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Identity

New Westminster in 1892

A large portion of a person’s identity is related to geography. This weblog post explores some issues related to identity, from a very personal perspective.

The above map of New Westminster, is oriented as its citizens conceive of their city, with the west on the left and the east to the right, with the north at the top, and the south at the bottom. Streets run south to north, avenues from east to west. Even numbered addresses are on the southern and western sides, odd numbered on the northern and eastern sides. Unfortunately, even these basic facts aren’t actually true. The compass near the bottom of the map helps explain it. The streets run from the south-east to the north-west. The avenues from the north-east to the south-west.

For over forty years I have been an immigrant to Norway, and probably will have that status for as long as I live, despite acquiring Norwegian citizenship 2021-05-07. Even my children cannot escape that term, despite both of them having been born in Norway. They are regarded as second-generation immigrants. Sometimes, they are referred to as third-culture children. It means that they are not fully integrated into the country/ culture of their citizenship, in our case, British Columbia/ Canada, nor that of their birth, in our case, Norway. It is a common situation.

I grew up in New Westminster, British Columbia. It was founded by the Royal Engineers, led by Colonel Richard Moody (1813 – 1887), to be the capital of the Colony of British Columbia in 1858, and continued in that role until the colony’s merger with the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1866. New Westminster was the largest city on the mainland, from that year until it was passed in population by Vancouver during the first decade of the 20th century.

The most prominent street on the map of New Westminster is fifth street, where my sister lives. The architecture is attractive. Some patriots might even call it majestic with traffic divided by a boulevard. This was to be lined with foreign embassies, but by 1871, when British Columbia entered Canada, this dream came to an end. Victoria had become the capital of the united colonies. I know too much about New Westminster’s history, especially its racism, to want to live there again.

My biological/ ethnic/ cultural identity has emerged, and become more complex, with the years. I have always known that I was adopted, that I came from a family of farmers, and that my biological father had served in the Royal Canadian Navy, during World War II. I was given my original birth certificate with my original name, by my father, some months before he died in 1991. Here it stated my original name, Richard Edwin Salter. I received information about my biological mother in 2006, and even met some of her family in 2007, more of them in 2008. For the first time in my life, I could see people who had some of my physical characteristics, blue eyes and large hands, especially. I even had a place of origin, Essex County, Ontario, but with English origins from Cornwall and Irish origins from Greyabbey, with ancestors that had started off in the Orkney Islands, with roots pointing to Norway.

In 2015, gene testing through 23 & Me provided me with even more revelations, including some First Nation genes. Just before I turned 70, my biological half-brother contacted me. While he was born in Windsor, Ontario, his family had moved across the river to Detroit. My paternity can be traced back to Fredrikstad in Norway, and from there to New Amsterdam and Schenectady, New York. I have Dutch and French genes as well. The First Nations genes turn out to be Mohawk.

I too feel as if I am a third-culture child. I have never been fully integrated into my adoptive mother’s family, nor can I ever fully integrate myself into my biological family. I also lack the mindset to be a fully integrated Norwegian.

My mind inhabits Qayqayt, the co-located First Nation village, usurped by New Westminster. It also inhabits New Westminster, Inderøy, Essex County and Detroit. Somehow, I manage to live in all these places simultaneously. Such is the power of the mind, and emotions.

When I visit Qayqayt/ New Westminster, every block resonates with memories. The remaining half of my old neighbourhood is protected from development, including my childhood home, hopefully none of these houses will come crashing down during the remainder of my life. The other half was destroyed in a housing boom in the 1970s, when single family dwellings were replaced with three-story, wooden apartment buildings.

Using thesaurus.com, to find synonyms for migrant, there appear to be different classes that meet their definition of “a person who moves to a foreign place.” Emigrant and immigrant are the most neutral terms that focus on leaving or entering (a country), respectively. I have not come across migrator or departer before, and mover does not imply anything foreign. Expatriate may also express some of the same sentiments, but it is a term I refuse to use. While evacuee appears on the list, refugee does not. Drifter, itinerant, nomad, rover, transient and wanderer all express a more temporary relocation, even if it is one that is part of a lifestyle, imposed or chosen. Vagrant seems almost criminal, while gypsy, tinker and traveller reflect ethnic orientations.

Migration is magnetic. There are some forces that push a person away from their home country, but other forces that pull them to a new destination. For some, money is a very compelling force. For others, it barely enters the equation. Personal safety may be a concern for many.

Of the various places I have known and visited, I am content with Inderøy. It is sufficiently hilly, and close to the sea to satisfy these primal needs. Qayqayt was on Sto:lo, that is, New Westminster was on the Fraser river. Essex County and Detroit border on the Detroit River. I can mentally relate to them by relating them to the Fraser Valley, and its farms.

I am uncertain if I could move to Essex County. I find the town of Essex attractive, but a little too flat. If something forced a relocation from Inderøy, I am most attracted to the landscape surrounding the Salish Sea. Ninety percent of it, is encompassed on the route from the Malahat on the south-eastern shore of Vancouver Island, northwards to Courteney, then across to Powell River, and further south to the Sechelt peninsula.

This is the background image on all of my computers, showing Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley to the right of the Salish Sea, with Vancouver Island on the left.

I may live in Norway, but almost all of the recent books I have purchased are about British Columbia, typically on or near the Salish sea.

Much of the early history of British Columbia was researched, written and published by Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832 – 1918), born in Granville, Ohio, but who moved to San Francisco in 1852 where he started the largest bookseller, stationer and publishing house west of Chicago. He started researching the history of British Columbia on a trip to Victoria in 1878, and came out with a definitive history of the province in 1887, written by himself, William Nemos (Swedish), Alfred Bates (English) and Amos Bowman (1839 – 1894), from Blair, Ontario. The major challenge with this work is its emphasis on pioneer history, where settlers of European origin set the premises for the work. It is the migrants to the area that are intent on determining its history. Despite the First Nations populations far outnumbering these settlers, they were largely ignored, as were people of Asian origin. Bancroft did, however, manage to strike a balance between British and American perspectives on the province.

