Times They Are A Changin’

Like the vinyl record was replaced by the cassette tape and then the compact disc in tandem, new technology is challenging the current music industry.

Just like Sam the Record Man fell victim to illegal downloads and the emergence of the MP3 player, record stores like Mike’s Music on Danforth Avenue, are now struggling to pay the bills.

Mike Waite, who has owned the store for the last 15 years, says that illegal music downloading has played a huge role in why record stores across the country have closed down in the last couple years and is why big businesses like Walmart are not going to sell compact discs anymore. But he doesn’t blame new technology so much as the government’s lack of enforcing regulation for downloading.

“It’s directly related to the reluctance of the Canadian government to protect copyright,” Waite said. “If people had to pay to download an MP3 versus buying a CD, they would buy a CD because MP3s sound like crap.”

He thinks the reason people are downloading free music off the internet is because they don’t care about the quality of it, or – even if they do care about the quality – just because it’s free.

Illegal downloading has become so common in contemporary culture that some kids don’t even know what a CD is.

“There are a lot of young people out there who have never even heard a CD,” Waite said. “And to me that’s really dangerous for the entire music industry because the music industry is driven by people who get an incredible buzz off of music.”

Waite thinks that the degraded quality of MP3s won’t allow the new generation of kids to feel the quality kind of music that sends a tingle up your spine – the kind of sound that enables a love and appreciation for it.

Waite says that independent CD stores are the frontline of new music and that the big corporate stores, electronic stores and toilet paper stores exist for profit. He says that big stores like HMV carry music that is a proven seller or that a record company has paid them or given them a deal to sell.

“Whereas independent record stores: we exist because we love music,” he said. “We’ve never made very much money… what we get is a buzz from working with music all day long.”

Waite thinks that CD stores are an important cultural centre for music – a place where people get the opportunity to share their passion face to face.

People can go to Internet forums to discuss music, but like the Internet has reduced the face to face, human to human contact of so many things, it is now doing the same to music culture.

The younger group only makes up a small percentage of Waite’s business and though he says there are still kids who are passionate about music and who are buying CDs, he thinks the move towards new technology will hurt music as a whole.

“The effect of MP3 technology, I think, will kill peoples’ passion for music,” he said. “Just because it sounds so bad that they won’t be able to get the buzz that people get with a full CD or a piece of vinyl.”

Business is a daily struggle for Mike’s Music these days, but Waite’s passion keeps him going “against intelligence.” He hopes that the independent stores that are still around might get some more business from people who are having a harder time finding CDs because of other store closures.

To try and bring in more money and to add to the atmosphere of the store Waite hopes to start selling instruments by July.

Bloor Bike Lanes On Back-Burner

Toronto cycling groups have been lobbying city hall for bike lanes on Bloor Street ever since amalgamation.

And at a Toronto Cycling Advisory Committee (TCAC) meeting on Monday, March 17, Coun. Adrian Heaps declined committee members’ request to establish a working group for Bloor. His rationale: he does not want to detract from the 50 kilometres of bikes lanes already planned for Toronto this year.

Margaret Hastings-James, a member of the old and new committees, is frustrated.

“It’s like beating my head against a brick wall,” she said.

But Heaps, chair of TCAC, says that a design for bike lanes along Bloor is coming in May. In the meantime, Heaps wants to cut the main thoroughfare down from four to two lanes called “sharrows” – two big lanes shared by cars and cyclists.

“Everything from Avenue Road going west is being looked at in terms of potentially eliminating parking, reducing lanes and dealing with BIAs,” he said. “And there’s good councilor support for bike lanes along Bloor Street.”

Heaps says he wants to bring a bike culture to Toronto, a predominantly car-friendly city. He is resolute that 50 kilometres of bike lanes will be installed In the city this year and is aiming for another 75 kilometres next year and 95 kilometres the year after that.

Hastings-James says that if Heaps reaches his 50 kilometre goal it means that more bike lanes will have been installed in the city this year then in the last 10 combined.

“But if he doesn’t do it,” she said. “Then it’s going to be upsetting for a lot of people that are working on projects like a bike lane across Bloor Street.”

The planning bureaucracy for bike lanes at City Hall is complicated, but Heaps has created a new model for approving the lanes that he hopes will help streamline the process – he cut the community counsel meetings from the original process so that pressure to install bike lanes now has to be put directly on individual councillors. Those councillors then bring their suggestion to Heaps and it is voted on at city council.

Heaps says the majority of Toronto councillors favor the new approval process – it was accepted in a 37 to two vote.

Hastings-James feels that the new process is a mixed blessing. She thinks the new cycling committee allows members to focus attention where they think it is most needed, but forces them to do the work at the community level.

