When We Walk By

When We Walk By by Kevin F. Adler, Donald W. Burnes et al.

Social Issues (2023 - 235 pp.)

When We Walk By is a brand-new part-monograph, part-activism book by San Francisco-based social entrepreneur Kevin Adler, academic Donald Burnes, and two assistants,* exploring the causes and effects of homelessness in the United States, as well as possible solutions. Being from Toronto, a city in the midst of a housing crisis, I compared the situations in my hometown, San Francisco and Los Angeles as I read the book, as well as the (so-far) attempted solutions. 

At the heart of the book’s message is Kevin’s company Miracle Messages, which has reunited 800 unhoused people since 2014. Among their innovative methods include attaching body cameras to unhoused volunteers, which allows their stories to be told in real time, and the extensive use of social media to locate family members across the United States. On a personal note, the book is dedicated to Kevin’s uncle Mark, who lived on the streets of Santa Cruz for three decades, and is sadly no longer with us.

The book flows easily, with each chapter exploring a different facet of homelessness. From Kevin’s personal story in the introduction, the book shifts into a more neutral tone, covering topics like relational poverty, paternalism, and transcarceration. Relational poverty is straightforward, in which people can experience homelessness not so much due to financial or logistical concerns, but due to the lack of a social network, which isolates them from their peers. The authors divide paternalism into progressive paternalism, which is making someone else’s decisions out of a misguided belief that they are being helped, and punitive paternalism, which is making someone else’s decision as though the decider is handing out a criminal sentence. (64) The authors point out a particularly bizarre instance of paternalism, in which a person experiencing homelessness received a “Blue Apron-style” package of food; the package contained tuna and peanut butter, and the recipient was allergic to both. (72) Depending on the aid offered and what the unhoused person needs, a supposedly humanitarian gesture may actually be harmful.

Transcarceration is a relatively new word within the sociological lexicon, so I’ll post the Legal Information Institute definition in full:

Transcarceration is the transfer of prisoners or persons institutionalized for mental illness from one facility to another of the same type. Through transcarceration, prisoners are moved to another prison, and the institutionalized mentally ill are moved to another psychiatric hospital.

Entering the public eye during the dismantling of the often-horrifying state mental asylum system, transcarceration saw the mentally ill shuttled to prisons or the streets. As the authors note, this process causes them to frequently lose social connections (for example, if they are transported to a different part of a large state) or lose access to necessary medical treatment. (119, 151-152)

The invisibility of homelessness is striking. Contrary to the stigmatized stereotypes of disheveled, reeking addicts rabble-rousing on street corners, over half the unhoused live in shelters, and a significant portion are families. (2) These shelters often separate families due to stringent gender requirements, and in some cases are even less safe than life on the streets. (97)

My favourite of the authors’ recommended solutions is the tiny home village movement. Having lived in a Toronto-sized apartment, and being familiar with the similar Canadian concept of “bunkies”,** I thought immediately of how relatively simple tiny homes are to construct.*** Ranging from 100-200 square feet or thereabouts, tiny houses can provide people a place to sleep and store their belongings while taking up very little space. They’re not just for the homeless either – I have a friend in Alaska who is currently planning a tiny home village for people on fishing vacations. What surprised me, as the authors point out, is that tiny homes were one of the solutions San Francisco employed following the 1906 earthquake, which displaced 250,000 of the city’s the 400,000-person population. The San Franciscans of that age were more than likely to go from  squatting in rubble to living in tiny houses, through, as the authors emphasize, no fault of their own. (212-213) As an erstwhile student of American history, that tale of tiny houses, right in Kevin’s back yard, brought a smile to my face.

Less convincing are the discussions of wages. Unexplained is why a single earner making the minimum wage should be able to support a family of four (108); as a Torontonian, it would puzzle me to see this idealistic scenario play out in my city when many middle-class people here can barely support themselves. The growth of CEO salaries relative to average worker salaries is also mentioned (109), but the wealthiest CEOs make relatively little in base pay compared to their benefits, stock, stock options and restricted stock units. People living paycheck to paycheck frequently need money right now, as opposed to stock options that may take years to vest.