The next significant historian was Frederic Howay (1867 – 1943) born in London, Ontario, but who moved first to the Cariboo goldfields in 1871, and then to New Westminster in 1874. He studied law at Dalhousie University, graduating in 1890. He was appointed a judge in 1907, retiring in 1937. He used as much of his working day as possible writing history.

For years, I have coded it as NW, until today. News of the tragedy at the Kamloops Residential School, has prompted me to refer to the city from now on, as Qayqayt, or Qt. I lived at the residential school in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, during the summer of 1974, as an archaeology student working on a nearby excavation.

Despite years of effort by my mother, who grew up in Kelowna, although she was born in Vancouver (Eburne is the name appearing on her birth certificate). I never felt at home in the interior of British Columbia, as an adult. The one exception was Madeira, a cabin at Blind Bay on Shuswap Lake. For me, civilization ended at Hope. Almost everything beyond felt like the frontier. Since the early 1970s, whenever I think of the interior, I think of Robert Altman’s (1925 – 2006) film, McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971), based on a 1959 novel of the same name by Edmund Naughton (1926–2013), and set in a 1902 Bearpaw in Washington state. That is despite the rain, the vegetation, and most of the film being shot on location in West Vancouver and in Squamish,

Before opening his own butcher shop in Kelowna, my maternal grandfather was a cattle buyer. He rode a horse, and was armed.

Before moving to Norway, we applied then met with the consul in person in Vancouver. He admitted that he wanted to make sure that we were of the correct race. During our meeting he received a telephone call. From his remarks, it was obvious that the person calling was the widow of a Norwegian citizen who had immigrated to Canada. After he died, she discovered that he had another wife, children and family in Norway that she had not heard about previously. His bigamy was making her life difficult.

There are times when I regard myself as a third-culture child.

Despite having lived in Norway for over 40 years, people can hear my foreign origins. While some ask if I am American, others have been more complimentary asking if I was from Finland or even Denmark.

An aside on orthography. At elementary school I had difficulty spelling, as well as with the art of handwriting/ penmanship/ penpersonship. I am aware that tradition dictates that fifth street should be written Fifth Street. I prefer not to write it that way any more, as a Norwegian writing style seems more natural. Similarly, while others may encourage me to write the Fraser River, I often write Fraser river, but would prefer to write Sto:lo which is its name in the Halqemeylem (Upriver Halkomelem) language.

This preference has been reinforced following the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, and the subsequent discovery of even more, at other schools. I can no longer accept the use of names imposed by English invaders on the landscape they referred to as British Columbia. #EveryChildMatters.

The first Richard McBride Elementary School, in the Sapperton neighbourhood of New Westminster, was built in 1912. It burned down, and was replaced by a second school in 1929. Now, that school is being replaced. In the Brow of the Hill neighbourhood, John Robson elementary school, has been bulldozed away and replaced by École Quaquat Elementary School, offering dual track French and English immersion programs. Richard McBride urged the Canadian Prime Minister to support legislation banning immigration from Asia. He dispossessed Indigenous people of reserve land, and opposed women’s suffrage.

The New Westminster school district has launched a renaming process for the school after a request from McBride’s parent advisory council (PAC). At issue are the opinions and actions of Richard McBride, the 16th premier of British Columbia, from 1903 to 1915. He held publicly expressed views against Asian and Indigenous people and against women’s suffrage. Throughout his time in office he oversaw legislation reflecting those views.

New Westminster school board has pledged its commitment to undertaking anti-racism work in the district. The naming proposal came from PAC secretary, Cheryl Sluis, and was discussed at the group’s annual general meeting in 2020-06, held virtually due to COVID-19.

New Westminster has become a diverse city. There is a need for children to identify positively with the name of their school, and for the name to reflect values of equity and inclusion. Despite this the renaming proposal has its critics. Allegedly, some people don’t want (racist) history erased and want to honour New Westminster’s Anglocentric traditions. My attitude towards New Westminster stems from being denied an opportunity to participate at the May Day dances, performed by third grade classes. I was one of two people excluded, probably because of my cerebral palsy.

The school district is now fully in charge of the renaming process. School district superintendent Karim Hachlaf wrote in a letter dated 2020-06-24 to the McBride PAC that an operations committee will be established that will include a wide range of staff and community representatives: a trustee, administrative staff, union representatives from both CUPE and the New Westminster Teachers’ Union, community members, student advisory members, a PAC representative and possibly more. Once the list of participants has been finalized, the committee will meet to recommend a plan and consultation timeline to the board. After it carries out its consultation process, the committee will present a summary report and recommendation to the board, and the school board will make the ultimate decision about a new school name. [Note, the school is now officially known as Skwo:wech Elementary School, discussed in the post, Homebound.]

This reply was prompted by a 2020-06-22 letter to the New Westminster school district, from the Richard McBride Elementary School PAC executive outlined some of their findings:

During his time as premier (1903 to 1915), McBride advocated for “a white B.C.” and sought to shut out the “Asiatic hordes.” He worked hard to prevent “cheap” Japanese labour from competing in the fisheries and in “everything the white man has been used to call his own.”

McBride led the legislature in passing numerous anti-Asian measures, such as taxes on companies that hired Chinese labourers and legislation denying the vote to Asians and Indigenous people.

After the Conservatives formed the federal government in 1911, McBride urged Prime Minister Robert Borden to honour a promise to legislate against immigration from Asia.

McBride was premier at the time of the Komagata Maru incident, when the Japanese steamship carrying hundreds of Sikh passengers was prevented from docking and most of its passengers were barred from entering B.C. McBride was quoted as saying: “To admit Orientals in large numbers would mean the end, the extinction of the white people.”

As premier, McBride pursued a policy of making way for economic development and the expansion of cities by dispossessing Indigenous nations of their reserve lands.

McBride was also well-known as a leading anti-suffrage politician at a time when white women were gaining the vote across Canada. He believed extending the franchise to women would take away too much power from men.

Other identities

As an adopted person, I also have a number of adopted identities, that I refer to as personas. [These were discussed in a very early post from 2016-05-12, Unit One.]

Note: This was originally planned to be published in 2021, somehow it wasn’t. Parts of it were published in Homebound, mentioned above, published 2022-04-23. Then accidentally, this post was published on 2022-10-27, despite a publication date of 2021-12-05. Please excuse the repetition of information.

