints, all to no avail. We assumed that it was due to the weather, the spotty Internet connections, etc. Yet about two weeks later we have come to suspect that something much larger and more calculated has caused our Skype to suddenly disappear. Not only is Skype no longer working, but also other forms of online communication, such as Yahoo Messenger and iChat. It becomes incredibly frustrating dealing with these issues and not being able to access certain things that have become blocked.
I realize that this is one of the greatest benefits of living in a place so different: learning how to adapt and learning to be grateful for the things I didn't appreciate until I no longer had them. When I think about it, I have the same type of love/hate relationship with the U.S. When I am in the U.S. in social work classes, reading the newspapers or discussing the upcoming election, it is easy to find the fault and criticize the country's policies. However when I am abroad I realize the many civil liberties I had in the U.S. that I was blind to until I was without them. I suppose that is one of my favorite things about being abroad: not only learning about a new culture, but also discovering new things about my old culture. It is never until I am abroad that I count my blessings and realize how good I had it back at home.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Tough love
Posted by Rachel Schulman at 1:59 AM
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


text:
After a day off, we all gathered for another fabulous hamburger dinner with cole slaw and chocolate toffee desert treats. After we bedded down for the night, the sky exploded in a huge lightening show that circled our valley. The thunder from the lightening reveberated around our valley so I could never figure out what was the original lightening strike and what was the echo. I was hoping that the tree I was camped under was not the highest in the area. Counts from the lightening to the thunder was never more than 3 seconds. The lightening made my tent look transparent. This continued on for several hours as the thunder marched on east until it was just a dull rumble. If that was not enough, the rains began as a downpour. The volume of rain that fell was unbelieveable. During the night, I saw that Ben had relocated to our tent kitchen. It turned out that his tent area had become a swimming pool with the torrential rains so he relocated for the rest of the night.
As we got up from this torrential downpour, it was still gently raining so we all got into our rain gear for the fourth work day. One of our first tasks was to place our stringers on the two turnpikes.
We now were able to begin completing the 2nd turnpike with the culvert, but it was a lot of muddy grubby work we had to do to make room for the culvert and pack the turnpike with rocks followed by sandy dirt.
Liz and I are sawing through the lower stringer so the culvert can be installed. This is some tough, muddy, and grubby work that will never be seen when everything is done.
We now have installed the culvert which will move the water from one side of the PCT trail to the lower side without mushing up the trail.
Now that we have finished all of the culvert and rock work it is now on to hauling the sandy dirt from our forest sand pit to the turnpikes. Here we have Ben resting, Kathy is digging more sandy dirt and Terry is hauling away the dirt to our nearby turnpikes.
I am using a bag for hauling the sandy dirt. Check out how deep the hole is and how many trips we had to take to fill up the two turnpikes.


text:
Essay 11
Parading Past
Most people love a parade, and for reasons that at first seem obvious. A parade is a festive and escapist event, an opportunity and an excuse to forget for a few minutes the cares and concerns of everyday life. To watch, say, a Santa Claus parade either on television or from the sidewalk is to enter a reverie—a waking dream—created by bright colours, loud music, fantastic floats, and, for children especially, a happy anticipation of holidays and feasts and presents to come. But a parade is also a manifestation of communal feeling and an aid to shared remembrance. Whether the community in question is a city, a province, a nation, or even an empire, a selective and orderly procession of its components affirms a sense of community between and among the participants and spectators. "It [is] a statement unfurled in the streets…a social order representing itself to itself" (Darnton 120, 124). It is also a repetitive rite that prompts both participants and spectators to recall previous parades, to remember people and events associated with them, and thus to enjoy a sense of continuity between the past and the present (see Connerton 41-47). Not without good reason did Rudyard Kipling make collective memory the burden of "Recessional" (1897), his cautionary celebration of the great parade of naval power that marked Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee: "Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, / Lest we forget—lest we forget!" (325-26). Even a Santa Claus parade can be an occasion for affirming and pondering the nature and history of a community and its values.
Nowhere in Canadian poetry has the transcendental effect generated by a parade been more poignantly captured than in P.K. Page's "The Bands and the Beautiful Children" (1946), a poem quoted at length by Desmond Pacey in Creative Writing in Canada (1952, 1961) as an example of Page's special gift for "convey[ing] the world of childhood" (159). At the very outset, the alliterated "b"s of the poem's title forge a link of sound between the children and the bands whose instruments transform unenclosed space first into a comforting passage and then into a concert hall. Notice how, in the opening stanza, the falling rhythm of "tunnel" and the rising rhythm of "ascending on the strings of sun" mimic the imaginary structures inspired by the band:
The speaker of these stanzas is very much a post-Romantic artist who possesses the balanced combination of imaginative power and analytical distance that is denied to the "attendant…children" and the "arthritic old." "[A]ttendant" in two senses (attentive, accompanying), the children lack the detachment that permits their "running and innocence" to be abstracted into a symbolic "white" (see Frye, Bush Garden 39). "[P]atient" in two senses (long suffering, receiving medical treatment), the elderly are insulated from the street by "windows" and, in any case, lack the physical and mental vitality to create or enter the moving pleasure dome of the band. Only the speaker can observe and follow the procession, can provide an imaginative and analytical account of its effects.
The remaining stanzas of the poem envisage the termination of the procession as a Wordsworthian descent from "the vision splendid…into the light of common day" (Wordsworth 4: 281):
The "lost" children and elegiac tone of the final stanza are Blakean, but "the unknown edge of the…city" is a twentieth-century location, a site of exile and alienation that could be anywhere or everywhere and thus becomes nowhere. The "home[s]" that the children "remember" are as unlocatable as their unnamed "city" and their "imaginary trumpets." Here, as in so much Canadian poetry in the High Modern mode, the search for supposedly universal or archetypal patterns like the fall from innocence into experience results in abstraction and placelessness. "[I]f there is such a thing as 'pure poetry,' this must be it," wrote Northrop Frye in 1954 of Page's The Metal and the Flower (1954) "Miss Page has a symbolic language of her own…and looks for the human situations"—that is, the mythopoeic patterns—"involved in what she sees" (Bush Garden 39).
In sharp contrast to Page's poem, a wealth of local detail animates Sara Jeannette Duncan's description of the effect of a marching band on imaginative children in The Imperialist (1904). Not only does the parade that Duncan describes occur in a highly particularized place (Elgin [Brantford], Canada West), but it also occurs on a specific day, the "twenty-fourth of May" (4), which was of course "the great Upper Canad[ian] summer holiday" until Dominion Day became well established in the present century (Leacock, The Boy I Left Behind Me [1946] 52). "I will say at once, for the reminder to persons living in England, that the twenty-fourth of May was the Queen's Birthday," explains Duncan's narrator; "[i]n Canada the twenty-fourth of May was the Queen's Birthday…a real holiday, that woke you with bells and cannon…and went on with squibs and crackers till you didn't know where to step on the sidewalks" (4-5). "I [feel] the strangeness of this land more [on this] day than any before," E.W. Thomson had written to Archibald Lampman from Boston on May 24, 1892:
Not that I [ever] felt or professed to
feel (since I [was a] boy) one particle of loyalty to Her Maj[esty]—except
as she's a very respectable [woman]. But this day has been the day of
banging and tooting and hooraying and picnicking with us Canucks ever
since the beginning of things, it seems to me, and one relucts [giving]
it to work instead of play, or [the] melancholy that comes of trying to.
When the old Queen dies and the King's birthday comes in November (?)
what the deuce will the Canadians do? Why, keep the 24th in
commemoration of their sentiments for the old 24th!
Duncan would probably have been dismayed by Thomson's lack of monarchistic feelings, but she would surely have rejoiced at his perception that Canadians would not wish to impoverish their collective and individual memories by dispensing with a holiday rich in patriotic and personal associations.
