Current Mood: Civic

Happy Holiday Monday!

The holiday that occurs on the first Monday in August throughout most of Canada is a complete and utter farce. A non-holiday. We are celebrating absolutely nothing–but, like the good Canadians we are, we must overlay some kind of veneer of respectability on top of it, to overcome the WASP guilt of actually–gasp!–taking the day off. So, in various places, it’s named after the province (British Columbia Day, Saskatchewan Day, New Brunswick Day) and in Ontario, it changes by municipality to honour some local, long-dead colonist of wig-and-breeches vintage.

Being in Toronto, my non-celebration revolves around: Lord John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. I dunno what the hell he really did for us, but I think he was in the British Navy, and possibly repelled some Yanks from the northern shores of Lake Ontario. Oh, wait … it says here that he introduced “institutions such as the courts, trial by jury, English common law, freehold land tenure and [abolished] slavery in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the British Empire as a whole.” (source: Wikipedia — where else?)

Well, then … my hat’s off to ya’, Johnny! In your honour, I’ve:

• updated the Mindgames page with a new jigsaw puzzle and a new brainteaser. Try the jigsaw puzzle, they’re much easier on a holiday Monday;
• added a new widget from goodreads.com — this is a fabulous site for readers that I found just last night. You can click on the little pictures of book covers over there to the right in “On My Nightstand”, and you’ll be taken to plot summaries, readers’ reviews and rankings. You can engage in discussion groups about what appears to be a vast number of topics. And so far, it looks like there is something for every kind of reader, and in particular me. Meaning, the entire thing is NOT dominated by people whose only experience with literature is Harry Potter. What a relief. (I’ve never read it. I’m never going to read it, nor am I ever going to see any of the movies. Ever. I could, and perhaps sometime will, write an entire rant about Harry Potter and how it has contributed to the denigration of critical thinking among today’s youth. Later. It’s a holiday, for goodness sakes. I’m celebrating Johnny.)

My first eccentric musing of the day, in which I take you on a trip from Joshua Allen to Leonard Cohen, with stops at goodreads and Johnny Depp along the way, after the jump.