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On this day in 1777 delegates from twenty-eight settlements convened in a town called Winsor to declare their independence from disputed and competing territorial claims by colonial Quebec and the breakaway states of New York and New Hampshire and established the Republic of Vermont.
Though it was eventually admitted into the Union in 1791 as the fourteenth state after the original thirteen colonies, in the intervening years, it was a fully-formed and constituted government with a postal system, a militia (Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys—from les verts monts), flag, anthem, legal system (which abolished slavery), credentialed diplomats and currency, the coinage called Vermont coppers. Coins struck after the British surrender when it seemed more guaranteed that the US would be a stable political entity bore the motto on their observe Stella quarta decima—meaning the fourteenth star and signaling the republic’s aspiration to join them. It was not until 2015 that the state dictum officially became “Stella quarta decima fulgeat,” secondary after the “Freedom and Unity” of the state seal.

ps-752

While the Iranian military committed an unforgivable act in its accidental downing of a passenger aircraft and the loss of one hundred and forty-seven individuals and neglecting to close its airspace, it certainly was provoked by Trump with his order to assassinate Major General Soleimani as a rash distraction from his own domestic problems, the throughline is not impeachment or even pulling out of the nuclear deal but the Trump administration’s racist and xenophobic policies that has severely restricted travel for people with an other than white ethnic-background and put fifty-seven Canadians on that particular flight-manifest, forcing them to take a circuitous route via Kyiv to avoid American border and customs checks. Iran’s admission of this grave error and realisation of the gravity of its actions are in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s lack of contriteness, candor and continued obfuscation.

7x7

franking privileges: Royal Mail (see previously) will issue postage stamp sets based on classic arcade games—via Boing Boing

cajun court: a resplendent Louis XV tower sequestered in the heart of Louisiana—via Messy Nessy Chic

cosmodrome: the busiest space ports in the world charted out—via Maps Mania

conurbation: the world’s largest megalopoli tracked on a bar-chart race

yugo.logo: a growing visual archive of brand enblems from Yugoslavia

team rodent: an intricate link diagram illustrating the connections between Disney properties and merchandising from 1967

tomorrow’s on fire: Australia needs our help and needs us to heed this stark warning—via Waxy

the ballad of rocket robin hood: a Canadian animated children’s show that aired from 1966 to 1969 featuring a team of Merry Men living in the “astonishing year 3000” and committed to protecting the poor and innocent from exploitation by Prince John and the Sheriff of NOTT (National Outer-Space Terrestrial Territories)

the last of the beothuk

Kidnapped during a raid on her encampment over some allegedly stolen fishing equipment that resulted in the deaths of her family and sent away to live with a priest in a parish house in the capital of Newfoundland who christened her Mary March (for the Mother of God and surname in deference to the month she was abducted in), Demasduit died day in 1820 (*circa 1796) from tuberculous contracted during a failed attempt to repatriate her with her tribe.

While in St. John’s, the governor’s wife Lady Henrietta Hamilton painted Demasduit’s portrait, the people of the city and broader Notre Dame Bay raising funds for her journey home. Having expired aboard the ship as it crossed Red Indian Lake, her coffin was deposited on the shore with members of the Beothuk—only some thirty left at this point reunited her body with the grave of her husband Chief Nonosbawsut and her infant child. Demasduit’s niece who died a decade later, called Shanawdithit (“Nancy April”), also from tuberculosis, is regarded as the last of her tribe.

totem guide

Via the always engaging Friend of the Blog, Nag on the Lake, we are invited to learn more about the rich cultural traditions and customs of the Haida Nation of the Haida Gwaii (Xaaydaga Gwaay.yaay) archipelago of British Columbia through this custom set of emoji that created by indigenous artist Jaalen Edenshaw, renowned the world over for his incredible totem poles, ritual masks and other native art, whose study and talent inform and inspire these new glyphs and engender interest in this severelt endangered though reviving language (see also here, here and here). Edenshaw‘s extended, creative family have devoted their careers to preserving and promoting their heritage including Gwaii Edenshaw who made the first Haida language feature film and artist Guujaaw (Eric Edenshaw), folk singer and political activist. Much more to explore at the links above.

intergalactic planetary

Sampling from sources as diverse as Les Baxter, Modest Mussorgsky’s A Night on Bald Mountain through the filter of piano virtuoso Sergei Rachmaninoff, the Beastie Boys’ Grammy winning single showcased in a music video is celebrating turning twenty this year, inspiring a Toronto trio, Angela Young and children Lilah and Levi, to honour this anniversary with their holiday greeting. The three MCs dance their way through the city’s metro and Union Station to the song, outfitted like the band, wishing all a celestial season. You can watch the original at the link from Nag on the Lake above as well.