In The Imperialist, the "twenty-fourth of May" is an occasion for the exercise of both memory and imagination. "Nobody in Elgin can possibly have forgotten [the Queen's Birthday]. The Elgin children had a rhyme about it—
'The twenty-fourth of May
"[A] day with an essence in it" (4), "the twenty-fourth of May" does more than provoke performances and memories of children's jingles. "[W]ho had forgotten the time the ancient piece of ordnance in the 'Square' blew out all the windows in the Methodist church?" asks the narrator before observing of the "fastened shutters" that lend an air of "ceremonial festivity" to Elgin on the Queen's Birthday that "the sunny little town sat around them, important and significant, and nobody was ever known to forget that they were up, and go on a fool's errand" (5). Like the date in the jingle, the protocol of the "fastened shutters" recalls past practices, dictates present behaviour, and shapes future expectations: this year, as in previous years and, hopefully, as in years to come, the everyday activities of the town such as working and shopping are suspended on Victoria Day and instead people gather and parade in groups consisting of "family, …friends…[and] hundreds of known and unknown neighbours" to "recollect [their] collective history" (Gary Taylor 175). To eliminate, or even to modify, either the holiday or its conventions would be to strike at the temporal continuities that constitute collective and personal identity.1
Since Duncan's novel is centrally concerned with the imperial connections between Canada and Britain,2 it is only to be expected that the memories generated by the sights and sounds of "the twenty-fourth of May" are more than local and personal. In the foreground of the festivities is "old Mother Beggarlegs" (1), a character associated by name and appearance with "old" Henry Cruikshank (277) and, hence, with the decrepitude of the British Empire that the novel's hero, Lorne Murchison, hopes to rejuvenate with youthful, Canadian energy. Together, these two allegorical figures recall the varus and scauvus ("Knock-Kneed" and "Club-Footed") of Horace's Satire I, iii, 38-95, a genial injunction to acknowledge one's own failings and to indulge the failings of others. More explicitly, one of the "young country folk" with a "soft felt hat" reminds the narrator of Corydon (5), the typical rustic of the pastorals of Theocritus and Virgil. "[A] dark green hat" proves even more mnemonically and imaginatively productive for the Murchison children,
This passage nicely illustrates the reliance of imagination on memory that caused the ancient Greeks to make Mnemosyne the mother of the Muses and persuaded Wordsworth to conceive poetry as the product of recollection (2: 400). Without memory, the hats of the Independent Foresters would not even be knowable as hats, but in a mind stocked with memories they become the stuff of historical and mythical associations and implications. That this occurs "especially in…procession[s]" is scarcely surprising since even the most rudimentary of costumes and props can become inspirationally evocative when accorded special status by "banner[s] and… band[s]" (Duncan 6), ceremonial organization and the distance that lends enchantment. It is precisely because they have the potential to actualize history and myth that parades are a potent force in shaping and sustaining personal and collective identity. As Duncan clearly recognized, parades can play a powerful role in binding individuals to their local and larger communities.
Another Canadian writer who clearly recognized the communal force of parades was Stephen Leacock. An annual event on an unspecified "July morning"—as certainly Dominion Day as the eve of epiphany is the date of the Misses Morkan's "annual dance" in "The Dead" (1914) (Joyce 175)—"The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)3 is a mock-heroic treatment of Canadian patriotism that nevertheless presents the Mariposan equivalent of a parade—a steamboat outing on Lake Wissanotti—as a "microcosmic" affirmation of the values of "community and country" (Lynch 82). Festooned with a "cloud of flags" and sent on her way by the Mariposa band's rendition of "The Maple Leaf Forever!" (Leacock, Sunshine Sketches 41), the Mariposa Belle is both a "floating Mariposa" and a "symbolic 'ship of state'" (Lynch 82), a fact made abundantly apparent and "politically telling" when she sinks, albeit in less than six feet of water, just as "the voices of the girls and men blended into [communal] unison by the distance" can be heard singing "'O—Can-a-da'" (48). That the steamer has been "sunk" and refloated by the Mariposans several times in the past and this time returns to the dock as "the Mariposa band—actually forming in a circle on the upper deck"—plays "O Can-a-da'" (46) testifies to Leacock's faith in the bumbling durability of Canada's local and national communities. "[T]he annals of settlement," the recollections of individual lives and small communities in which "history…and living memory" are inseparable, were always for Leacock the foundation of "Canadian history" ("Author's Foreword" xxiv-xxv). "'There will always be an England' sings the Englishman," he observed in Canada: the Foundations of Its Future (1941), "[b]ut Canadians would never sing that there will always be a Canada—like this one. This is just a beginning. We have hardly started. Wait a hundred years and see. Hence any proper story of Canada, even in narrating the past, must open the windows of every outlook to the sunshine of the future" ("Author's Foreword" xxv).
This is not to say that in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town or Canada: the Foundations of Its Future Leacock ignores the "romance of exploration…[and] war" that constitutes the "large canvas of Canadian history" ("Author's Foreword" xxiii). For obvious reasons, his wartime history book is given over to these very aspects of Canada's past, and in "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" he registers some of the same themes in a manner that plays simultaneously on the reader's sense of humour and knowledge of history. On the day before the excursion, Mariposans converse laconically "on the corner of Nippewa and Tecumseh Streets" and "at the corner of Dalhousie and Brock Streets" (39). As the Mariposa Belle sinks, the narrator makes passing references to "the old Macdonald Government" and to the "York boat[s]" that were used by furtraders in the Northwest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (50, 51). The "big Mackinaw lifeboat" (40, 51) that comes to the rescue of the steamer has similar historical associations, for as William F. Butler writes in The Great Lone Land (1872) such vessels were used by the Hudson's Bay Company "on every river from the Bay of Hudson to the Polar Ocean" (155).
But the most sustained and humourous references to Canada's romantic past occur in a series of abortive history lessons given by Dr. Gallagher as the Mariposa Belle steams towards the intriguingly named "Indian's Island" (41, 45, 46). At the outset, Gallagher is frustrated by Dean Drone's ignorant insistence on countering all his references to "Canadian history" with Christian and classical topics: "Dr. Gallagher…said…that…Champlain had landed [at Poplar Point]…three hundred years ago; and Dean Drone…said…that the Almighty had piled up the hills and rocks long before that…Dr. Gallagher said that he…wished he could have seen and spoken to Champlain, and Dean Drone said how much he regretted to have never known Xenophon" (43-44). He then takes his interest in the "relics and traces of the [Canadian] past" to Josh Smith with equally egocentric results: "Mr. Smith turned his head and looked at the divide [that Champlain and his party had traversed] for half a second and then said he had crossed a worse one up north…and…went on playing freezeout poker with the two juniors in Duff's bank" (44). It is at this point that Gallagher resolves to give his collection of "Indian arrow heads" to the "Mariposa Mechanics' Institute" (44). "[F]or the time being," however, the doctor despairs of interesting anybody in the knowledge of Canadian history that he has gleaned from his "books…[and] travels" (44), and leaves his fellow Mariposans to play Drone's games and drink Smith's beer on "Indian's Island" without sharing with them (or the reader) the origins and significance of its intriguing name. Where ignorance and egocentricity abound, shared historical insights are impossible, and history remains (or becomes) the purview of scholars and curators ( and see Essay 19: Defining the Country: Memory and Nationhood in the Canadian Museum of Civilization).
