How many Italians live in Canada?

I found a page here that has some numbers for some of Canada's larger cities, according to which:

Le statistiche dell’AIRE del 2008, percio’ recentissime, dicono che gli iscritti italiani sono 121.000 così ripartiti: 62.564 a Toronto – 35.232 a Montreal – 18.902 a Vancouver e 4793 ad Ottawa.

Assuming we're talking about metropolitan areas here, that gives us the following ratio:

Toronto: 62,564 / 5.5 million = 1.1%
Montreal: 35,232 / 3.8 million = 0.9%
Vancouver: 18,902 / 2.8 million = 0.7%
Ottawa: 4793 / 1.2 million = 0.4%

On top of that are people of Italian heritage, almost 1.5 million in total, that may or may not know the language. Half of them are in Ontario, 30% in Quebec, and the rest are divided up between everywhere else.

Secondo le ultime statistiche del governo canadese le persone che si sono dichiarate di origine italiana sono 1.445.330 e il 50% di queste risiede nella provincia dell’Ontario, il 30% nel Quebec ed il resto nelle altre provincie; ad Ottawa, la capitale del Canada, vivono circa 40.000 italiani.

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Air Canada to order 45 CSeries jets

Well this is a big relief: Air Canada has decided to buy 45 CSeries jets, with an option for 30 more. For those who don't know the CSeries is a jet that Bombardier probably shouldn't have made because it was too ambitious, but since they have managed to pull it off by the skin of their teeth the world is better off for it, because it really is a fantastic jet.

The short explanation for it is this: you know those small regional jets you sometimes fly at the end of a long trip, when you're feeling at your worst? At those times the plane itself just happens to fit with your mood, with the cramped quarters and overall regional, tired feel. This jet makes even these flights a treat. Not that I've flown one yet, but the reviews say it all, and it's basically the Dreamliner or the A350 of regional jets. Even has a window in the bathroom.

This order brings the number of planes ordered to some 300 or so, and is their first one in a long time.

It's especially important because Bombardier seems to be so bad at sales, at least in the environment where Boeing and Airbus are so keen to undercut them or do whatever they can to sell their planes instead.

Let's hope Iran decides to buy a few of them too.

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Anti-German and Austrian race riot in Calgary exactly 100 years ago

CBC has a story on an event that happened exactly 100 years ago in my home town of Calgary, full of detail and even including a scan of the original meeting minutes. Apparently two people were let go from a job after which untrue rumours started that Germans were hired in their place, which led to a riot.

If you're following along with the Great War on YouTube, or simply know about the war in general, you'll know that 1915 wasn't the best year for the Allies and the overall atmosphere was quite a frustrating one, just the right situation for an event like this to occur.

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Canadian exports to Iran might reach $1 billion

Canada has finally gotten around to removing most of its sanctions on Iran (a bit slow in my opinion compared to Europe which is already eating our lunch), and I found a number here about exports to Iran before:

Canada’s exports to Iran peaked at $772 million in 1997. With the imposition of sanctions, this number declined to $67 million in 2014 (comprising mostly food products exempt from sanctions).

So my $1 billion isn't based on anything more than the fact that both countries have larger economies and populations than in 1997. And even that isn't that large a number.

On the whole Iran and Canada are an odd match for trading, since they are far from each other and export much of the same items: petroleum, raw materials, etc., and the some of the obvious items Iran has that we don't are ones like nuts and caviar and rugs and things. Now if Canada's Bombardier can manage to sign a contract with Iran Air for a good number of planes then it'll be a different story. Bombardier is good at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory though so who knows what will happen there. If they can't get a contract from a country that now needs 600 or so planes and has $100 billion freed up to do it, then that will tell us something about the company.

Personally though I think they will buy planes from as many countries as possible, including Canada, for two reasons:

1) Buying a jet doesn't mean getting a jet right away. Each company has different waiting times and Iran Air isn't in the mood to wait.

2) The more countries they sign contracts with the less eager the world will be to snap sanctions back into place later on if something goes awry. See the $15 billion contract for armed vehicles to Saudi Arabia that Canada does not want to nullify for an example of this.

