from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 9:16 PM
subject Des centaines de gens manifestent contre la brutalité policière lors du G20; Protests continue over police actions at G20
Dear Stephen,
I stayed out late and got a little drunk after the successful opening. We had bought drink tickets for the techs from Casa del Popolo, and so after the private dinner at Phoebe’s house Mark, James, Roland and I piled into a cab and headed straight there, and there I stayed until well past 3. I ran into an old barfly from the Khyber days, Samantha, who worked as a dominatrix for a few years and complained about the lack of comprehensive health care and STD checkups in Montreal clinics. She was with a friend who works as a page or something in Parliament and she complained about the Bloc always freaking out if something happens in committees in English. Then I believe I wrote up some contracts for Vincent and Joanne to come work at DHC, except the contracts were written the back wall of the casa, in blue jiffy marker, and are hopefully not legally-binding. I offered them each $40, 000, which is more than I make, and for positions that already exist, so it would be a big mess. Speaking of big mess, and no, not the oil spill, but closer to home, the G20 police brutality. I know I hadn’t been paying attention much to the news in the lead up to the opening, but recently I took a look at some videos on Youtube and I must admit that I was shocked. So that was what the $1-billion was for: to hire a gazillion black-booted thugs to create a fascist army to bully and intimidate and indiscriminately whack away at hipsters, hippies and teenage anarchists. Well, you certainly don’t have to worry about attracting disaffected lefties, students, youth, women or aboriginals to your conservative cause. Way to go! Your hard-core supporters might still love you, they probably think all protesters are idiots and should just “shut the fuck up” anyway (Oh wait that would be a conservative senator, no?). And what better way to celebrate Canada Day, which, I might add, seems to have gone unnoticed here in Montreal, as most people are either working, or moving, or watching people moving (that was us), or watching Youtube videos of police brutality in the new Canada. Welcome immigrants! At least we only beat you with billie clubs if you are peaceful, but watch out: it you raise a stapler in self-defence we might just taser you to death.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 9:27 PM
subject La reine consacre sa journée aux nouvelles technologies; NHL tough guy Bob Probert dead at 45
Dear Stephen,
Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, we went west, to james’ cottage in Ontario. Somewhere near Perth, or Coxville. Long Gull Lake. We left on Friday. Rose was super-good the whole time, as per usual. She is good in the car, and now we know she is good in the wilderness with a gazillion mosquitoes around. We were glad we brought her tent, as the mess kept those bloodsucking critters away from her. Jame’ family cottage has a new addition that puts in more in the realm of Melissa’s family cottage, it is certainly a far, far stretch from our little abode on Knapp Lake. The are is surprisingly quiet, the cottages are all fairly hidden and tucked away from one another, there were not too many motorboats out. Only thing was that the bugs were so bad there was no evening fire. On Friday night I cooked a massive paella for 10, then on Saturday, when more of our motley crew arrived, there was a massive feed for 16 adults, including chicken, pork and amazing, succulent steaks, all on the barbecue. And during the day I had the chance to go water skiing, twice, something I haven’t done since Steve’s stag party, and I was much better on a lake than on the Kennebecasis River. It was so hot this weekend, and the wave continues. Today at work it was a big rush to get the education room finished, I drove to Rona three times in James’s car (we returned the truck on Friday), because there was a problem with the compressor. I was cutting molding and quarter – round. At least there is decent air-conditioning in the building. I bixied to work and back, when I got home there was a repairman and his helper / son working on our washer. Turns out it was simply a case of a small washcloth getting stuck in the filter, aha. Have to start washing small items in a mesh bag or something. Oh, and on the financial front, I again didn’t qualify for overdraft protection at my bank and suddenly found myself in the hole again, so I emptied my mutual funds, all $600. Turns out Debbie cashed my August cottage cheque a month early. And we found out that the feds had indeed used the incorrect address and mailed our returns and cheques to our old address. I have to fill out a form and send it back so looks like I won’t be seeing that $ until September. Even so, it is mostly to go to provincial taxes, and a bit to the Berlin vacation. Good grief, I can’t seem to get ahead.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 10:35 PM
subject Faire face à la chaleur; Suspect in Amber Alert previously convicted of manslaughter