A second threat to a shared Canadian past that Leacock gently satirizes in "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" is ethnic factionalism or, as it is known today, multiculturalism. As indicated by the date of their excursion and the classical associations of their name (like the Olympic Games, the Pythian Festival was one of the "four great festivals" that "emphasized the unity" of ancient Greece [Harvey 175-76]), the Knights of Pythias is a nationalistic organization that brings people together in the name of Canada. But, while "practically everybody [in Mariposa] belongs to the Knights of Pythias" (36), they also join happily and promiscuously in the national celebrations of other countries, wearing a "green ribbon" and "talking about Home Rule" for Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, for example, and displaying the "stars and stripes" and professing to "know all about [Theodore] Roosevelt and [William Jennings] Bryan and the Philippine Islands" on the Fourth of July (36-37). "[I]f you feel anxious about the solidity of the British connection," advises the narrator, "wait…till the twelfth of the month, when everyone is wearing an orange streamer in his coat and the Orangemen (every man in town) walk in the big procession" (37). Where national loyalty rides off in all directions like Leacock's famous Lord Ronald, collective memory can only be diffuse and centrifugal.4
A third threat to a shared Canadian past and, thus, to national unity that is much more obliquely addressed in "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias" is the pre-Conquest history and contingent national aspirations of French Canada. In the "Author's Foreword" to Canada: the Foundations of Its Future Leacock treats of French Canadian history as parallel but longer than the "heritage" that extends back "through a generation or two of memory and hearsay…to the days of the American Revolution and the founding of the Maritime Provinces": "[w]ith our French-Canadian fellows such memories and recollections carry back even further, till they are lost in the golden mist of the royal history of France" (xxv). It is to this longer history that Dr. Gallagher's repeatedly disregarded remarks about "Champlain [and]…his French explorers three hundred years ago" are addressed (43-44), the implication being that on Dominion Day of all days Canadians should attend to the "relics and traces of [a] past" that stretches back through British settlers to French explorers (and, indeed, to Native hunters, for the "narrow canoe track" along which, according to Gallagher, Champlain's "party of five hundred French…made their way" towards Georgian Bay in 1615 is known as "Old Indian Portage" [43]). Gallagher's Falstaffian inflation of the number of French explorers is, of course, typically Mariposan, but it has the merit of emphasizing through exaggeration the importance of the French contribution to the exploration and development of Canada.
No more than Dean Drone or Josh Smith have Québécois nationalists paid much heed to the accretive and assimilationist view of Canadian history assumed by Gallagher's generous but suspect remarks. No more is the past of Abbé Lionel Groulx's Notre maître, le passé (1924-1944) the history of post-Conquest Quebec than the "Je me souviens" on the Quebec license plate is an injunction to remember the entwinement of the fleur-de-lis with the rose and the thistle. The "memories and recollections" of French-Canadian nationalists by-pass all but a few incidents of post-Conquest and post-Confederation history to conjure incidents and personages from the "golden mist" of the Ancien Régime—Champlain as the "Father of New France," Maisonneuve as the founder of Montreal, and Dollard des Ormeaux as the saviour of the colony and the city. "Lève-toi donc, ô Dollard, vivant sur ton socle de granit," intoned Groulx at the Monument National in Montreal on January 31, 1919; "[a]ppelle-nous avec ton charme viril, avec tes accents de héros…. Ensemble nous travaillerons, nous reconstruirons la maison de famille. Et, pour la défense française et pour la défense catholique, si tu le commandes, ô Dollard, ô chef enivrant et magnétique, jusqu' à l'holocauste suprême nous te suivrons" (Dix ans 122).5 When Groulx delivered himself of these "messianic" words (Cook, French-Canadian Nationalism 125) the "cult of Dollard" (Wade 576) was already well established in Quebec. Fuelled by anti-imperialist sentiments in French Canada during and between the Boer War and the First World War, the Association Catholique de la Jeunesse canadienne-française (1903- ) had started a fund for "the erection of a monument to the hero" in 1910, and in 1913 the A.C.J.C. decided "to celebrate the memory of Dollard des Ormeaux on May 24" (Wade 577, 636), a date chosen more for its political force than for its historical accuracy since "Dollard and his companions must have perished [at the Long Sault] between 9 and 12 May, 1660" (Vachon 272). The "cult of Dollard" is a particularly striking instance of the way in which—to adapt some observations from E.J. Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism since 1780 (1992)—the Quebec nationalist movement of the present century has "reach[ed] far back" to an "old kingdom" "beyond the real memory of [Quebeckers] in….search…[of] suitable (and suitably impressive) national" heroes (76).
A more venerable and authentic celebration of the collective memory of French Canada than the commemoration of Dollard des Ormeaux is the annual fête and parade of Saint John the Baptist. "[H]alf religious, half popular," celebrations on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (June 24) have been held in Montreal, Quebec City, and elsewhere since 1843 ("Société"), but they do not appear to have inspired any substantial piece of writing in English until 1948—a fact that may reflect a general English-Canadian lack of interest in French-Canadian popular and religious customs during the century of Canada's emergence as an independent nation within the British Empire. During and after the Second World War, however, the increasing identification of French-Canadian nationalism with "provincial autonomy" rather than "anti-imperialism" (Ouellet 63) lent a significance to the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day festivities that did not go unnoticed by a Jewish poet who had viewed with dismay and fear the wartime rise of Québécois racism and its ugly corollaries, anti-semitism at home and indifferentism abroad. "The whole street wears one face, / shadowed and grim; and in the darkness rises / the body-odour of race" (Complete Poems 2:658), A.M. Klein had written in "Political Meeting" (1948) after hearing a speech by Montreal's affable and anti-semitic mayor, Camillien Houde, and in "Hormisdas Arcand" (1948), perhaps with an eye on Maurice Duplessis' Union Nationale (1935-1960) as well as Adrien Arcand's Quebec Nazis: "Hormisdas Arcand, about to found a new party…cannot get / beyond the principal first blast…. A bas les maudits Juifs" (Complete Poems 2:681).
"Parade of St. Jean Baptiste" (1948) takes a more benign view of the "Bannered, and ranked,…festive and puissant" (2:691) display of French-Canadian history and unity. Drawing heavily on French to signal his understanding of the culture on display and, less consciously perhaps, to assimilate its otherness to English culture, Klein presents the parade as a contrived and childish "spectacle" for people who are only too willing to substitute a make-believe realm of the "Imagination" for the "Real world" of their "wards and counties," "suburbs" and "factor[ies]" (2:691-92). As tableaux from fairy tales, early Quebec history, and a vanished rural past transport the happy spectators into a never-never land of "animal fables, myths of the crayon'd class, / [and] the nursery's voyage and discovery," the narrator observes wryly that the floats resemble the illustrations of Edmond-Joseph Massicotte, a French-Canadian artist who is still revered by many Quebeckers for his nostalgic and sentimental depictions of—to quote the title of a recent collection of his work—Les Canadiens d'autre fois (1981). He also observes that the tableaux are presented "courtesy of Simpson's and Eaton T. and Son" (2:691), the suggestion being that they serve the commercial interests, not of French Canada, but of large English-and pan-Canadian retail companies. It is because they are so emotionally engaging and professionally presented that the floats cast a "veil" of nostalgia over the eyes of the urban crowd, blinding them with imagined memories of the "parish parallelograms" of the habitant and the "mountain liberties" of the voyageurs to the painful realities of the "fumed and pulverous city" (2:692).
In The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1984), Robert Darnton draws a sharp distinction between parades in eighteenth-century France and twentieth-century America: "[a] procession générale in [Enlightenment] Montpelier …expressed the corporate order of urban society" but "a Rose Bowl or a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade" merely "stir[s] up fans [or] stimulate[s] trade" (120). In Klein's analysis, a Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade does both. Following a tableau depicting Louis Hébert, the first Frenchman to cultivate land in Canada (Pollock 1021), come four groups in what appears to be ascending order of importance: (1) "the schools and seminaries, potent with race" and representative of the large families encouraged by the Roman Catholic church; (2) the "priest[s] and eminence[s]," carrying their "Crosses" and prompting memories of the role of the Jesuits and other orders in the history of New France; (3) the "mayor" (Houde) and "seniors of the city," "pompous [and] staid" but "familiar" to and with the crowd; and, finally, (4) "the seigneurie / of capital"—the manufacturing, lumber, and fur barons who now rule the province and its people (2:692-93). Escapist, hierarchical, and commercialized though it is, concludes the charitable narrator, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade serves the positive, therapeutic purpose of alleviating and appeasing for "one day" the "gray seasons and the frustrate heart" of ordinary Quebeckers (2:694). As the parade disperses, a single statement—"Departed is the enfilade" (2:694)— appropriately recalls both "Recessional" ("The Captains and the Kings depart" [Kipling 325]) and The Waste Land ("The nymphs are departed" [Eliot 175, 179]), and the narrator imagines the evening's fireworks shining down like bright stars on two of the mainstays of Quebec culture, the family and fertility: "the pleiades / …pyrotechnic will this night illume / pères de famille idyllic and content / and in the dense boskage the ancient intimate experiment" (2:694). To the sympathetic dismay of the narrator (and, presumably, Klein), the "rite and rapture" of the parade (2:694) have served their purpose of reinforcing the values of a not altogether admirable social order.