So, because the Toronto Cyclist Union – the first umbrella cycling group to cover all 44 wards of Toronto – will soon be launched, Hastings-James says she will probably do a lot of partnering with them to get areas prioritized by the councillors.

The co-ordinator of the bike union Dave Meslin, said the last TCAC meeting was the first time he had been listened to so attentively. And he said that cyclists are also to blame for bike lanes not being built.

“There are public meetings every time a street is reconstructed,” he said at the TCAC meeting. “I don’t think the problem is the process, I think it’s the lack of organization on our part as cyclists.

Conservation Is The Energy Key – One Side: Kim Warren, IESO

There is currently no plan for a powerline to be built through East York as part of the construction of the controversial Portlands Energy Centre (PEC).

Because Toronto gets the large majority of its energy from plants outside the city’s limits the PEC will reduce the strain on the existing power lines that feed the city, Kim Warren of the Independent Energy Systems Operator (IESO), said. On the hottest days of summer, when the transmission system is operating at maximum capacity, PEC will be used to create local power that will ease the strain on the network.

“There’s no immediate need on the horizon at this time,” Warren said. “During the peak times when the transmission system could be under stress the Portlands facility would be brought online to reduce the flow into the city.”

Energy demand for the province is expected to rise in the future and Warren said that PEC is only one alternative for meeting or curbing Toronto’s energy needs.

“Down the road there could be an additional need,” he said. “But that would be dependent on how effective some of the conservation and demand programs could be.”

But the existing network is sufficient with the addition of Portlands.

Warren said the provincial energy demand is predicted to rise by 1 per cent next year, while demand in the city of Toronto – not the GTA – has plateaued.

“PEC is buying some time for Toronto,” he said. “Time for the city to say: Over time, is another source needed or not. What are going to be the effects of the conservation programs.”

(Sites of groups opposed to the PEC can be found by searching for Portlands Energy Centre on Google).

Mark The Litter Guy

In front of Old City Hall, a man wearing dark green army pants, dirty All Star sneakers and a bundle of sweaters bends down to pick up a used Starbucks coffee cup. He puts it into his garbage bag.

A pin on his baseball cap reads: “Toronto: Clean city, beautiful city.” A sign on his back says: “The Litter Guy – cleaning up our community. Donations of money or supplies keeps me working for another day. Thanx for the support.”

At first, Mark “The Litter Guy” Geisbrecht started perambulating downtown Toronto cleaning up garbage because he was tired of wasting his time waiting at employment agencies all day and not getting work. He hoped people would see something novel in what he was doing and support him.

Mark, 33, began his endeavour almost two years ago because it was something that he could work at every day. Roaming the city he saw a void he thought needed to be filled: Although the city employs its own litter guys – a job Mark has applied for twice – there is still tonnes of garbage and hazardous waste strewn across the city.

His idea was to get a grant from the city. He figured, with some money, he could help employ panhandlers, the homeless, people waiting for their first pay cheque or even needy students to cleaning up the city, by starting a “Litter Guy” project.

“You need some kind of initial financial incentive to get them to change,” he said. “You (have to) say: ‘OK. Here’s something else you can do. Here’s another option for you.’”

Mark would pay his workers a stipend at the end of the week and their donations could be their tips.

But his idea to pay people for the work they do would make him an employer and he then becomes subject to certain employment regulations, Rob Orpin, director of Toronto Solid Waste Management Collections Operations, said.

“You, basically, just can’t throw people out on the street and ask them to collect litter; certain health and safety standards have to be followed,” he said. “It’s not quite as simple as: people are just going out and picking up litter.”

Geisbrecht is investigating the feasibility of starting The Litter Guy Project in Toronto’s drop-in centres because in order to be eligible for a government grant he needs to be part off an established organization.

Anne Carruthers, manager of the Toronto Drop in Network, says that the project is something that certain drop-ins might support and that he should discuss the idea with one close to his own neighbourhood, to start.

If Geisbrecht met all the necessary criteria and move forward with The Litter Guy Project, Orpin said he thinks it would be nice for The Litter Guys to at least liaison with Solid Waste Management.

“There needs to be some sort of co-ordinated effort there to clean the litter up,” he said.

Kensington Market Organic Ice Cream owner, Brad Kurtenbach has supported Mark The Litter Guy in the past by giving him food and water, and by sitting down and helping him think of ways to raise money – a liveable wage.

“There might be people in better financial situations that can help him more,” Kurtenbach said.