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D. B. Cooper

Tickle The WireFBI Accepts New Evidence in Cold Case of ...
Sketches of “D. B. Cooper” with and without sunglasses, from 1972. Images: FBI, in the public domain.

Fifty years ago today, 1971-11-24, a man identified as D. B. Cooper highjacked a Boeing 727-100. Sometime that day he disappeared.

A middle-aged man stood at Northwest Orient Airlines’ flight counter at Portland International Airport, identified himself as Dan Cooper and purchased a one-way ticket in cash for a 30-minute trip north to Seattle. After boarding the aircraft he, in all likelihood, sat in seat 18C.

Flight 305, with 36 passengers and a crew of six, departed Portland on schedule at 14:50 PST. Shortly after takeoff, Cooper handed a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner. Although she initially put it in her purse, Cooper asked her to read it. It mentioned a bomb and directed her to sit beside him, which she did. Cooper showed her the bomb, then demanded $200 000 in “negotiable American currency”, four parachutes (two primary and two reserve), and a fuel truck to stand by in Seattle to refuel the aircraft upon arrival. Schaffner conveyed Cooper’s instructions to the pilots in the cockpit, then returned.

William A. Scott (1920–2001), the captain, contacted Seattle–Tacoma Airport air traffic control, which informed local and federal authorities. The passengers were told that their arrival in Seattle would be delayed because of a minor mechanical difficulty. Northwest Orient’s president, Donald Nyrop, authorized payment of the ransom, and ordered all employees to cooperate fully with the hijacker’s demands. The aircraft circled Puget Sound for about two hours while the parachutes and ransom money were assembled, and emergency personnel mobilized.

FBI agents assembled the ransom money, 10 000 unmarked 20-dollar bills and microfilmed each of them. Cooper rejected military parachutes, and obtained civilian parachutes with manual ripcords.

At 17:39, the aircraft landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The aircraft taxied to an isolated, but brightly lit section of the apron. All window shades in the cabin were closed. Northwest Orient’s Seattle operations manager, Al Lee, delivered a cash-filled knapsack and parachutes to flight attendant Tina Mucklow on the aft stairs. Once on board, Cooper allowed all passengers, Schaffner, and senior flight attendant Alice Hancock to leave the plane.

Cooper’s flight plan involved a southeast course toward Mexico City at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling the aircraft—approximately 100 knots = 185 km/h at a maximum 3 000 m = 10 000-foot altitude, with landing gear remaining in the takeoff/landing position, and wing flaps set at 15 degrees, and the cabin unpressurized. This meant that a second refuelling would be necessary. Cooper and the crew discussed options and agreed on Reno, Nevada, as the refuelling stop.

At about 19:40 the aircraft took off with only Cooper, Scott, Mucklow, first officer William J. Rataczak and flight engineer Harold E. Anderson on board. Two F-106 fighters shadowed the airliner, one above and one below, along with a Lockheed T-33 trainer, for part of the trip.

After takeoff, Cooper asked Mucklow to show him how to open the door to the aft staircase. He then ordered her to join the rest of the crew in the cockpit and remain there with the door closed. At about 20:00, a warning light indicated that the aft airstair had been lowered. At 20:13, the aircraft’s tail moved upward movement, requiring trim to level it. The plane landed at 22:15, at Reno Airport. Cooper was no longer on board.

From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of the case has to do with investigators describing the highjacker as D. B. Cooper, rather than the name he used on his ticket, Dan Cooper. Agents theorized that Cooper took his alias from a popular Belgian comics series of the 1970s featuring the fictional hero Dan Cooper, a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot in a Belgian comic book/ graphic novel series, who participants in numerous heroic adventures, including parachuting. These comics were never translated into English, nor imported to the U.S. Thus, there are suggestions that Cooper was Canadian. In particular, the phrase “negotiable American currency”, aroused attention, because it would seldom be used by Americans.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c7/DanCooper_270.jpg
Dan Cooper is a Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot appearing in Les Aventures de Dan Cooper, illustrated and written by
Albert Weinberg (1922 – 2011) and published in 41 albums from 1957 to 1992.

On 1980-02-10, Brian Ingram (ca. 1972 – ) uncovered $5 800 of the ransom from the Columbia River bank at Tina/ Tena Bar, about 14 km downstream from Vancouver, Washington. This is the only money from the highjacking that has ever been recovered.

There have been any number of suspects. Only one will be mentioned. In an article by Jake Rossen, writing in Mental Floss, in 2016, he suggests that D. B. Cooper may have been Barbara Dayton (1926 – 2002), who, before gender-reassignment surgery in 1969, was born Bobby. For the high-jacking she had disguised herself as a man. Pat and Ron Formans’ book, The Legend of D. B. Cooper (2008) gives a more detailed version.

There are any number of sources of information about D. B. Coooper, including a Wikipedia article that has provided much of the information here.

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Intel 4004

An Intel C4004 microprocessor with gray traces. (Photo: Thomas Nguyen)

Today (2021-11-15) is the 50th anniversary of the Intel 4004 microprocessor. This featured a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU). It was the first microprocessor to be sold as an electronic component. At the time of its development, Intel considered itself a memory chip manufacturer. At about the same time, three other CPU designs were being developed, but for specific projects. These were: Four-Phase Systems AL1, (1969); American Microsystems MP944 (1970); and Texas Instruments TMS-0100 (1971).

The Intel 4004 project began in 1969, when Japanese adding machine manufacturer Busicom, approached Intel to manufacture a chip it had designed. Intel was a start-up, so small that they didn’t have the staff to design the logic required. Thus, they came with a counter proposal, to build a general purpose computer-on-a-chip and to emulate the calculator architecture using a read-only memory (ROM) byte-code interpreter.

Frederico Faggin (1941 – ) was assigned responsibility for the project. He was able to design a customer-programmable microprocessor. The work included logic design, circuit design, chip layout, tester design and test program development. His initials F.F. were incorporated into the chip design. Assisting in the development process was Masotoshi Shima (1943 – ), a Busicom software and logic designer, but without any chip design experience. The chip was first used in the Busicom 141-PF adding machine.

