In 2021, I was in front of the US Consulate in Toronto. And there was a small plaque that was surprisingly moving to me.
As the United States marks the 10th anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, in the name of all Americans, Consulate General Toronto thanks the people of Ontario for their support and generosity following the worst attack on American since WWII.
The nearly 3,000 innocent victims from ninety countries included twenty-four Canadians, our friends and family in Ontario, and all of Canada, were with us in our darkest hour, as you always are. Neither terrorism nor any adversity can conquer free peoples, and we are grateful to stand with the best neighbours any nation ever had.
As together we look back, together we go forward.
We are eternally grateful.
September 11, 2011
Reading the text of this now is just crushing to me. I’m sad that “eternal” gratitude seems to have lasted less than 15 years since the plaque was revealed.
Today is my last day as a tenured full professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
This is going to be a tough post to write.
Since starting at The University of Texas Pan-American, I’ve made no secret to people here that I would love a reason to move back to Canada. But it’s always been a low-level, “Wouldn’t it be nice if...?” wish. I had been looking and occasionally applying for years.
But this year, a new word kept forming in my head:
“Flee.”
I kept wondering throughout the summer, “Is it time to go, regardless of the job I have now?” At one point, I took out a lot of cash from my bank account in case I needed to leave immediately. The sort of money that many people call the “Fuck you” fund in case they have to leave an abusive partner. Things have felt that bad.
Living in the United States in 2020 has broken my belief in this country.
And I don’t think an election and a vaccine is going to fix it.
It’s not just that the current administration is awful (though it surely
is). It’s how so many people have embraced the awfulness.
It’s about how the US can’t address its chronic problems. The COVID-19 pandemic didn’t create these problems but it sure as hell threw them into sharp relief.
Over at the Better Posters blog, I’ve been compiling pictures of 2020 events in the United States. They are probably more powerful than anything I might write.
I accepted a new position at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. And doing so was the most brutal professional decision of my life. That is the only word I have to describe the decision. Brutal. There was some crying on the couch with me holding my wife in one arm and my dog in the other arm.
Giving up a tenured professorship? I mean, that is the thing that you are just not supposed to do. I like being a professor. I like doing research. I still have questions about those sand crabs and crayfish that I want to answer. It hurts to think that for all I know, I’ll never be able to hold one of those little Lepidopa in my hands again. I like my department colleagues. I like the students I work with.
But this job offer seemed to come at a “now or never” moment. Between taking the time to focus writing the Better Posters book, followed by a global COVID-19 pandemic making both field and lab research difficult, my biological data collection had practically ground to a halt. It looks like 2020 may be the first year in well over a decade that I haven’t published something. I’m not abandoning projects in mid-stream. I don’t have any graduate students who are counting on me to finish their degree. No mortgage I’m stuck with.
McMaster is teaching remotely this semester, so I will still be in Texas for a while at least. But the plan is to move back to Canada. I am anticipating massive reverse culture shock. I know that Canada is not perfect, but Canada at least looks like functioning democracy and not like a collapsing empire.
I am not sure what this move will mean for me professionally. But I am convinced that this move will result in a better quality of life for me, my wife, and family. I want to look after myself and them. This is not just me wanting to move home.
But I am not kidding myself. There is a big leap of faith here. And in any leap of faith, you have to ask what do you believe? Do I believe I am smart enough and hard working enough and resilient enough to make this okay for me, my wife, and family?
Leaps of faith are scary.
As I mentioned a while ago, I have recently rediscovered the music of The Alarm and Big Country (both bands connected by frontman Mike Peters). And as so often happens, music helps.
There will be hurt, there will be pain
There will be a lot of tears, a lot of joy
What we have left cannot be destroyed
Time to move on, to let it bleed
What will be, will be
There is a land, there is a sea
There is a place where we can be
There is a hope, there is a dream
Mike Peters: “Sometimes, you’ve got to make the journey. We have to make that leap of faith. We have to cross that line to embrace what is happening now. We’ve crossed that line, and this is a song that lyrically encourages everybody to cross that line. And it acknowledges, ‘Yes, it’s gonna be a tough journey. There will be pain, there will be joy, there will be tears.’ Everything associated in life comes into making this particular journey.”
I moved from Canada to the United States in August of 2001 to take a job at what was at the time The University of Texas Pan American.
I have many advantages. I’m from a nation that the United States considers “friendly,” I am white, I am a man, I am a native English speaker, I am a skilled professional in a respected occupation.
And after the events of the last few days (the so called “Muslim ban”), I don’t want to go out of the United States for fear I might not be allowed back in. Or that something bad might happen. I’m nervous about driving to San Antonio, because there’s a Border Patrol checkpoint on the highway I have to drive through.
