When I was in my early twenties, I ran for a position on the Peterborough County Board of Education. I was prompted by a desire to have a young voice on the Board, and by my friend Simon calling me the day the nominations closed to alert me that there weren’t enough candidates for the number of positions, so if I hurried up, I could get acclaimed (in the end, this word reached others, and I was one of 13 candidates for 9 positions).

One of the issues on the table that year was the recently-released Radwanski Report, the result of a committee headed by George Radwanski. To be honest, I have no idea what was said in the Radwanski Report, for I never read it. But I was repeatedly asked, on the campaign trail (such as it was), questions like “what is your reaction tot he recommendations in the Radwanski Report.”

For a kid like me, who was running on a platform of student autonomy, I couldn’t care less about the Radwanski Report. It was like asking an aetheist his reaction to the recommendations of the Bible.

So now the chickens are coming home to roost, and my arch nemesis Radwanski is feeling the heat. Poor guy.

Oliver and I went out to Avonlea for the afternoon yesterday. Careful readers will recall that I was involved in the very early stages of this project, my prime claim to fame involving the purchase of the Belmont School House from a man in Lot 16 who was using it to store his boat.

Avonlea has evolved over the years (if you had to pick the thing that Scott Linkletter is best at, it’s evolving ideas). It started off as a very commerical sort of “ye olde mall” the first year; now almost all of the commercial activity is gone, save the chocolate and cordial stores and the Anne of Green Gables Store and what’s left is a very pleasant, well constructed historical theme village, with a rich collection of actors, musicians, farm animals and other distractions that can keep a pair like Oliver and I busy for several hours.

The highlight for Oliver and I was Michael Pendergast. Which surprises me, as if you had told be five years ago that I would write a sentence like that, I would have laughed at you. Children’s entertainers are a hard bunch for adults to like: the exaggeration and necessary general goofiness turns them into sort of anti-adults, and thus while they entertain and delight children, they make adults (or at least this adult) feel uncomfortable. But Michael Pendergast, who roams the grounds of Avonlea playing a show hear, strumming his guitar there (in what must be a musician’s dream job), has the right mix of humour, style, musical abilities (which are considerable) all without too much “old timey-ness” or saccharine. He’s a consumate entertainer.

On the way out of Avonlea, we stopped by the barn to visit the pigs and the chickens; over in the corner were Michael and his fiddler quietly playing Will You Go Lassie?. The effect was magical.

I started running Google AdSense content-targetted ads over there on the right-hand side of this website yesterday. This isn’t from a desire to make millions of dollars from the clickthrus of my inquisitive and demographically well-tuned readership; I’m simply interested in seeing how this works, and whether one can actually make any money.

In theory, the ads that appear — they come directly from Google’s servers — are targetted to the content that appears here. When I turned things on yesterday, however, I was getting ads for the American Cancer Society and Habitat for Humanity (maybe it’s because I mentioned “progressive” and “David Suzuki,” who knows).

Today, as you can see here, I’m advertising for the Chrysler Sebring:

This is because I mentioned the Chrysler Sebring in yesterday’s story about fuel economy. The obvious irony is that the Sebring was at the bottom of the fuel economy ratings, so doesn’t exactly come off in a good light. I can filter out advertisers; I wonder: can advertisers filter out me?

Look here for thumbnails of how this website looks in about a gazillion different web browsers (this link may explode or cease to operate at some indefinite time in the future).

Many of my friends and family have purchased new cars, or new used cars, in the last couple of years. Most of these people would define themselves as “progressive” if not “radical” and almost all of them would come out on the David Suzuki rather than the George Bush side of environmental issues.

To this end, I decided to look at the fuel economy of the vehicles of my friends and family, and the results are presented below. I used the fueleconomy.gov site, run by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for my figures; as a result, any differences between U.S. and Canadian models won’t be accounted for. I set the price of gas at 68 cents a litre (or $2.61 a gallon). I guessed where I didn’t know the specific year, model, or engine type. And of course older cars won’t be performing at their peak these days. All fuel economy numbers are combined city/highway miles per gallon; dollar figures are in Canadian dollars.

Johnny’s last-place finish is no surprise, as the Chevy Blazer isn’t exactly known as a paragon of fuel economy, and he didn’t purchase it with any illusions that it was. The surprise, for me, was Catherine’s second-place ranking with a 1995 Ford Escort Wagon; I never realized these were so fuel efficient.

If you look at the difference in what it costs for fuel, based on 15,000 miles/year, Johnny will pay $2175 and Frances will pay $1223, a difference of $952.