Faggin is known for several microprocessor inventions. These include the buried contact, and the bootstrap load. He also created the basic methodology for random logic design using silicon gate technology. He was particularly vocal inside Intel in advocating the 4004 as a general purpose microprocessor, with a huge market potential. He subsequently led the design of the 4040, 8008 and 8080 processors.

Faggin was presented with the engineering prototype of their calculator with the first 4004. This was subsequently donated to the Computer History Museum.

Faggin and Ralph Ungermann (1942 – 2015) left Intel in 1974 to start Zilog. Intel’s reaction was to disown Faggin, and to rewrite company history. In particular, it credited more loyal, but less competent, employees, with the 4004 design.

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Donald Lewes Hings (1907 – 2004)

Don Hings (1942-03-09)

Donald Lewes Hings (1907-11-06 – 2004–02-24) was born in Leicester, England, but moved to western Canada with his parents when he was three. He grew up in Rossland, in the Kootenays, halfway between Vancouver and Calgary, and 10 km north of the Canada/ United States border.

He was a pioneer in the field of telecommunications, and best known for his invention of the Walkie-Talkie. Previously, mobile radios were mounted on vehicles and transmitted in Morse code. Hings’ model, developed in 1937 while working at Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (CM&S) now, Cominco) in Trail, British Columbia, was portable and could transmit the human voice over long distances. He called his invention the packset.

During the Second World War (1940-1945) Hings worked for the National Research Council, on loan from CM&S, working with the Signal Corps to develop military communications, including the military walkie-talkie. From 1946-1985, he worked for Electronic Laboratories of Canada as President & Chief Engineer. The company was started 1942-11-02 as a subsidiary of Electronic Laboratories, Inc. of Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. It was dissolved 1998-09-21.

Between 1975 and 1993, he devoted his time to developing instrumentation for measurements of the causes and effects of long-range air pollution vectors.

In 1946 he was awarded the Member of the British Empire by King George VI. In 2001 he was presented with the Order of Canada by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. In 2006 he was inducted into the Telecommunications Hall of Fame because “his modifications of the two-way radio … which he evolved into the world’s first functional and operational walkie-talkie, saved the lives of thousands of British, Canadian and American troops during the Second World War and helped to usher modern telecommunications technologies into the military”.

Despite being a lifetime member of the Professional Engineers Associations of British Columbia and Ontario, the American Geophysical Union and the Canadian Signal Corps, his professional education was self-taught. He had no university education.

His life work includes a wide-range of antenna, radio technologies and geophysical exploration techniques using electromagnetic instrumentation that he developed. He has more than 55 patents to his name in both Canada and the US.

On 2000-02-13 Roger Chaisson, Bruce Waugh and David Billings were awarded the People’s Choice Award at the Ottawa Winterlude Festival for their 4 m tall ice sculpture dedicated to Don Hings. It depicted a Red Cross soldier in the Second World War, speaking into a C-48 walkie-talkie.

Hings was adept at Morse code, and was an amateur radio operator, with call sign VE7BH. His obituary notes that he talked to “HAM boys” well into his 90s.

Hings lived in Burnaby, a municipality immediately east of Vancouver, at the summit of the 203 m high Capitol Hill, a neighbourhood north of Hastings Street, east of Willingdon Avenue, and west of Fell Avenue, known for its Italian, Portuguese and Croatian immigrant communities. He first saw Capitol Hill on a Scout outing in 1918, and decided then and there that he wanted to live there. He bought ca. 2.5 city blocks of the area, built his house there in the late 1940s. This is where he lived and worked for the rest of his life.

He located his business on a compound at this site. Seven of the staff members that worked for him in Ottawa, relocated to Capitol Hill when the company was established. Ultimately, he sold building lots to a staff of 15 at the same price he had paid for them, so they could live close by their place of work.

In addition to other patents, he has one for an electric piano. It consists of tuned steel bars that set up a moving magnetic field that creates pure tones, minus the harmonics, It is small, compact and never needs to be tuned. In addition it is equipped with a speaker and volume control.

Much of the information for the Weblog post is sourced from the D. L. Hings website.

The C-58 Walkie Talkie is less portable than today’s hand-held devices.


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The Mother of All Demos

The Mother of All Mice. Wooden and with two wheels, first demonstrated publicly 1968-12-08. Image: SRI International.

Fifty-three years ago today, 1968-12-09, is one of several dates that can be regarded as the start of the personal computer age, when a computer demonstration, A research center for augmenting human intellect, retrospectively called The Mother of All Demos, was presented by Douglas Engelbart (1925 – 2013) in the Civic Auditorium, San Francisco. The technical aspects of the presentation were managed by Bill English (1928 – 2020). About one thousand computer professionals attended the event there.

The demo featured a computer system called NLS, oN-Line System. The 90-minute presentation essentially demonstrated almost all the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: collaborative real-time editing, command input, dynamic file linking, graphics, hypertext, a mouse, navigation, revision control, video conferencing, windows and word processing – all in a single system.

The San Francisco terminal was linked to an Eidophor large-format video projection system loaned by the NASA Ames Research Center, so attendees could watch what was happening on the NLS on a 6.7 metres high screen. The terminal was also connected to an SDS 940 computer (designed specifically for time-sharing among multiple users) located at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) headquarters, 48 km away in Menlo Park using a pair of 1 200 baud-modems. There, a second (but smaller) group of attendees could experience the demo as it was live-streamed.

Engelbart was best known for founding the field of human – computer interaction. He also made notes describing a computer mouse. These were made into a functioning prototype by Bill English in 1963. Thus, both of these two people can be said to have jointly invented the computer mouse.

The demonstration was highly influential, most especially the development of Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) that flourished in the 1970s.

The original demo is available as a video on YouTube. Note: Modern viewers may be disappointed by its low fidelity. New Atlas has an article that provides additional insights, and photographs.

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Empty Planet

This post looks at the basic premise of Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson’s Empty Planet (2019), that the human population, now at 7.5 billion, will peak at 9 billion, before declining rapidly, later in the 21st century. The question addressed is how different nations/ regions will cope with a collapsing population.