The executive order isn’t directed at me in any way, but I have eyes. I saw how quickly the ground truth changed. I saw the heavy handed implementation. Even if the “Muslim ban” is ultimately overturned, I saw the needless turmoil it caused. Damn right I’m nervous. I’m fine today, but will I be tomorrow? Next week? The week after that?
I can only imagine the fear and stress that other immigrants must feel, particularly those who don’t have my laundry list of advantages.
I would like to believe the university and the United States have benefited from my presence. In general, the United States has benefited from immigrants, and especially in science. The Manhattan and Apollo projects probably wouldn’t have even started without immigrants. Michio Kaku has certainly argued that the United States has been the preeminent leader in science for decades because of immigrants.
I thank those American citizens who have stood up against the terrible “Muslim ban” executive order and voiced their support for immigrants. And I support my fellow immigrants.
I normally tell people that I hate football. But homesickness makes you do funny things, so I tuned into the last quarter of the Grey Cup last night.
I was rewarded.
At some point, when the lead was still pretty big for Ottawa, one of the commentators said a CFL motto was, “No lead is safe.” I sort of snickered when I heard that. I would not have believed Calgary could score two touchdowns is less than two minutes, with the last coming in with something like 20 seconds left on the clock to force the game into overtime. What a thriller! At that point, it didn’t matter who won, you just had a great championship game.
The Redblacks are new, formed after I moved to the US. I looked a few things up about the team while the game was in progress. When I went to Wikipedia, I wondered if I was on some sort of time delay, because the entry said, “In the 104th Grey Cup, the Redblacks brought the Grey Cup back to Ottawa for the first time in 40 years.” What...? But... but... the game was still going.
When I cam back a few minutes later to get a screen grab of the jumped gun, I saw someone already had some fun with Wikipedia (click to enlarge):
Of course, Redblacks had the last laugh on the irate wiki contributor, pulling off the overtime win.
Even this football hater can’t resist an underdog victory. Congratulations to the Redblacks on their first Grey Cup win!
I don’t think it matters what age they are: some people wonder if they can contribute. Young people wonder if they’ll get their shot. Mid-career people wonder if they’re making an impact. Older people wonder if they’ve still got it.
Some people do their best work early. Einstein’s “miracle year” was when he was about 26. As Tom Lehrer once said of another musician:
It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
Then you have slow burners like Charles Darwin, who published the On the Origin of Species when he was 50.
I think you look for those examples of people who have success at different ages to convince yourself that there’s still a shot for you to stay creative and productive and vital.
So I was amazed and pleased to learn that last night, the Polaris music prize for independent Canadian music was won by a 74 year old. It was Buffy Sainte-Marie, whose music career started before I was even born.
Holy crap.
Frankly, I was never familiar with her music from when I was younger. I was never a fan. But I defy anyone to listen to “Power in the Blood” and tell me that they’d have guessed that song came from a septuagenarian. It’s got as much punch, nerve, and energy as songs by artists a third her age. It freakin’ rocks.
Huge congratulations to Buffy!
Update, 7 March 2025: The Polaris Prize has been rescinded from Buffy Sainte-Marie after she returned her Order of Canada and descibed herself as American. This is the latest in a long series of moves that arose from investigations into her claimed but falsified First Nations heritage.
I’ve taken over the @PeopleOfCanada Twitter account for the week!
I’ll be tweeting about maintaining a Canadian identity while living out of the country, a little science, and a maybe little more personal stuff than I normally get to at my usual Twitter account.
I went to Matthew Halton High School in Pincher Creek, Alberta. I had never heard the name “Matthew Halton” before attending the school, though while there I learned he was a journalist in World War II. But that was about all I learned.
If I remember right, I even won an award named after Matthew Halton for promise in writing. I took high school awards off my CV years and years ago, so I can’t remember what year I won, or even if I did, for that matter. (Update: My parents confirmed that I did win this award in Grade 12, back in – ugh – 1984!)
The interview has got all sorts of great little details, such as that Matthew Halton’s father was the man who cleaned Pincher Creek’s toilets, and Matthew Halton was teased in school as “Shithouse Halton.”
Then there’s the fight between Halton and Ernest Hemingway over Hemingway’s sex scenes...
The comics character has been rebooted into an online animated series, and I honestly think this may be the incarnation of the character I’ve enjoyed the most so far. The voice acting is excellent and the animation is lively. Check out Episode 1 from the Captain Canuck website!
(Edit, 20 August 2022: The Captain Canuck website is now retired, and the video is no longer there. The new publisher is for Captain Canuck is Lev Gleason Publications.)
I’m proud to have supported this project on IndieGoGo!
I don’t always listen to movie soundtracks while I’m working. Sometimes, I listen to the CBC Radio 3 podcast. On a recent episode, host Grant Lawrence interviewed Gene Simmons of KISS. Simmons suggested a new Radio 3 logo, which got mocked up like this:
They asked for feedback about the logo, so I sent an email, which got read on this week’s podcast (starts at 23:26). Several other listeners responded much more to the source of the suggestion than the logo itself, methinks.
