Archive for Shameless fawning

London Centre North will be having a byelection on November 27, and the Green Party candidate will be – our leader, Elizabeth May.  Former Green Party leader and Toronto-Danforth local Jim Harris just announced it in his blog, and explained why we very well may get our first elected Green.

You can wish Elizabeth luck or pledge to donate to her campaign at leader@greenparty.ca.

If you’re interested in starting a blog, but don’t know how to start, the Green Party of Canada has just made it a little easier.  They have a new blogging resource for members at:

http://greenparty.ca/blog

Jim Harris, former GPC leader and one of our Toronto-Danforth members, just wrote to me earlier today (well, actually yesterday now, as the site was down so long it’s now the morning after) to announce the appearance of his blog there, which you can see at:

http://www.greenparty.ca/en/blog/358

Count on Jim to write well. I think his blog should be one to watch for, and I’ve linked our EDA blog to his.

I’ve looked the blog area of the GPC site over and there is room for improvement.  For one thing, there’s no link from the main site.  For another the “new members” listing isn’t a link, and it should be.  But it’s a start and will surely improve.  I’m looking forward to watching it grow.

Edward Chin is [was, in 2006] running for City Council in Ward 30 (the bottom half of our Toronto-Danforth riding), and looking for help from environmentally-minded residents…

I met Ed Chin through the Toronto Energy Coalition, when he came to a Steering Committee meeting.  He struck me as quiet and knowledgeable, and committed to the idea of reducing harm.  I soon discovered that he had an incredible array of experience, from biochemical research to paralegal to many positions in the theatre industry.  Now retired, he gives a great deal to the community, working in tax clinics, setting up computer centres, teaching ESL, and sitting on the Board of the Ralph Thornton Centre.

Last week, he sat down with me to tell me more about himself. He is a fascinating man.  Born of Chinese parents in Boston, Ed grew up in what he calls “Boston’s Chinese ghetto”, where he was painfully aware of the exclusion suffered by racial minorities.  Ed studied chemistry and math as a young man at Columbia University before spending a year in Germany and Denmark.  He speaks a version of Cantonese, English, German, and some French, some Danish and some Russian that he is learning for fun.  He returned from Germany to register for the Vietnam draft, but was prepared to face military jail if ordered to fight.  Instead, he was assigned to working in biomedical laboratories.  When his service ended, he went on to work at Columbia’s medical school, while simultaneously returning to study molecular biology at the University.  Nearing the end of his studies, he was recruited by the University of Pennsylvania to a teaching position.

The Columbia riots intervened.  Sympathizing with the students who opposed the Vietnam draft, Ed made the difficult decision that he needed to devote his life to helping people.  He spent the next years working as a paralegal focusing on housing for the poor.  He organized rent strikes for people living in substandard housing and offered other legal services.

Eventually, a friend arranged for Ed to get a job as a projectionist, which Ed thought was an easy way to make some money, while still leaving time to do other things.  He ended up spending 20 years in the theatre industry, both in film and on Broadway, working in production, post-production and backstage tech.

He came to Canada in 1980 on a work visa, married a Canadian in 1983, immigrated in 1984 and became a citizen in 1989.  He has one son and one grandson.  As a retiree, he dabbles in many interests.  He sits on the Board of the Ralph Thornton Centre and on 3 committees of the Riverdale Co-op, where he has lived for 13 years.  He enjoys computers, and helped incorporate the GTA Linux Users Group, a public freeware advocacy group.  He is setting up the Computer Learning Centre at Banglatown, a Bangladeshi community centre, and helped them incorporate.  He studied to become a financial investment advisor, and has been in charge of the tax clinics at Woodgreen for 8 years.  He is also a qualified ESL teacher and taught at Woodgreen.

He is the only candidate who opposes the construction of any power plant on the Portlands, and was one of the first signatories of my plan.  He would like, through legislation or incentives, to encourage greater energy efficiency in new construction.  He is particularly annoyed by the inefficiency of all-glass exterior construction.

