No matter what some little urban Toronto twit designed the sections in babble, these are accepted designations, responding to shared, to some extent common values reinforced by the environment. Alberta is somewhat of an anamoly because of the massive influence of US immigration
going back to the northern movement of cattle ranchers and later oil industry workers, but northern Alberta is definitely canadian prairie.

As a Manitoban If I want to appeal to prairie people in babble, I have to post to 2 sections, which for those north of the Sioux (an abandoned region) and those in western Alberta is of marginal interest, not to mention it's engulphment in posts from southern Ontario or Quebec. Even including these 2 populous provinces along with Manitoba shows a certain contempt for all 3, and ignores any sense of Quebec as a nation.

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No matter what some little urban Toronto twit designed the sections in babble,

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Well, I guess I could get defensive about that, but I guess the best comback I have is "who ya callin' little!?"

The initial compartmentalisation probably represented a compromise following a long and tedious discussion way back in the day, and has evolved a bit over the years, and I think we always try to see it as a work in progress. Constructive input is actually welcome. Personally, I like simplicity. I also like to be able to find things. We try to keep it practical rather than political.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
However, the issue is that we'd have to go through seven years of threads and move them to the new forums.

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(Frankly, I am surprised that it wasn't a British Columbian pointing this out... they separated from the other western provinces years ago... the news finally made it over the mountains... I guess it is caught in some sort of time/space tidal thingy surrounding the black hole that is the center of the universe.)

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There are two options that make sense:

1) separate fora for each province / territory, or

2) generally recognized regions - Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, Prairies, BC, North.

(Separating Prairies and BC makes more sense to me, but putting them together as West would be fine.

Putting Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba together is stupid beyond words.

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Originally posted by al-Qa'bong:
It might be fixed here, although keep in mind that the mods live in the Toronto area. From there we're somewhere waay out in the west, and thus pretty much all the same.

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Originally posted by Michelle:

Not to get too defensive here, but FYI, neither oldgoat or I came up with the current configuration.

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Originally posted by Michelle:

Not to get too defensive here, but FYI, neither oldgoat or I came up with the current configuration.

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I guess the configuration is the fault of some different southern Ontarian.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
We have discussed changing the regional forums in the way suggested here. However, the issue is that we'd have to go through seven years of threads and move them to the new forums. And with this software, that means moving each thread individually. If we didn't move them, then we wouldn't be able to find threads from four years ago very easily.

So far, the money hasn't been raised for the extra 5,000 moderating hours this would take. So we figured it would just be easier to leave it as is.

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Michelle, would it be possible to revamp the configuration of the regional forums when we move to the Drupal software? As long as we are not moving the old posts to the drupal software, it should be easy to set up the regional forums on the Drupal software to be:

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Originally posted by GOD:
I don't think Body and Soul should be under one forum. Let's have a Body one and a Soul one.

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Let's ignore the Almighty and keep things as they are.

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I can volunteer to moderate the Soul forum if you like.

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It was out here where the Co-op movement and the CCF was born until it was taken over by Ontario social workers and the trade-union elite to form the NDP. Many of it's tenets were adopted by northern Ontarions who still don't feel comfortable with the southern region, which shows in it's different voting patterns.

Joke however you like, but there is a cmmonality of common interest between peoples of the prairies and to some extent northern Ontario and which excludes the proto-American oil-kings of southern Alberta.

I posted an URL of a prairie journalist's articles, of necessity, to 2 different sections and was accused by Michelle of "duplicate-posting". How else, pray tell, can I get a message out to like-minded progrssive "prairie people" who live in this region of Canada.

Similarly, the presently urban-dominated NDP has yet to issue any really comprehesive rural agricultural policies to appeal to the prairies despite the roots of the CCF in this region and the disatisfaction with such polices as the Conservatives attempt to kill the Wheat Board (even the local conservative is, of necessity, against it)

Oh, and just to put myself in categories some people on this forum seem comfortable with:
I am a "white, over-50 male". But I have children and grand-children "of color". Shades of Black. chew on that. I declared them "Irish" when confronted with the question of national origin on birth registry forms, as is traditional in canadian decent from the male parent.