All advanced and many emerging market economies, to use International Monetary Fund slang, have fertility levels below replacement, considered to be 2.1 offspring per woman. The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in Norway in 2018 was 1.56, the lowest on record. In her New Year’s address in 2019, the Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg, encouraged Norwegian women to have more children. The PM has had 2.0 children, while the two other women party leaders in her government have not had any children. Being generous, these three have a combined TFR of 0.7.

Is Canada the world’s first post-national country? Despite my Canadian heritage as well as Bricker and Ibbitson’s suggestion that this is the case, I would have to answer, not yet. Yes, Canada features individualism, combined with urbanism, low TFR and high immigration. Twenty percent of the population are immigrants. That is higher than any other country, including the United States of America. Yes, this contrasts with the stereotypical image of Canada as the vast, unpopulated, ice-encrusted North. But these characteristics are not sufficient to make a country post-national.

For a country to be post-national, it has to be multi-cultural. This means that it cannot display preferences for one culture to the detriment of another. Canada does this, by continuing to have a British monarch of German heritage, as head of state. The fact that it uses a first-past-the-post electoral system also puts limits on representation in parliament. Amazingly, the Liberal Party currently in government as of this writing in 2019, first promised a more democratic voting system, then reneged on this promise. Currently, cultural minorities have to find their place within a three party system. Rather than having a group of people from an assortment of political persuasions representing citizens over a larger area, one person from a specific political party represents everyone in the riding, including those who did not vote for that person.

Despite the book’s Canadian chauvinism, it offers important insights. In urban societies, women become better educated, have better knowledge about contraception, this results in fewer children and leads women to better jobs, which makes women more financially autonomous. Ties to family, clan and religion deteriorate. The ties that are left are cultural.

Immigrants to Canada generally teach their children their original language, so that these children can continue to be entrenched in two cultures – Canada and something else. My daughter, who took her secondary education in Canada, had Norwegian as her second language. My old elementary school, named after gold prospector, journalist, some time New Westminster resident and former British Columbia Premier John Robson, has been demolished. It has been replaced with Ecole Qayqayt Early Education Centre. It is named after the Qayqayt First Nation, who originally lived in New Westminster, and offers French immersion classes.

While most of the world is at or below replacement fertility, 2.1 children per woman, the one major exception is Africa. The 2019 African Economic Outlook reports economic prospects and projections for Africa and for each of its 54 countries. It offers short and medium term forecasts for the main socio-economic factors, noting challenges and progress.

The report states, “Africa’s economic growth continues to strengthen, reaching an estimated 3.5 percent in 2018, about the same as in 2017 and up 1.4 percentage points from the 2.1 percent in 2016.”

But also cautions, “Africa’s labor force is projected to be nearly 40 percent larger by 2030. If current trends continue, only half of new labor force entrants will find employment, and most of the jobs will be in the informal sector. This implies that close to 100 million young people could be without jobs.” African fertility has halved to 4 since 1975 due to better female education and empowerment. However, this is still about twice replacement levels.

While declining population is a benefit, in terms of relieving pressure on the environment, it will also swing economic power from capital to labour, reducing inequality.

There are four approaches that can be taken to the world population challenge. Approaches 1 and 2 both accept a perpetual decrease in population. Approach 1 is to continue relying on humans as before.

Approach 2 is to replace workers with robots. Japan is the poster child for working with this. There are many areas of the economy where robots can be used, especially in the transport sector and manufacturing. Some progress can undoubtedly also be made in terms of construction.

With these first two approaches, there will come a point when having a nation-state will become impractical. There will be so few people living in them, that land could be freed for other groups to use.

The third and fourth approaches allow increased immigration. There are a number of situations that have to be understood, when dealing with immigrants. One term bandied about is integration. Quite often it is understood to be something that someone else has to do. Many people in the host population confuse integration with assimilation, and expect immigrants to assimilate themselves into the wider society. That task is, of course, impossible. So, Approach 3, is a situation in which the host society/ culture envisions itself as superior to anything/ everything on offer from migrants. It also expects them to give up social and cultural values, for something these immigrants may not quite understand.

Approach 4, the last approach here, is to accept that society will ultimately become multicultural. This is the official Canadian approach. Apart from a disdain for radicalism, Canada is willing to accept large numbers of well educated and young immigrants, capable of engaging with other Canadians of divergent backgrounds. At the same time these immigrants are allowed, even encouraged, to preserve their original culture, so they can function as a link between the two societies. Immigrant children to Canada are taught that they have two feet, one planted in Canada, the second in the culture they come from. Both are equal, and both are relevant.

Society changes

If anyone were to enter a time machine, and go fifty years back in time, they would discover a completely different world. With respect to my own situation, it would be a world filled with cheap gasoline, smokers, mini-skirts, vinyl records, beef steaks and corporal punishment. Since then, that culture has become unrecognizable. Like everyone else born before the new millennium, I didn’t grow up with cell phones, and had to learn how to use them – as an adult. Dress codes prevented women from wearing trousers at school and at work. In fact, some women had to quit work if they married. I was strapped for turning around in my desk at school.

Corporal punishment is illegal in Norway today, but listening to Norwegians my age, it seems to have been quite common fifty or sixty years ago. Transitions to a new culture can be difficult and while I don’t approve of people hitting their children, I don’t think jail sentences are the correct response either, in many cases. Suspended sentences are a cost-effective way of expediting behavioural change, both for the individual and society.

Yet, prophecy is a tricky proposition. With hindsight, it is easy to see that pizzas are more than a passing fad. The same cannot be said of fondues.

This weblog post was originally written 2019-03-06, but not published until 2019-07-08. It continues a discussion begun in Workshop Activism (published 2018-02-03), and continued in Lotta Hitschmanova (published 2019-02-14).

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Cut/Copy and Paste

The most influential computer ever made, original Xerox Alto featuring bit-mapped black and white display sized 606×808 (the same dimensions as a regular 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper, aligned vertically; 5.8 MHz CPU; 128kB of memory (at the cost of $4000); 2.5MB removable cartridge hard drive; three button mouse; 64-key keyboard and a 5-finger key set. It was on such a machine that Bravo and Gypsy were developed, and cut/copy and paste invented. (Photo: Xerox PARC)

Larry Tesler (1945 – ), invented cut/copy and paste. Between 1973 and 1976, Tesler worked at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), in Palo Alto, California, on the programming language Smalltalk-76, and especially the Gypsy text editor, referred to then as a document preparation system. It was on this project, he implemented a method of capturing text and inserting it elsewhere.