Ed is interested in reaching out to immigrant communities and addressing their needs for improved access to services and employment.  He feels that our community has become a dumping ground for unwanted development because it has traditionally had the highest new immigrant population in the city.  He feels that new development should be integrated with new communities and planned in consultation with existing residents.

My husband Charlie is lying in bed unable to move.  He’s a baby when he’s in pain, so today I’m not taking my customary long walks, but rather just hanging out to feed him painkillers and muscle relaxants.

All this began on Saturday, a day that I promised to spend with Charlie, having returned a few days before from Ottawa, where I had spent most of a week at the Green Party convention.  Now, we don’t have days together when Charlie travels for a week, which happens with some regularity, but me being gone for a week is unusual enough that a day together was deemed necessary.

We spent our day romantically handing out flyers for Frank de Jong’s campaign in Parkdale-High Park in the rain.  I cannot say I recommend this as a date.  Coming down a sleek set of stairs with no handrail, Charlie flipped onto his back, breaking off the lower step and quite possibly cracking a rib.  We walked home very slowly on Saturday, with Charlie romantically grabbing my shoulder in his pincer-like grip every time he had a spasm.  Yesterday, properly medicated, Charlie was okay for most of the day.  Last night, every movement was painful.

This morning, Steve Downie, our friend and Charlie’s coworker, arrived for a breakfast appointment to which he had specifically requested that Charlie wear his pants, and was disappointed that pants were not an option and really, neither was breakfast.

Charlie has been instrumental in organizing the Danforth Greens website, this blog and much of the database.  He’s also incredibly tolerant of the fact that I don’t seem to have time for him anymore, often noting with satisfaction that he actually enjoys watching me get involved with things again after almost two decades of watching children.  He doesn’t complain that the house is turning into a pigsty, and he actually sometimes gets more excited than I am about my various causes.  He’s an important force behind the scenes who deserves some recognition.

If anyone reading this is a Parkdale-High Park voter, remember Charlie’s sacrifice for the Greens and vote for Frank de Jong in the provincial by-election.

As of this morning, Elizabeth May’s train was running almost an hour late, but they were expecting to catch up.  This is a major improvement over my daughter’s train, which I’ll describe below.

We are meeting at

Monday, 2006 September 4, 7:45 pm
Union Station, just outside the front doors.

If you want to call VIA to inquire about the exact arrival time, call (416) 366-8411 and ask about train #2 arriving from Vancouver.

If you bring 10 people, you get a picture with Elizabeth.  Everybody gets a Green Order of Danforth paperclip.

If you like all Green Party, all the time, you can go from Union Station directly to Frank de Jong’s campaign rally.  Frank de Jong is the leader of the Green Party of Ontario and the candidate for the provincial byelection in Parkdale-High Park.  The rally will be held at the Rhino Bar and Grill Upstairs, 1249 Queen St. West.  Doors open at 8:00 pm.  Jim Harris, our outgoing leader will be speaking.  Elizabeth May is scheduled to arrive at 9:00 pm or so.

Now, if you’re still paying attention, and want to know about my daughter Lee, she took the same choo-choo train trip that Elizabeth is taking just a few days ago, after spending part of the summer with friends in Vancouver (the company she works for operates out of Vancouver as well).  She was scheduled to arrive Wednesday night at 8:00 pm.  She called us late Monday night to tell us that there had been a derailment ahead of her train and they had been stuck in one place for 12 hours just a few hours out of Vancouver, but already it was apparent that the train would not be able to get through the busier corridor near Toronto.  Consequently she would arrive by bus on Thursday morning at 4 am.

When we called VIA late Wednesday night, they confirmed that some passengers were scheduled to arrive in Toronto at 4 am, but they would have called when they were offered free phone calls earlier that evening.  All other passengers would arrive at 1:30 pm.  At 10 am, Lee called me from Union Station because she had arrived on the bus scheduled to arrive at 4 am, having not been given an opportunity to call after all.

So I will go out to meet Elizabeth May, having not bothered to pick up my darling daughter.