I usually scan the major daily headlines once a day or so, a habit I’ve had for years of which I’m sure there exist examples here on TCL.

Based on this, I was surprised to see one such daily running modern warfare scenarios between Canada and the U.S. “Haven’t seen this before,” I thought to myself at the time.

Upon further reflection, maybe I have.

It’s something I’d stumbled on a few years ago, a nearly decade-old comic series named “We Stand On Guard” which took much the same tone, albeit set ninety-nine years into the future (as of this year).

Spoiler alert: a good number of the rebellious Canadian “heroes” die and ostensibly take a large part of the water-deprived U.S. civilian population with them. Hooray!

Long story short, the artwork is great but the tale is bleak.

You ever get those existential pangs in your stomach? You know, the kind that make you question why you do things?

I look over at the side bar here on TCL and notice that I’ve been doing this, on and off, for almost six years now. At the beginning we were getting hits from all over the world, but now we’re seeing predominantly Canadian traffic. Just in time too.

As I’ve noted many times (and I’m not alone in this), most big-name media have little interest in really getting their hands dirty with really exposing what’s going on. When’s the last time you saw the front-page headline, “Government of Canada repeatedly violates the law and all of our Charter Rights“? — because it’s quite true. Or is the problem that this might cause people to start to ask too many uncomfortable questions? I can’t imagine that the government would allow such incendiary commentary about itself, no matter how true and urgent it is, so I suspect it’s a convoluted mix of pressures keeping media giants stupid and silent.

As with any large organization, of course it’s not true to say that everyone is in on keeping stark reality relegated to the OpEds, but by virtue of “I need that paycheque”, really, they kind of are.

Sometimes the media dissent is very public, as was the case at RT. While it’s absolutely true that RT — Russia Today– is deeply funded by, and works for Russia, it’s important to consider that this thinly-veiled propaganda network (as are all major news outlets, let’s be clear), is more free here than pretty much any western media outlet.

While RT is, understandably, free and open to criticize the west, we find that domestic big media openly rejects balanced discussion and trumpets western government propaganda while at the same time deriding critics and spreading even more misinformation and often just flat-out lies about their own country and rest of the world. Domestically, RT’s cousin is probably a lot like this too, so it’s not as if I’m saying that this sort of thing doesn’t happen elsewhere.

While it’s certainly reasonable if not accurate to say that a Russian-funded network is biased, it’s also true that it probably reports on way more, and in a far more balanced way than our so-called “balanced” domestic media. Even the word and subject of “propaganda”, most people are surprised to learn, was created by an American for the stated purpose of “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses” — for corporate/government benefit.

Most people are equally surprised to learn that many ghastly Nazi war criminals were repatriated and handsomely rewarded by the American government after the Second World War. America’s late entry into the conflict was hardly about liberating the world from the “Nazi menace”, protecting America, or even helping to protect people against the barbarity of things like the Concentration camps. In fact, American Capitalism directly contributed in many ways to the Jewish Holocaust and to Nazi Germany itself.

That war, like any other, was about one side’s dominance over another — one government cabal demanding that its subjects die en masse against another for their personal ideologies, which are typically not mass opinions, and which are often strikingly similar. The fact that no American president has answered for any of their obvious international war crimes at the ICC, the modern Nuremberg (or any court, for that matter), proves it was and is merely a mock court where the United States owns and operates a public podium to vilify the opposition.

The problem isn’t that the Nazis didn’t necessarily deserve it, it’s that similar and numerous international crimes have been perpetrated by world leaders since then, and to date only America’s enemies (and anyone standing in the way of their plans), have ever been brought before this ridiculous, contemptuous court of The Hague. The fact that America defends its crimes at the highest levels further demonstrates that these were never “crimes” in their eyes.

So to expect honesty, fairness, justice, balance, or even correct information from either government, mega-corporations, or behemoth media is an exercise in abject futility. That’s not what they’re about.

Consider, for example, how loudly new Bitcoin-related legislation is being trumpeted, one that affects all Canadians directly and is in everyone’s best interest to at least be aware of. Oh, you haven’t heard?

The news itself is misrepresented (“Bitcoin is now money in Canada!”), and I have yet to see even a passing mention of it in any of Canada’s main dailies. There is plenty of news on something that all Canadians are engaged in though: legalized prostitution.