A further research direction that could be useful in the broader housing crisis discussion is the work on learned helplessness, broadly defined as “the behavior exhibited by a subject after enduring repeated aversive stimuli beyond their control.” If someone’s repeated attempts to secure housing are met with draconian restrictions, or they are subjected to constant paternalism by well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) authorities who never listen to them, why should they keep trying? Why shouldn’t they give up and resign themselves to life on the streets? True help may come in the form of giving someone hope.

My own volunteer experience is adjacent to Miracle Messages and other unhoused-supporting charities; I have put in over 120 hours in 2023 at my local food bank.**** There, I work in the community kitchen, cooking meals that are frozen and then distributed to over 180 locations across Toronto. I am certain I have met some people experiencing homelessness during my time there, and others living in precarious arrangements that could lead to homelessness. However, at staff and volunteer lunches I eat the same meals I cook for anyone who stops by, no questions asked. Vegetarian options are always available, and only foods containing known ingredients are used in order to avoid accidentally giving someone an allergic reaction. This food bank also accepts medication donations, which are often more necessary to sustain those experiencing homelessness than a can of tuna or a free burger from McDonald’s. In Toronto, a wealthy city by any stretch of the imagination, I meet people all the time who have at least some of the same needs as the people whose stories come onto the page throughout When We Walk By.

Those stories make the book different from a pure academic monograph. They humanize homelessness, not through attempts to cherry-pick the direst situations possible, but to show who the authors actually met on their journeys. Talk to a person experiencing homelessness, and you might meet Adam, Ray, Gabe, Lainie, Jeffrey, Linda, David, Timothy, Rand, Tom, Elizabeth, Joseph, Angelo, or any of the others. (Ronnie, sadly, passed away while awaiting senior housing.) Some of them no doubt just want to re-meet their families, shed the stigma of homelessness, and get out of the cold.

Ease of Reading: 7

Educational Content: 7

*Amanda Banh and Andrijana Bilbija, two recent graduates. 

**It’s tougher than you’d think to find bunkie websites unaffiliated with any particular seller. I myself have no stake in the bunkie industry.

***Given the high cost of “frequent-flyer” hospitalizing, policing and prosecuting the unhoused, it may actually be cheaper to just build them all tiny houses. (122-124) I’m a lawyer, and I would appreciate a tiny house, if only to have a place downtown I can stay at instead of paying for taxi fare home. For someone with no home, the need is far more acute.

****The Daily Bread Food Bank at Islington and Lake Shore, for those interested in seeing how a large-scale food bank works. A nice young man recognized me from there at a restaurant in Guelph in early December. Two middle-class people, in a city an hour outside of Toronto, and the food bank was our common ground.

King's Steel

King’s Steel by John Morris

Fantasy (2022 – 645 pp.)

John R. Morris’s King’s Steel is a brand new release in the epic high fantasy genre. Morris’s protagonist, Major Kallan Garrik, investigates a rash of soulstealers who threaten his home kingdom, while the mysterious but beautiful Vala and a cadre of loyal soldiers* join him in uncovering a long-held, deep-seated, magical grudge. While King’s Steel doesn’t break new ground, it zips along at a pace rivaling even the pulpiest airport novel, making its considerable length (approximately 154,000 words) more manageable than most books of that length.

A historical division within the fantasy genre is often between sword and sorcery (exactly what it sounds like), typified by series like The Chronicles of Prydain and Conan the Barbarian, and fantasies more contemplative of the social and cultural conditions in which the characters live. In King’s Steel, Morris balances both ends of the spectrum. The book opens with Kallan immediately in swashbuckling mode, which establishes him as a formidable fighter, but also demonstrates the teamwork that will be necessary to overcome the soulstealers (or “hexen”, depending on which character is speaking). Starting at Chapter 28, a semi-major character is a dressmaker. Morris describes the ladies’ dresses** in sufficient detail that if King’s Steel were ever optioned as a movie, limited series or stage production, the costume designer would have plenty to work with. Fans of the more Renaissance Faire style of fantasy will surely enjoy those descriptions, all the way from Chapter 9 onward. Then, of course, there are plenty more battles to be had.

Magic comes with rules. One of the dictates of the fantasy genre is that no matter how much disbelief is suspended, once the rules of the world are in place, the author must obey them. Morris does this almost perfectly. Innate powers (tau) and crystals can heal, but they drain the subject of energy. Kallan suffers grievous injuries that lay him up in hotel rooms (well, it’s fantasy, so a room above an inn) for days at a time. Although Kallan and Vala have a certain amount of plot armor, as one expects in this genre, they never appear invincible, even when they are enchanted. The one exception is the abrupt appearance of the portals, which are crucial to transporting Vala and her compatriots across South Reach*** and Urdan. The first instance of the word “portal” occurs in Chapter 19, and completely threw me for a (hyper)loop.

