TriumphAnt

Ah ha! So this is why there are so many traffic accidents in Montreal! Recently I read this transcript of a Question and Answer from the daily House of Commons Question Period. Both the asker and the answerer are from the province of Quebec:

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“QUESTION:
If the Minister can’t even tell us how he leads his own department, what point is there in having him?

ANSWER:
Maybe my colleague from Montreal is wrong. Maybe the opposition was in power. It sought confrontation with the Quebec government. Now the federal government has… you know… there's a colour for go and it's red.”
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So now we know why almost everyone who comes back from a driving trip to Montreal comes back with tales of misadventure and mayhem in their passages through that otherwise most cosmopolitan of cities’ traffic light-controlled intersections. Quebec drivers really should be told that, when your colour for “go” is red, you’re going to cause problems the moment you depart your province and, similarly, the moment you encounter an out-of-province driver at any intersection on your home turf.

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English well have you learned yours, grasshopper.

In a newspaper op-ed not so long ago, a Chinese-Southeast Asian legal advocate named Avvy Go wrote critically about how new arrivals to Canada are, for all intents and purposes, penalized for being educated when they discover that in Canada they can find only work for which they are paid much less than their Canadian-born counterparts. Near the end of his piece, here’s what he wrote when it came to defining a solution:

“What we need urgently is a comprehensive poverty reduction plan that integrates a broad range of universal initiatives, accompanied by specific targeted measures to remedy the different underlying sources of vulnerability that expose racialized - and other disadvantaged - communities to poverty disproportionately.”
(“Why we must talk about race when we talk about poverty”, Toronto Star, June 10)

I understand that Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley immediately adopted the recommendation without a single word of change as her department’s new mission statement.

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Let’s divert to the darkened comfort of a movie theatre for a while, shall we?

Recently, I was engaged in an e-mail back-and-forth with a friend that began with the exchange of some toweringly awful reviews of a recent movie entitled “The Happening”, including one by a reviewer who happily gave away the entire plot. (He explained without apology this was so that none of his readers would have to suffer through what he claimed he had to suffer through).

I was then diverted (oh yes, even in e-mail I digress) into describing my opinion that, given our having been excluded from the invitation list to attend a wider, day-long unit “retreat”, our little unit at work was perceived by the powers-that-be with much the same enthusiasm as Gregory Peck perceived a misfit B-17 crew he created in his squadron in the movie Twelve O’Clock High to serve as the home of the squadron’s screw-ups. And he ordered the name “Leper Colony” to be painted on the bomber’s nose.

Being the incurable optimists we are, we quickly turned to the more positive things about movies that we liked. And that led me to pen a brief description of what I still think of as one of the most evocative movie openings I’ve ever seen – that being the aforementioned Twelve O’Clock High.

The opening scene has Dean Jagger (who plays a cross between squadron administrative officer and squadron morale officer) in post-war London, where he spots a battered Toby jug in the window of a bric-a-brac store. You the viewer are shown that, despite its obviously low price, it is apparently of great significance to him as he instructs the shopkeeper to wrap it very carefully. Exactly what its significance is we are not told at this early stage in the movie.

Then the setting shifts to Jagger on a train, followed by seeing him on a leisurely bicycle jaunt into the English countryside, where he comes to the overgrown remains of an air base. He climbs a fence and strolls out onto a weed-cracked concrete surface. As he scans about, he takes in the remains of a tattered windsock, a dispersal hut and control tower. The background soundtrack begins to fill gently with near-ghostlike men's voices singing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree”, "Bless 'em all", “We Are Poor Little Lambs”....

Then the camera pans slowly across the runway’s surface to an adjacent field of long grass waving in the wind. Without missing a beat, the screen image raises slowly back up again. You haven’t moved, but the sky is now alive with the thundering roar of B-17s returning to the now pristine concrete runway. And that's how you're taken into the plot.

The movie's being shot entirely in black-and-white gives it a real documentary feel. (In fact, so authentic is an amazing belly landing by a huge four-engined bomber in this same opening sequence that it was only recently I read that what I had thought was archival combat footage was not an actual wartime crash, but rather was managed by an especially skilled stunt pilot specifically for the movie.)

Recalling that scene in my recent e-mail exchange also recalled for me another similar and equally evocative moment in the William Wyler classic, The Best Years of Our Lives. In this scene, Dana Andrews plays a former B-17 (coincidentally) bomb aimer who finds himself down on his luck and on the verge of leaving his home town in search of greener pastures. Faced with some time to wait before his flight leaves, as his parents read his medal citations back at home, Andrews sets out on a slow walk through a vast field of junked military aircraft (a scene filmed in an actual such “boneyard” located in Chino, California).

