Summer of love

Raccoons

Raccoons playing (and mating) nonchalantly right in the middle of a friend’s outdoor birthday dinner. I like to think they make a dividing line between the hockey riot and the rest of the summer. Let’s make love, not war, and think of better things.

It’s Canada Day today but recent events—the hockey riot, the Canadian government’s shameful refusal (nearly alone among the international community) to stop exporting and adding warning labels to its toxic asbestos, the same right-wing government’s decision to threaten the arts and culture sector on Tuesday after promising in its election campaign that it wouldn’t, and other deviations from the country we once were (a country I preferred, a country that did the Summer of Love properly)—these events sort of demotivate one from feeling anything for Canada Day. I’d rather watch the raccoons and hatch a plan to get our country back.

Raccoons mating

For more photos of this raccoon sequence, click on images to go to the Flickr set.

9 comments on "Summer of love"

  1. Were you ever in the right place in the right time. Love these images, and they are miles better than all the images of masses of knobs rampaging through the streets.
    As for our government, I really can’t understand how they have a majority, but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised by lots of lies and trickery over the next few years. The best thing, so far, is the “gift” of an amazing job for Gordon Campbell – high commissioner to the U.K. I guess Mr. Harper thought that was a nice way to say “thanks” for pushing the HST through.
    Happy Canada Day!

  2. Oh, yeah, that was a pretty move, wasn’t it. And how about 9 BILLION FOR NEW FIGHTER JETS!

    I’m thinking of today more as a Canada Memorial Day.

    A new game could be “which is more right-wing and draconian, the BC government or Harper’s federal government?” At this point it’s very hard to tell, but it’s a certainty that in BC we’re going to be hit twice. (Unless we get rid of the BC (so-called) Liberals.)

  3. YES. And then there’s THAT gigantic elephant in the room, the biggest one of all.

    I thought the hallmark of Canada was always that we were not so nationalist as some other nations I could mention. But politicians seem to be whipping up a form of hyper-nationalism these days, the same way they whip up hockey fans. Not pretty all round. If you’re going to feel smug, especially when you have nothing to act smug about, it’s best to keep it to oneself, no? The Ugly Canadian is increasingly in evidence.

    1. Hear hear. Screw pride, let’s see some gratitude and some commitment to the weird, unique, clumsy multicultural experiment that this country is.
      Ha, yes to Britain, but I was thinking of a closer neighbour!

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