Morris simultaneously employs and subverts the quest theme. While Kallan’s story arc starts as a seemingly straightforward quest to find out what the hexen are plotting against South Reach, it quickly goes astray based on the shared goals of South Reach and Urdan. Characters like Vala, Relenki and Bartholomew generally support Kallan but insist on having a say in the overall goals of the quest. Magistrate Allistrando of Urdan, by contrast, is extremely wary of exposing Urdan to other kingdoms, acting in Chapter 39 as an isolationist who is initially opposed to outward engagement. He eventually realizes he will need to form an alliance to succeed over the hexen, completing his arc. Characters’ goals in King’s Steel are rarely opposed or orthogonal, instead usually consisting of North versus North-North-East. The primary exception is Andor, who is exposed as an ostracized pariah who manipulates subjects from a distance.

The only scenes I found wholly unrealistic**** were the ring scene leading up to Chapter 45 and the courtroom scene in Chapter 66. In the former, one of the characters requires an engagement ring, so his first idea is to detach the gemstone from his sword’s pommel. This is despite him belonging to a royal family, which presumably owns a number of family heirloom rings that would be perfectly suited to the young man’s upcoming engagement. Morris gives no reason as to why this character does not first inquire about the family’s collection. The courtroom scene is typical fantasy fare, complete with self-represented parties, sloppy court procedure, and general proclamations of characters’ intentions. My qualm here is not with Morris specifically, but rather with a time-honored tradition that needs to perish. No more fantasy trials.

Otherwise, though, Morris makes the world realer than many another fantasy author might have. Magistrate Allistrando’s brother Luggio, for example, reveals in Chapter 40 that he is the owner and proprietor of a restaurant. This is the ultimate illustration of how an at least somewhat democratic country would differ from a top-down autocratic kingdom; in democracies, merchants are prized for their successes, whereas in autocracies they are typically not. One of my favorite characters, meanwhile, is Yantz, who is a magical doctor. As mentioned above, characters’ injuries in King’s Steel are bloody, debilitating, and result in extended infirmary stays. Without Yantz, the whole troupe***** would probably be dead in the first third of the novel.

After unofficially retiring this blog, it is fitting that my lone review of 2022 so far is a Fall 2022 release full of adventure, romance and theme. King’s Steel is quick-reading fantasy fun that should please both the martial and social fans.

Ease of Reading: 10

Educational Content: 1

*There’s a Captain Greenway. The chief editor of the book, who also wrote a foreword, is named William Greenway. I imagine this is 100% pure coincidence with absolutely nothing more to it. 

**At one point, there’s a form-fitting lavender wedding dress. Clearly the era of Disney Princesses is behind us, and we’re ready for our fantastical brides to wear more modern designs.

***I kept reading “South Beach” here, but alas, there was no Bam Adebayo sighting.

****Again, by the standards of the world. Healing crystals and soulstealers, I can accept as being pillars of a fantasy world.

*****There are some misspellings of this word as “troop”. Similarly, there are some instances of switching “hanged” and “hung”. While these editorial issues niggle slightly, they are a cup of water in Lake Superior compared to the red pen I would take to the average thriller novel.

Ten Years In

Although this blog hasn't been maintained since August for a variety of reasons (i.e. my life has been way too busy since then), I thought I'd mark what would have been a momentous occasion had I still been reviewing books.

I've reviewed over 100 books on here. Some are long, some are short. Some are fiction, some are non-fiction. Some are old, some are new. Some are highbrow, some... not so much. Over the 2013-2019 span alone, I reviewed 91 books and read many others.

In 2021-2022, my reading hasn't let up. I picked up The First World War by Hew Strachan, a remarkable summation of one of history's most violent conflicts. Then I took on The Habsburgs by Martyn Rady, a fantastic whirlwind tour through a thousand years of Europe's first family. Then I read The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams, a book so voluminous at 275,000 words it could have supplied three months' worth of reviews. Then I read Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, the first book I'd ever been recommended at work. Now it's on toward other fiction and non-fiction, in the roughly alternating order I tend to take. While I make no guarantee as to what I'll read next, especially in this post-review state, I'd like to point out that I do own a Library of America science fiction collection.