Xerox PARC was initiated by Xerox Chief Scientist Jacob E. “Jack” Goldman (1921 – 2011) who previously worked at Carnegie Tech and directed the Ford Scientific Laboratory, who hired a physicist, George Pake (1924 – 2004) to create it in 1970.

Xerox PARC was largely responsible for developing laser printing, the Ethernet, the modern personal computer, the graphical user interface (GUI) and desktop paradigm, object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, electronic paper, amorphous silicon (a-Si) applications, and advancing very-large-scale integration (VLSI) for semiconductors.

For a more complete story, see: Larry Tesler, A Personal History of Modeless Text Editing and Cut/Copy-Paste (2012)

While most people focus on the cut/copy-paste tool, the concept of modeless software had even greater impact. A mode is a distinct setting within a computer program, in which the same user input will produce different results, because of other settings. Caps lock when pressed puts the user’s typing into a different mode, CAPITAL LETTERS. If it is pressed a second time, the original made will be reactivated, resulting in lower-case letters.

Most interface modes are discouraged because of their potential to induce errors especially when the user is expected to remember the mode state the interface is in. The situation is somewhat better if there is an on-screen state/ mode indicator, such as a change in the colour of an icon, when a mode change is made.

If the user is unaware of an interface mode, there may be an unexpected and undesired response. Mode errors can be disorienting as the user copes with a transgression of user expectations. Not all mode changes are initiated by users,

Mode changes can be initiated by the system, by previous users or by the same user who has disremembered the state change. In such a situation, an operation with the old mode in mind, will disrupt user focus as the user becomes aware of the mode change. This is especially important when a user cannot find how to restore the previous mode.

Prior to Gypsy, Butler Lampson (1943 – ), Charles Simonyi (1948 – ) and others developed Bravo at Xerox PARC in 1974. It was a modal editor where characters typed on the keyboard were usually commands to Bravo, except when in “insert” or “append” mode. Bravo used a mouse to mark text locations and to select text, but not for commands.

Although similar in capabilities to Bravo, the user interface of Gypsy was radically different. In both, a command operated on the current selection. But Bravo had modes and Gypsy didn’t. In Bravo, the effect of pressing a character key depended on the current mode, while in Gypsy, pressing a character key by itself always typed the character.

In the Wikipedia article on Gypsy, the difference between Bravo and Gypsy is illustrated by three examples:

  1. Insert In Bravo’s Command Mode, pressing “I” entered Insert Mode. In that mode, pressing character keys typed characters into a holding area (“buffer”) until the Escape key was pressed, at which time the buffer contents were inserted before the selection and the editor returned to Command Mode.
    In Gypsy, no command or buffer was needed to insert new text. The user simply selected an insertion point with the mouse and typed the new text. Each inserted character went directly into the document at the insertion point, which was automatically repositioned after the new character.
  2. Replace In Bravo, to replace existing text by new text, the user pressed “R” to enter Replace Mode. That mode was just like Insert Mode except that the buffer contents replaced the selection instead of inserting text before it.
    In Gypsy, to replace text, the user simply selected the old text and typed the new text. As soon as the user began to type, Gypsy deleted the old text and selected an insertion point in its stead.
  3. Copy In the then-current version of Bravo, the user selected the destination, pressed “I” or “R” to enter Insert or Replace Mode, selected the source (which highlighted differently from the destination), and pressed Escape to perform the copy and return to Command Mode. While in Insert or Replace Mode, the user could scroll and could select a source, but could not invoke another command, such as opening a different document. To copy text between documents was more complex.
    In Gypsy, the user could select the source text, press the “Copy” function key, select the destination text or insertion point, and press the “Paste” function key. Between Copy and Paste, the system was, as usual, not in a mode. The user could invoke other commands, such as opening a different document.

Fewer modes meant less user confusion about what mode the system was in and therefore what effect a particular key press would have. Gypsy and Bravo both used a three-button mouse, where the second and third buttons were intended for experts.

New users could learn to work with Gypsy in only a few hours. Drag-through selection, double-click and cut-copy-paste were quickly adopted elsewhere, and have become standard on most text editors.

This text was originally written in June 2009 as a draft for a weblog post. It was removed from the weblog, but subsequently revived without the original date and time stamps. New text was added at irregular intervals, including 13 May 2016, 23 April 2018, and 06 May 2019. The publication date of this weblog post celebrates the 10th anniversary of this weblog.

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Doggerland

Some of my ancestors were living as First/ Tribal Nations people in the Mid-Atlantic states, 10 000 years ago. Others, were most likely living in Doggerland, at the same time. At least that is the story according to 23&Me, and their interpretations of my Y-chromosome haplogroup’s DNA, (I-M253/I-Z58).

Here is some conjecture about Doggerland’s past.

Extent of the Last Glacial Maximum in Eurasia source: Mangerud et al 2004, Quaternary Science Reviews 23 (2004) 1313–1332, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2003.12.009

During the Last Glacial Maximum, which ended around 18 000 BP = before present, the North Sea, Scandinavia and much of what is now coastal northern Europe was covered with glacial ice. The sea level was about 120 m lower.

Land bridge between the mainland and Britain – Doggerland and Dogger Bank. Comparison of the geographical situation in 2000 to the late years of the Vistula-Würm Glaciation. (Illustration: Francis Lima, 2016)

After the ice melted, a watershed emerged. The Seine, Thames, Meuse, Scheldt and Rhine rivers joined and flowed west along the English Channel as a wide slow river before eventually reaching the Atlantic Ocean. At about 12 000 BP the north-facing coastal area of Doggerland had a coastline of lagoons, salt marshes, mudflats and beaches as well as inland streams, rivers, marshes and lakes. Many regard it as the richest hunting, fowling and fishing ground in Europe in the Mesolithic period.