In terms of pollution, the difference between Johnny (10.5 tons/year of greenhouse gases) and Frances (5.9 tons/year) is 4.6 tons. It says here that U.S. President Clinton proposed “reducing U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2012.” The article goes on to say:

…if the United States agrees to limit its emission of greenhouse gases to 1.6 billion metric tons annually (the 1990 level), then the average American can produce no more than 5.3 tons of greenhouse gases if our population is 298 million in 2025, as it would be with moderate levels of immigration.

Because the vehicle figures above don’t include the greenhouse gases we produce from our electricity usage, we’ve all obviously got some ways to go, no matter the car we drive.

In 2003, the best fuel economy you can get from a generally available fuel-burning car is 64 mpg from the Honda Insight. It produces 3.1 tons/year of greenhouse gases, and has fuel costs of $612/year.

By way of comparison, the 2003 Toyota RAV4 Electric gets 112 mpg, and emits 3.8 tons/year of greenhouse gases (they say that “For electric vehicles, mpg represents the number of miles that can be traveled using an amount of electricity equivalent to the energy in a gallon of gasoline.”).

For those of you claiming poverty, the 2003 Toyota Echo gets 38 mpg, and produces the same emissions as the Insight, 3.1 tons/year. The Toyota Yaris, which is the model the new Canadian 2004 Toyota Echo Hatchback is based on, is rated at 50 mpg/combined in Europe. Both models are very cheap.

In response to my critique of Angel’s Restaurant, reader “Phil” recommended Piece a Cake in downtown Charlottetown.

I’ve had varied experiences with Piece a Cake.

When it was first opened by foodtrapraneur Bruce MacNaughton, it was based on the “marché” concept pioneered in North America by Mövenpick. Here’s how Mövenpick describes this:

The key to the MARCHÉ concept is our collection of market tables or stations where daily specials are prepared and cooked to order à la minute.

At Piece a Cake in its original incarnation, you were seated at your table, and given a chit to take with you to the salad station, the mains station, the dessert station, and so on. At each station, your chit was stamped with what you ordered, and when you checked out, everything was totalled up.

I remember discussing this at the time with Kier Kenny, no stanger to Island foodservice. Kier’s take was simple: Islanders want to be served at their table when they go out to eat.

And he was right. It wasn’t long before Piece a Cake reconfigured itself into a more traditional “waiters and waitresses” restaurant.

In the honeymoon period when the restaurant first opened, and things hadn’t shaken out yet, there were some interesting aspects to Piece a Cake beyond the self-service: they served an excellent selection of non-alcoholic drinks, like Seaman’s Ginger Brew, in tall flutey glasses. There were carafes of crayons at each table, and the tableclothes were covered with kraft paper, so it was easy to sketch, doodle, and play tic-tac-toe. The music was good. The chefs were animated.

It wouldn’t be proper to say that Piece a Cake has settled into mediocrity since, as all that’s really happened is that the owners have figured out what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately, sometimes “what works” is the same as what works elsewhere, and that’s why so many restaurants are so alike, both in style and food.

All that said, I had a very good meal at Piece a Cake last night. Our babysitter-from-heaven unable to come Saturday, Catherine and I gathered for an unusual Friday night away from Oliver. We had a reservation for 7:00 p.m. When we arrived, our waitress checked a list, and wordlessly seated us at an excellent table. Feeling like Big Daddy Rukavina, I marvelled at her wordless recognition, only to find, when seated, that our waitress was Brenda Whiteaway, who knows Catherine well, and me a little.

Slightly deflated (although who wants to walk around town being known as “Big Daddy Rukavina,” anyway?), we settled into Brenda’s truly excellent service.

We ordered a flagon of the red house wine to start, which was served in a Daphne Large vessel (Brenda’s comment: “they’re beautiful, but we keep breaking them!”). For an appetizer, we had the spicy crab cakes: they were tasty and well-prepared, but could have been spicier. This was all underlaid by a carpet of very tasty house bread, which we finished off in short order.

My main course was the Penne on Fire. I’d seen this on the menu before, but had never ordered it, fearful that the “on fire” would prove to suffer from the same tepid approach to spicing that most purportedly “hot and spicy” Island cooking does. I needn’t have worried: the Penne on Fire was truly inspired, and sizzling melange of penne, zucchini, onions and a bona fide fire-filled red sauce. It was the kind of meal that makes you sparkle into a delightful haze when it’s done, happy to be alive.