I don't see myself ever returning to "full-time", i.e. at least once per month, reviews on this blog, but I'll keep it active as a repository of book recommendations. 

As always, onward and upward!

Pictured: Art Gallery of Ontario, yesterday. Not all art is written down!

Happy Ten Years, my 2012 self. I'd like to think I've made you proud.

August's Book: The Luminaries

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Western (2013 - 832 pp.)

Eleanor Catton is a Canadian writer, two years older than me, who won the 2013 Man Booker Prize for The Luminaries while I was still in law school. Bravo. More to the point, she was raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, and was evidently inspired enough by local history to set The Luminaries in 1866 during the New Zealand gold rush. Historically accurate gold miners, outlaws, and sketchy rural pharmacists abound, as a patchwork jury of 13 local men attempt to figure out who killed Crosbie Wells, why the opium-addicted prostitute Anna Wetherell was drugged, and who made off with all the money.

Our protagonist, young lawyer Walter Moody, comes upon the scene to find twenty-four-year-old mining mogul Emery Staines vanished and presumed dead. Moody is convinced he hears Staines's ghost inside a nailed-shut wooden crate on board a ship, while charlatan madam Lydia Wells organizes a seance to communicate with the presumably deceased Staines. The other characters, such as my favourite back-alley chemist Joseph Pritchard and semi-sleazy banker Charlie Frost, have to watch all this unfold. Catton's strength is in creating lovable characters, whose stunned responses to the madhouse scenarios thrown their way echoes how readers would react to those same scenarios. The town's hospital is so useless, people with all manners of maladies are sent directly to Pritchard, sometimes in a wagon. Harald Nilssen, a commission merchant, seems ready to commission just about anything. (Non-spoiler: yes, this gets him in hot water.) In a tiny town far away from the rest of civilization, the most qualified person appears to perform any number of tasks. I shudder to think of myself providing tax law advice, but then, it's not like much was being taxed in New Zealand in 1866 anyhow.

The prevalence of the shipping industry in that era's New Zealand gives Catton the license to have characters appear, exit, or be totally transient. Stowing away on a cargo ship proves a cheap and easy way to see the world. Alternatively, Ah Sook's transportation from Kowloon to New Zealand ends up being the bane of his existence, as he tearfully confesses. Generalized ne'er-do-well Francis Carver, son of a wealthy merchant, becomes a fraudster who serves as the book's main antagonist. I use the term "antagonist" loosely, as none of the characters in The Luminaries appear to be nice people, exciting as their stories are.

The timeline jumps back from 1866 to 1865, so the reader has to be careful to watch for the date accompanying each chapter. At one point, the book travels exactly a year into the past, (656) which was initially confusing but quickly became clear. Catton's interrupted timeline allows the reader to see past events through the lens of their inevitable fallouts, which gives the last quarter or so of the book a very "aha!" feel.

Shockingly, in an 832-page book featuring a prostitute and taking place in multiple hotels, there is no sex scene. I am not entirely sure what to make of this, which means that in an already too-long book,* it is probably for the best that there is no additional material. Judicial clerk Gascoigne is certainly tempted by Anna, Staines is her lover for a brief time, and she frequently passes out high on opium in Ah Sook's den, but that's as far as it went. In reference to Anna's initial recruitment to prostitution, I smiled upon seeing the term "euchred", (694) although the card game was not yet cemented in its modern form.

The courtroom scenes fell flat for me. As someone who finds inevitably inaccurate courtroom drama interminable, I found the entire section on the trial wearing. Catton confuses some criminal and civil terms as well (why would a criminal case have a plaintiff?), although it's entirely possible New Zealand trials in 1866 were sloppy, haphazard affairs. Nonetheless, legal inaccuracy in media is an ongoing nuisance to me. By contrast, Wells's letters (469-479) were gripping. Reading faux-19th-century correspondence written with the knowledge it might never be returned is at once tragic and investigatory, as though I were an archivist pawing through old letters trying to solve the case. The closest comparison is to Adam Ewing's journal in Cloud Atlas, which is my favourite part of that book.

I don't usually read westerns, but when I do, they seem to be written by Canadians. What a fun genre. I think we could all use a few more gunslingers on our reading lists.