Looking back on The Imperialist, "The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias," and "Parade of St. Jean Baptiste," it can be seen that Duncan, Leacock, and Klein saw festive parades as a reflection of the surrounding social order that can work, not just to strengthen the ties between and among members of a society, but also to forge links between the past (history) and the future (children). As well, all three writers recognized that parades are local events that can have wide cultural and political significance as affirmations of provincial, national, and even imperial identities. One of Duncan's messages is that parades can help to locate individuals in communities whose extent is limited only by the imagination. To belong to a small community (Elgin) is no hindrance to belonging to a larger one (Ontario, Canada) or the largest one imaginable (the Empire, the world).6 One of Leacock's messages is that ethnic heterogeneity is the enemy of Canadian nationhood when it is either inordinately indulged or selfishly ignored. To fail to privilege national unity or to fail to acknowledge ethnic diversity is to court the imbalance that breeds fascism or anarchy. One of Klein's messages is that the mind cannot bear too much reality or too much fantasy. To escape temporarily into the "gloss[y]" realm of "allegor[y]," and "symbol" that predominates in some parades has therapeutic value, but "images" from the golden ages of history and childhood should not finally be permitted to draw attention away from the here and now (Klein, Complete Poems 2:693-94). A healthy Canadian parade is one that invokes the present as well as the past and the future, the national as well as the provincial and the multinational, the common and the diverse aspects of Canada's distant and recent history.
The final lesson to be drawn from Duncan, Leacock, and Klein is that, although parades are open to manipulation by those who wish to inculcate ideological positions and induce political inertia, they can also serve purposes that are positive and appealing, at least to those who believe that the affirmation of confident and magnanimous communal values is among the last remaining bulwarks against the shallow individualism and homogenizing multiculturalism whose perpetual parade ground is the suburban mall or shopping centre.
Supplement 1
The 1993 Santa Claus parade in London, Ontario was somewhat unusual. A climactic event in a year of celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the siting of the city on March 2, 1793 by Upper Canada's first lieutenant governor, John Graves Simcoe, it was devoted to the theme of "Christmas Past and Present." Among the first elements in the procession were thus a horse-drawn coach carrying actors costumed as Lord and Lady Simcoe and an elaborate float based on Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol (1843). Although similar in its combination of historical and literary references to the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day parade described by Klein, London's 1993 Santa Claus parade lacked the racial and nationalist element that rightly prompted the Jewish (and Marxian) poet's dark thoughts about the consolidating and tranquilizing purposes of such an event. Civic rather than national in their emphasis, Santa Claus parades tend to put history and literature at the service of communal spirit and personal nostalgia rather than ethnic solidarity or identity. No doubt Canadians of many ethnicities and religions have ridden on the floats and marched in the bands of London's Santa Claus parades, but they have done so, not as Orangemen or Ukrainians (or even Ontarians and Canadians), but as members of a civic community whose good qualities they have come together and—as anyone who has built a float knows only too well—worked very hard to celebrate and symbolize.
The London that "represent[ed] itself to itself" in the 1993 Santa Claus parade was a community of communities. There were floats—civic and, indeed, ethical constructs—from such groups as Community Living London, the Memorial Boys and Girls Club of London, the London Professional Fire-Fighters' Association, the Canadian Red Cross Society, the Whitehills Child Care Association, the London Home Builders' Association, the Sunshine Foundation of Canada, the Civitan Clubs (motto: "Help People"), and the Block Parent Programme ("which started right here in London"). There were floats and bands from several of London's municipal and educational institutions—London Transit and Catholic Central Highschool, for example, and the University of Western Ontario. And there were three commentators (Ruta Pocius, Jim Swan, and Bruce Williams) to give explicit voice to the parade's communal implications: "London [is] such a caring place….Western is so much a part of our life here in the city of London….Christmas is about giving and sharing….[Building a float is] just another way that they all get together….[The parade is] a reflection of the communities we live in: you can get a sense of what th[e] community is and what it's about by looking at the parade and the organizations and the institutions that are represented there" (London Jaycees Santa Claus Parade). With a mixture of company loyalty and social awareness, one of the announcers noted that the television station covering the parade was using the event to "collect…food for the London and area food bank" and that "a lot of the parades all over southwestern Ontario [would] be gathering food for the food bank project."
It is tempting to be cynical about such unguarded expressions of local pride and communal charity, and even more tempting to take a fashionably subversive approach to other aspects of London's 1993 Santa Claus parade. Of course, the award for the best float went to the Canada Trust Staff Association. Of course, the award for the best corporate float went to Bell Canada. Only a large company could afford to put together an expensive, prize-winning float, and why would they bother, if not for advertising purposes? To the extent that communal activities almost always involve a degree of more-or-less enlightened self-interest, such questions are valid, but they should not be allowed to obscure the fact that Bell Canada and Canada Trust participated in this particular Santa Claus parade because, more than many other companies, they have historical roots and communal responsibilities in London. For many years, both have employed large numbers of people in the city, and, until recently, Canada Trust had its corporate headquarters (t)here. Klein was probably right to notice the incongruous presence of two Toronto-based retail chains in a Saint-Jean Baptiste Day parade in Montreal, but it would clearly be wrong to censure Bell Canada and Canada Trust for participating in a Santa Claus parade in London. Indeed, it was the absence from the parade of other prosperous companies with roots in the area that should be cause for dismay and consternation. Did the management and staff of Labatt's have no loyalty to London?7
A temptation less easy to resist is that of questioning the appropriateness of some the advertisers who sponsored the live telecast of London's 1993 Santa Claus parade: Nintendo, General Mills Trix, and White Oaks Mall. Perhaps no other sponsors were available, but the presence of advertisements aimed especially at children did much to undermine the efforts of the event's organizers and commentators to mitigate and redirect the commercialism and consumerism that lie as close as Father Christmas's bulging sack of presents to the idealistic raison d'être of a Santa Claus parade. A child watching the telecast could be pardoned for thinking that buying and getting gifts would be—as for some people it probably is—the main focus of activity between early November and late December. An adult inclined to Marxian analysis would have strong support for arguing that the effect of the telecast was to inculcate Londoners with the perception of themselves as sufficiently wealthy and leisurely not only to build floats and support charities, but also to indulge their children and consume conspicuously.
More evident to many people, however, would have been the parade's emphasis on memory. With the way prepared by the Simcoes' carriage and A Christmas Carol, the parade and commentators returned again and again to the sources and manifestations of individual and collective memory. Prompted especially by the float of the Chelsey Park Retirement Community (a group of "folks who have seen some Christmases come and go"), the commentators waxed eloquent on Christmas as a time when "all different generations, and families and friends, get together," a time for "special memories that are always there." Ruta Pocius recalled looking at old pictures in a photograph album and remembered visiting Simpson's with her grandmother. "What would Christmas be without turkey?" she wondered, adding "and with a few Lithuanian treats thrown in along the way." To which Bruce Williams replied, "that would be fabulous." For the occasion, for London, for Ontario, for Canada, that combination seems exactly right. Perhaps it is too optimistic to take four further statements by the commentators as choric: "times have changed, but some things about Christmas always remain the same"; "Christmas…is when a house really becomes a home"; "the Christmas spirit is definitely alive and well;" "traditions go on from generation to generation."
Supplement 2
"Let's not analyze Canada. Let's celebrate it."8 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's words on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on July 1, 1994 assume a common enough distinction between rational enquiry and emotional enjoyment: to analyze is to dismember and therefore destroy; to celebrate is to praise and thus confirm. To stop analyzing Canada's problems and, if only for a day, to celebrate its accomplishments and potential might not make those problems go away, but it could help. Perhaps.