I’m sorry to report that Catherine’s experience was less positive. She ordered the 6 oz. steak medium-rare, and when it arrived Brenda cautioned that it appeared to her to be rather more cooked than medium-rare. She was right: it was very, very well done. She quickly returned it to the kitchen, and when a new steak returned 5 minutes later, it was only slightly less well done. By this time, however, Catherine was ravenous, and I was done my Penne on Fire (ravenous myself, I refused Brenda’s kind offer to return my entree to the kitchen to be kept warm, sacrificing chivalry points for satiation). So she put up with the “medium well” steak, and polished it off in short order. Brenda was appropriately apologetic for all of this, and comped us the wine to compensate.

For dessert we were offered a field trip to the dessert case, which, with its echos of the Piece a Cake of old, we eagerly accepted. Catherine had a rum and pineapple cake, and I had a white chocolate cheesecake. Both were well-prepared, but neither was dreamy. I ordered a cup of tea, which was served boiling hot in a complete tea service and was excellent (making Piece a Cake one of the two or three places in Charlottetown one can get a good cup of tea, when judged using the Karen Mair benchmark).

Despite the steak debacle, we left feeling well-fed and well-served, and at $54 for the meal, it didn’t feel like an extravagent night out.

So here’s a vote for Piece a Cake as a good place for a meal in Charlottetown. Things are looking up.

There are only two more nights left to see All The Real Girls at City Cinema. We went last night.

I loved the movie, and the best reason I can give you for why is that it is about as close a representation as I’ve every seen of my romantic life between 19 and 25, and all its crazy, powerful, zingy, gut-wrenching glory.

See it if you have a chance.

The Daniel J. MacDonald Building turned 20 years old this week.

It’s hard to be anything but positive about having the Veterans Affairs Canada as a neighbour (if I squint and angle myself just right, I can see the building out my front window).

DVA employs thousands of Islanders (and pays them well). Their mission of supporting veterans is hard to argue with. And having DVA as a major presence in Charlottetown’s downtown is perhaps the primary reason the neighbourhood retains the retail and restaurant community it does.

So, happy birthday DVA. Thanks.

I have occasion to visit Boston about half a dozen times a year. Because Air Canada charges as much as $1000 more if I don’t stay over a Saturday night, it’s almost always in my best interests to invest in a Boston hotel for a couple of nights and return home Sunday.

As a result, I’ve had a good overview of where to stay in Boston. Not a complete one, of course, as there are many hotels I’ve missed. But enough to perhaps be of help to others looking for an inexpensive, clean, well-run hotel in a city where “inexpensive” starts at $100. All prices are in U.S. dollars.

My favourite hotel in Boston, although it’s only “seasonally inexpensive” is NineZero. It’s a new-style “boutique” hotel, which means good design (running from lobby to the typography of the room service menu), cool facilities (CD player in each room, etc.) and comfortable beds (really, really comfortable beds). I’ve stayed here for as little as $129 for a small room, but summer rates can range as high as $299. Central location on Tremont Street, near four ‘T’ stops (Park, Government Center, State and Downtown Crossing). Free high speed Internet (via Ethernet jack in each room). Kinkos almost next door. Walking distance to the Boston Common Loews Cinema (the best multiplex in the city).

Close on the heels of NineZero, albeit slightly downmarket, is Club Quarters. This actually isn’t a public hotel, per se, but rather a private hotel open to the public on the weekends through travel discounters. During the week the hotel is used by employees of major U.S. corporations and universities; on the weekends they let our rooms to the public. I’ve never had to pay more that $110 for a room, and in the off-season they can be less than $90. Rooms are quite small — about the size of your bedroom at home — but are well-equipped. All that’s missing compared to a regular hotel room is a couch or chair and table; otherwise everything’s there. Very clean. Free high speed Internet throughout (WiFi in all guest rooms and in lounge; Ethernet in lounge; computer for guest use in lounge). Check-in and check-out is completely automatic via a machine in the lobby (swipe your credit card, get a keycard). There is, however, staff on duty 24/7, and they can assist with things like luggage storage. On Devonshire, which is three blocks from State ‘T’ stop, two blocks from the large Borders store, and from Filenes and Macy’s.

