Toronto: in Pics

This is the Thanksgiving weekend in Canada, which is one of those rare long weekends. The weather is gorgeous, with temperature in the high twenties. You almost forget it's the Fall.

To make the best of the weather, I went downtown to take some pics. i walked along the harbour front area for a while and deiced to take a ferry to the Toronto islands. These are a group of islands couple of kilometers from the shore. Its only about a 15 ferry ride.

As promised, pictures :D

Above is a Google map view of downtown Toronto and the Toronto Islands

The top three are actually pics of the skyline at night from a are called Broadview. This is looking at downtown from behind.

This is one of the ferry's leaving for the Toronto Islands

Pics of Random boats moored at the harbour front area

A lamp post, a tree, and the CN tower

Roof structure of a stage at the Harbour front. if you look closely you can see a reflection of yours truly :D

Toys of the rich

A pic taken from the ferry. There is a plane coming in for landing at the Island airport

Toronto skyline from the ferry

Below are various pics from the island

This sign shows the direction and the distance from Toronto

Can see hazy outline of building further towards the west, a city called Mississaauga

Gibralta point lighthouse

A plane taxing on the Island airport. It's a small airport for domestic flights.

Royal Ontario Museum, better know and the ROM

Old among the new

ROM facade

Enjoy

Cheers!

Elections: Canada vs. SL

Image from here

The provincial elections for Ontario were held on Thursday, and unless you were really following it, you wouldn’t have even known that there was an election going on.

No posters

No colorful flags

No banners, billboards, and cut-outs

No vehicle parades

No goon convoys

No disturbance of peace

No violence

No causing inconvenience to the public

In other words, it was very civilized.

It doesn’t mean that they don’t do campaigning. They do, but in a more calm and collected way. They carry on in a way that it doesn’t cause any problems to the general public, because if they inconvenience the public, then they are more likely to lose votes rather than garner them. Some candidates take it to the personal levels, hanging out with the constituents at the corner deli and such. I even met one outside a metro station handing out flyers with only one assistant, at night time too. Can we really imagine our politicians doing that?

In a rare incident there was some election violence though. Was it murder? Beating? Arson? Nope, some supporters of the Liberal party got their car tires slashed and graffiti painted on their walls. That was it, and the media made a very big deal out of that. With the things we are used to, this was like child’s play.

During one of the previous times I was here, there was a general election to elect the prime minister, and I only knew it because of the TV ads. I think even the Canadians were more excited about the 2008 US election than their own elections.

I hope someday the way politics is done in Sri Lanka will change. I want to see educated, capable people running for office, starting from the municipality level up to the parliament. I want people to cast their votes based on the work carried out by the candidate, rather than the promise of a lunch packet and a bottle of arrack. I would like to see our representatives and public officials elected or appointed based on the merit of their work and capabilities, and not on how much money they can throw around, who they know, how many goons they can muster etc.

Furthermore, the amount of money spent on political campaigns, not only in Sri Lanka even in other countries, are disgusting. Especially in a country like ours, can you really justify spending obscene amounts of money for something trivial like a municipal election when so many people are trying to make ends meet. This money could have helped keep several deserving families fed, clothed and sheltered for many months. I understand that you need to advertise and campaign to get you image and message across to the populace, but there is a line between what is acceptable and not.

Let’s hope that the next generation will be better than the current one at this game of politics.

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective. Election and power are.

Cal Thomas

World Teacher’s Day

Image from here

October 5^th is world teacher’s day. It’s celebrated since 1994 to recognize the essential role of teachers in providing quality education at all levels. It is also an opportunity to promote international standards for the teaching profession. The theme for this year is Teachers for gender equality.

I wrote a post long time back for teacher’s day where I said that the profession of teaching should be held at a higher esteem than it is currently held at. My feelings haven’t changed since then. I personally consider teaching to be a very important vocation, because next to parents, teachers are the people who mould a child during its informative years.

Then again respect is something earned. We have heard of instances where the trust placed on teachers has been abused by them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be something criminal, but handling something as simple as a misbehaving child. Some teachers are not able to handle these situations and might end up doing something that has an adverse effect on the child. They do it most of the time because they do not have the proper training on the psychological aspects of education and child behaviour. Some on the hand do it because they just don’t care, and those are the worst kind.

Sadly, modern society has little respect for knowledge and intelligence. The center of gravity for respect has shifted from knowledge to money, power and influence. Knowledge maybe power, but money is the ultimate power.

A lot of people blame teachers for going into the tuition “business. However with the situation as it is today, is it wrong? Teachers are people too and they also need to survive. They are not paid high salaries, but the cost of living is high. So is it wrong for them to supplement their income to make ends meet? I don’t think so. People say that teachers don’t do their jobs properly during the school time so that they can get children into their tuition classes. I say if you want to change that, increase their salaries so that they don’t have to find other means to cover the balance of the cost of living. I believe that a true teacher would always prefer to give their very best during school time, without getting into the tuition “business”.

Another thing we must do is give all teachers some kind of training in child psychology. I’m not familiar with the teacher training system already in place here and whether they already do it or not. If it is already happening then it is good.

My message to all teachers out there is that you are doing important work. It may not always feel like that, but it matters for the future generations.

Furthermore, a big thank you to all who have taught me. Respect!

Canada Eh!

Well, I’m back in Canada for another stint at client site. Said good bye to good old SL last Thursday, the 29^th, and will not be seeing her for some months.

Thanks to the time difference, you get to land in North America on the same day as you left Sri Lanka. So, I left early morning of the 29^th SL time and landed in Toronto in the evening of the 29^th. The flight was long and tiring. Spent 20 hours in total, including a 3 hour transit at Abu Dhabi.  This time around flew on Etihad Airlines, and the service was quite good.

I’m a bit upset about the timing of the trip because I missed Hon. Pusswedilla’s third campaign. I was so looking forward to this for a long time. Oh well, maybe he’ll have a 4^th campaign.

The weather is quite cold, hovering between 10-16 C, and it’s still the beginning of fall. Even the trees are still green. I have a feeling I’m in for a very cold winter. The last winter that I was here was pretty hard, but both the previous one and the preceding one were mild. Jack Frost isn’t a fan of mine. To add to the cold, it’s raining too.

My internal clock is whacked out. No matter what time I go to bed and night, I wake up around 2 in the morning. Last night I actually went to bed around 2am, but woke up around 4. Sometimes I fall back into sleep around 6am again and wake up around 9. Unfortunately the result is a heavy drowsiness around 3 in the afternoon. You are knocked out for another 3-4 hours. Hopefully this sorts itself out soon. I have to get back to work tomorrow.

Went to downtown last night, and the place was crowded. There was a city wide, all night art show in town, so the streets were jam packed. It’s called Nuit Blanche, where various contemporary art projects are installed in public building and spaces throughout the downtown area, and it’s a night event. It went from sunset to sunrise the next day.  

Well, here’s to Jack Frost not freezing me!

Cheers!