Puffin Poop

Avec ma cousine, Collette Turcaud, et sa famille à Mouilleron-en-Pareds

Back from a wonderful holiday in France. We started out on June 10 on the TGV from Charles DeGaulle airport to Poitiers, where we crashed at the super efficient and helpful Hotel Ibis Centre, after eating a great meal at a local bistro, where the conversation (with a native Frenchman with Algerian roots and two women with Egyptian and Spanish roots) rivaled the excellent food. The next day I walked to the Eurocar office near the railway station so I would know the route back to the Ibis to pick up Anita and the bags. That part went fine.

Retour de merveilleuses vacances en France. Cela a commencé le 10 juin en TGV de  l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle vers Poitiers, où nous avons dormis au l’efficace et serviable Hotel Ibis Centre, après un bon repas dans un bistro local, où la conversation a été au niveau de l’excellente nourriture offerte.  Le lendemain je me suis rendu à pied au bureau d’Eurocar près de la gare pour me souvenir comment retourner a l’Ibis avec mon petit Hyundai diesel loué pour prendre Anita et les bagages. Cela s’est bien passé.

Soon we were off to Mouilleron-en-Pareds to visit with Collette Turcaud. She and her friend, Raymond Boulier, had organized a welcome BBQ for us (see above photo) for about 13h30. Read the rest of this entry »

You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product.

En 1926 Gustave Turcotte, un cousin de mon arriere grand-pere, Alphonse Turcotte, lui a envoye une article,  dont il etait l’auteur, dans Variete, un periodique de Marsac en France.

Je l’ai retaper parce que la qualite du document etait tres mauvaise, pas du tout lisible  dans quelques sections. Je m’excuse pour les fautes dont je suis responsable. J’ai essaye de rester fidele aussi aux particularismes de l’original.

L’article etait sur la lignee de geneologie de Gustave, qui a commencer avec notre premier ancetre, Abel Turcault, ne en 1631 a Mouillerons-en-Pareds, La Vendee, France.

Abel est venu au Canada environs 1659. Il etait meunier a l’Ile d’Orleans, pres de Quebec.

Le lettre de Gustave qui accompagnait l’article est aussi donne ici.

Il y a une drole anecdore sur Joseph-Edouard Turcotte qui commence sur page 9. Read the rest of this entry »

Mon ancetre francais, Abel Turcault, est venu en Canada en 1659. Il est ne a Mouilleron-en-Pareds (ou Saint-Maurice-le-Girard) en 1631 ou environs. C’est possible qu’il est marie en France en avant que l’avait quitte pour Canada. J’ai recu l’information recent qu’Abel Turcault est marie “avant 1654″ a Louise Lelievre a Saint Maurice-le-Girard ou Saint-Maurice-en-Pareds.

C’est possible que son premier acte de mariage existe aux archives du Saint-Maurice-le-Girard.

Nous y irons cet ete pour visiter avec Collette Turcaud, une amie depuis notre derniere visite a Mouilleron en 1995. Peut-etre nous trouverons son acte de mariage et, avec ca, les noms de ces parents.

It’s pretty sad when one has to go to Al Jazeera via youtube to learn that as yet no independent inquiry has been started into the Smithfield Farms factory pig farm near La Gloria, Mexico despite all the suspicion that this crisis started there. No questions, no government testing of the farm’s pigs…

Maybe the fact that this corporation kills a population of pigs equal to Canada’s human population every year in 4 countries has something to do with it.

Being big and scary helps keep the Press quiet, I guess.

Pork producers object to the name “Swine Flu,” even though medically that’s where it started.

The World Trade Organization  caves in and changes the offending, but honest, name.

The people of La Gloria, Mexico have been fighting the factory pig farms that have caused up to 60% of them to suffer from a “respiratory illness” due to a STINK STINK STINK  that comes from the pig farms in the area.

That’s FACTORY PIG FARM FACTORY PIG FARM FACTORY PIG FARM, folks.

John Colbert said the Pork People would really like to call it ‘Bird Flu.” That about sums it up.

Why don’t we call it American-Based Corporate Factory Pig Farm People Killing Flu????

Better yet, why don’t we send the PIG FARM PROLIFERATING CORPORATE EXECUTIVES, from whatever country, to jail. They have caused too many deaths and made too many people ill to keep going.

New World Order - Bah, humpig!

Time to go to the award-winning Meatrix Website again! Remember it? It has grown!

Or, if you have a strong stomach, watch David Suzuki’s video on factory farms. I recommend the following two 15 minute segments:

Part 1: Intro

Part 2: (Particularly shocking)

On April 23rd Major Michelle Mendes died in Afghanistan in her room. She was the 118th Canadian to die while serving in that unfortunate country.

If one does some digging it is possible to learn that she was one of dozens of Canadians injured when that most horrible and cowardly of weapons, the A-10 Warthog, flown by an American, mistakenly shelled Canadian soldiers on September 4th, 2006. Major Mendes was one of 11 soldiers sent home for treatment. The Warthog is called in by ground troops to bomb wedding parties and other civilians when the ground soldiers sense that they are in danger of possibly being hurt. The rule of thumb seems to be: Saving a few Coalition troops is worth many innocent Afghan lives.

Oops. Read the rest of this entry »

Taking a trip is a little like life, provided that you’re not in a pine box at the time.

A trip has a beginning and an end. So does (and this, I admit, is debatable) life. There are, of course, differences. A trip is something you plan for, more or less. More if it’s a holiday; less if it’s an emergency. I like the first kind best.

At Lake L'Achigan

The first holidays I remember going on were not planned by me. My parents took me and my sister, Anne, up to Lake L’Achigan in the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal ca. 1949. I was about 5. They tell me I wouldn’t take my shirt off because I was I was afraid someone would see my chest. This was a problem, because I wouldn’t go in the water. My mom, Angel, solved it brilliantly. Read the rest of this entry »

Nobody explains it better than Vandana Shiva.

She has been living and promoting a way out for India, and the world if it listens, for decades.

Listen to her April 10 interview with Nancy Wilson of the CBC on The Current.

Please.

Apparently the world has voted, by Internet and cell phone, on the seven “New” wonders of the world. The huge statue of Christ at Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro makes the list (?????), as do the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China. Somehow the Great Pyramids of Giza didn’t make it.

Not enough electronic gizmos or pyramid boosters in Egypt, I guess.

So much for popular opinion.