[ 29 September 2008: Message edited by: downtime ]

[ 29 September 2008: Message edited by: downtime ]

[ 29 September 2008: Message edited by: downtime ]

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Originally posted by downtime: How else, pray tell, can I get a message out to like-minded progrssive "prairie people" who live in this region of Canada.

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I thought you might have a point until I read this:

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Oh, and just to put myself in categories some people on this forum seem comfortable with:
I am a "white, over-50 male". But I have children and grand-children "of color". Shades of Black. chew on that. I declared them "Irish" when confronted with the question of national origin on birth registry forms, as is traditional in canadian decent from the male parent.

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It's descent BTW.

[ 29 September 2008: Message edited by: RevolutionPlease ]

edited to fix quotes

[ 29 September 2008: Message edited by: RevolutionPlease ]

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Well ignoring the facetious attempts to be humorous by those from the "big smoky" ...

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Oh, that's what was going on. I admit I've been puzzled by statements like this:

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And I try to not go north of Bloor, man. Yonge and Eligible is for suburbanites playing at living in the city.

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Ya mean down east you give your roads names, just like they were pets or kinfolk? If that don't beat all.

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
I think that we should have the Atlantic Region, Central Canada, the Prairies, BC and the North.

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Has the last 141 years taught you nothing? Ontario and Quebec need separate rooms, otherwise they start accusing each other of one taking the other's stuff... don't you remember the last car ride, they shouldn't even be allowed to sit together.

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Originally posted by downtime:
Did I lose my "point" because I was a white over-50 male of Irish descent or because of the bad spelling ? Strange criteria for logic. :^))

I'm sure in this enlightened forum it wouldn't be because the mother of my 4 sons was afro-american. I find it a bit amusing in an ironic way that all my "Irish" progeny should forever-on be labelled as "persons of color". Perhaps my great-grandchildren will be able to pass inspection in this supposedly "tolerant" society.
Who in hell wants to be "tolerated" anyway.

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Feel that way if you'd like, I'm just not sure why you're trying to make a point of it here.

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Originally posted by RevolutionPlease:

Feel that way if you'd like, I'm just not sure why you're trying to make a point of it here.

This is bigger than your immediate family.

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I included that as a "point" of the existence of ageist, racist(anti-white overtones are also racist), and urban arrogance, which occurs in many of the sections of forums unopposed.

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Originally posted by downtime:
Ontario and was also the seat of financal power which caused the ruin of many homesteaders ....
I have children and grand-children "of color". Shades of Black. chew on that. I declared them "Irish" ... I'm sure in this enlightened forum it wouldn't be because the mother of my 4 sons was afro-american. ... I included my family history in case you were implying that I was a white, over-50, honky, thereby invalidating any valid "points" I might have made

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Originally posted by downtime:
It was out here where the Co-op movement and the CCF was born until it was taken over by Ontario social workers and the trade-union elite to form the NDP. Many of it's tenets were adopted by northern Ontarions who still don't feel comfortable with the southern region, which shows in it's different voting patterns.

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You make some very valid points. Too bad they come with a lot of loaded assumptions about the moderators and organizers of this board and where they're located. Okay, yeah, I get it - you have nothing but contempt for Toronto and anyone who lives there. Totally understandable, since where one lives is somehow revealing of character, or lack thereof.

Now, if I believed that, then everyone from the prairies would be an angry, defensive blow-hard who exploits his racially diverse relatives to add some kind of 'cred' to his membership in the overwhelmingly dominant culture of this country.

Well, gosh by golly, that would hardly be fair, would it? Especially since I know it to be quite untrue. Mostly ;)

Personally, spewing bitter vitriol and insulting the people I'm asking something of has never gotten me very far. Perhaps you've had more success with this tactic?

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Originally posted by Stargazer:
Class act that downtime.

BTW, I think it is a big mistake to put Alberta in with any province. Alberta should have its own forum. There is nothing similar between that province and Manitoba politically and I don't think the people from Winnipeg would like to be lumped in with Alberta.