For the record, I saw the logo above on the podcast, which I like much more than this one on the Radio 3 website:
I think the grays help make the top one a bit more edgy, like street art; the bright colours on the bottom one look a little too cartoony.
You can find a history of CBC logos here. I don’t remember the butterfly...
There’s not another way to put it. Not just for the agency, but for our discipline worldwide.
The Current has a good discussion on this, although I have to correct Wendy Robbins, who said (13:37 into the segment; emphasis added):
It's interesting, they're trying to find Nobel quality people, right? If you look at the history of the Nobel prizes, it's very interesting there, and I'm sure a lot has to do with two things: with more women going into different areas, but also with women’s work being recognized. You know, early on, Marie Curie won two Nobel prizes, right? Rosalind Franklin never did, because Watson and Crick took her research and they became famous for the double helix, but it was her work.
Rosalind Franklin died from cancer in 1958, and the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA structure was not awarded until 1962 (which Watson and Crick shared with Maurice Wilkins). The Nobel prize rules forbids posthumous awards, so Franklin could not have won the Nobel Prize. Whether she might have won it had she lived is anyone’s guess.
Much has been written about Franklin’s treatment by her colleagues, and there’s every reason to think much of it was unfair. Nevertheless, it’s wrong to say she didn’t win the Nobel prize because of it.
More comment by Canadian science show host Bob McDonald.
Additional: The Current revisits Rosalind Franklin’s legacy, with an interview with Brenda Maddox, who wrote the biography Rosalind Franklin, The Dark Lady of DNA.
Randy Olson often says scientists are handicapped by their blind obsession with the truth.
Rory Sutherland puts it this way:
And this shows that engineers, medical people, scientific people, have an obsession with solving the problems of reality. When actually most problems, once you reach a basic level of wealth in society, most problems are actually problems of perception.
I love that quote, but you should do yourself a favour and watch his whole TED talk. It is brilliant.
And I’m not just saying that because it features Shreddies. (Homesickness trigger.)
One of the down sides to having lived in different parts of the world is that you find certain foods that you love. And then you move, and you can’t get them any more. Or only with great difficulty.
Red Rose Tea turned this problem into a virtue in their commercials, with a tag line that many Canadians know:
“Only in Canada, you say? Pity...”
This morning I was shocked when I realized there was something on the shelf I hadn’t seen in eight to ten years...
I know we haven’t seen each other but once in the last eight years. And that one time was really because of business, so hardly counts. But I wanted you to know that you’re in my thoughts all the time throughout the year, not just on days like today when “Happy Canada Day” is trending on Twitter. I’d come back in a heartbeat if you had a professional opportunity for me.
Happy birthday.
Here’s to fellow Canadians who, for whatever reason, are living elsewhere in the world.
Today is the 150th anniversary of the first scientific announcement of the theory of natural selection, as described here. Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace had a jointly-authored paper read the Linnean Society of London.
The writer of the blog post speculates on why the contribution of Alfred Wallace has been overshadowed by Charles Darwin. Surprisingly, to me, it doesn't mention what seem to be pertinent facts.
First, Darwin had a much more highly developed theory. He had spent decades accumulating evidence and working through arguments and dealing with difficulties. Wallace had the idea pretty much full blown in a fever dream, and freely admitted that Darwin had ideas he'd never even thought of.
Second, Wallace got very interested in spiritualism later in his life. Certainly, there was a lot of interest in that generally in his time. While interest in the supernatural certainly doesn't disqualify someone from becoming a scientific icon -- cf. Isaac Newton's interest in alchemy -- it really doesn't help Wallace's reputation as a scientist or intellectual figure.
Be that as it may, less than a decade after Darwin and Wallace's paper in the Linnean Society of London announced one of the best scientific ideas of all time, a group of people had another great idea:
The confederation of Canada.
Happy evolutionary sesquicentennial and happy Canada Day.
The exuberant among you may now toot your party favours.
Formenti F, Minetti, AE. 2007. Human locomotion on ice: the evolution of ice-skating energetics through history. The Journal of Experimental Biology210: 1825-1833.
Tying together Canada Day and the current summer blockbuster release and my last blog entry, it seems fitting to remember that one of the co-creators of what is now seen as a quintessentially American character -- Superman -- has a Canadian connection. Joe Shuster, the artist who created Superman's look, was born in Toronto. Clark Kent's newspaper was originally not the Daily Planet, but the Daily Star, a name it shared with a Toronto newspaper. And the Fortress of Solitude lies within Canadian waters, I'm sure.
I might go see Superman Returns to celebrate Canada Day this weekend. It might be appropriate, even though in another twist of globalization, it was filmed in... Australia? At least the television series Smallville is filmed in the lower British Columbia mainland.