Mark’s Blog

Taser Force

It’s not a surprise that police are defending their rights as law enforcers to use tasers, and it’s not a surprise that the companies who produce the tasers are still touting their product despite deaths related to its use.
Despite the new wave of deaths associated with this recent addition to the police force’s arsenal, the corporations insist that tasers are still a “safer alternative” to other uses of force.
What happened to the good old days when cops would just throw you face-down on the sidewalk and handcuff you?
Robert Dziekanski’s death, at the hands of four RCMP officers who used tasers on him at the Vancouver Airport, is one of many since police have started using them.
Taser International, a company that makes the weapons, posted a press release after Dziekanski’s death. In the release they refer to his state of anxiety as “symptoms of excited delirium” in an attempt to forego blame.
“Cardiac arrest caused by electrical current is immediate,” they say. “His continuing struggle is proof that the TASER device was not the cause of his death.”
I guess it should be believed then that, had the RCMP not showed up and tasered him, he would have died anyway. The fact that he died within five minutes off the RCMP’s arrival and subsequent tasering had nothing to do with it… OK.
Sima Ashrafinia, a witness from the airport who tried to communicate with Dziekanski and calm him, said that the situation was handled inappropriately. She also claimed that, where the RCMP said they tasered him twice, it was actually four times and that the third and forth were done simultaneously by two of the officers.
The – at least – four trained law enforcers there to resolve the situation did not attempt to contact an interpreter or to detain Dziekanski before shooting him with a taser.
“The vast majority of people who have died after being struck by Tasers have been unarmed men who did not pose a threat of death or serious injury when they were electro-shocked,” a public statement from Amnesty International states. “In many cases, they did not appear to pose a significant threat all.”
Amnesty International is calling for law enforcement agencies to stop using tasers “pending the results of comprehensive, independent studies into their use and effects, or limit their use to situations where officers would otherwise be justified in resorting to deathly force, where no lesser alternatives are available.”
Well, we now know that tasers themselves, used improperly, are a deathly force.
It is a sad state when the public has to fear its own protectors and has to police their own defenders.

Give A Day To World AIDS

“I walked into a hospital where 90 per cent of the patients were HIV positive… and the vast majority of them were dying – and they were dying of AIDS,” Dr. James Orbinski said on Nov. 13, at a rally for Give A Day To World AIDS.
Organized by Give A Day founder Dr. Jane Philpott, M.D., the rally aimed to raise awareness about the campaign she started in 2004 at Markham-Stouffville Hospital, where she works. The campaign challenges people to give a days worth of their pay to fight AIDS on World AIDS Day (December 1).
Orbinski, the Co-Founder and Chair of Dignitas International, a medical humanitarian organization, and Stephen Lewis, the former U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, and the Chair of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, also a MHO, both spoke about their organizations’ work in third world countries – but primarily Africa.
With just over 10 per cent of the world’s population, sub-Saharan Africa is home to nearly two-thirds of the world’s HIV-infected people and without treatment, half of the infants infected with HIV die before reaching age two.
“Every dollar raised is a blow to the pandemic,” Stephen Lewis said. “And if AIDS is to be defeated, it will happen at the community level, drawing on the astonishing resilience of the grass roots.”
Dignitas and the Stephen Lewis Foundation both receive the money raised by Give A Day.
The Stephen Lewis Foundation provides many women who dedicate their time to the afflicted with medical supplies, training, drugs, and a living wage. It has teaching initiatives for people living with HIV and AIDS and provides orphans with school and food. Dignitas International sponsors community based care programs that deal with treatment and prevention and is studying their own processes to learn how they can deliver better care.
Philpott also invited 11- and 9-year-old Emma and Elliott Wood, who share a paper route in Stouffville, on stage to talk about their contributions to the Give A Day campaign. Last year they decided to give one day of their pay to the charity. This year they are challenging their fellow paper carriers to participate as well.
“The great beauty of the Give A Day movement,” Philpott said. “Is that everyone, no matter what your age, your occupation, or your financial status, you can participate.”

Troops Out Of Iraq

The Troops Out of Iraq march, Sunday October 28, 2007, on University Ave., was a family affair. Children marched with their families to protest Canada’s role in the U.S. led occupation of Iraq.