Inevitably, the Prime Minister's passionate plea fell on the deaf ears of numerous newspaper and television journalists. One of these was Robert Mason Lee, "a Vancouver journalist and lawyer" who delivered himself of a scathing analysis of the Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill in the July 2 issue of The Globe and Mail. "The West, runt of the cultural litter, sucked hind teat on Canada Day," ran the headline of Lee's column, which proceeded with heavy sarcasm to condemn the festivities televised on Parliament Hill as a sinister attempt by "Ottawa's cultural bureaucrats" to foist upon Canadians a "veiled political agenda" made up of "diversity," "patriotism," and communal affection ("love one another"). "The grand finale" of the Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa "was a vision of the country as scripted by Walt Disney and performed by Mouseketeers," proclaimed Lee: "[i]ts centralist vision of Canada struck Western sensibilities as just another French label on the corn-flake box, with patriotism being the contents that were being shoved down their throats." This might have been an astute and telling analysis if its generalizations were not so fatuous (all "Western sensibilities"?) and its rhetorical squibs so wet and underpowered ("scripted by Walt Disney…shoved down their throats"). But perhaps there are still some "Western sensibilities" that enjoy reruns of the anti-national, anti-American, and anti-French diatribes of the 'sixties and 'seventies. If so, then they would probably have got a special rush from Lee's assertion that the senior rock band in the celebrations—The Band—"is…an undisputed Canadian talent, now that Robbie Robertson has left it and it is fronted by an American."
What is more dismaying and questionable about Lee's analysis is his naïve notion that any and all celebrations of Canada can and should contain manifestations of every aspect of "Canadian diversity"—that an hour-long concert designed for television, even one with what Lee sarcastically calls "a budget of barely more than $1-million," could possibly be all things to all Canadians. Compounding the naïveté of this notion is Lee's conscious avoidance (surely not complete ignorance) of the large issues and tensions that dictated the "political agenda" of the 1994 Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa. For reasons that are obvious to the meanest intelligence, "Ottawa's cultural bureaucrats" did not set out in 1994, as in some previous years, "to demonstrate the thousand petals of multiculturalism" (Lee), but, rather, to extol the geographical and linguistic commonality that made Canada a nation in 1867 despite its regional and racial diversities. With the Bloc Québécois sitting in opposition in Ottawa and the Parti Quebeçois gaining in popularity in Quebec, Lee's "cultural bureaucrats" would have been highly irresponsible if they had failed to give priority to English-French relations in the "political agenda" of the Canada Day celebrations. To have included more Western Canadian content in the hour allotted to them would have been tantamount to fiddling while Rome burned. To his or her credit, the "sheltered…Ottawa bureaucrat" envisaged by Lee recognized that there was time for only one fiddle in the Canada Day celebrations—the fiddle of a French-Canadian.
Despite Mr. Chrétien's understandable misgivings, an analysis of the "Party on the Hill" ("This Week's TV Programs," P-115) need not prove inimical to the spirit of celebration that it was designed to embody and encourage. Indeed, it might even encourage that celebration, not least in the West, by enabling a recognition that, far from being simplistically "bilingual" as feared by Lee, the "Party on the Hill" actually represented Canada as a country characterized by a ubiquitous and accommodative Anglo-American linguistic and cultural heritage.
Consider the design of the set for the "Party" and the opening sequences of the telecast. Framed by a colourful collage of Canada's provincial and territorial flags and surmounted by a heraldic scroll bearing the nation's transcontinental motto (A MARE USQUE AD MARE), a huge electronic screen carried still and moving images in a window-bar pattern that evoked the multiple-screen presentations made famous by Canadian filmmakers at Expo 67. Against this obviously and subtly patriotic background, a series of musical performances and accompanying effects bore witness to Canadian diversity and tolerance within an unmistakably North American and English-speaking matrix. "[A] New Brunswick francophone," Roch Voisine, wore a lumberjack-style plaid shirt and "perform[ed] in English" (Lee). A Black choir from Quebec—the Montreal Jubilation Gospel Singers—wore traditional white cassocks and also sang in English. So, of course, did The Band, accompanied by footage of a motorcyclist of the Easy Rider school, with a Canadian flag on his jacket. Both in their dress (jeans, black leather mini skirts) and in their musical styles (rock and roll, country and western), the Native, Québécois and Acadian groups and singers who appeared on the stage reinforced the impression of diverse traditions enjoying a comfortably unthreatening and unthreatened relationship with their surrounding Anglo-American culture.
This impression was none-too-subtly reinforced by the series of live interviews and video vignettes that interspersed the stage performances. Variegated with patches of French, the predominantly English (and almost hysterically up-beat) commentary of the show's two young hosts suggested that large quantities of French (culture) could be inserted into English (culture) without difficulty or anxiety. Enclosed within a frame inscribed "CANADACAM JULY 1, 1994," the videos bore witness to a commonable ethnic and regional diversity both by depicting different racial groups from across the country and by presenting these groups in a camcorder format that is resonantly "down-home" and North American in its associations. The impression here was of what one of the hosts called "one big family—the family of Canadians"—being, by turns, interviewed by reporters from MuchMusic and filmed by a loving parent or relative. Lee suggests that "[t]here is something false in the attempt to portray Canada as a happy family, something strained in the effort to celebrate things as they ought to be, rather than as they are." Maybe there is, but dreams of tolerance and harmony have always been expressed through familial similes and metaphors. In "The Provinces" (1948), Klein finds a tentative answer to the problem of Canadian "unity" in "the family feature, the not unsimilar face" (Complete Poems 2:644). In Nova Britannia (1858), Alexander Morris envisages the country as an "alliance of the…hearts and hands" of the Maritimes and the Canadas (56). As even these two quotations suggest, the trope of the family frequently makes its appearance at times of national uncertainty and opportunity. Surely the Heritage Minister, Michel Dupuy, deserves more than Lee's scorn for his thought-provoking and guardedly optimistic statement on July 1, 1994 that "Canada Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of the word family in its fullest sense…. Canada Day allows us to come together as a family."9
One of the most potent components of the Canada Day celebrations on Parliament Hill was the sequence centred on Jann Arden, a singer who, as Lee correctly notes, was the "only one" of the "14 acts in the grand finale…[that came] from the West." As Arden sang a ballad with the refrain "I would die for you," the screen behind her showed scenes from the Normandy invasion and fiftieth-anniversary ceremonies. The cameras on Parliament Hill then focused briefly on some of the veterans in the audience and the camcorder splices carried interviews with current members of the Armed Forces. The sequence ended with a bird's eye view on the large screen of the bow of a Canadian warship cutting through a turbulent sea (an allusion to the ancient trope of the ship of state). Not only did Arden's soulful ballad and the accompanying visuals recall a great moment in Canadian history in a timely and moving way, but they also invoked a particular historical event—the liberation of France—that speaks indirectly but clearly of a history of Canadian assistance to the French, a history commemorated less than a month earlier on the beaches of Normandy. By activating memories of both the invasion and its commemoration, the D-Day sequence of the Canada Day celebrations suggested an enduring history of Canadian-French assistance and gratitude that might well be capable of prevailing over present tensions and persisting into the future.
A variation of this message was embodied in the closing minutes of the celebrations when the spotlight fell on some of Canada's most outstanding Olympic athletes. "What [makes] sport so uniquely effective a medium for inculcating national feelings," observes Hobsbawm, "is the ease with which even the least political or public individuals can identify with the nation as symbolized by young persons excelling at what practically every [one] wants, or at one time…wanted, to be good at…. The individual, even the one who only cheers, becomes a symbol of the nation" (Nations and Nationalism 143). As Nathalie Lambert, Jean-Luc Brassard, Edi Podivinsky, and others assembled on the stage, the large screen carried shots of several athletes in action, and Sylvie Frechette—an icon of the triumph of rightness over error—spoke movingly (and in English) of her feelings on seeing the Canadian flag raised and hearing the national anthem played during the Olympic medal ceremony. Once again, the focus and emphasis fell on Canadians who had given their utmost and shown their flag in an Old-World arena. But now the group was not a survival of the rapidly receding past; it was a manifestation of the present and a hope for the future—an accomplished and dedicated group of men and women whose very names spoke of the opportunities and kudos that Canada can afford to young French Canadians. That the climactic singing of "O Canada" was in English simply reinforced the point that English is the language of the circumambient culture in which French Canadians have for centuries grown and prospered.
