Happy Canada Day

Yesterday was Canada Day. I celebrated by heading to Granville Island with a few ex-pat friends. The island is a touristy area with markets and is located under a bridge downtown. There's a Jazz festival on in Vancouver at the moment so we got to see the Matthew Smith Trio play for free in the tap room of the Granville Island Brewery. You may not have heard of the band before but I suspect you may have heard their music last time you were put on hold.

Anyway, I started working a few weeks ago after signing up with a temp agency. I must have done really well on my office skills tests (which took nearly two hours) because within a few short days I was working for $10 an hour as a labourer at a warehouse sale at the PNE (kind of like Exhibition Park in Canberra). I quite enjoyed my first day as a working man. While lugging tables around I dreamed of joining a union and picketing something. I would sing "There is Power in a Union" with my comrades and fight for a better world for us working folk. The idea wore off once we stopped carrying heavy loads and started folding towels & sorting lipsticks.

The sale was held in the Agridome, an awesome old hockey rink where the Vancouver Canucks played in the 1930s (or thenabouts). The place seems to have not changed at all. My workmates were mostly travellers, including an Irish bloke, an English bloke and a kiwi chick. It's a pity we never walked into a bar together. One of my other workmates was an interesting character from Toronto called Calvin. He asked one of the warehouse sale people about the purpose of our labour and the guy said, "It's a warehouse sale, really cheap. Say you'd buy 100 dollars worth of stuff from a store, here it would cost..." Calvin cut him off to say, "you know you can buy a car from an auction in America for 100 dollars?" The guy just looked at him. Soon after I was carrying a table with Calvin and he said, "I really want to go to one of those auctions".

Anyway, I was working alongside Robin Williams. That is to say, one of the buildings next door was being used as a soundstage for a Robin Williams film (called RV or something). I never saw the hairy man but I had a feeling that he'd stand beside us in the picket line if things came to that - maybe even belt out a humorous version of The Internationale. Apparently he unexpectedly turned up a couple of weeks ago at a regular comedy night at a small Kitsilanno Beach club on a Tuesday night. The punters paid 7 bucks to see a couple of small time comics and ended up watching Robin Williams!

After the warehouse sale ended last Sunday, I began work at a safety products distribution company out in Richmond. I'll be working there for four weeks - answering phones, collecting mail, filing and reading books when it's quiet (don't worry mum, they told me to bring a book in for such slow periods). It takes 1 1/4 hours and 3 buses to travel to work but the job does pay 11 bucks an hour!

On the fun side of things, I've gone to a couple of sporting events in the last few weeks - a Canadian Football game and a baseball game. Here are my match reports:

CFL
BC Lions vs Calgary Stampeeders

Beer $7.50!

BEER $7.50!!!!

Baseball (I can't remember what the league is called)
Vancouver Canadians vs Tri-Cities

Beer much cheaper than football.
Cool mid 20thC venue - the Nat Bailey Stadium.

The game was pretty sweet. It gets more exciting the more beer you drink but I imagine I could quite happily watch a game sober. The between-inning entertainment was so, so lame. They had a tricycle race on grass (doesn't really work so well and competitors don't respond to crowd calls to fight, well my calls to fight anyway), a Subway giant sub making contest with huge foam subs & ingredients (just plain lame) and some thing where they blindfold a kid and the crowd yells directions for him to win something or other. The only good between inning event was after the 7th inning. The announcer says, "okay, it's that time again after the 7th where we all stretch and sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Everyone indeed stood up, stretched and sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game!!! - even those of who don't know all the words and blush at the idea of "root, root, rooting" for the home team.

As the beers kicked in our section of foreigners got a little more vocal in our support for the C's. Apparently, in Canada, you don't start chanting "bullshit" when a baseball umpire makes a bad decision - I maintain that the kids have to learn that kind of language sometime... The slow chanting of an opponents' name is acceptable, however. And although we couldn't get as offensive as one would at a PM's XI match, I thought we did our bit to help the local team to a 2-1 victory.

I hope everyone is doing well.

ps for those 3 of you interested in what bands I've seen in the last couple of months, I've seen the ...Trail of Dead with the (International) Noise Conspiracy, Stephen Malkmus (of Pavement), Grant Hart (of Husker Du), Aussie band Architecture in Helsinki (who sold out their show) and Modest Mouse.

pps in soldarity with my fellow workers of the world, here are the lyrics to There is Power in a Union and The Internationale.

There is Power in a Union

There is power in a factory, power in the land
Power in the hands of a worker
But it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand
There is power in a Union

Now the lessons of the past were all learned with workers' blood
The mistakes of the bosses we must pay for
From the cities and the farmlands to trenches full of mud
War has always been the bosses' way, sir

The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters from many far off lands
There is power in a Union

Now I long for the morning that they realise
Brutality and unjust laws can not defeat us
But who'll defend the workers who cannot organise
When the bosses send their lackies out to cheat us?

Money speaks for money, the Devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone
What a comfort to the widow, a light to the child
There is power in a Union

The Union forever defending our rights
Down with the blackleg, all workers unite
With our brothers and our sisters together we will standThere is power in a Union.

The Internationale (varient words in brackets)

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.

Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more

And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear

E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.