Note: There is a refined and updated look at the same topic, with more complete data, in my post The Government That Swallowed a Pond (Using Open Data and GIS to Inform Policy and Influence Behaviour).

In early September I made a Freedom of Information access request to the PEI Public Service Commission for:

A spreadsheet providing the postal code of the home address of each employee of the PEI public service, across all departments and agencies, and the civic address (or, if not available, building name) of their primary work location.

Well within the 30 day time allowed, the request was fulfilled: I received an email with an Excel sheet with the data I requested on September 27, 2019.

Tomorrow, at the Applied Geospatial Research in Public Policy Workshop at the University of PEI, I’ll present an initial analysis of the data with an eye to exploring how it can be used to shift the commutes of the 4,519 people who work for the provincial government to public transit and active transportation.

According to PEI’s Climate Action Plan, 48% of the provinces GHG emissions come from transportation; the provincial public service accounts for a substantial portion of the Island labour force, and the provincial government, as an employer, has both the motivation and the means to incentivize a shift.

This is “just in time” data analysis, as it’s only been in my hands a week, but the workshop simply provided too attractive a pool of smart geospatial practitioners to dip into for advice and guidance.

My initial investigation focused on the 252 public servants who live in postal codes starting with C1A (a good swath of urban Charlottetown) and who work in the Shaw, Sullivan, Jones and Arsenault buildings in downtown Charlottetown; I found that:

• 248 (98%) can cycle to work in under 20 minutes,
• 234 (92%) live within 500 m of a T3 Transit bus stop,
• 121 (48%) can walk to work in under 30 minutes

The slides and the supporting data for my presentation are online now, and if this is a topic that interests you, you are welcome to attend in person: the session is called “Geospatial Workshop 1: Doing Digital Humanities with GIS Data” and it’s happening in Atlantic Veterinary College room 218S from 9:45 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. tomorrow morning, October 4, 2019. You do not need to register for the conference to attend; just tell anyone who asks that I invited you.

(Image from Google Street View, captured October 2015)

Japan’s award-winning laundromats for 2019.

About 100 metres east of Catherine’s room in Queen Elizabeth Hospital is the room where Oliver was born, 19 years ago today.

Happenstance, thus, took us back to the beginning, as we gathered this morning for the first of three birthday parties that are happening today.

As Catherine is doing well—and coming home tomorrow!—day 6,935 turned out to be a much calmer one than day 0.

This young man turns 19 years old today. Let the celebrating begin!

Many years ago I found myself in Boston with Catherine Hennessey and we found our way to the New England Mobile Book Fair, which is, despite its name, neither mobile nor a fair, but rather an excellent firmly-held-in-place independent bookstore.

The store, at least at the time, organized some of its titles by publisher, rather than by topic or author, and this proved an invaluable aid to finding books I wouldn’t otherwise find, especially from publishers with a focus on a particular domain or approach to publishing.

I’ve yet to come across another bookstore that organizes books this way, but I’ve recently come across something even better: a publisher that allows you to subscribe to everything they publish.

Portland’s Microcosm Publishing has a BFF Subscription that, for a sliding-scale price, with a recommended $100 US per six months, gets you one of everything they publish:

Do you want us to publish more books that empower readers to change your lives and worlds?

Would you like to receive each new title as it’s published?

Subscribe as a BFF to our new titles and we’ll send you at least ten new titles that we publish over the course of six months!

The 6-month subscription is on a sliding scale, pay-what-you-can-afford fee with postage included. In addition to reading, we try to include any other material that we make.

Microcosm has a fascinating array of books and zines in its catalog; I came across their Bikequity, Bikenomics, and Bicycle/Race at Drawn & Quarterly last week in Montreal and bought all three. I’m looking forward to a regular dip into this well.

Oliver turns 19 years old on Tuesday, October 1. As his is tradition, he’s worked out a complex cavalcade of celebration.