Apparently, between your ability to legally fuck hookers and your ability to get timely, accurate government information, the hookers win pretty much exclusively.

Okay, so you don’t own any Bitcoin and couldn’t give a toss. Fair? So is it fair to say you frequent prostitutes way more, thereby making this news of greater importance? The media seems to think so.

More often than not, I find that I have to rely on non-Canadian news sources to discover what my own government is up to, and even then it takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff. This assumes I can find any information at all — the government regularly violates its own citizens’ Charter rights to just be aware of what’s being done directly to them.

To make matters worse, information from agencies like the Canada Revenue Agency is unclear and unhelpful, ensuring that no matter how good and honest (and legal), your intentions may be, they (the government) will find some way to find you in violation of some law or another, and summarily destroy you five ways from Sunday before you’ve had a chance to blink.

For example, the CRA treats Bitcoin transactions as barter, and they completely fail to define this according to their official web page: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it490/it490-e.html

Notice that this page is “archived” (is it even valid?), is over 30 years old (has it been updated since?), makes no mention of any related documents or information, and lists no useful information for any taxpayer. Stuff like this:

 In arm’s length transactions, where an amount must be brought into income or treated as proceeds of disposition of capital property, that amount is the price which the taxpayer would normally have charged a stranger for his services or would normally have sold his goods or property to a stranger.

So if I say I would’ve charged someone $0 for my services, is that acceptable? Apparently I’m left to my own devices when determining any such amount, the CRA doesn’t think it’s important to include any detail, but this is legally binding and will be used against me at their earliest opportunity.

Besides this, depending on who you speak to in the (at best) dysfunctional government, you will be provided with something resembling either the truth or truthy misinformation. What, you think it’s up to the government to provide you with accurate, honest, timely information?

In effect, the Canada Revenue Agency (and, really, all of government), often resort to citing documents like their “policies” to justify whatever overt crap they’re engaged in now. Policy is not law, has never been through what are claimed to be the rigours of the legislative process, and so on.

Some document that some agency drafted up as a public document is no more a valid law than anything I write on this blog. Of course, they won’t tell you this, and they will use whatever law-violating policies, sideways nods of approval, and sticky note directives to justify their actions. Regardless, the ultimate result is always that you obey now and you can take up your complaint with some dispassionate dick that works for them at some later time. Your objection will be noted and filed in a special bin along with discarded pizza boxes, rotting vegetables, and yesterday’s cigarette butts.

These are the same for government and the mega-corps who regularly make absurd, ridiculously illegal demands which are often simply accepted as the status quo. Unless some concerned citizen complains (and even then it may be swept aside), few in the government-corporate cabal even thinks to bat an eyelash. After all, when it comes to mass fraud or mass murder, they are entirely exempt from even a stern glance while it’s you and me who are forced at government gunpoint to pay for their crimes. Our tax money is even used to provide proxy support for human slavery. If it’s depraved, you can be sure that government and its corporate buddies are engaged in it.

Okay, I know, this is all disjointed — I can link to examples here or there, and I have plenty to back up my own situation — but does this theory accurately model what corpo-government is?

I say yes. In fact, this model accurately explains most if not all of government’s decisions, corporate maneuverings, and so on. Others have made similar observations.

That’s why your cell phone costs so much. That’s why your cable service costs so much. That’s why the state demands that you must go through a bank (at your loss / their profit), to deal with government and why they refuse to accept their own legal tender. In other words, they have no interest in putting their obvious activities to scrutiny, they want to maintain them; they have no accountability to you or me, they work for the rich and powerful.

Why does the government claim “banks are too big to fail”? See above.

Why does the government claim that some drug use is so illegal that you should be locked up for engaging in it, that seat belts are legally mandatory “for your own good” while at the same time happily continuing to allow the sale of cigarettes, a product that exists for no other purpose than to bring about your untimely death along with a slew of awful health problems, massive costs to the healthcare system, etc.? See above.

Whatever argument they make about “protecting public health”, or trying to keep down “systemic healthcare costs”, etc. are all horrendously ridiculous — they’re there to protect the big-money people: tobacco, drug cartels, police enforcement, etc. Through the wonders of taxes, we pay for this obvious hypocrisy while they work to maintain it. You and I will barely benefit from what they take from us.