Coming upon a partially disassembled B-17, he climbs up into it, and after dusting off what looks like a map, he makes his tentative way into the bomb aimer’s position in the aircraft’s plexiglas nose. You, as viewer, already know the Andrews character has issues, but this scene makes it graphically obvious he also has a lot of not-so-deeply-buried ghosts to deal with, as well. Director William Wyler now manages the astonishing feat of making a junked WWII bomber seem to come alive by injecting into the soundtrack a musically-induced sense of tension, with huge brass and lots of strings that seem to ignite all four of the bomber’s engines, despite there being nothing more on the engine mounts now but their firewalls and a few loosely dangling wires.

In a few seconds, Andrews clearly replays one, or perhaps all, of his missions in his mind’s eye. The dramatic musical score serves to magnify the moment; slowly we are zoomed forward onto Andrews face – his eyes are locked an eternity away from where his body sits, and we see steel-like beads of sweat affixed to his forehead.

Then the moment, just as swiftly as it began, dissipates – with some timely outside help. But for a few short minutes, you realize you have been in the fully assured grip of a directorial master.

The nice thing about the internet is that, by the video miracle that is You Tube, both these scenes are available for viewing as stand-alone sequences. Playing them back to back is fascinating. Both directors obviously have a real appreciation of the role of an orchestra in heightening the drama of a scene. (In fact you rarely see music used so well in more modern films. Even my daughter pointed out recently that she and one of her friends have long since clued into the musical telegraph in recent thrillers and cover their ears just before, sure enough, the soundtrack simply blasts you through a so-called “scream” scene.)

It’s instructive to see it employed so much more subtly and, in consequence, so much more effectively in scenes like these. So with my strong urge that someday you watch both these movies in their entirety to contextualize these two classic scenes, here they are. You could pass a worse quarter hour.

In the Andrews clip in particular, pay close attention to the way the emotion of each part of the scene changes solely due to the brilliant application of music. Movingly patriotic while his parents read his citation, it turns ominous as he strolls among the ruined aircraft, becomes a more gentle strain of near nostalgia while he stands inside the B-17 framed by the blinding circle of light that is its nose, then finally becomes the conveyor of wire-taut tension as Andrews sits down in what was his wartime “office chair”, including a masterful flash of tromp d'oeil in which the aircraft seems momentarily to be rolling forward and about to pass over our heads. The music is finally chopped off at the precise moment the tension breaks. It is an absolutely perfect example of how to work music with image to push the very most into your audience’s hearts.

Andrews in the boneyard.

Jagger opens Twelve O’Clock High.

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Speaking of telegraphing, in my last entry I included a photo of a motorcycle and mentioned that, in the weeks ahead, I expected to be learning how to ride it. It will surprise no one, I trust, that the occasional adventure along that road will find its way among these pixils. I think I can make it interesting, but for the sake of any Duckling for whom cyclebabble is right up there with instructions for boiling water on the scale of your personal reading interest, I will flag future bike notes with exactly that title: Cyclebabble. Then, to evoke Charlie Brown’s Linus when he was describing how he manages the complex names in “War and Peace”, you can just “bleep” right over those sections.

So: Cyclebabble.

If you recall the photo I added last entry, you can now qualify it with, “Not exactly as illustrated”. Instead, what is now sitting in the storage section of Ottawa’s Good Times Centre, with my name on it and the label “SOLD”, is this (and in pretty much the colour scheme you see here – a stunning deep blue with cream highlights and lots o’ chrome).

Still a Triumph, but the Bonneville America. And it all came about from simply sitting on one on the sales floor. The lower seat places your feet rock solidly on the ground when you’re stopped and its saddle shape (vs the somewhat blockier rectangle on the Bonneville) is purpose-designed for the middle-aged butt. I am having a sissy bar / backrest added for the comfort of any future passengers and will take delivery when I get the safety course under my aforementioned middle-aged butt – presently scheduled for completion in mid-August.