The Harborside Inn deserves extra points for actually believing that the Big Dig, Boston’s project to bury it’s downtown elevated highway, would ever be completed. The first time I stayed here, in 1998, they had just opened, and walking out the front door you had to be careful not to fall 50 feet down into a giant Big Dig pit. My first overnight, and at 5 a.m. in the morning the pounding of earth rams shook the hotel to its foundations. Thankfully the Big Dig has progressed, and not only is the pit gone, but it’s been replaced by the entrance to the Aquarium ‘T’ stop, which opens up almost directly in front of the hotel. The Harborside is built inside an older industrial building; there are “city view” rooms, that overlook Fanueil Hall, and “atrium view” rooms, that overlook a central atrium; both are nice. Rooms are clean, and designed somewhere between “modern” and “frilly Victorian.” Breakfast used to be included, but wasn’t last time I stayed. Rates are climbing as the neighbourhood improves, but it’s still possible to pay as little as $125 in the off-season.

For some inexplicable reason, it’s almost always possible, low season and high, to get an inexpensive room at Swissotel. It’s very rare that I don’t find rates as low as $129 on their website. The hotel is very well appointed; it’s really almost a luxury hotel. Of course room service and other rates are never discounted, so you have to be careful to not use the hotel’s for-pay amenities. Slightly non-central, but only very slightly: three blocks from Macy’s into the Theatre District, on the way to South Station. Parking (extra charge) right under the hotel. Usual upscale hotel design. Last time I stayed here, I had a hard time making data calls using their phone system, but that might have been an isolated problem.

The most intriguing place I stay in Boston is The College Club of Boston. The Club is the oldest university women’s club in the U.S.A. They let rooms to the public — men and women both — at their “clubhouse” at 44 Commonwealth Avenue (around the corner from the Ritz, and just up the street from the Public Garden. The building is beautiful — very high ceilings, lovely woodwork, and so on — and the rooms are spacious. Johnny and I stayed here last winter, and had a huge double room we could have played football in. Rates are very reasonable — starting at around $80 a night. Some rooms have shared bath, others have private bath; don’t balk at the shared bath rooms, as the bath is, in almost all cases, right beside your room, and only shared with one or two others, who you will probably never see. Nice simple breakfast, served in the basement dining room, is included in the rate. Book early.

Rooms at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge are often available at a discount from Expedia and Travelocity; I’ve seen them as low as $99/night on the weekends here. The hotel seems inconveniently located, but it’s actually not that hard to get to, as it’s across the street from the CambridgeSide Galleria, and about 3 blocks walk from the Lechmere ‘T’ stop. The Galleria is a large, multi-floor upscale shopping centre (home to the Cambridge Apple Store; they have a slightly better than average food court, and several chain restaurants, which are a good alternative to room service. There aren’t many other restaurants in the area. Rooms on the Charles River side, which tend to be more expensive, have stunning views of downtown Boston. There’s for-pay Internet in every room.

The Seaport Hotel is incredibly inconvenient, located as it is across the street from World Trade Centre, about 15 minutes walk from downtown Boston. But if you’re driving, and want to be handy to the downtown, that might not matter. Service here was amazing — we stayed here when Oliver was very young, and they were very nice to him, and gave him a very nice stuffed elephant when we checked in. Not many restaurants, or much of anything else, in this neighbourhood, although if you’re going to a concert at the waterside FleetBoston Pavillion, it is very handy — a quick 5 minute walk up the street. Like the Royal Sonesta, inexpensive discount rates do pop up from time to time, and the hotel’s own website often highlights others.

As for hotels to avoid…

Stay away from the Cambridge Gateway Inn, which used be called the Susse Chalet Cambridge. The hotel is located right on the highway (really, right on the highway), the rooms are outdated and depressing, and the walls are paper thin. A friend told me last week that when he worked in Cambridge they used to stash job interview candidates here, often two to a room; it was like a new hire prison.

The Ramada and Quality locations in Dorchester are nice enough hotels, but their claim to be “minutes from the Freedom Trail and Quincy Market” is a hopeful exageration at best: you need to take a hotel shuttle bus to the JFK ‘T’ stop, or, if driving, get on the I-93 north into the city, which is almost always stop-and-go. If you want to be out and about without a car, and don’t want to spend a lot of time getting to and from your hotel, these locations are best avoided. On the upside, there’s a bowling alley, candy factory/store and restaurant, all owned by the same family that runs the hotels, located right next door. The Ramada has an outdoor pool in its courtyard.

I spent some time in the middle of last night doing some spring cleaning here at the website (not much more time to do spring cleaning, after all). Probably most noticeable is that the whole operation should now seem much peppier, as I indexed some database tables that should have been indexed years ago, and cleaned up the design of the site under the hood. This clean-up may result in total chaos for users of Netscape 4.x. Please let me know of any other irregularities you notice.