Question Authority

When you see a one page add in The Toronto Star for The National Women’s Show, you might not see it as propaganda perpetrated by an authority, but I did – there were too many people smiling for it to be real.
They seem to consider themselves experts – a headline at the top of the page calls the Women’s Show “a fantastic day out with girlfriends that you won’t find anywhere else!”
The different daily events they list actually seem to claim expertise in all their respective categories – “Live your best life,” “Style Secrets,” “(hair) Tips and Tricks,” “(free) Cuts and Consultations,” “Cooking Demos,” and “Fashion and Style.”
They set these events up as if they have some “secrets,” as if they actually are authorities in their worlds.
On top of the offer to help women in so many (significant…?) areas of their lives, the offers are abetted by the posed smiles of female marketing model dummies and men trying to sell their advice and services.
The people who dropped their money for this full-page add obviously want women to react out of their primal urge for self-pampering, betterment and to experience the “Friends, Laughter, (and) Fun!” the show seems to promise on the page.
Then we see in the bottom right corner a business logo where it says that the event is “presented by” Nissan, and says “Thank you to our sponsors,” nine different companies and “Ontario, yours to discover.”
Is that a government subsidy?
The most blatant irony is in the box for the first event. It says “Live Your Best Life – Oprah’s personal trainer and author of The Best Life Diet, Bob Greene, gives advise to make balanced living a part of your life! Presented by McDonald’s”.
I once read somewhere that buying healthy food from McDonald’s is like buying vitamins from a crack dealer.
Despite the fact that Greene obviously has a book to sell, he’s smiling for McDonald’s too. I wonder if he advises Oprah to eat there?
The next box, “Style Secrets,” helps women “get style tips from Steven Sabados and Chris Hyndman, personal stylists, home décor experts and tv personalities.” What aren’t these guys selling?
The list goes on: The “great beauty tips” are provided by a “trainer and media spokesperson;” the “free hair makeovers and complimentary consultations” are provided by the sponsoring salon; the cooking demos by the sponsoring chocolate manufacturer; and the fashion show by Sears & Nygard.
What we end up with is an event that is sponsored by a number of companies and the event actually ends up being a promotion for the sponsors, though the add shows the logos of a few other companies that are not advertised as part of the “events”). I would hazard to guess that they will have promotional booths at the event too.
This full-page colour ad is strategically placed at the back of the “Living” section of the Star – the cover story for this edition just happened to have a big picture of a topless firefighter on the front. Ladies!?
Either way, the commercial collaborators (sponsors) of this show – which does include the The Star – want some money, because you have to pay to get in to hear their “secrets” and advice.
I don’t know if they are simply the most noble people and are just breaking even on all the event expenses with the money from the tickets and sincerely want to better the world by spreading their life and beauty tips, but I tend more toward the view that they are making profit by duping women into paying them to advertise their products and services all day, for 3 days.
So, I will assume that this ad was placed in the paper by the corporate sponsors for the purpose of attracting women to the show which is essentially a show comprised of their products and services. And I hope I am rightly giving (you) the reader enough credit by simply assuming that the sponsors would rather stay alive and prosper – which requires business and marketing – then to go out of business and loose their jobs. In business, profit is the goal.
Their propaganda is themselves – people say: you are what you eat; but for these people (the sponsors) I wonder if we can say: you are what you teach.
Through its pictures the page seems to say: We have the answers, we are smiling and healthy and beautiful and etc… (and we can help you).
Without delving into the monetary figures – of the event and the future sales catalyzed by the event – we can’t know if the sponsors are just magnanimous martyrs breaking even to save the world through shopping, beauty, style, cooking and wine, or if they are propagandic corporations getting women to pay for their advertising time and space.
If it even matters, you could go to the event and get an impression for yourself – I’m sure the sponsors wouldn’t mind.

Bipolar Ontario

A Conservative blog called The Conservative Hipsters has voiced its discontent with their own party. The two bloggers (B-Double and Q) decry the leadership of the party, its 2007 election platform, and the “experts” organizing the campaign.

“I refuse to hang this car crash of a campaign on the faith-based funding issue. For sure, it was a horrible policy to put in a platform. But I’m convinced that even if it wasn’t included we would of had a difficult time getting elected,” they said.

“There was nothing good about this campaign, and the people affiliated need to be benched for a while. Even if that means a loss of talent (I’m sure the risk is minimal).”

In her blog “A View From The Left,” Miranda Hussey echoes the latter truism of this past election – thought the “Hipsters” don’t blame the demise of the Tories solely on the funding issue, they prove its electoral significance by mentioning it.

“Six weeks ago I was sure we were headed for a minority government,” says Hussey. “Then John Tory made his faith-based schools announcement and the rest, as they say, is history.”

So both sides show that this election was largely effected by the issue of funding for faith-based schools.

Yet, while so many see this as a Tory misstep that ruined the Conservatives in the election – a party who was largely against the MMP system in the simultaneous referendum – it is convenient that such a mundane issue happened to overshadow the discussion of democratic reform in our province.

This election, with so much emphasis on a single issue, we missed a chance to advance our province’s – and potentially the country’s – system of democracy in the referendum.

I wonder if the Tory’s are complaining about that?

Activists Demand Action On Minimum Wage

Minthura Wynn from Worker’s Action Centre, exclaimed the urgency of a $10 minimum wage for Toronto’s ever-increasing poor at the anti-poverty demonstration at Queen’s Park last Wednesday, September 26, 2007.