This seems nonsensical, the result of a broken and dysfunctional system or ineptitude, but the fact that example after example shows benefits and rights predominantly skewed toward them proves that this is not the case. This is purposeful, planned, and prepared, often over the course of many years or even decades. As murder, it would be in the first degree.

It explains why Harper is able to be so openly hypocritical about things like China’s human rights record while importing those very same abuses directly into Canada under the tired old lie of “economic prosperity”. If he’s a bit of a sociopath who genuinely doesn’t give a toss about his fellow human beings, it explains why he’s able to lie so easily, be publicly hypocritical by claiming he’s doing it for your benefit (when in reality, it’s really not), and so on. As messed up as that may seem, it not only makes complete sense but fits as a model for much of what comes out of the corpo-government establishment. Seriously, take any emotion out of it and weigh all of the available facts dispassionately — I believe you’ll come to the same conclusions I have. Then you can get upset again.

This model also explains pretty much any other form of government, including why they all seem to resemble each other so much. Whether state power is some form of National Socialism, Communism, or Capitalism, the end result is always the same: human misery, suffering, death, slavery, destruction, and everything else dark and evil. Some hang in there in an idealized form longer than others, but eventually the badness creeps in. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it mostly government that wages war? Isn’t it government that incarcerates people? Isn’t it government that claims the exclusive right to violence? That government may not always be legitimate, but it’s in power so…

Along the way they always have little golden moments, examples of how it all might’ve worked if yet again we didn’t have a system that could be usurped by corruption and evil. The utopian ideals weren’t bad, it’s practical government that’s the main problem. If it weren’t susceptible to corruption, it would probably work okay (still probably way too inefficient though).

Government is also natural and, in my opinion, unavoidable. Some sort of government will just happen, because I really believe that this is our natural idealized state. If it only worked as well as we imagine.

People will naturally organize and, yes, it makes sense to cede some responsibility over some things to others. Those others should ideally be good at those things for which they’re responsible, and equally ideally be civic-minded — working for the people under their care, not their jurisdiction. A view of dominance or superiority over those people is the wrong attitude; seeking to extend centralized power rather than distribute individual power is the wrong approach.

Of course, there will always be people who assume the wrong attitude and take the wrong approach.

The idea that corruption will ever truly be distinguished is childish. The belief that power such as that wielded by governments, mega-corps, or any large institution won’t be attractive to said corruption is equally childish. The answer must therefore be to put a democratic and unassailable clampdown on any such organizations, providing near-instant checks and balances by and for the people, not more corruptible agencies and organizations. The moment that power or influence start to amass, they should receive extra scrutiny. If such collectivized power is truly good for its democracy, it will be directly supported by that very democracy. If not, it will be ejected.

The voting systems involved are something I discussed earlier, but the part about people being in the dark is something I haven’t touched on yet, at least not directly.

That introduction at the beginning of this post where I mention how long TCL’s been online, that isn’t to boast, it’s intended to demonstrate that focus and perseverance can make a difference. That Canadian traffic I mentioned is regularly in the four-digit, sometimes five-digit casual-visits-per-day range (not taking into account any external feeds), and I have to believe that among those visitors has to be one or two who are now aware of something they weren’t before.

What I’m trying to get at is that independent media — the blogs, the community newsletters, the guys on the street corners handing out pamphlets — these are the new gatekeepers of information. Much as my own experiences with the Canada Revenue Agency mean that I’m probably more knowledgeable in the ways of the agency than many tax lawyers, I’m finding more and more that true subject matter experts are those who took it upon themselves to educate themselves. Sure as shit isn’t some of the morons the media parades around whenever they need a talking head to fill up some space.

I share my insights and advice for free right here and elsewhere on the web; lawyers charge you an arm and a leg for access to laws and regulations that you are legally required to understand yourself. It’s perverse.

Yeah, I sometimes change my opinions; and what’s wrong with that? That means that I continue to weigh the available evidence and I’m not closed to new information. Sometimes that information tips my opinion in a different direction, which is exactly what one wants from reasoned discussions. But when those discussions are entirely absent, as they are in government, big media, and mega-corps, we are left with – at best – one very biased side of the story.