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However, my "ostentatious white privelege" was of a railway working class person dealing with racism from both sdes of the racial divide, with even more problems of obtaining housing than most "people of color". My pride is not of my pigmentation but of overcoming that criteria which you would have me decry. Of the struggles to support and transmit to my "non-white" kids when they came home crying about being called "blackie" or later "Zebra" or "Oreos" that
it was simply ignorance or racism which was hurtful and divided working people who created the "wonders" of Thebes. And many times succeeding in my explainations. One of my greatest feelngs was when one of my sons was into a brawl when we lived in Montreal and because he returned the basketball to the french school next door to the protestant school he went to.

I don't know whether or not your login name suggests your racial origins. You could be simply
a poseur. My anti-racist history is impeccable and
in the Toronto SUPA march against the events in Selma, Alabama, My wife and infant son were the only afro-americans in it. When I later brought that up to afro-american friends, they admitted there was a fear of stirring up the situation.

Later on the largest black march in canadaian history, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, took place in Montreal, and was initiated in my front room.

Those like you attempt to gain power by evoking guilt. I don't play your game. I remember slick characters who would follow Stokely Carmichel around and gain sexual and financial favors from
self-abnegating students. They were very slick, your an amateur.

Do you really know anything about frst-nation culture or attitudes ? It's a crock. I was born out here and like many areas of the world it was invaded. It was about power and native people were decimated by it, includng Louis Riel, a "white" man. At one time it was inconceivable that a person could own the land, much less the air or water. Now many cheifs do own that, while many of their people starve.

And of course in Africa most of the slave trade was maintained by chiefs and Muslim traders.
Do you also take that responsability ?

I guess your challenge to not post to the anti-racist forum is based on your own questionable validity. Sooner or later, i'mcumngImcummnggg.
Out with the phonies.

This post and topc has obvously no relation to the thread, but I'm sure Michelle will transfer it to where it should be, however troublesome I mght be. These quebecois ladies are cool.
At times.

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Originally posted by Makwa:
Your family history is of little interest to me, except to engender some sorrow that non-white family members have had to learn to survive with someone who displays so much ostentatious white privilege with such obvious pride. To declaim the mythology of the 'benighted homesteader' who has profited for hundreds of years off land stolen from the First Nations, and to callously describe your unfortunate progeny as "shades of Black - chew on that!" while bragging that you thereafter deemed them to be "Irish" thereby casting aside their unique histories as multiracial Canadians, suffices to invalidate any point you may think you are making. All I can do is ask you please, please never to post in the Anti-Racist forum.

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[ 02 October 2008: Message edited by: downtime ]

[ 02 October 2008: Message edited by: downtime ]

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Originally posted by bigcitygal:
And I try to not go north of Bloor, man. Yonge and Eligible is for suburbanites playing at living in the city.

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[ 03 October 2008: Message edited by: Makwa ]

We took an "express" bus from Wilson! Wilson I tell you! Wherever I lived in the city while going to York (Mimico, St Clair/Dufferin, Bloor/Christie, the Annex) it took me a frikking hour and a half to get there. That's time I'll never have back! I got lots of sleep and readings done though. Well, mostly sleep.

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Good thing those provinces are so dull nothing ever happens there.

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It is said that durring the long tenure of Bill Davis as Premier of Ontario, a reporter remarked to him that his style, if a winning one, was rather bland. To which Davis responded, "Bland works".

Now, around that time things were not terribly dull or bland at Fleck manufacturing, where Bill and the terrible tories were using the OPP as a private strike breaking force, but to the pundits, everything was dull as dull could be.

Anyway, old story not terribly important to anything. May we all live in interesting times.

Strikes me though, and has for a long time, how we on the left of things like to organize ourselves into finer and finer distinctions.

We could have province specific forums, but I give it thirty seconds before someone complains that Nordern Hontario should have it's own forum separate and distinct from dose guys in Sudern Hontario.

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Originally posted by bigcitygal:
Dude I went to York University before there was Downsview Station!
For eight years!

We took an "express" bus from Wilson! Wilson I tell you!

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Make no mistake, that bland, cuddly old guy with the pipe is a mean, nasty, viscious psycho.