Ease of Reading: 9

Educational Content: 3**

*The Luminaries clocks in at a hideous 263,000 words. By comparison, notable doorstopper Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (220,000 words) is approximately half a novel shorter than The Luminaries. I'd say someone should have hired Catton an additional editor, but she has a Man Booker Prize and I don't, so the point is taken.

**For a book that does not purport to contain any educational content whatsoever, The Luminaries 

provides a good overview of the New Zealand of the time period from 30,000 feet. While the book is about as realistic as Jack London's White Fang and Call of the Wild, it captures the spirit of the times well.

July's Book: Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Journalism (1997 - 192 pp.)

Having discussed Mitch Albom's Time Keeper on here over eight years ago, and being a long-time fan of Albom's basketball writing, I figured it was high time to return to him. This time, it's a more philosophical bent, although the past year and a half of pandemic life has made us all a bit more philosophical. Albom's old professor, Morrie Schwartz, was dying of ALS at the time of writing, but was kind enough to share some profound life wisdom with Albom. The book is organized into a series of vignettes, featuring fourteen consecutive Tuesday conversations between Schwartz and Albom, as well as flashbacks to earlier time in Schwartz's life. Accepting one's imminent mortality, as Schwartz learned to do, leads to much-needed pondering about what is really important in life.

Schwartz spends much of the book railing against an America that is too obsessed with moneymaking at the expense of relationships. Although Schwartz waxes poetic, he is also unfailingly direct, making statements like "We are too involved in materialistic things, and they don't satisfy us." (84) Schwartz's core values of kindness, forgiveness and family transcend his own life,* influencing Albom heavily as the book progresses. Albom expresses regret for chasing too many dollars and not enjoying life enough, but when he shares these regrets with Schwartz, the teacher shares one of his last lessons, that we have to forgive ourselves "For all the things we didn't do. All the things we should have done." (166) As someone who has taken many of life's opportunities and passed up a few others, and is self-critical by nature, what could I have done differently? Living in the present has helped, especially when it comes to exercising** and writing, but the question always remains of what more should I be doing? Ironically, Albom mentions that "America had become a Persian bazaar of self-help", (65) combining the images of materialism and salesmanship, but does Tuesdays with Morrie simply add to the heap?

As much as Schwartz's body failed him in those last months, he and Albom were always able to share a good laugh together. Albom's sense of humour emerges within the book's first few pages, when he gives a short physical description of Schwartz: "In his graduation robe, he looks like a cross between a Biblical prophet and a Christmas elf." (3) Having graduated from an American school that is known for its pageantry, there is a Henry VIII-level theatricality. One of the book's funniest moments comes when Schwartz is discussing his early career as a psychologist, when a woman told him how thankful she was to be in Chestnut Lodge mental hospital. When Schwartz is appropriately befuddled as to why someone would be thankful for being institutionalized, she quips back about the quality of the lodgings, "Can you imagine if I had to be in one of those cheap mental hospitals?" (110) Schwartz's jokes about needing to eventually have his behind wiped for him provides much-needed bathroom humour.

I would be remiss to read Tuesdays with Morrie as a cold, clinical document, as though it were some Elizabethan screenplay. Part of getting Albom's and Schwartz's full emotional spectrum is self-reflection during and after reading. I thought of my own experience with loss - at one point, I was losing a family member each calendar year. I also thought about all I've accomplished, and how excited I am to move forward with the rest of 2021. Schwartz draws considerable attention to the lack of meaning in peoples' lives when they live in the past, and how the mark of a meaningful life is the desire to always move forward toward the future. (118) As someone who always seeks new challenges, I like Schwartz's attitude. I'm trying to make each day even better than the last, complete with measurable happiness gains. For Schwartz to have spent those last few months of his life always looking toward the future, even when he had a distinguished past and the future held a lifetime of ALS, is courageous. 

In the spirit of my "giving credit where credit is due" tradition, I am pleased to credit Albom with teaching me a new word. Apparently, a "lavaliere" is "an ornamental pendant, usually jeweled, worn on a chain around the neck." It is also a type of microphone.

I read this entire book today, on a Tuesday.

Ease of Reading: 10

Educational Content: 3

*Other life guide-type books espouse similar values, sometimes with even less subtlety.