You’ve probably already guessed at where I’m heading with this — I really believe we all need to be our own producers and distributors, specialists in one field or two, focused, determined, passionate, willing to listen to detractors (sometimes they make some really good points!), and dedicated to sharing with each other. The freedoms of information that are under siege by corpo-government, freedoms that are often a matter of life and death, must be something that we have to undertake for ourselves. There are, of course, some things that really should be kept secret; but for the rest, what corpo-government won’t share, professionals and knowledgeable individuals can (and should).

Edward Snowden went somewhat above and beyond, but considering that to date no harm has been proven (glassy-eyed government supporters simply gobbing off via propagandized media is not proof), except to the trust and reputation of a government agency, it seems that we can entrust such decisions to individuals.

If they transgress, they should have the opportunity to be judged fairly by as wide a base of people as possible. I’m not expecting any waving of magic wands, but this is the direction we should be heading, not away from it.

That government often publicly proclaims the triumph of profits over human life is, to me, reason enough to stand in public opposition. I may be misguided, I may have it all wrong, someone might school me something fierce tomorrow, but I know that no matter what I was standing up for the right things for the right reasons. I’m willing to make such mistakes again because I know that they’re the signs of strength not weakness, adaptivity not rigidity, increased clarity not opacity, and a willingness to get at the truth — not reject it.

Some people say the truth is malleable, that it’s a matter of perspective, that it’s all about context.

This is not correct.

Truth is obscured by these things. It is very real and very much in existence beneath all the bullshit and lies and garbage. Government & friends seek to bury inconvenient truths beneath their “context” and it’s up to us to unearth it again for everyone. But even if political discourse isn’t for you, and even if you find that all you have to share is a really effective method of getting red wine out of white clothing, that’s the kind of thing that empowers individuals — so it’s a good thing!

Though there’s still no indication of this on their website, The Grid TO’s last issue will be tomorrow:

What makes this sad news is what appears between the lines:

“The media landscape continues to be impossible for a start up,” he said, calling The Grid a victim of timing.

Launched on May 12, 2011, three years after the Great Recession, Turnbull said, “nobody anticipated how dramatically print and online revenue would continue to decline after 2009. We all thought it would be a gentle landing. Instead, it’s been violent.

After everything that happened this week, I’m sure that Newstalk 1010 would’ve had some kick-ass ratings with this Sunday’s “The City”, a.k.a. the RoFoDoFo radio show.

Alas, it seems that is not to be — the Ford brothers have decided to pull the plug, which probably came as unhappy news to Newstalk who were still expecting the show to go ahead as planned. I was certainly looking forward to it, if only to hurl insults at the radio.

The station pointed out that the Ford brothers are still very welcome “as guests”, which suggested that something final was involved behind the scenes. In other words, it’s not looking like the RoFoDoFo Show will be back any time soon :(

If, for some bizarre reason, you happen to read this blog and you’re a Ford supporter, first off, kudos for making it this far without losing your shit (or at least keeping it out of my face). Second, I’m going to propose that we have something in common.

I’m totally serious.

Assuming that the Ontario Press Council had ruled against the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail, etc., would you agree that the Council should have some real teeth to go after infractions? Maybe monetary penalties? Maybe something tougher? Well me too.

Oh, I think the ruling was right on, and I would’ve been surprised at anything else. But I would want these oversight agencies, while being diligently transparent, to have the power to affect and mandate some actual change. Change like holding Ford to account, for starters.

We don’t have to get all medieval on anyone’s ass, just get a little closer to what they do in the private sector, as Ford and friends so wisely suggest.

You may have heard the term “paywall” — it’s when a web site limits the amount of content that you can see unless you sign up with them for a fee. This typically happens after you’ve viewed a predetermined number of articles, and that number is reset on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (depending on their setup).

All of Toronto’s major daily newspapers have put up paywalls, including the Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Globe and Mail, and National Post.

And they’re all just awful.

Much hooplah was made about a developer that bypassed the New York Times paywall a couple of years ago, yet little (if anything), has changed since. David Hayes, the developer who cracked the NYT paywall, claims it took him a lunch hour to write the bookmarklet that bypasses the newspaper’s paywall.

A couple of days ago when Sarah was hitting the Star’s paywall I decided to take a quick look at what would be involved in getting around it. Twenty minuted later I had bypassed the paywalls of all of the above papers, including the New York Times (before I’d read anything on the topic, I should add). It took another 30 minutes to produce a small, generic site script that makes the dewalling process just a little easier and faster.