Instructive times, though. Many of the rights workers have today came from that era-- thanks to the Stephen Lewis opposition in a minority government. And it was the same NDP opposition that scuttled the Reed paper clear cut. And introduced rent controls.

More than five years of NDP majority government under Bob Rae ever did for us.

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Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
Perfect spin, too. During those bland times, Reed paper poisoned the Native people of Grassy Narrows with mercury. And Bill Davis wanted to reward Reed Paper with the largest clear cut to that time ever given by the province.

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[ 04 October 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Ken, Downtime no longer exists.

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That is the most menacing posting that I have seen, anywhere!

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Ken, Downtime no longer exists.

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He probably still exists, as a 74-year-old looking to find some meaning in the present by relating to a past activism...and, like many of us, wondering at the gap between statements of concern for others and their actual treatment.

If downtime needs help, probably an online forum isn't the best place to find it. Certainly we are not required to allow people to abuse forum members or the moderators. He was removed from the forum for remarks made in another thread, not this one.

[ 04 October 2008: Message edited by: Michelle ]

Have now deleted the entry in question.

[ 04 October 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Sorry, oldgoat, didn't know the axe had fallen on old downers.

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The block has to be prepared before the executioner does his work.

That was the work of all of the sensitive souls who parodied his attempts to talk in serious terms about the politics of this country and its past, and a personal history offered up in an attempt to explain a different perspective - jeering rather than inviting answers to questions in the name of enlightenment.

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
On the subject of Babble regional reorganization, how about putting Alberta in a "Texas and Northern Texas" forum?

That's pretty much what Alberta Tories would want, anyway.

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I can totally get behind that, and promise to stay out of the Central Canadian Overlords (In Sight of the World's Tallest Freestanding Concrete Penis) forum when the name changes come into effect.

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Originally posted by George Victor:
Hope it doesn't portend even more exclusionary actions to come! All quite frightening, really. Tribalistic.

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The term's etymology is the Latin tribus, a division of the Roman people.

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[ 07 October 2008: Message edited by: Caissa ]

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I say, GV old sport, I really would appreciate it if you could avoid using terminology related to aboriginal and traditional peoples in a denigrating manner on babble, ta very much.

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Good grief. Maybe you should take your predilection for outrage to the CBC and sue them every time a newsreader mentions the "tribal" regions in Central Asia.

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RENTON: I hate being Scottish. We're the lowest of the fucking low, the scum of the earth, the most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat into civilization. Some people hate the English, but I don't. They're just wankers. We, on the other hand, are colonized by wankers. We can't even pick a decent culture to be colonized by. We are ruled by effete arseholes. It's a shite state of affairs and all the fresh air in the world will not make any fucking difference.

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[ 10 October 2008: Message edited by: Caissa ]

My use of "tribalistic" was intended to be the standard dictionary one (now that I look it up in my Oxford) : "loyalty to one's own tribe or social group."

I hope that others are looking it up as well, but I would really appreciate seeing just a smidgen (Canadian Oxford, a small amount) of attention given to the object of the thread, not just the final offending word.

In fact, every time I re-read the entire thread, I'm convinced that it is not I who should be explaining - and I'm certainly not apologizing.

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Originally posted by George Victor:
I'm convinced that it is not I who should be explaining - and I'm certainly not apologizing.

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Makwa isn't 'selectively' choosing which parts of a word's history to 'privilege'. In fact, it's rather presumptuous to levy Makwa with such a charge when you're the one trying to crowbar ancient Latin and Roman history into a contemporary term. Not to mention 'sociology'. Words are present, and they have a present meaning. Makwa made a fairly light-handed request, with centuries of good cause, to be more cautious when using words generally associated with FN and African peoples in a negative light.

ETA: Your use of Anno Domini for the 10th century of the Common Era seems a bit anachronistic.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:Though the Anno Domini dating system was devised in 525, it was not until the 8th century that the system began to be adopted in Western Europe. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, even popes continued to date documents according to regnal years, and usage of AD only gradually became more common in Europe from the 11th to the 14th centuries

[ 10 October 2008: Message edited by: Caissa ]

[ 10 October 2008: Message edited by: Slumberjack ]

[ 10 October 2008: Message edited by: Makwa ]