Lee concludes that on July 1, 1994, Westerners "watch[ed] a broadcast so intent on inclusiveness that it largely excluded them, …lit their loyal fireworks and endured." If so, then perhaps they didn't watch closely enough.
Supplement 3
In "I Love a Parade" in the June 23, 1995 issue of The Globe and Mail, Daniel Latouche provides an astute and amused account of "the contradictions of the parade on the Fête nationale, also known as Jean-Baptiste Day":
This year the theme of the Fête nationale
parade is the St. Lawrence River, and float after float will
celebrate the many facets of this wonderful river.
On the surface this is a very innocent theme, apolitical and not a bit "separatist." After all, a river is a river, and in Montreal the Vieux Port, the area adjacent to the St. Lawrence, remains a federal territory where not a single Quebec flag is to be flown. The Mouvement national des Québécois, a loose confederation of Saint-Jean-Baptiste Clubs, chooses the theme for the annual celebration, and it usually goes out of its way to select a topic that won't offend anyone.
The Mouvement is a nationalist organization, known for its pro- sovereignty leanings. In any other country, it wouldn't hesitate to put forth both its political views and its own vision of the grandeur of the Nation. That's what nationalist organizations usually do, at least once a year: the Irish are pretty good at it, and on Bastille Day the French have little trouble showing off their tanks and joie de vivre. But not in Quebec, where everything is more complicated, including organizing a parade.
First, everyone agrees that the parade and the festivities around it have to be apolitical, and since almost everything in Quebec, except the weather, is political, this leaves little room to manoeuvre. In this sense, picking the St. Lawrence is a safe bet: even the most ardent federalists will be hard put to deny that it is essentially a Quebec river, while sovereigntists will grudgingly admit that the water flowing in "their" river is essentially Ontarian water.
Second, parade organizers have to deal with one of the more puzzling phenomena of recent years: the rising anti-nationalist elements in the Quebec nationalist movement. No decent Quebec intellectual, filmmaker or writer will ever want to be considered "nationalist," and many have come to support sovereignty as the best way to purge Quebec of its nationalist tendencies. It's somewhat difficult to explain to non-Quebeckers, but psychologist friends of mine tell me it's quite normal among minorities, who usually insist on feeling guilty about the way the majority is forced to treat them. For a minority, there's nothing more stressful than to lose one's status as the underdog.
But for the Mouvement national, this anti-nationalist nationalism doesn't make things easier. How do you convince Montrealers that they should come down to Sherbrooke Street with their parasols and lawn chairs to watch a parade that will make them feel good about the fact that history is slowly passing them by while the rest of the country thinks they're a bunch of nuts? No wonder so many people grow bored and get drunk watching the parade.
Organizers are also expected to celebrate the French culture of Quebec while making sure they don't end up praising the famous Québécois de souche (old-stock Quebeckers). This is a tough one, and the Mouvement has yet to find a satisfactory way of being ethnically anti-ethnic. What makes life almost impossible for the organizers is that the federalists insist on turning the parade into a giant celebration of French-Canada's heroes while the sovereigntists will be happy only if there is as little mention as possible of Champlain and D'Iberville.
Jean Chrétien, for one, carefully avoids even using the words Fête nationale du Québec. For him, June 24 is Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day (the guy with the bearskin and the sheep at his feet), and is to be celebrated as the quintessential French-Canadian holiday. Last year, he was even quoted as saying he did not quite understand what non-French-Canadians were doing walking in "our" parade.
For the last couple of parades, the Mouvement national has managed to present a non-ethnic, French-only image by having groups of young Vietnamese girls swivelling their batons to the tune of Mon pays ce n'est past un pays set to a Haitian rhythm. The show was quite surrealistic, and people seemed to appreciate the effort, through no one was quite sure what was happening. This year there is talk of an Inuit band dressed up in fleur-de-lis anoraks playing Alouette. It should prove interesting.
Give me a parade any time.


text:
This gift could cause serious harm
Drone owners must exercise great caution and follow the rules
No doubt some local residents will find remotely controlled miniature aircraft — drones, in popular parlance — under their Christmas trees next Monday. Recipients will tear open packages anticipating tons of fun.
Aircraft pilots have a different view. The proliferation of drones flown by irresponsible owners has created a new, potentially deadly, hazard for those who fly or ride in bigger craft.
National Transportation Safety Board officials have released a report on the first confirmed midair collision between a manned aircraft and a drone in this country. It occurred Sept. 21 over New York City, when a drone hit and damaged an Army helicopter. Those on the chopper were able to land it safely.
The drone's operator was breaking virtually every rule in the book. He flew his craft about 2.5 miles away from where he was, despite a Federal Aviation Administration on flying drones out of sight of the operator, for one thing.
If you have a drone or get one this Christmas, enjoy it. But do so safely. Follow all the rules. Don't be responsible for the first fatality involving a drone.


text:
Having problems with your Toshiba Satellite A100-ST3211 Notebook ?
Problems with Toshiba Satellite A100-SP621PC Notebook
\015 Please, I need assistance on my satellite A100-SP621, display, audio and some other features working bad or not working.. original OS Windows XP pro. please, I need a place to download precise drivers.. help needed.. UR..\015
Answers :
Download the XP network driver for your model laptop from the Toshiba WEB site from their download page.
For a shortcut to the Toshiba's download page.
Copy and paste this address into your browser's URL address location.
For a shortcut to the Toshiba's download page.
Copy and paste this address into your browser's URL address location.
Repair Help & Product Troubleshooting for Toshiba Satellite A100-ST3211 Notebook
Tips for a great answer:- Provide details, support with references or personal experience .
- If you need clarification, ask it in the comment box .
- It's 100% free, no registration required.
Suggested Questions/Answers :
Problems with Toshiba Satellite A100-SP621PC Notebook
Download the XP network driver for your model laptop from the Toshiba WEB site from their download page.For a shortcut to the Toshiba's download page.Copy and paste this address into your browser's URL address location.http://www.cs ... Toshiba Satellite A100-ST3211 Notebook
Toshiba a100 screen not working
Hi..The easiest and most foolproof method for testing your LCD screen is to\015\012hook up the laptop to an external monitor. If the video output on the\015\012external monitor looks fine, this means that the problem is with the\015\012vi ... Toshiba Satellite A100-ST3211 Notebook
Need the win xp profeesional drivers for the toshiba laptop satellite A100, model :PSAAKL
Hi Friends,Problem with Acer Aspire Notebook Or Laptops? Just visit the sites..For any Software problem you can visit a link by just ... PC Laptops
Toshiba Satellite A100 Win XP O/S. SHUT DOWN Prob.
Sorry to say but sounds like a cooling problem or the bored is bad :( ... Compaq Presario 1200XL104 Notebook
Need specs: CMOS battery for Toshiba Satellite M60 notebook, Euro
Sounds like you have several problems to solve.\015\012The LCD screen might only need the the video ribbon cable connector reseating otherwise it could be a video card problem. Connect an external monitor to the laptop, power up the monitor the ... Toshiba Satellite M60 Notebook
Please can you supply me instructions and/or diagrams for replacement keyboard for a toshiba sattilite pro a100 laptop
Jasper02:\015\012\015\012Good day to you. The A100 is a Satellite, but not a Satellite Pro. Additionally, the exact model of your laptop will include a number of characters following the 100. For instance, it could be A100-Sxx11TD (where ... Toshiba PC Desktops
Toshiba Laptop crashing
Hi vfcork4al67, did your notebook come with restore cd's or a windows cd? If yes load your restore cd or windows cd into the cdrom drive. Boot the notebook. The notebook should go to the cdrom & start to load the cd. Follow the on s ... PC Desktops
Toshiba satellite A100 Monitor problem
I have Toshiba Satellite A 100 which is not booting and does not show the boot screen . I have put a user password in BIOS and in abscence of boot screen I am unable to start the system.When Power is switched -on,the display screen lits -up without ... Toshiba Satellite A100-ST3211 Notebook
No power I have a Toshiba Satellite M-60, when I go to turn it on the power button lights up and the indicator lights come on for a couple seconds then it shuts right off. Nothing comes up on the screen. Can you please advice?
