Before You Cancel That Telus Contract!

because the company favors a price on carbon, read Rebel Media's (that's Ezra Levant's latest venture, if you haven't been paying attention) fight back letter!

Note the fifth and seventh paragraph.  While Holly the Rebel wants you to dump Telus now, she herself only plans to cancel someday, maybe, if the cards fall right.  That's about the lamest form of rebellion I've ever seen.  

PS.  They address me as Heywood J. because I am in the Rebel database as Heywood J. Blome.  Its an old joke.  I get a ton of email from these folks.

Bill Whatcott's Back

Last I heard, he had moved to the Phillipines because they hate the gays more.  But he's back in Toronto, his old stomping grounds, at least temporarily:

The class action lawsuit is a interesting idea.  You don't debate guys like Whatcott.  You figure out ways to take away their money.

If his name is unfamiliar, start here.

H/T@journo_dale.

Important News From Turkey!

I just googled it and turkeys don't actually come from Turkey. So no matter what happens, the 1st World should be OK for thanksgiving.

— Bigcitylib (@Bigcitylib2) July 15, 2016

Tim Tebow Says He Ain't Speaking At RNC National Convention

There is a list, and he's on it.  But then there's his Facebook message saying its all a rumor.  But that's a semi-official looking list.  Did the Trump gang stick Tebow on it without telling?  And if Tebow shouldn't have been there, how many other entries are false?

A Brief Note On Dope Regs: Make 'em Now Or Make 'em Never

 As you may know, I spent the last week and change  out on the Left Coast.  Probably the most interesting part was hanging with friends last Saturday at a beach BBQ, discussing the state of medical marijuana.  Half the table owned "green cards" or "compassion club" membership cards, and more than half of those were retired.  Trying to sound knowledgeable, I told them I knew a gal back in Ontario with chronic pain, who got a couple of vials of oil per month from the program.  And she'd told me the price of street weed, which she'd used previously to alleviate pain, had plunged during the last year. They cackled at my simplicity and one little old lady said: "We know that, sonny."

So there you have it.  The elderlies have gone rogue.  So if the Trudeau government plans to get ahead of the issue, they should act soon.  Otherwise Canada will turn into B.C.  Questionably legal pot shops on every corner.  Downtown T.O. smelling sickly sweet with the herb, just like Vancouver.

Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that, other than its pretty clear organized crime has a toe in the business. There's an incentive: open a dispensary and you have a legal reason to be driving around with 30 kilos of weed in your trunk.  And some dispensary owners have responded to $250-a-day municipal fines for being open illegally...by paying $250 a day.  This is suspicious behavior, in my opinion, and not something you would expect from a young hippy couple with shop-keeping ambitions.

And not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that either.  I'm sure there are many west coast bikers who, as they get older, would like to transition into selling a legal product.  Even tough guys dream of an easier life.  But if the federal government wants to shape the market rather than take what is there now,  they should move with more haste than they're currently displaying.   Some leeway seems to have already disappeared.  A too restrictive regime at this point will not supplant the status quo; it will be undermined by it.  Unless Justin Trudeau wants to start busting Vietnam vets, and maybe even his own mother.

What I'm Up To

Wife and I are out on the West Coast for a wedding and some vacationing, which for us has come to be associated with visiting the many, many wineries on Vancouver Island.  This

...is a shot from outside of one of our favorites, de Vine Vineyards on top of Devine Hill.  And this 

...is just a random bunch of wildflowers outside of Sydney By The Sea, an old retirement town that's repurposed itself as a tourist trap.  Note how healthy these flowers look.  The same flowers in T.O. would be gagging on car exhaust and industrial pollutants.

Your Ward News: A Letter The G&M; Didn't Print

They got an even shorter version, but so stubbornly persist in their wrongness and hatred of elegant prose that they wouldn't even print that one.  Anyway, I didn't want all my work to go for nothing, so here it is:

Marcus Gee's Free Speech Views Are Painfully Naive

Gee suggests that Toronto citizens respond to Yourward News by  debunking its chief author, James Sears.  But Sears brags about the many women he has "pinned down against their will", and talks up Hitler and Jesus in the same breath.  That rape is bad, and Hitler not like Jesus; these seem self-evident truths and I would personally shun anyone who felt they were at issue.  An attempt to convince them towards sanity would likely prove futile.  It might also result in online death-threats from Neo-Nazis and members of the "seduction community", as some have already discovered.

And I'm not sure  Mr. Gee has read what he is defending.  He supports prohibiting material which incites violence, but  apparently missed  Sears' pro-rape musings and his talk of "eradicating FemiMarxists".  I don't begrudge Mr. Gee his ignorance, but he might show some empathy for the posties who must deliver this vile product, or the locals who receive it on their doorstep.  They can't avoid it so easily.

Marcus Gee's painfully naive piece can be found here.