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Francophone new residents in Alberta up 50% in 2013 compared to 2012

This article is kind of funny because of the local nature and small numbers it deals with - Francophones in Alberta went up 50% in 2013 compared to the year before, reaching a grand total of...226 new residents that year. And not only that, it even breaks it down by country including a helpful bar chart. Haiti went from 9 to 14!

The largest number: France with 83, up from 44.

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Air Canada gets its first Dreamliner

Air Canada just got its first Dreamliner today, one that will be used for Toronto - Tel Aviv, and Toronto - Haneda. As a smaller plane than the 777 but nearly the same as a 767, the 787s Air Canada gets will be mostly used to replace 767 routes that cost the carrier too much money in fuel and can't fill up a larger 777 either.

The plane itself is more comfortable, a tiny bit faster (a trans-Pacific flight would take about 30 minutes less), but Air Canada has added an extra row making each seat in economy smaller than its other configurations. So try to book ahead and get at least Premium Economy if you can.

Air Canada will have something like three of these by the end of the summer, and six by the end of the year.

In total this makes about 160 787s in the world now, compared to around 40 or so when I flew on one last October. Still about 800 left to make with orders as they currently stand.

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What Chris Hadfield learned from going blind in space

Nothing really to add to this except an exhortation to watch it. So few people have the experience of ever going to space, and so few of those can describe it in the way Hadfield does.

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International aid given by Canada

This map is a lot of fun, showing Canada's aid to each and every country it has given money to from 2001 to 2012.

For 2012 the largest recipients were:

The largest recipient was Ethiopia (CAD$ 207 million), followed by Haiti, Tanzania, Afghanistan, Ghana, Sudan and South Sudan, Mozambique and Pakistan.

What's extra fun about the map though is the ability to select a rectangular region, after which the overall trend over time can be seen. Ukraine for example has gone up from $22 million in 2010 to $48 million in 2012, while Moldova is about the same. Afghanistan has dropped from $345 million in 2008 to $163 million in 2012. Canada as of last week is now officially finished in Afghanistan, so this should continue to decrease. Croatia has gone from $2.7 million in 2005 to just $42,000 in 2012, which makes sense because it was a year away from full EU membership. Bulgaria has received more or less nothing since its accession as well, going from $2.8 million in 2003 to never over $100,000 in any year since 2009.

And so on. There's lots to be seen in this map.

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Quick donation to the Liberal Party of Canada

I just made an unplanned donation to the Liberal Party of Canada:

@JustinTrudeau @DrRaymondMc Just made an unplanned donation to the LPC because I like unscripted answers. pic.twitter.com/G7OQbfWxTA
— Dave MacLeod (@mithridates) November 9, 2013

For background on what this is about, see this article:

The party leader responded: “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say we need to go green, we need to start, you know, investing in solar. There is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about: having a dictatorship where you can do whatever you wanted, that I find quite interesting.”

The quote is not all that impressive, especially with the added Stephen Harper jibe at the end. So why the donation? Namely because it is an awkwardly phrased, yet good point. He later wrote the following on Twitter:

I pointed out that globally Canada is up against big countries (China, for one) that can address some major issues quickly.

It’s ridiculous for anyone to suggest that I of all people would trade our rights and freedoms for any other system of gvt.

Some countries play by rules we wouldn’t and shouldn’t ever accept, but, we still have to compete with them.

Canada is the best country in the world. I would never trade our freedoms. But countries we compete with play by different rules.

Le Canada est le meilleur pays au monde. Nos libertés en sont le cœur. Nos pays compétiteurs obéissent à d’autres règles.

which is true. But more than that because I often find myself making an awkward point in speech that I later think about and can more clearly express in writing, and don't want off the cuff remarks to be anathema in a campaign, fodder for negative ads and no more. The more polished a country's electoral process becomes the harder it is to determine what a candidate truly intends to do upon attaining office.

And just for the record, I've voted Reform before and am a Preston Manning fan.

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Death per terawatt hour, the Pope's letter to la Repubblica, Quebec the oil producer

Three tabs to get rid of today:

This chart showing the number of deaths per TWh by energy source. Coal is of course right near the top at 161 deaths, oil is next at 36, natural gas is way behind at 4, biomass is 12, peat is 12. After that we have the final two stragglers: hydro at 1.4, and nuclear is the dunce of the deaths per TWh class at just 0.04.