Oliver’s already raised $300, all on his own, on Facebook, for the Alzheimer’s Society.

On the day proper, we’ll start at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital with Catherine, who’s spending some time recuperating there. This means that Oliver will start his celebrating about 100 m from where he was born. There will be morning cake.

That afternoon, Oliver’s invited his UPEI classmates to join him for an after-class celebration at The Fox & Crow, the campus pub. There will be afternoon cake.

Then in the evening, we’ll join the Charlottetown Green contingent at The Guardian/UPEI Student Union election debate on campus. After the debate Oliver’s hosting a Green after-party downtown. There will be evening cake.

Oliver’s inviting donations to Darcie Lanthier’s Green campaign in lieu of gifts: you can donate online here; you must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, but you don’t need to live in Charlottetown.

If you’re not a Canadian, he encourages you to donate to a local political party that supports Green values.

I have helped raise a son with a big heart and a curious mind. I am a happy father.

From an editorial in today’s Charlottetown Guardian (which is part of the larger SaltWire conglomerate):

From now on, we at SaltWire will refer to what’s happening to our climate as a climate crisis, instead of the usual “climate change.”

It represents a change in tone that we feel is appropriate to the urgency of the matter.

We’ve been chewing on this for some months now, since the group Extinction Rebellion besieged our office in Halifax and were invited in for a chat.

They asked us to consider this change in language, as they’re convinced people aren’t alarmed enough about the issue to insist that governments do something. Referring to it consistently as a crisis or emergency, they said, could eventually help people change how they feel about it. It could make a difference.

Extinction Rebellion deserves our thanks for making this case; SaltWire deserves our thanks for listening, and acting.

I had a regular weekly meeting that ended at noon today, which gave me an opportunity to close the meeting by going on strike. Perhaps not too brave a move when I’m my own boss.

I walked next door, to the backyard of the Coles Building, to join the climate strike protest, expecting, given my aversion to crowds and yelling, that I’d stay for a few moments and then go on to have lunch.

Instead, I got caught up in the proceedings.

The event, which seemed to pleasantly lack concrete leadership, came to feel like an organism all its own. After half an hour of gathering behind Province House, the group appeared to spontaneously start moving; down Grafton to Prince, along Richmond Street to Queen, a stop at City Hall, a stop at MP Sean Casey’s office, along Fitzroy and to The Guardian office, and then back to the Cole Building. Occasional organic chanting. An expansion into taking up the entire street when opportunity afforded. City Police seemingly caught unawares and not sure quite what to do. Anachronistic honks of support from SUVs. It all worked out.

The crowd seemingly included people from 0 to 100. There were commendable contingents from both the Ellerslie - Foxley River area, from Central Queens, and from Greater Dover.

I ran into Oliver, who protests independently now.

He is a rebel. For life.

As a self-identified stakeholder, I’ve been invited to participate in a “Visitor Experience Strategy Workshop,” hosted by Parks Canada, about the future of Province House:

The workshop will consist of a series of discussions and activities through which you and your fellow participants will identify the qualities that distinguish Province House from other Parks Canada places and other regional parks and attractions. The VES workshop is the first step to determining the path forward at Province House, and will be followed later by an interpretive planning session. The outcomes of this workshop will provide the foundation for guiding the redevelopment of the visitor experience.

The invitation requested “each participant to choose 3-4 images (from your own collection, from the Internet, etc.) that you feel best represent Province House. These do not necessarily need to be pictures of Province House, but rather images that best represent the essence of Province House to you.”

Here are the images I forwarded:

When I arrived tonight from Montreal on Air Canada 1686, my bicycle and trailer were where I left them a week ago at Charlottetown Airport

Forty minutes later I pulled up in front of 100 Prince Street. Exhausted. But chuffed.

I started my day driving a Chevy Bolt EV from Burlington, Vermont to Montreal. After dropping it off I rented a car2go electric Smart car and drove across town for lunch, then took Metro and bus to the airport.

What a day.