hold me closer, tony danza

Even before seeing these reality show characters arguing across dimensions with a meme cat became a coordinated ugly Christmas sweater, we were fascinated with the phenomenon and really appreciated the backstory courtesy of Nag on the Lake.
The singularly unimpressed cat is called Smudge by his humans and resides in the suburbs of Ottawa, who despite what’s being served insists on having a seat and a setting at the dinner table. The image of the cat scowling at a salad garnered quite a bit of attention and admiration in its own right but really explored virally, redone with countless different captions when inexplicably juxtaposed it with an angry 2011 screen-grab from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills of Malibu beach party hostess Taylor Armstrong crying and pointing accusatorily. Which sweater would you be wearing to your holiday celebrations? Do remix your own and be sure to share.

weekly top forty

Via Miss Cellania, we really enjoyed seeing the meteoric rise of Elton John, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Queen (plus their retreat and eventual resurgence) and the tenacity of The Beatles, ABBA, etc. in this presentation charting the best-selling artists (from aggregated certified sales world-wide, adjusted by a twelve-month trailing average) of the past fifty years, and admittedly we’re a bit out of touch with the music scene today, we found ourselves, after the turn of the century a bit bewildered and baffled by the bands vying for the pole position and the not so much of a photo-finish. Were there surprises for you? See previously.  Probably not spoilers and bombshells for anyone else, but we were pleased to learn that the career of a Canadian child star of Degrassi: TNG carried its own nearly as well as some of the confirmed legends in the running.

prayvaganza and purely scientific post-script

There’s a certain hegemony to the present that privileges the living and those living though it to declare work of fiction—allegory or otherwise—to be especially resounding and addressing them directly, granted, but there’s something particularly prescient to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (previously) which describes the world’s trajectory, which doubtless also spoke to the author and her readership at the time of writing, publication back in 1985, that’s really hard to shake. Such is the mark of good writing, and I’m embarrassed to say that I hadn’t read Atwood’s brisk, engaging story of dystopian transition from democracy to theocracy that cozened up to the fragility of the male ego and fears of displacement of the status quo. Atwood, nor none of the other storytellers with accounts caution, visionary or otherwise, aspires to be a prophet and hopeful with warnings as dark and dire and banally begun the sort of future set forth here could be avoided. Sorry for being Johnny-come-Lately to this novel and highly recommend anyone re-read it in anticipation of the recently published sequel.

cfc

Despite far less consensus and surety regarding the exact culprit among the scientific community compared to the unity that we have for anthropogenic climate change today, the world’s nations unilaterally came together to draft and enforce a protocol to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the outcome of a convention held in Montreal which became an international and universal priority on this day in 1987.
Depletion of atmospheric ozone first discovered and researched, with its grave implications limned and communicated during the intervening years, within just a little more than fourteen years public and political will aligned and overcame deniers and those in impacted industries—aerosol and cooling, with a managed phase-out of the most harmful compounds that fostered willing partnerships and commitments for reform. Among the few environmental success stories to hold up as examples of what we can achieve (though we should also be vigilant to avoid losing those gains and there’s unfinished business yet), human change has allowed the ozone layer to repair and replenish itself.

little matron

Via Nag on the Lake, we are treated to a playful stop-motion short from award-winning Dutch-Canadian filmmaker Jacobus Willem “Co” Hoedeman. “Matrioska” (1970) was one of his first commissions for the National Film Board of Canada—having immigrated there in 1965 on the hope that the esteemed institution might hire him on. After producing several films including a treasury of Inuit folktales, Hoedeman went to Czechoslovakia to study puppetry and currently serves as an advisory member of the board and animation consultant. Explore more of his works at the link above.

Matrioska, Co Hoedeman, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

le chameau

On this day in 1969, coincidently on the same day as the shipwreck of the French naval vessel The Camel occurred two hundred forty-four years before in passage from La Rochelle to the colony of New France in North America, the high court of Canada awarded the recovered cache of gold and silver coins to the wreck’s finders, a trio of treasure-hunters, after being tied up in litigation for years regarding the venture partnership’s liabilities to one another. The specie (then valued at seven hundred thousand Canadian dollars was meant to pay workers and the ship’s manifest of some three-hundred passengers included the replacement Intendant, governor-general, for Nouvelle-France. Some of the coins and the rest of the maritime artefacts are on display at a museum in Halifax.

SENĆOŦEN

The orthography of the First Nations Saanich people from British Colombia and Washington state employs (with the exception of ‘s’ which acts like an apostrophe) only uppercase letters, making it one of the unicameral alphabets, like Hangul, Arabic, Georgian and Tamil, something rare for a Latin-based script though all languages start out with just a single case. The International Phonetic Alphabet uses only lower case Latin and Greek letters, so a second example, though not a genuine writing system but rather something epiphenomenal. Created by linguist Dave Elliott in 1978 to conform to the sound and grammar of the language, it saw a resurgence and renewed interest around 2011 when its unfamiliar characters (Ⱥ and Ⱦ) received their own Unicode range and a texting programme was developed.

histoire de perles

Via the always engaging Æon Magazine, we are subjected to the rhythmic and beautifully brutal stop-motion animation from filmmaker Ishu Patel, illustrating the cycles of evolution and competition with glass beads—inspired by the handiwork of the Inuit. This 1977 acclaimed short starts from a single cell and concludes with humanity in all its dreadful excellence with a stark warning against a nuclear arms-race.

