I find the current mayoral race in Toronto fairly depressing and I think the problem has more to do with the state of municipal politics in general than with the current crop of less than inspiring candidates.

For me, the largest issue is transportation of all forms. People (who don't actually live in Toronto) complain an awful lot about how terrible it is to drive here. The reason of course is that there is limited space for roads in the downtown core of any city and that the only way to alleviate the problem is to decrease the number of cars using those roads. The obvious way to solve this problem is through promotion of alternative means of transportation such as walking, biking and most importantly public transit.

But that's where it all falls apart. City council has enough power and funds to tackle bike lanes and neighbourhood walk-ability issues but they honestly don't have much hope on public transit.

The whole "Transit City" program, while better than nothing, isn't anywhere close to sufficient in addressing the current and future needs of Toronto. As a city we really need several new subway lines in addition to extensions and upgrades to the existing lines. Such projects are expensive and challenging and require long term plans that extend beyond the average term of any particular mayor. Most importantly, they are not financially feasible without significant guaranteed investment from the federal and provincial governments.

Such investment will never come though (despite the fact that cities all over the world get transit funding from higher levels of government), as it is political suicide to spend large amounts of money on things that only help Toronto. Over 10% of all Canadians live in the GTA but the national sport of Toronto-hating forver holds the city back from reaching its goal of becoming "world-class."

And so, since none of the candidates can really do anything to properly solve the issue that I feel is most important to the city, I find the whole election to be rather redundant. It would suck if Rob Ford won since he'd probably do a bunch of embarrassing and stupid things, but if someone else wins it's not like they'll be able to create new subways out of nothing (and yes I know Rob Ford likes subways, but his plans are ludicrously unrealistic in that regard).

Thus, I'm seriously tempted to ditch the strategic voting thing and vote for Joe "Pants" Pantalone as he is the only candidate who seems to say positive things about the city as it is now. George and Rob can only seem to talk about how terrible it is and it makes me think they don't actually like being here. In particular, Joe acknowledges that the city budgets are actually in fairly decent shape, especially compared to other cities around the world. All the "gravy train" business is mostly populist nonsense meant to stir up people who don't normally pay attention except when they see their tax bill (which is actually lower in Toronto than all the suburbs around, but whatever, facts are meaningless).

I just got back from the first and only event I'll be attending as part of Toronto Beer Week which was "A Night With Black Oak Brewery" at Bar Volo. It was a great event with nine Black Oak brews on tap and the Brew Master and Owner of Black Oak present. My favourite beer of the night was by far the Double IPA (!!!), "Ten Bitter Years." I don't even know how to describe it, it was just so good! Also fun was that the Brew Master came and chatted with us for ten minutes or so about his beers and about beers from around the world. I love living in a city that lets me enjoy events like this.

For anyone who missed my Facebook update, we bought a house! It's just off St. Clair West between Lansdowne and Keele and it's a little semi-detached, 3 bedroom place with a nicely finished basement and a big deck. We're quite excited/happy and can't wait to move in (which will happen on December 18).

Not sure how long this link will work, but for now check out the virtual tour for pictures.

I enjoy beer quite a bit and for the last couple years I've made an effort to try lots of new and interesting styles and brands. In particular I've developed a great fondness for local craft brewed beer; a scene which is exploding all across North America. Ontario has a number of truly amazing small breweries and the LCBO has become more flexible lately and has taken to featuring those breweries on a regular basis. Unfortunately, due to the strange rules of liquor distribution in this country, the LCBO rarely gets anything from outside of Ontario. So it is quite difficult to access craft beers from the US or even from other provinces in Canada.

Sometimes though, the LCBO works something out with a particular brewery from out of province and we get a chance to buy wonderful beers from other regions. This fall, the LCBO is featuring the Quebec-based brewery Dieu du Ciel. I've tried four different beers from them and my favourite by far is their American IPA "Corne du Diable."

IPAs (India Pale Ales) seem to be extremely popular among people who, like me, seek out new and interesting beers (many would call such people beer snobs and personally I'm OK with that...I'd rather drink fewer delicious beers than many average beers). I've never been able to really get into IPAs though, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is because the style has such a large amount of variation and I've just never had one I liked. Just a quick aside, the definition of what makes an IPA is a hotly debated topic among beer aficionados. I won't step into that argument here except to say that if all you've had is Alexander Kieth's then you've never had an IPA.

Now that I've tried Corne du Diable, I am reevaluating my attitudes towards IPAs because it is just so good. It's flavourful with a good amount of bitterness and it's also super dry in a way that reminds me of dry white wine. I have three more bottles in my fridge and I'm thinking I'll have to pick up some more before it's all gone. Either that or start making regular trips to Montreal!