Hi 1trainer2nv,\015\012\015\012I have been having the EXACT same problem with my Toshiba notebook (Satellite A135-S4527). At first, I thought it was an issue regarding my AC adapter. But after getting it checked out by a certified Toshib ... Toshiba Satellite A135 Notebook
Toshiba laptop satellite A100-332
Toshiba has a problem with the connector from the LCD to the board which breaks over time. You will need to replace it. Here is a sample of what the part looks like. You will need to specify your model. ... PC Laptops
Toshiba Satellite Laptop Power Failure (A105-S1013 System Unit)
How handy are you with a digital multimeter? If the laptop is still disassembled, find the solder connections on the motherboard where the mini power cable enters the board from the jack. Plug the AC adapter in. Check to make sure you have the pro ... Toshiba Satellite A100-S8111TD Notebook
Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 boots up sporadically
One of the problems I had was overheating, wich caused the same simptoms.The ba***rd would not boot for about one hour or so after shutting down due to excess heat.I downloaded the BIOS update from Toshiba, wich keeps the fan running almo ... Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 Notebook
Toshiba Satellite 17" L355-S7812 Gaming Resolution Problem
This is a common problem with Toshiba Notebooks. Their driver is locked onto Intel version 13.29 which is a buggy driver that has an issue keeping the aspect ratio settings in the control panel. You will want to download Intel's 15.9 drivers (the zip ... PC Laptops
Toshiba satellite pro a60 power problem
Did u install already all the drivers for the A60???then, update / flash the bios... http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/jsp/modelContent.jsp?ct=DL&os=&category=&moid=1213736&rpn=PSA60U&modelFilter=A60-S107 ... Toshiba Satellite A60 Notebook
Problem with keys used to enter the cmos
For Toshiba notebook PCs manufactured since the introduction of Windows XP, one or more of the following methods will be effective:\015\012\015\012\015\012Toshiba Hardware utility method: R ... Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 Notebook
Media Buttons and Finger Scanner
Hey there\015\012I have the same laptop (toshiba sat A100) and have had the same problem (and many others!) the only way you can get the buttons to work is if you use the product recovery disk and start over from scratch.. I have had to do this ... Toshiba Satellite A100-S8111TD Notebook
Laptop toshiba satellit A100 Charging Problem
This section of Toshiba's web site will allow you to locate a service center. ... Toshiba Satellite A105 Notebook
Toshiba Satellite Blinking battery light
Its certainly power issue..... i have had a similar problem with one other toshiba notebook and it was a dying battery....i suggest you to get a new battery for ur set... ... Toshiba Satellite A105 Notebook
Troubleshooting with Toshiba Satellite A75-S211 Notebook
Try more chargers, if posible one made for u;re model , so that u;ll know if the charger is the problem ! i susspect that not the charger gives u hard times but the computers power managment hardware/software .... U can try to open the co ... Toshiba Satellite A75-S211 Notebook
Toshiba Satellite A135-S2376, black screen problem
This is a known problem with this laptop, it`s vga card have some kind of a major problem . so u cant do it on your own , go and make them give u a new borad -any yea u should go get dell in the first place :P- ... Toshiba Satellite A135-S2386 Notebook
Hi. My notebook (Toshiba Satellite A75-S229) is having overheating problems. Every time the notebook overheats, it shuts down...just like that (I know that's what overheating means). When I watch an videos, the notebook runs very loud and then after 5 minutes, it shuts down. I can't do much with a notebook that shuts down on me so many times a day. Any solutions? Thanks in advance!
I have family members who have also had similar problems. Your overheating problems may be linked to something more serious but there are a few things I would try first.\012Step 1 - Use a can of compressed air or an air compressor to blow out the dus ... Toshiba Satellite A75-S229 Notebook
Windows xp Driver for satellite A135-S2246
Just use the below link to download all the drivers for your laptop.\015\012 ... Toshiba Satellite A135-S2246 Notebook
Toshiba satellite notebook dvd/cd player
First open the "Device Manager" to check for any error messages related to the device and click on "Start" and select "Control Panel" .Now double-click on the "System" icon then click on the "Hardwar ... Toshiba Satellite A105 Notebook
Toshiba laptop screen goes white while in use
The problem actually will happen to all notebooks. Some problems happen on certain models more often. Also, it depends on how often the user closes and opens the notebook. The data cable is usually the problem and it happens where the mos ... PC Laptops
Toshiba Satellite M45 will not recognize Matshita
I had the same problem with my Matshita drive in HP Pavilion notebook. The solution given to me was to delete the upper and lower filters in the following registry locationHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Control\\Class\\{4D36E965 ... Toshiba Satellite M45-S269 Notebook


text:
Discussion in 'Current Events' started by dmp, Mar 29, 2005.
I hope this isn't old news..
LOL - Unbelievable!!!
I just had a thought - you reckon that was Lolita?
Lolita... there's a blast from the past!
I keep her memory alive in my signature....
LOL - how much you want to bet she voted for Kerry?
"911 - who did you vote for? Kerry? Hold please...."
seriously--911 abuse royally pisses me off !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :chains:
Do you wonder if she is embarrassed now, or can she still not see why this was not an emergency?
I would hope a VERY LARGE fine might wake her up quickly.
Had I been the 911 operator, I'd have definitely sent a deputy down there - to cuff her and take her simple ass to jail!
Separate names with a comma.


text:
Building a Conscious Corporate Culture
By DeLinda Forsythe
A corporate culture exists in every organization, whether you build it consciously or unconsciously. An effective way to build your business culture is through furniture design. ICE plans and fabricates furniture that encourages a company to connect, play, solve problems together, fail, succeed, experiment, grow and ultimately "create magic."
ICE uses furniture as a tool to build an empowered corporate rainforest. A tropical rainforest is a climatic condition where millions of species of plants, insects, undiscovered microorganisms and 75% of all biotic species live. 25% of all natural medicines have been discovered in rainforests. Creating a rainforest corporate culture is not a mere business theory; it provides a new paradigm for policies and strategies that transcend the way businesses have traditionally worked. Note: This concept is in reference to "The Rainforest" by Greg Horowitt and Victor Hwang.
According to ICE CEO & Founder DeLinda Forsythe, "A rainforest environment in an office eliminates hierarchy and encourages teamwork. The mechanisms of a rainforest touch the heart of a company, making it more efficient and innovative. It creates an interior environment where vibrant engagement makes it possible to build a culture of inspiration. Employees are reminded everyday by working in their inspired workplace that the welfare of each employee matters. Employees working for a common goal build an inspired company."
One of the methods ICE might use to create this atmosphere include a combination of open benching systems for team work and panel systems for privacy as well as sound masking, private huddle rooms, lounge areas, and conference tables that do double duty as ping pong tables. A business owner has the ability to create an intangible presence through creative furniture design that builds community.
According to Forsythe, "This methodology is an important investment in a company's overall success. Great companies have an undying belief that they can do something better and bigger and this fosters a personal relationship with their customers. Building employee loyalty is similar. A staff should feel that working at their company is bigger than themselves and that together the entire team is doing something authentic, meaningful - and that ultimately, the employee is valued."


text:
I recently discovered a book called A rich store-house or treasury for the diseased printed in 1596 (and again throughout the 17th Century) It was written for those who were unable to visit a physician and who would be presumably self medicating. I thought I would share some of the recipes, not all are as brutal as this first one. I don't think I'll be trying it anytime soon due to its use of many crushed up swallows.
One handful knotty strawberries
One handful of thyme
One handful of lavender cotton
4 or 5 Swallows
Half a pound fresh unsalted butter
Take the thyme, lavender cotton, Knotty Strawberries, cut them and beat them in a morter, and when you have so done, then take 4 or 5 swallows out of a nest, and beat them in the morter with the herbs, untill you cannot perceive the feathers, and then take the butter and mingle them altogether. Then let them stand for the space of 24. hours, then seeth and strain them into a gally pot, or into some earthen vessell. And so use it twice a day, in anointing of the place where the grief is, and in five or six days it will be whole.
The book contains many remedies for various ailments most of which contain a lot less swallow. Here is one for women who have sore breasts:
Take red sage, chamomile and whitewine vinger, and apply it often to the womans breast that is sore and it helpeth her. Probatum est.
