Not many things surprise me. Well, actually, many things do surprise me. But not many things when it comes to the minutia of U.S. - Canada differences — the Z/Z thing, the different Thanksgiving Days, miles vs. kilometres, honour vs. honor and so on.

As you might imagine, then, I was flummoxed to learn this afternoon, courtesy of my all-seeing, all-knowing colleagues at Yankee Publishing that in America they don’t have Boxing Day.

In America, the day after Christmas, it seems, is known simply as “the day after Christmas.” It isn’t a holiday.

I was therefor embarrassed when said American cousins asked what exactly Boxing Day is and why it’s called that. I didn’t really know. And so here, for their benefit, is the best answer I can find:

The day after Christmas, the Feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, is better known as Boxing Day. The term may come from the opening of church poor boxes that day; maybe from the earthenware boxes with which boy apprentices collected money at the doors of their masters’ clients. Nowadays, we often see, in certain families, gifts (boxes) given to those who provide services throughout the year. “Boxing Day” is listed in the Canada Labour Code as a holiday.

So, Canadian readers, think of your poor American brethren on December 26, as you gaily celebrate the festival of the cardboard container, and they trudge back to work, ever so wishing that they lived a couple of hundred miles to the north.

Geraldo Rivera gets a lot of flack. I find him essentially unwatchable, but mostly because of his subject matter rather than his approach. However I also count myself as among the few that have read his [now out of print] interim biography Exposing Myself. If you ignore the “and then I slept with [insert name of alluring beautiful powerful woman]” references which litter most of the book’s chapters (or perhaps don’t ignore them), he’s actually had an interesting life. He is not someone to be dismissed.

Following on the successful transition from plain old Island Tel to Island Tel: An Aliant Company (it appears as though there is a corporate dictate that the An Aliant Company bit must always be present), I have decided to transition Reinvented’s corporate identity.

Henceforth we will be known formally as Reinvented Inc. - A Reliant Company.

Disclaimer: This change is subject to statutory and regulatory approval in the jurisdictions where Reinvented Inc. - A Reliant Company does business. Reinvented Inc. - A Reliant Company is in no way associated with DaimlerChrysler AG and no such association should is implied by our repositioning. Similarly, there is no corporate connection (other than rhythmic) between Reinvented Inc. - A Reliant Company and Island Tel: An Aliant Company. A 1985 Plymouth Reliant gets 26 mpg city, 33 mpg highway.

I sent a message to the friendly folks at the Google Catalogs last Saturday. It occured to me that as they’d already scanned and converted to text all of the catalog pages, the next logical thing to do would be to make that text available to people with screen readers (i.e. visually impaired and those who don’t read).

Today I received the following reply:

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, this type of feature is not in our near-term product plan. While the OCR quality is acceptable for search, it is not good enough for reading, which is why we prefer to show the image of the page rather than making available a text view.

Thanks for using Google’s catalog search!

The Google Catalogs Team

I’ve written here before about the Noodle House. The funny thing is that in almost 9 years of going there at least once a month, I’d never actually had noodles there until today. Today I ordered the Hot Szechuan Noodles with Tofu (from the special purple vegetarian menu page) and they were transcendent. If you haven’t had Noodle House noodles before, I highly recommend them.

Just to avoid recriminations, I will insert here that it was Kevin O’Brien who took me to the Noodle House for the first time. Indeed is was there that the idea that became ISN was hatched (it received full power at the now-defunct Kelly’s on Victoria Row).

I met Colleen Peterson in the early 1990s when she played a Christmas concert at Artspace in Peterborough, Ontario. I was working as programme director at the local community radio station, and we broadcast the concert live. It was a wonderful evening, and Colleen was a wonderful performer.

One of the songs she played that night was called 1942. I liked the song so much that I wrote to Colleen’s mother, who lived just north of Peterborough in the small village of Lakefield, inquiring whether it had been recorded. She wrote me back a very nice note explaining that it hadn’t, but that if it ever was, she would be sure to let me know.

In 1993 Colleen joined with Caitlin Hanford, Cindy Church, and Sylvia Tyson for form a “Canadian country and folk music supergroup” called Quartette.

Colleen died of cancer on a Wednesday in 1996.

There’s a lovely Book of Remembrance on the Quartette website that’s worthy of a good read through.

The year 2002 is the International Year of Mountains, so-designated by the United Nations. According to this page on the IYM website, “Canada has not yet established an IYM National Committee.” I would suggest that we should get started soon! Azerbaijan, Gabon and Kyrgyzstan are already ahead of us in this regard.

As initially absurd as the idea of an International Year for mountains might seem, the IYM website makes a pretty compelling case for why it’s important.

I will follow up with the Government of Canada to see what we can do about moving this along.

From our traffic logs, it looks like twenty-nine people have ended up at this site after entering the query “what does sic mean?” into a search engine. As an aid to others following in their tracks:

Thus; so. Used to indicate that a quoted passage, especially one containing an error or unconventional spelling, has been retained in its original form or written intentionally.

Date: ca. 1859 : intentionally so written; used after a printed word or passage to indicate that it is intended exactly as printed or to indicate that it exactly reproduces an original <~said he seed [sic] it all>

From Question Period on December 13, 2001, MLA Elmer MacFadyen speaking about an event planned for Victoria Park in Charlottetown on New Year’s Eve called Capital New Year in the Park:

Madam Speaker this safe, alcohol-free, public celebration will give families, friends, and neighbors an opportunity to gather for some good old-fashioned fun. From sleigh rides to skating — weather permitting of course —a magical guided tour through the woods, a prayer for peace, and live entertainment, there should be something for everyone. An early countdown to the New Year after, shortly after 7 will allow family members to celebrate together. Historically people gather with family and friends to ring in the New Year because they believe that what you were doing during the first moments of the New Year set the tone for the entire year. Having this countdown early enough for all family members to participate together encourages family unity on this night and throughout the year 2002.

The first season of the CBS television program The Amazing Race ends tonight with the grand finale.

Since the program started, we have been Big Fans. Although, as Edward Hasbrouck points out in an interesting series of columns, the travel in the program is a distant relative of “real” life on the road (and how could it be, with TV cameras on all the time, and a time limit?), I find the show appeals to my latent desire to move. It’s like the Reader’s Digest of travel, and sometimes Reader’s Digesting something can be useful (and even entertaining).

Like the rest of North America we were biggest fans of Kevin and Drew, the rollicking New Yorkers who were eliminated two weeks ago. Now that it’s down to the finish with three teams, I’m torn between the Rob/Brennan team and the Frank/Margarita team. I am not torn, however, by the quite pleasure I take at the demise of the Joe/Bill team (aka “Team Guido” after their dog); they have been consistently snotty, and deserve to lose (of course by some miracle, they could still win, even though they’re a full 24 hours behind the others at this point).

Catherine and I agree that of all the “reality TV” shows, The Amazing Race is the only one we’d relish participating in. Unfortunately it looks they’ve already cast the next episode. I suppose there’s always next time. Still unclear as to whether having wee Oliver strapped to our back would slow us down.

Be sure to watch CBS tonight, 10 p.m. Atlantic Time, for the thrilling conclusion.