Toronto is electing a new mayor soon and it's causing me stress. Something that has been bothering me about politics lately is the apparent desire of many people to have candidates that are "down-to-earth" and "just like me." For example, Sarah Palin in the US and Rob Ford in the current Toronto mayoral race. For a converse example, see criticism of Stephan Dion or Michael Ignatieff for being too smart/educated. Also noteworthy is Stephen Harper's aversion to listening to advisors who are experts in their fields as well as his push to make the long form census non-mandatory.

Seriously, on what planet does any of this make sense? I want the smartest, most educated and most experienced person possible to win elections. It shouldn't be about who is nicest or most approachable or about religion. It should be about who is actually best for the job. I want someone who is better than me. Running countries or provinces or cities is hard. An average person isn't going to cut it. Why would you vote for someone average? So that the country can be average? We should all aspire to greatness.

The only explanation I can think of is that perhaps people don't like to vote for someone who is smarter/better than themselves because it makes them feel bad about their own lack of accomplishment. To those people I say, if you can't stomach voting for a person who is better than you, do everyone else a favour and refrain from voting at all.

For a more amusing take on this same topic, check out this blog post from the Real Johnson.

Late last night the downtown Toronto location of Canada Computers burned down! Well, burned out I guess. The building is still there but will need to be totally gutted. The apartments above were destroyed too, which is pretty sad. No one was seriously hurt though and apparently it could have been a lot worse. They were able to contain the fire to just the Canada Computers building and prevent it from spreading to all the adjacent buildings (which are equally old and flammable). We walked by this evening and it was sad to see all the bits of computer stuff blackened inside the store (see my slightly blurry photo below, be sure to click for the full resolution version).

Tonight I updated my main RSS feed to include both my blog posts as well as photos I post to my Photos page instead of having a separate RSS feed for each. So if you read my blog from an RSS reader you'll have noticed five new photos pop up in your feed in addition to this post. Please let me know if you see any problems.

Finally, although I am normally pretty good about backing up my data, I have always been reckless with my lists of recipes to cook and restaurants to visit. Both are kept as drafts in my Gmail account. The other day, after adding a recipe to my recipe list, I pressed the discard draft button instead of the save draft button. Gmail is pretty good and will let you undo stupid stuff like that, but I didn't notice I had done it until three days later when I went looking for a recipe. By then it was too late and I was sad. So I'm going to push ahead a little on some plans I once thought up to add a recipe section to my blog so that I can store the data more permanently. I should do something similar with restaurants, but I think it's best to focus on one thing at a time.

Burned out Canada Computers

I haven't had much to post about lately so I'm posting my Algonquin trip journal from this past Civic Holiday weekend. I wrote it up a couple weeks ago and was just waiting to receive the last set of photos from one of the people on the trip. Unfortunately that set seems to have gotten lost in the mail or something. Anyway, I'm posting with the photos I do have and if the missing ones ever show up I'll add them in.

Yesterday was Rib-o-Rama X at John's house and guests were encouraged to bring salads and/or desserts to augment the piles of delicious smoked meats that are always served. Inspired by Janet, I decided I would attempt to make baklava to bring as my contribution.

Baklava is extremely time-consuming to make as it requires you to lay out ~40 sheets of phyllo pastry one at a time, brushing each with clarified butter as you go. I messed up the syrup a bit so the baklava wasn't as moist as I would have liked it, but it still tasted just fine. The nice thing about Janet's recipe is that it is much less sweet than baklava you might pick up at a bakery or wherever which means it's easier to eat lots all at once.

Also yesterday the thermostat in our apartment decided to finally die (it seemed like it was about to die when we moved in, but then it clung to life for almost three more years). Generally I would call the landlord to get it fixed, but he has a new baby and I thought it would be good practice to try to replace it myself. So I picked one up from Canadian Tire that looked similar to the old one and installed it this afternoon in about 30 minutes. It was super easy and our apartment is nice and air conditioned again.

Home-made baklava

I've been totally sucking at blogging lately, not too much has been happening beyond the usual climbing, house searching, and general life stuff. There is some exciting news though as of today, Chris and John got engaged! Good times!!

Also tonight we talked with Patrick and Toni on Skype for the first time in a while which was fantastic. Finally, I made a tart for supper tonight with fresh Ontario zucchini and it was amazing.

Zucchini and Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Parmesan Tart

I'm back from our annual canoe trip in Algonquin and it was friggin' awesome as usual. We had 20 people this time in total and everyone was great. I'll be writing up a proper journal with photos and even cliff-jumping videos soon.