I’m not blowing my own horn here. I’m no super genius and this “hack” could be accomplished by anyone with rudimentary web development experience. In fact, both Hayes’ code and my own are almost unnecessary; with a few extra steps, you can bypass these paywalls with no extra software or crazy hacking skills. Chances are good that you already know how to do it.

I can see some extra benefit to a utility that would assist in automatically navigating the paywall beyond the first article — so that you could click on the web page links instead of having to load article by article — but this was more of a proof-of-concept thing, and the proven concept is that paywalls are unfortunately simple to defeat.

I’m not currently posting my dewalling code publicly. However, I will detail why this problem exists, and what the papers can do to fix it (if you’re from any of the aforementioned newspapers, feel free to give me a shout).

So Why Are Developers So Dumb?

I don’t think they are :) And to be honest, I totally get why things were done this way.

When a typical web browser grabs the web page you request, it sends out some limited information for the listening web server on the other end. This includes listing the browser’s capabilities (what kinds of content it can handle), specifying what it’s looking for (usually the URL of the web page), and cookies.

The receiving web server has that, plus an IP address, to identify an individual reader over the internet.

The IP isn’t unique to you, it’s unique to your internet connection which may be shared by many devices (like the the internet box thing, a.k.a. residential router, in your home). Browser capabilities can’t be assumed to be unique, again, because of that shared internet connection thing. And cookies can be cleared with the click of a button.

Given these limitations, how are web developers supposed to identify unique readers while ensuring that other legitimate readers can still access the site?

Better to err on the side of caution and just use cookies, sometimes along with IP, rather than accidentally block readers. Paywalls are necessarily leaky.

So What Should They Do?

This is a tough one.

It’s tough because it puts the limitations of technology up against corporate culture and profits.

What this does is really call up the need for reflection on how the papers profit from their content, and to me it’s an all-or-nothing proposition.

One option is for the papers go all-in and make certain articles, sections, features, etc. fully pay-only. That means having to log in to access them, otherwise it’s an excerpt, or some sort of teaser, to the general hoi poloi.

Another, more Zuckerbergian option is to offer access in exchange for personal information. I’m not necessarily averse to this, but it also requires a content lock-down of some sort.

The current paywall solution is somewhere just above both of these, being easily circumventable but still acting as a deterrent to the average web user.

I would gravitate towards the nothing end of the scale with a nag solution where on every X views of an article, the non-subscribed reader receives a temporary pop-over message suggesting that they subscribe. IP address on the server could be used to determine how often to do this — it seems unlikely that shared connections would all be connecting to the same content source, and even so, all it would produce is a nagging reminder that people really do like the content. It’d be sort of like a local rating system with an option to subscribe.

Beyond that, there could be a mild nag every time, for non-subscribed users. This starts to get close to being just plain old fashioned inline advertising, which would be the next solution before nothing at all (full, free access to everything).

Of course, since the papers have full control over their sites, there’s theoretically no limit on how inline advertising could be accomplished. There’s the always classy Toronto Sun wall-to-wall background…

…but if that’s not the newspaper’s style, I’m sure there are other and more elegant approaches.

Ultimately, the decision is whether or not to lock away content. Logins are reliable, which is why they’re so popular. Identifying users without them is inherently unreliable. Either content can be locked away completely, or it should be assumed to be open to everyone. The seemingly in-between paywall solution is actually in the second family by reasons which I’ve explained earlier.

Astute web developers will point out that other mechanisms are available to bypass some of these limitations: Flash shared objects, or persistent browser databases. While these are a step beyond simple cookies, both are easily deleted as part of most modern browers’ cache management. In other words, they’re not much better than anything mentioned so far.

Browsers impose these limits to provide a level of privacy protection, and without requiring readers to manually enter additional information like a username and password, it’s tough if not impossible to pinpoint an individual human being. Without this exactness, any paywall or content blocking system is bound to be flimsy. The solution, at least at the present time, won’t involve technology; it’ll require high-level decisions about what will be locked away from the general public and what won’t.

The mainstream media are barely naming Bill S-7 (to be debated by MPPs today), and good luck finding anyone in the industry who will provide an accurate list of all the draconian, tyrannical measures that Harper is trying to institute in his “but it’s for terrorism!” bill.