Sure of the remedy's capabilities it ends probatum est or 'it is proved'. Chamomile is still often used today in a lotion to sooth the skin and also as a relaxing herbal drink.
I particularly like this next medicine which uses pig foot marrow for a clear and glowing complexion :
A Medicine for to make ones face cleare, and to shine.
Take a good quantity of the Marrow of Swines feete, Cow-milke, and Rosewater, and mingle them well together, and anoint your face therewith lukewarme, and it will make it very faire.
Apparently pigs feet contain a lot of collagen believed to be good for keeping the skin looking young (although this is debatable) so there could be something in this one!
'A.T: A rich store-house or treasury for the diseased', 1596, at Early English Books Online
Copyright © 2010 E.JH
Copyright © 2010 E.JH


text:
Five goals in his last six appearances or, to put it another way, a strike-rate better than Diego Costa and Olivier Giroud.
Billy Sharp, both personally and statistically speaking, is in a pretty good place right now.
"I'm happy with the way I've played. I've got into some good positions and had some good chances. The support we're getting is unbelievable but the most important thing, always, is our results."
Those, as Sheffield United's recent record in League One demonstrates, have been surprisingly difficult to come by of late with Nigel Adkins' side entering tomorrow's meeting with Doncaster Rovers hoping to secure only its second win this month. Sharp, preparing to face his former club for the first time since leaving the Keepmoat Stadium last year, feels the pressure more acutely than most given the emotional investment he made in Bramall Lane after returning for a third spell during the close season.
"There's always pressure on a professional footballer," Sharp, who grew-up supporting Nigel Adkins' side, acknowledges. "Yes, I'm a fan and I know the fans are expecting me to score.
"But that's no different to myself. I just love scoring goals and that's what I expect to do. The squad, I can already see, has got loads of quality in it and a lot of goals. Nobody can put any more pressure on me than I do myself. Really, it's not an issue at all."
Plenty of water has passed beneath Lady's Bridge during the centre-forward's 11 year association with United. And, as he freely admits, not all of it placid. A promising but unproven talent when Adkins' predecessor Neil Warnock sold him to Scunthorpe in 2005, Sharp returned following Bryan Robson's appointment two years later before departing again, this time for Rovers, after cracks appeared in his relationship with the England legend's replacement Kevin Blackwell. Adkins' arrival three months ago paved the way for Sharp's return and, given their success together at Glanford Park and Southampton, things promise to be different this time around.
"He was a big pull to get me here, Nigel Adkins. I always wanted to come back, I never wanted to leave in the first place but I had to for the sake of my career. "I'm stronger, older and better now. I'm better equipped to be a Sheffield United player.
"I'm also lucky in a way because some people only get the chance to play for their club once, if at all. This time, I've got to make sure it's a success."
So far so good as the facts and figures behind United's latest bid to drag themselves back into the Championship proves. Sharp has scored nearly a third of their goals in all competitions and cites Adkins, who boasts four promotions on his managerial CV, as a major factor behind his form.
"The facilities here have always been good but there have also been changes for the better. The gaffer knows what he's doing and he's got promotions under his belt. It's a positive, definitely, that he's got automatics too. He knows the type of challenges that you face and the type of problems that are likely to arise."
How best to utilise Sharp's talents too. Having spent a significant portion of his transfer budget prising Sharp away from Leeds - "I know I'll get some stick but I always had this feeling I'd end up playing for them" - Adkins charged the 29-year-old with leading an attack purpose built to accentuate his strengths and negate his weaknesses. It mirrors the tactics employed by Danny Wilson to resurrect Ched Evans' career with United during the early stages of the 2012/13 season. Another triumph of design over accident although Sharp, reflecting upon the recent defeat by Colchester, is adamant faith is more important than formations.
"It's a big confidence booster when you know that a manager believes in you. Another one might have taken me off at half-time then because I'd missed a few chances. Two really good ones, definitely.
"But he didn't, he kept me out there and that just makes you even more determined to repay him. The great thing about the gaffer is that he doesn't make you afraid of making a mistake. He's supportive when things aren't going well and is always encouraging you to try things. Express yourself and show what you're all about."
Adkins is not Sharp's only source of encouragement though.
"I always go to see my dad after matches because he comes to watch. He tells me to keep my head up if things haven't gone well but, don't get me wrong, he gives me the odd telling-off too.
"He's been a really big influence on me throughout my whole career. He wasn't a professional footballer, he played semi-pro himself, but knows exactly what to say and when to say it. He's been a huge help to me."
"I play to impress my mum, my dad and the fans who pay their money to come and watch us," Sharp adds. "I'm lucky to be here and I know I'm in a very privileged position to be doing what I do."
United enter the game against Rovers seventh in the table having averted a third straight loss by drawing at Bradford City five days ago. The visitors appeared done for when Devante Cole doubled City's lead early in the second half before James Meredith's own goal allowed Sharp to complete a dramatic comeback.
Ranked 22nd in the table and with caretaker manager Rob Jones at the helm, Rovers' hopes of causing an upset could depend on their ability to drive a wedge between United, who slipped to a 3-1 reverse when Bury travelled to South Yorkshire earlier this month, and the home support.
"Emotions were low after the last home game," Sharp says. "But there were positives to take. Our first-half performance (against Colchester) was unacceptable but, despite being under pressure in front of our own fans, we dragged ourselves back into contention and that shows we're made of the right stuff."
READ MORE: Click here for all the latest news from Bramall Lane


text:
Music Gifts Music Keyrings & Pin Badges Musical Instrument Pin Badges
This trumpet pin badge is hand crafted from English Pewter and is highly detailed. A super present for a trumpeter, teacher or musician, this trumpet badge measures approx. 3cm x 0.7cm and is secured on the back by two push pins.
Delivery Info
Special Offers
Visit Our Store
Our Services
Privacy & Security
Read Our blog
enjoymuzic Facebook
Customer Reviews
Music Links
Contact Us
About enjoymuzic
All Major Credit and Debit Cards Accepted A PayPal Account is NOT Required
enjoymuzic ltd, 54 Royal Quays Outlet Shopping Centre, Coble Dene, North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 6DW Tel: 0191 2966544


text:
firstname.lastname@example.com, @PykoszIM
I&M Staff Writer
The main theater at the Dreamland will be filled with the sounds of opera arias and lively spirituals this weekend, as nationally renowned soprano Adrienne Danrich performs her unique multimedia and Emmy award winning show �This Little Light of Mine,� a celebration of the groundbreaking careers of African American singers Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price.
Accompanied by Djordje Nesic, the show was originally commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera and is being brought to Nantucket by Gerry Mack of the Nantucket Arts Council to kick off their winter/ spring concert series this Sunday at 4 p.m.
To read the complete story, pick up the print edition of this week's Inquirer and Mirror or register for the I&M's online edition by clicking here.
For up-to-the-minute information on Nantucket's breaking news, boat and plane cancellations, weather alerts, sports and entertainment news, deals and promotions at island businesses and more, Sign up for Inquirer and Mirror text alerts. Click Here.
Follow us on Facebook!��� Or Twitter!


text:
Once again I would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to the recent transport survey I undertook as part of my campaign to get a fairer deal for Medway commuters on Southeastern trains.
I recently met with representatives of Southeastern to discuss the concerns that were raised through this survey and I would now like to report back to you on the results of this meeting.
Tomorrow (25th April), in what will be a first for local politics here in Medway, I will be hosting a live webchat on this site to take your questions on commuter services as they are now, and how they will look in the future. With the inflation-busting fare increases in January, possible future increases, and the new high speed service to St Pancras due to start running in December there's plenty to discuss.
If you wish to take part in this exciting new initiative, then please make sure you log on to this site tomorrow at 4pm, go to the Reckless Direct page and put your questions and feedback direct to me.
Unlike the representatives of other political parties here in Medway, we don't just talk. We listen. And this is your chance to be heard, so please join me tomorrow.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Southeastern Update - Live Webchat 25th April At 4pm
Posted by Mark Reckless at 12:48
Labels: commuters, fair's fare, southeastern
No comments:
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)