As sea levels rose and the land began to tilt in an isostatic adjustment as the huge weight of ice lessened. Gradually a large tidal bay emerged between eastern England and Dogger Bank by 11 000 BP. This was followed by a rapid sea-level rise, leading to both Dogger Bank and Great Britain becoming separate islands. Doggerland eventually became submerged, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 8 500 BP.

Soon after about 8 200 BP the remaining coastal land was flooded by a megatsunami, caused by the Storegga Slide, a submarine landslide off the coast of Norway. This would have had a catastrophic impact on the contemporary coastal Mesolithic population It has been suggested that the only remaining parts of Doggerland at the time of the Storegga Slide were low-lying islands, and that the area had been abandoned. However, the Dogger Bank, an upland area of Doggerland, remained an island until at least 7 000 BP.

An alternative view speculates that the Storegga tsunami devastated Doggerland but then ebbed back into the sea. Lake Agassiz was a very large glacial lake in central North America. Fed by glacial melwater at the end of the last glacial period, its area was larger than all of the modern Great Lakes combined although its mean depth was not as great. When it burst releasing so much fresh water that sea levels over about two years rose to flood much of Doggerland and make Britain an island.

Archaeology

The prehistoric existence of Doggerland was established in the late 19th century. However, it was Bryony Coles in the 1990s, who named the area Doggerland and produced speculative maps of the area.

Non-Fiction literature

Coles, B. J. (1998). “Doggerland: a Speculative Survey”. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 64: 45–81. doi:10.1017/S0079497X00002176.

Gaffney, V.; Thomson, K.; Fitch, S., eds. (2007). Mapping Doggerland: The Mesolithic Landscapes of the Southern North Sea. https://www.academia.edu/2480682/Mapping_Doggerland_the_Mesolithic_Landscapes_of_the_Southern_North_Sea: Archaeopress.

Gaffney, Vincent; Fitch, Simon; Smith, David (2009). Europe’s Lost World: The Rediscovery of Doggerland. Council for British Archaeology. ISBN 1-902771-77-X.

Moffat, Alistair (2005). Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-05133-7. Discussed in depth in chapters 2–4.

Morelle, Rebecca (4 April 2017). “Evidence of ancient ‘geological Brexit’ revealed”. BBC News. Retrieved 5 April 2017.

Spinney, Laura (December 2012). Robert Clark (photog.); Alexander Maleev (illus.). “The Lost World of Doggerland”. National Geographic. 222 (6): 132–143. Retrieved 30 November 2012.

Julia Blackburn, Time Song: Searching for Doggerland (2019). Roger Cox, reviewing in The Scotsman, writes: “To describe Time Song as a non-fiction book about the history of Doggerland makes it sound dry and academic, but Julia Blackburn’s approach is anything but. At one point, she describes her modus operandi as “trying to learn prehistory hand to mouth as I go along” and that’s a more-or-less accurate description of what it feels like to read her writing. There is certainly no handy potted chronology of Doggerland to hang onto; instead, the author describes a series of encounters she has with some of the people who have devoted their lives to searching for traces of this long-gone landmass, from archaeologists to obsessive enthusiasts, and uses these as jumping off points to help her imagine what life must have been like in the flat, open country that once stretched all the way from East Anglia to Holland.” See: https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/books/book-review-time-song-searching-for-doggerland-by-julia-blackburn-1-486859

Fictional Accounts

H. G. Wells referred to it in his short story, A Story of the Stone Age (1897). More recently,

Stephen Baxter, Stone Spring (2010) is a science fiction novel set in prehistoric Doggerland (renamed, Northland). It focuses on attempts to adapt to the rising sea levels slowly eroding Northland’s coastline. It is the first part of a trilogy detailing an alternate history in which human efforts were able to prevent Doggerland from being flooded. It was followed by Bronze Summer (2011) and Iron Winter (2012).

A more modern and dystopian story was written by Ben Smith, Doggerland (2019). Alan Warner, reviewing in the Guardian writes, “Ben Smith’s powerful debut novel takes us offshore into a polluted future and to a singular seascape – a vast wind farm of more than 6,000 turbines somewhere out on Dogger Bank. Jem, who is presumably in his mid-teens, and “old man” Greil, who is clearly unwell and weakening, live in serfdom aboard an abandoned, dilapidated accommodation rig; they use an electric boat to maintain the decaying wind turbines that extend for up to 80 miles around them. It is a losing battle against limited tools, bad weather and ill health. These custodians of rust are visited at unpredictable intervals from the coast by the menacing Pilot, who moves freely on a small supply vessel, delivering vital but unappetising tinned food. The Pilot resembles a jailer who also barters for extras.” See: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/11/doggerland-ben-smith-review

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Rednecks

Rednecks (Sébastien Thibault, 2018, appearing in The Guardian, 2018-04-14)

I have just added a new item to the shopping list: red bandanna, Its inclusion was prompted by the reading of an article in the Guardian.

I am unaware of any family links to West Virginia, genetic or adoptive, but I do have family links to coal mining, and occupational links to union membership, being a retired member in good standing of norsk lektorlag, sometimes translated as the Norwegian union of master teachers.

My paternal grandfather was secretary of the Nanaimo Local of the United Mine Workers Union of America. Here, coal miners were independent, tough, and proud and became among the most radical and militant labourers in an extremely polarized province. They were the core of the socialist movement; their strikes were frequent, long and bitter. John Hinde (2011). When Coal Was King: Ladysmith and the Coal-Mining Industry on Vancouver Island. UBC Press. p. 4.

The most violent labour clash in B.C. took place in the coalfields of Vancouver Island, 1912–13. The initial cause of the 1912 strike was a gas explosion that killed 32. When two miners reported gas in another mine, they were dismissed. Fellow workers demanded that they be reinstated. The company retaliated by locking out the miners. Miners all over the island downed their tools in solidarity. Management resorted to tactics they had used in the past to break the strike. In Cumberland, Chinese miners were threatened with eviction and even deportation if they didn’t return to work. In that bitter environment, riots, gun battles, burnings, and clashes between strikers and scabs escalated. The government sent in special constables and the 72nd Regiment to aid the company. Over 250 were arrested, including Labour MLAs and the leader of the newly established British Columbia Federation of Labour. The  strike continued for over two years . Eventually the United Mine Workers of America, after providing $16,000 a week to a total of more than one million dollars, ran out of money. The workers, faced with this reality, called off the strike. The settlement guaranteed improvements, but the employers reneged on the agreement.