Bead Game from National Film Board of Canada on Vimeo.

jour du déménagement

Previously we had encountered a statutory day on which leases expired in old New York, obligating renters to re-locate previously but had no idea that it occurred elsewhere much less was still a tradition upheld in Quebec, courtesy of Nag on the Lake who has some personal experience with must surely be a day of collective mania, wherein up to a quarter of a million households across the province and tens of thousands in Montréal alone not totally satisfied or otherwise tethered to their current accommodations lift up and change apartments.
Although formerly urban leases ran from 1 May to 30 April, like in the historic case in New York above to prevent landlords (seigneuries) from evicting tenants during the winter months, the provincial government decided to move the event to the summer, so as to be less disruptive to school children and place it on the national holiday, today—Dominion Day, Fête du Canada / Canada Day, so the people who chose to take part in this tradition were not sacrificing a day of work or extra time off. Movers assisting those not entirely doing it themselves were also entitled to holiday pay for their work.

ô canada

Officially made the national anthem by royal assent a century later on Dominion Day, the melody, composed by Calixte Paquet dit Lavallée commissioned by the lieutenant governor of Quebec, of the song was performed in public for the first time on this day in 1880 as accompaniment to a Saint-Jean-Baptiste (the Nativity of John the Baptist, his feast day often associated or conflated with the summer solstice) fête held in the provincial capital.
The original lyrics by barrister and poet Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier were in French and have remained unchanged. An English version, modified three times subsequently to make the language more inclusive, came in 1908—often performed bilingually with code-switching alternating verses to demonstrate the country’s diversity—and First Nations’ versions (ᐆ ᑲᓇᑕ) introduced beginning in the 1990s.

bill c-195

Whilst American engineers were busy shutting off their part of the Niagara Falls by means of a cofferdam apron to staunch the flow of water and allow for repairs of the eroded riverbed and cliffs, the Canadian senate was legislating and passed on this day in 1969 amendments to the law to decriminalise abortion and homosexual relations.
Introduced originally by then Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau, the passage allowed for the sale of contraceptive medicines and devices, consensual gay relations for persons of majority in private dwellings, as well as tightening laws regarding gun sales and ownership, drink driving, telephonic harassment and cruelty to animals. Trudeau famously defended his stance to the press by declaiming an often repeated phrase, «l’ État n’a rien à faire dans les chambres à coucher de la nation.» “There’s no place for the State in the bedrooms of Canada.”

culvert journal

Whether diverted, enlisted as part of the sewer system or simply buried under development, the notion of hidden and lost rivers and urban watercourses has been a particular fascination (previously) and we were especially pleased to come across some speculative spelunking both around London—courtesy of Things Magazine—and Toronto, via Maps Mania. While the London show is more testimony of lives reconstructed through artefact and mudlarking and the Toronto one is an interactive exploration, even connecting to tours that trace the routes of these former tributaries, both are pretty engaging and in both places, the secret, subterranean rivers and creeks have been championed to preserve their memory.

the longest day

The retreat and evacuation of British forces at Dunkirk having taken place and commemorated on the eve of the Normandy landings that would take place five years later, D-Day, codenamed Operation Neptune, was a long time in development and planning. Though failing to achieve immediate gains for the Allies battling Nazi Germany with only two beachheads linked and sustaining heavy casualties, the manoeuvre that took place on this day seventy-five years ago established a Western Front in Europe, a wedge to divide German efforts since it began its march towards Moscow with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and began the liberation of occupied France. 

Recognising that troop strength and materiel had not yet built itself up to the level to counter the German forces (mindful of the aforementioned withdrawal), the plan was delayed for months and focus was strategically shifted to North Africa, with the Allies eventually winning that theatre in 1943. With Nazi forces weakened and demoralised, commanding generals looked again to the French coast—planning with great secrecy and deception so defences could not be marshalled and the Allies could retain an element of surprise.  The carpenters that built the wooden planning map for General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Southwick House near Portsmouth were detained from April to September to prevent accidental disclosure of the location of the landings while a local medium was imprisoned for witchcraft lest she divine the plans.   

The date was chosen due to the best possible tidal conditions and phase of the moon and any postponement would see the situation degrade quickly. May we never forget the sacrifices of that day and may they never be in vain.

flagellation, regulation, integrations, meditations, united nations, congratulations

Referred by Messy Nessy Chic, we are afforded a chance to spend some time in the Montreal hotel honeymoon suite (Room #1742) of John and Yoko Ono Lennon refurbished ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of the Bed-Ins for peace that began in late March 1969 in Amsterdam with a two-weeks intervention. The next iteration was planned for New York but Lennon was barred entry into the US over a previous marijuana possession charge and so moved to Canada. Having arrived on 26 May and inviting guests over the ensuing week like Timothy Leary, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsburg, Tommy Smothers and others, all took part in a recorded chorus of the anthem “Give Peace a Chance” in the suite on this day.