This letter by Papa Francesco to La Repubblica made news a few weeks ago, as it's not very often that one of the letters to the editor is submitted by the Pope. The letter was submitted in response to another letter about secularism and non-belief.

Radio-Canada has a section containing a number of articles about the subject Le Québec, producteur de pétrole? which goes into much more detail than one would usually see on a website about the subject, with what appears to be about 30 links on Quebec's potential to join the 36 per TWh club.

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Link roundup: 10 June 2013

• 
  A "translation" of the Bible into Texan. The translation is actually just replacing the word you with y'all when the original is the plural you, which actually makes it more precise. Without the loss of thou English wouldn't have needed all the substitutes we have: y'all, your guyses, etc.
• Some more research on habitability around white and brown dwarf stars seems to show less possibility for life around them than previously believed, but the conclusion is far from definite.
• Chris Hadfield has announced his retirement from the Canadian Space Agency.
• France24 to launch a Spanish-language channel, after the current French, English, and Arabic versions.
• Will Smith talking in Spanish a bit, a language he clearly loves to use:

• A poem in Interlingua recently uploaded to YouTube:

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Chris Hadfield in Kazakhstan speaking Russian with a robe, lute and doll

Chris Hadfield is back safe on Earth and this video is exactly what the title says it is:



It's dubbed so the Russian can't always be made out but he sounds fluent. Not sure if it's functionally fluent, near-native fluent or completely fluent.

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Chris Hadfield's parting music video

Chris Hadfield has relenquished command of the International Space Station and will be returning to Earth by Soyuz tomorrow. His contribution to space PR all this time has been simply phenomenal, and this final music video may be the best so far:



Edit: Also, his final thoughts on the mission one day before returning:

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Shameless plug

for my mom's exhibit starting today in Vancouver (I don't live in Vancouver):

Her work is the one on the left. For more of it, see her blog.

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John Kerry in French: maybe later

John Kerry yesterday:



The bit of French at the end of the question about Keystone was: "un peu de français s'il vous plaît, peut-être?"

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Justin Trudeau's Liberal leadership bid speech

Here it is in full:



A bit over half of it is in French, and with no interpreter jumping in as is the case most of the time with Canadian news. His French seems more commanding than his English which sounds rather gentle in comparison - I'll let native French speakers decide whether this is true or just my impression. Announcing a bid for the leadership now was certainly the right time for him - there will be no election until 2015, and considering how badly the Liberal Party did last time any semi-competent leader of the party should be able to pick up at least a few dozen seats and come out looking better for it.

So what is Trudeau's position on the Canadian Space Agency? Nothing on his site that I can find, and searches for "Justin Trudeau" and "Canadian Space Agency" not surprisingly only turn up articles on Justin Trudeau as leader vs. Marc Garneau (former head of the Canadian Space Agency). On the other hand, Marc Garneau as leader or Marc Garneau as potential Minister of Industry Science and Technology are both better than the status quo, so my vote for 2015 thus far leans towards the Liberals. Lots of time before then though. As a fairly niche voter, any party that offers a detailed plan (and more funding) for Canada's role in space as opposed to mere lip service is most likely to get my vote.

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Luso Canadian Charitable Society and Instituto Camões break up in Toronto

Here's how they broke up, one year after it began. The Luso Canadian Charitable Society believes it's better off without Camões, and is even planning an expansion.

Questioned by Lusa, Ana Paula Ribeiro (Coordinator of Teaching Portuguese in Canada) explained that the protocol on which the Portuguese Language Centre in Toronto was founded "was to be terminated because the Luso Canadian Charitable Society said they would not be able to comply with the conditions established therein."

Under the agreement, the Instituto Camões was to assume the pedagogical and didactic responsibilities and the Luso Canadian Charitable Society was given responsibilities for financial management of the project and provision of the real estate for the school.

The Centre in Toronto began activities in September, with an average of 60 students for 2011 to 2012.