Apparently, the fact that Canadians are to be subjected to the following measures doesn’t warrant so much as a passing comment from most in the news industry (though you can find an occasional aside):

• People may be put under “preventive arrest” for up to three days.
• The “preventive arrest” may be due to an alleged association with a “terrorist” (which may include everything from environmentalists to anyone critical of the government), alleged knowledge of a “terrorist” or their dealings, or — my favourite — being suspected of future involvement with terrorists.
• As with all good Kafkaesque schemes, those arrested are not allowed to know the details of their arrest or know any of the evidence against them.
• Those arrested must stand before an “investigative hearing”.
• A judge can jail those arrested for up to year if they don’t enter into recognizance, which is a fancy term for a conditional release — you have to appear regularly before a court, may have to wear a tracking device, etc.
• Such arrests can occur without any charges being laid. In other words, they don’t really even need a good reason, just that something didn’t seem right about the person.
• Any evidence that is used against the arrested person (which, of course, they are not allowed to know anything about), can be obtained from foreign sources or through torture.
• These changes would become part of the Criminal Code of Canada — everyone would be subject to them.

Instead of fully laying out all of these incredibly corrupting and corruptible powers for all Canadians to judge, we have moist bags of flesh like CP24’s former cop-turned-TV-schill Cam Wooley and other “specialists” (most of whom were weather or traffic “specialists” this time last year), leaving out crucial information and instead saying simply that S-7 provides needed new police powers and creates …

“… new offenses for Canadians who become radicalized … with the permission of the Attorney General, [police] can bring a person before a judge and have hearings. They’ll be able to have a lawyer, that sort of thing, but a judge can compel someone to give information on terrorism. Police can, apparently through a well safeguarded process book recognizance and conditions through the courts on someone to prevent terrorism.”

And in 30 seconds, the piddling report is over, followed shortly afterwards by an in-depth, five-minute-long interview with “cultural icon” Kat Con D about her new book. The same reporter who found S-7 “fascinating” now gushingly describes the book as a veritable “work of art”; clearly, this is what really matters!

The idea that Ford would easily win a re-election if ousted was making the rounds before the judgement was announced. And, of course, every fool pundit and their dog was claiming that, for sure, he would be re-elected. Hands down. No doubt.

After all, the people of Toronto love Ford and think he’s doing just a great job with everything!

Sites like Canada.com have dedicated more than one column to propping up a man who, by his own admission, can barely tie his own shoelaces. The National Post typically marches in lock-step with the Ford dictatorship, so they’re not shy about showing their own support. And, of course, the Toronto Sun might as well be called The Rob Ford Daily, though that future is uncertain since he recently turned on them.

Yup, it’s pretty much a done deal … if Ford runs again, he’s a shoe-in and his ouster will just be  a huge waste of time! Easy!

Toronto Sun poll (November 26)

Toronto Star poll (October)

Toronto Star poll (November 26)

Metro News poll (November 26)

Globe and Mail poll (November 26)

Global Toronto poll (November 26)

Globe and Mail poll (October)

Hamilton Spectator poll (November 26)

So…yeah…there you go; when it comes to Ford, the bullshit just won’t stop. The media lackeys … erm … pundits, may not have learned that lesson, but at least it looks like the voters have.

When people ask me where my parents live, my answer is almost always invariably met with a blank stare.

“Elliot Lake?”

“Yeah,” I’d reply. “You know where Sudbury is?”

“Ummm, kinda. Do people go skiing there?”

“Yeah, I suppose. More likely they go to mine minerals there. Iron, copper, that kinda thing.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, you go to Sudbury, then head an additional two hours or so north and west. That’s Elliot Lake.”

“How far is that from Toronto?”

“I guess anywhere from seven to nine hours depending on traffic and weather.”

*surprised whistle* “Is it nice?”

“Yeah. If you like bears and hiking. In the winter they do a lot of ice fishing.”

“Sounds like cottage country. Muskokas.”

“Yeah … no. It’s pretty wild up there. Civilization is mostly a strip-mall type deal named the Algo Centre. Beyond that, it’s all trees and lakes and logging roads.”

Basically, people have never heard of it let alone be able to place it on a map. That is, of course, until recently. Now most Ontarians have at least a rough idea of where the infamous mall is located.

My parents are still trying to convince me to move to their community — apparently uranium mining is about to take off again and there are going to be jobs galore!

That’s a definite maybe on that one.