**I will hit 1,000 miles on the treadmill later this week. I have lost 25 pounds in 2021, one 5-pound month at a time. I should have run yesterday, but I didn't, so I'm going to take Morrie Schwartz's advice and forgive myself.

A Day of Authentic Happiness

For those who know me, I'm an extremely happy person, I love being the subject of focus groups or research studies, and I love arbitrarily defined Iron Man challenges. I'm also an Ivy League graduate. 

Naturally, when I saw the opportunity to sign up for the University of Pennsylvania's Authentic Happiness tests, for free, I figured: Why not complete all 26 tests in one day?

I completed 24 out of 26, as one is for children, and one requires a workplace profile that is impossible to approximate in these COVID times. Some tests are north of 100 questions, while others are under 10. There are no wrong answers, except when an answer is telegraphed to make you look worse. The lot of them took me almost 4 hours, with frequent meal/phone/bathroom/social media breaks.

Test Center link, for anyone interested in taking these tests themselves

Here are my results:

Key observations:

• I am apparently a happy person whose top strengths are Vitality and Love of Learning. I can get behind this.
• I found the Optimism Test the toughest to take. Often, there would be two options for a statement I would associate with an event, when I would associate neither with that event. On the plus side, I have a distinct lack of Permanence-Bad perspectives on life.
• I scored 41 out of 42 on Gratitude. I am a supremely grateful person, a reality for which I, to be circular, am quite grateful. (Admittedly, the low end is 6, not 0.)
• On the Grit Survey, measuring "perseverance and passion for long-term goals", I scored relatively high (3.92 out of 5), but right around the median for people of my education level. I wonder whether people with advanced degrees see those degrees as the long-term goals requiring perseverance and passion in the first place, making their answers relative to each other a batch of white noise.
• A few of the tests were so micro as to make me wonder about the extent of their usefulness. This was especially true with what I'll call parrot tests. A hypothetical parrot test question would be, "How happy are you on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being happiest?" Then, upon clicking the 5 button, the results page shows your happiness rating as a 5, based on that question alone.
• I've always found joy contagious and sadness repelling. In the absence of clarity, I was left to wonder: Do I have empathy? It turns out there is beneficial empathy and depleting empathy. I appear to have the former but not the latter, which syncs with my own self-observations.*
• The Approaches of Happiness test is interesting in that it divides meaning from pleasure. I tend to think more in terms of meaning, but I don't tend to turn down pleasure either. I had never made such a sharp distinction before. Then again, I tend to go light on creature comforts.
• My favourite tests were Jeremy Clifton's Primals tests, which assess individuals' core beliefs. Their general, interpretable, apolitical nature makes them more interactive than the typical political compass-type tests on these sorts of topics. The grueling process that went into designing the Primals tests is explained here.
• Speaking of Primals, I bristled a little at the idea that the world is either something that can constantly be improved, or else it is "inanimate [and] mechanical... without awareness or intent". What if a lot of things in this world are perfect just the way they are? I don't feel the need to improve a sunrise.

These were fun! I wish there were more...

Ease of Reading: 6

Educational Content: 8

*According to the results page for the Stress and Empathy Questionnaire,

If your score on this empathy assessment is positive, that means you have more beneficial than depleting empathy. Experiencing beneficial empathy maximizes a person’s health and well-being and predicts more charitable donations.

 

If your score on this empathy assessment is negative, that means you have more depleting than beneficial empathy. Experiencing depleting empathy has a negative effect on a person’s health and well-being and predicts less charitable donations

Happy Canada Day 2021!

As we gradually emerge from the almost year and a half that is the COVID-19 lockdowns, it's time to celebrate the 154th anniversary of Canada's independence!

Here's the view of the CN Tower from Tollkeeper's Park at the northwest corner of Bathurst and Davenport, taken by yours truly today, one of the most underrated views in Toronto:

Accompanied, of course, by the Unicorn flavour from Toronto's iconic Dutch Dreams ice cream parlour:

Here's today's Google search screen in full rodential commemoration:

Canada Day is an ongoing feature on this blog. Here's 2019 from beautiful Silent Lake Provincial Park, 2016's maple leaf picture day and Google theme, and some less admittedly inspired posts from 2013 and 2012. Then there's my Quora post from Christmas break 2017, which shows six pictures that sum up Canada.

With so much to be happy about and so many sources of pride, let's all celebrate one of the greatest nations in the world!

Happy Canada Day!