The labour movement in B.C. is famous in Canada for its militant and socialist roots. British Columbia by the 1880s had the highest proportion of unionist to general population. In company mining towns where class differences were easily observable, unsafe working conditions, low wages, easy communication, and the necessity of solidarity led to a labour history that at times verged on class war. Division between workers based on race, industrial unions or craft unions, socialist vs. non-socialist, often divided workers and weakened their common objectives. Nevertheless, many of the great demands of labour were eventually met: eight- hour day, safety conditions, old-age pensions, universal suffrage, minimum wage, and an end to child labour.

Back to the Guardian. In West Virginia, the term “redneck” dates back to the early 1900s. In 1921, black, white and immigrant mineworkers took up arms to battle the coal companies that controlled and exploited every aspect of their lives. United, they wore red bandannas to identify each other in battle. They called themselves the “Redneck Army”.

The West Virginia mine wars were the bloodiest labor conflict in American history. The Battle of Blair Mountain involved 10 000 mine workers against a private army of more than 2,000 mercenaries and multiple airplanes equipped to drop bombs on workers, American federal troops armed with gas and more planes.

By the 1910s, the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) was fighting for pay equality, and requiring an oath from every member not to discriminate against any fellow member by “creed, or color, or nationality”. Its first paid organizer in West Virginia was a black man, and an early planning committee consisted of three officers: one white person born in West Virginia, one Italian immigrant and one black person. See, James Green (2015) The Devil Is Here in These Hills: West Virginia’s Coal Miners and Their Battle for Freedom, Atlantic Monthly Press.

Other struggles featuring West Virginia:

In 1774, Point Pleasant. The first battle of the revolutionary war.

In 1863, Western Virginians formed their own state government in Wheeling. It rejected slavery and defended the Union.

Mine wars continued until the 1930s when the laws finally changed, union ranks swelled and mine protections improved.

Today, West Virginia is in the midst of another revolutionary moment. Since 2016, Volunteer-led resistance groups have arisen: RiseUp (Charleston), Mountaineers for Progress (Morgantown), and Huddles and Indivisibles (both State wide) across the state.

In March 2018, teachers in every one of West Virginia’s 55 counties went on strike, at the same time dozens of volunteer feeding and childcare programs cropped up. A citizen-led strike fund raised and distributed US$ 332 000. Thousands of teachers, janitors and bus drivers won 5% raises for all public employees. Then, a week later, West Virginia communications workers went on strike and won their own fight for job security. Now, teachers’ strikes are spreading nationwide.

The Guardian article concludes with: These hills were once home to one of the most powerful and diverse working-class movements in American history. That legacy lives on.

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Childhood houses

For the past few weeks, I have been contemplating the purposes a residence can be put to. During this time, I have studiously avoided propaganda from real estate agents, and others with a vested interest in maximizing property values.

People who do the actual residing, the residents, populate these buildings. Household is probably the most generic and non-discriminatory term for a group of people living together, and occupying a residence. There can be single person households, as well as those consisting of couples, families with young children, families with older adults, and many others.

Residents are not always owners of the building where they reside. They may be renters, even squatters. Even owners are not always owners, as the building may be mortgaged, meaning that the nominal owner actually owns a small fraction of the value of a property, and may lose that investment if payments are not made. Even if payments are met, their may be ways for mortgage owners to gain control.

Yet, these terms all suggest something more is going on than just the provision of shelter. Undoubtedly, primordial needs dictate much of the content of a house: sleep, food consumption and personal hygiene.

Food has to be prepared and, depending on the culture, clothes may have to be made, repaired, or at least washed. A number of maintenance activities are also required. This may involve refurbishing the building, repairing or cleaning. Gardening may be required, indoors, outdoors or in a greenhouse. Subsistence agriculture, may not be an economically optimal use of time. Yet, houses have been and are used as a locus for this, and for other economic activity. If residents commute to work or school, vehicle maintenance, repair and cleaning may be regarded as a legitimate household activity.

Social needs will also be met, sometimes there may be social-sexual needs that results in children, who – after their birth – will have socialization needs. Beyond the social, individuals have other more reflective, and even spiritual needs that have to be addressed. While schools offer a better environment for socialization and education, there may be some forms of home schooling that supplement that provided by the state.

Many of these purposes to which a residential building is put depend on the noun used to describe that building. The term house is more natural for me to use generically, than any other, such as home, residence, dwelling or living quarters. It is a building in which people live, a habitat, although this simple fact may have to be modified to express situations where a building is shared with other groups of people, as is the case of an apartment building, or with other purposes, such as the traditional corner store, with a residence on the upper stories, with a store below.

It is time for a new persona to enter center stage, the infamous “We”. Life is complicated, and not all decisions are made at express speed, or on the most direct route. We, in terms of married life, is not a precise 50.000/50.000 relationship between two partners. Some days it may be 99/01 and others 01/99. If one of the partners is too dominant, then there is a great chance that  “we” will soon replaced with “me and my ex”. In the discussion below, events sometimes reflect decisions and sometimes the absence (even dereliction) of decisions. There may be some prime mover spearheading a decision, or a more amiable, joint process.

While some activities remain the same throughout one’s life, others will change over time. For many, perhaps most, one will live in a sequence of houses. However, I am not a believer in a rapid transition of ownership, or serial ownership if it can be avoided. Personally, we have purchased precisely one house. I have no intentions of ever selling it, but will leave it to my children because this location was the focal point of their childhood.

My mother has throughout her life spoken warmly about her childhood home in Kelowna, and regretted it passing out of her family. Please note the change of noun. It reflects her usage. Yet, one wonders if she understands that other people might also have an affection for their childhood houses. When I speak with her about it, she seems to believe her childhood house and community was so special, that she cannot believe that other people, including her own children, could have similar feelings about their childhood houses.

I was given no opportunity to purchase my childhood house. The house where my wife and I currently live, and where our children grew up, belongs – at least in spirit – to our children, even if they do not formally own it yet. I never want them to regret that their childhood house has been sold.