Snow in June

Showing my age with this one, no doubt. But what better time to discuss snow and winter safety than in the middle of a scorching heat dome of a heat wave? Also the Northern Pikes are among the most under-rated bands this country ever produced. Fight me.

But seriously: I am delighted to hear Ottawa will move ahead with “living snow fences,” rows of trees or hedges along rural roads to stop the wind from blowing snow and making them impassable.

It's an old-fashioned way to keep roads from turning into Blizzard Central the minute there’s powdery snow and a little sideways wind. You can ask yourselves why over the years we continued to cut down so many trees and I promise you there won’t be an answer you’ll like. But now at least, in some parts of the city, we’ll start reforesting some, and since one of the secrets to a good life is to learn to appreciate small but meaningful victories, I wrote an entire column praising the people who brought us to this point.

A word from Stephen Harper

Imagine my surprise to find, in my sweet innocent inbox, an email from Stephen Harper his own self.

I find this interesting because it shows the party trying to reach out to conservative voters (and perhaps right-leaning liberals, too) who aren’t into childish overblown theatrics and remember with a certain fondness the kind of right-wing politics we used to have around here, with people who thought that videos like the one immediately below, which came out near the end of the 2011 campaign and helped seal Harper’s majority, are better than the one following it from about a year ago. Whether it’ll work, I have my doubts. But I find it interesting anyway.