The end of the partnership was confirmed by the president of the Luso Canadian Charitable Society, stating the "inability to respond to the number of requirements imposed by the Institute Camões." However, "our Portuguese language school will continue to function without the Instituto Camões. We are keeping the same director that we had until now."

He announced on the other hand an expansion of the project teaching Portuguese with the planned opening of another school located in Hamilton, 70 km from Toronto, "which will cost two million dollars" (Canadian).

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Two thoughts

Big announcement in a day or two. In the meantime here are two thoughts:

--- NASA and human exploration of space in general reminds me a bit of an aspiring polyglot who has still failed to learn a single language to fluency. Our lack of focus on a single area plus small budget has left us stranded on Earth. Focusing or largely focusing on one area, on the other hand, is the opposite: upon learning a language to fluency it reaches a kind of self-propelled status where it becomes a part of you, something that only takes a slight bit of effort to maintain. Mid-level fluency is the opposite: while somewhat useful and kind of fun, maintenance is harder and the language remains a useful skill only in certain limited situations.

* Concentrating on space station design could have led to a small Stanford Torus-like city (okay, settlement) with partial gravity (0.1g for example), complete with greenery and water and the like, and the more people that live there the more of a character of its own it would develop. A destination that is interesting in and of itself would attract much more tourism and aspiring settlers than the ISS, which is a floating lab from which one can look at Earth.

* Concentrating on telescopes may have already led to the discovery and simple imaging of a very, very earth-like planet nearby.

* Concentrating on the moon would have led to...people living on the moon. Similar to the station above, the settlement may have developed a quality of its own that made it attractive as a place to live, do research, and work.

* Concentrating on propulsion may have led to cheaper access to space, the largest barrier to becoming a spacefaring species.

A much larger budget, of course, would easily result in one or more of these situations. But in the meantime humanity exploring space is a bit of an aspiring polyglot with no time to study, and too many languages on his plate in the first place.

--- Second thought: this video about high-speed rail in Canada is very true.

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How many French people go to China every year to study?

According to this article, it's 6500. No mention on which year this is based on, or how much of an increase there is in recent years (I assume it is only increasing). The rest of it is advice on how to prepare for living there - how much health insurance costs, that sort of thing.

On a related note, the Globe and Mail has an article today on why being bilingual is good for you (especially you if you are a Canadian reader). For a lot of unsourced opinion on the article, see here. And in spite of being unsourced, anonymous and off the cuff, reading comments such as these can provide a bit of a window into prevailing opinion. You'll notice a lot of "don't learn French, it's the language of the past - learn Mandarin/Spanish instead" there.

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NDP wants only bilingual candidates for key positions in Canadian government

From here in French today. I mostly agree with the Commissioner of Official Languages here given that bilingualism is a requirement to do business on the federal level. On the other hand, the idea of a unilingual candidate being hired on the condition that he learn the language within a year is something that is common among government employees - CSIS, for example, where a new hire either is bilingual and gets a full salary, or is unilingual and starts at a slightly lower level but receives lots of training and must become bilingual within a year. For a top-level position like this though a one-year trial period is probably a bit iffy.

Only bilingual candidates should be able to fill positions of officers in Parliament, according to the official opposition (the NDP), which filed a bill to that effect in the Commons on Tuesday.
This initiative by the party comes as the Commissioner of Official Languages denounces in a new report the nomination of Michael Ferguson, a unilingual anglophone, to the post of Auditor General. 

According to Graham Fraser the government of Stephen Harper has violated the law on official languages by going ahead with such an appointment, criticized in unison by opposition parties in Ottawa. 

The NDP wants to keep this situation from happening by establishing clear linguistic prerequisites for ten key positions, including that of Auditor General but also that of Chief Electoral Officer, as well as commissioners including those for privacy, information, ethics, and lobbying... 

In his report prepared to respond to the complaints on the unilingualism of Mr. Ferguson, Graham Fraser insisted that the mastery of two languages is necessary for the auditor general to do his job. 

"The Auditor General must daily be able to read and approve documents prepared for his attention and of a complex nature: reports, briefing notes, notices and other correspondences", he wrote... 

Mr. Ferguson has promised to learn French in one year.

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