So to recap the order of events so far:

1. Buy bike boots: DONE;
2. Buy helmet: DONE;
3. Buy ballistic nylon jacket with body-armour inserts: DONE;
4. Buy motorbike: DONE;
5. Take written motorcycle exam to earn M1 licence: TO DO**;
6. Insure motorbike: TO DO. (Not to worry; even though I own it, it’s fully insured against theft or damage at the dealership until they actually deliver it);
7. Buy gloves and Kevlar-impregnated denim jeans: TO DO;
7. Learn to ride motorbike in a proper safety course which ends with being issued the M2 licence: TO DO;
8. Take delivery of own motorbike: TO DO.

Probably a somewhat unconventional order, I admit, but blame my wife and daughter. It was their combined birthday gift that vaulted “Buy motorbike” much closer to the front of the learning curve.

** The law in Ontario is a tad (to me) scary in its rules on this point. The M1 licence is based solely on (a) your passing a written test; (b) your passing a vision test. Assuming you pass both, you are then issued a licence that authorizes you to ride a motorcycle subject only to a few pretty-easy-to-swallow conditions:

- No passengers and no riding on any of the province’s 400 series highways;
- A full wardrobe of safety wear: helmet, gloves, boots or shoes that cover the ankles, a heavy jacket of leather, denim or ballistic nylon, and heavy pants of leather or denim with no holes in them (other than, I assume, the ones through which you put your legs);
- No riding in the dark. Your biking day can only begin a half hour before sunrise and must end no later than a half hour after sunset;
- Absolutely zero tolerance for alcohol in one’s bloodstream.

Notice anything peculiar about those restrictions? Well it seems in Ontario you don’t actually have to ever have ridden a motorcycle to be allowed to ride one subject to those restrictions.

So technically, despite the fact that my only experience – ever – on a motorcycle will be having plunked myself in the saddle and fallen in bikelust with the Triumph America on the sales floor at the Ottawa Goodtimes Centre and writing a cheque to claim ownership of it, after Tuesday the 24th of June – noonish – when I hope to have secured my M1, I will legally be allowed to put a motorcycle onto most of Ontario’s roads. At least in the UK they make you hang a large “L” plate on your vehicle (for “Learner”), which gives pedestrians a bit of a fighting chance when they glance up to see you and your “L” plate coming at them at 60 km/h while staring at your handlebar controls and trying frantically to remember, “Brake? Clutch?”

However, I promise I won’t even be seeing mine next until I’ve taken the training / safety course and earned the M2. And according to several people I’ve talked to, the Ottawa Safety Council motorcycle “Gearing Up” novice training course is so damned good and thorough, it will even cause you to adopt a pile of habits useful to driving period, not just driving a motorcycle.

Cyclebabble update ends.

Back to work whines.

In government, you take your PR victories where you can get them and, in the government’s definition of “success”, there is no greater victory than being mentioned in a non-embarrassing way. One of the departments under our massive umbrella is Labour, currently helmed by Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn. And recently, the Department was all a-tizzy when a Ministerial announcement actually received some positive (read “not negative”) play. But I confess I found myself somewhat puzzled when I finally saw the news that had tizzified the MO in this case.

(Oh, sorry, we speak in acronyms in the federal government. MO = Minister’s Office).

Here’s how the Toronto Sun (June 18, online edition) played the Canadian Press version of the story:

“OTTAWA -- The federal government adopted new legislation yesterday that aims to prevent violence in federally regulated workplaces. The legislation covers all forms of violence, including psychological harassment. It requires employers to develop policies and programs dealing with such issues as bullying, teasing and other harmful behaviour. Employers are also required to assess their programs' effectiveness every three years and update them as necessary. The measures, which come nine years after an Ottawa Transpo employee shot and killed four co-workers, also require all incidents of workplace violence to be recorded and investigated. Federal Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said the message is "crystal clear:" Workplace violence will not be tolerated.”

It has now become painfully clear to me that clearly I am not possessed of the Right Stuff for government communications. Because I confess that when I saw this, my very first reaction was not, “YeeHAH! A good news pick-up!”

Rather, as I read the print version of the story about which a veritable army of communicators had (pun intended) laboured, my first thought was “Dude; this is 2008. You mean until now there has NOT been legislation to prevent violence in the workplace by requiring employers to have policies in place to ‘deal with’ bullying, teasing and their especially ugly ilk??? Well colour me gobsmacked."

What’s next, I wondered as I amassed the three clippings prior to preparing a scintillating analysis of same, new legislation barring the use of slaves in the workplace?

I was on the verge of snarking just that to a co-worker when it occurred to me – better not. Because now I’m not so sure that workplace flogging has specifically been prevented in law yet.

Until la prochaine…