Dear Stephen,
Too hot to write coherently. Walking around naked with fans on. No AC, just too hot. Went to Outremont pool with Sarah and Etien and Femke after watching the Orange Crush Uganda. Too hot at Café Olympico went next door for the AC. Only worked 3/4 day. Too hot to Bixi but did anyway, with shirt off. Rose screaming, too hot. She just rolled over on her own for the first time, so it begins.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:25 PM
subject L’ex-recteur de l’Université McGill sera nommé gouverneur général; Few fines collected for violations of Do-not-call list
Dear Stephen,
It is so hot (still) that we are all sleeping on the front balcony tonight. Rose is already there, in her tent, and we lugged the futon beside her. Should be fun! And a great way to beat the heat. Other ways include: the “secret” pool behind the Royal Vic Hospital; beer and the World Cup in an air-conditioned office; ice cubes in lemony water; fans blowing in the slightly-cooler outside air; cold showers; and cold fruit salad. Had to chill the veggies, they were hot from the market. Were you at all surprised by the Spanish victory over Germany this afternoon? I wish that we played more and better football here in Canada. It would be nice to participate in a World Cup someday! It seems that it would be a much more inexpensive sport to learn, it doesn’t require all the gear and bells and whistles of hockey. Oh and guess what? I finally got some overdraft on my bank account, I called my home branch in SJ and vented a bit and they easily overlooked my bad credit rating, seeing as I get regular direct deposits and have been a good client for close to the past three years. OK off to try out the balcony.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 9:25 PM
subject Harper met en garde contre l’élection d’une «coalition»; Hundreds march to commemorate Oka crisis
Dear Stephen,
Sorry I haven’t written lately, I was taking some time for myself and my family. Frankly, sometimes I don’t see the point in even trying to write you everyday, I rarely have anything to say. And you never ever reply. Lately I have been trying to put the project into a larger perspective, seeing it as a part of a longer, larger, living document, and realizing that I can be writing more about the minutiae of everyday life, not just the generalities I usually fall back on. For instance, Rose is growing up before our very eyes and is doing some remarkable things. She has now rolled over three times on her own, and even seems to enjoy spending more time on her belly. She is eating more and more variety; today she had sweet potatoes, yellow beans, avocado and mango. And this morning Claudine and Rose and I attended a discussion on Elimination Communication held at the Bunnies store on Mont Royal. Tonight we tried it, and it worked! Just as she was waking up from her late afternoon nap, after we had come back from a barbecue that Simon Brown had organized in Parc Jarry, I took off her diaper and placed her on the new training seat we bought this afternoon. The seat is a bit big, so I removed it andput her right into the bucket, and lo and behold, she peed and pooped. Her poops lately are small, sticky and brown; Claudine is worried that she is constipated, but she is going multiple times per day, just small amounts each time. It seems OK to me, she forces a bit from time to time but doesn’t seem to be in pain and it also helps our EC,Elimination Communication. So then this evening as I was feeding her I saw the signs again and placed her in the bucket for another pee and poop. I often wonder what is going on in her mind. She loves grabbing both her feet, she loves her stuffed animals mobile which we hang low enough for her to grab and pull on, she loves to watch us dance and move about, she loves making spitting noises with her mouth. She also seems keen and interested in her surroundings, watching leaves on trees, and especially people. I think she will be a very thoughtful and imaginative girl. Anyway, those are my two cents worth of minutiae for the end of the weekend. We seem to have found subletters for our apartment for up until the end of August, which is great. Tonight we met with a Columbian student whose parents and brother are coming for a visit in August.We spent a good part of the weekend cleaning and organizing. Tomorrow it is back to work and Simon says that there are already some diode panels to repair in a couple of the Holzer works, a very sensitive and time-consuming effort. Last night we watched the White Ribbon which just depressed me with how ridiculous humans have behaved under the authority of organized religion. And today in the park we listened to the World Cup final on the radio but as you must know by now the Netherlands did not win, too bad for them but I was more or less neutral on the matter. Now off to eat a stir fry Claudine has whipped up.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 9:29 PM
subject L’autobus d’Ignatieff tombe en panne dès la première journée; Postmedia Network Inc. opens new era for publishing unit
Dear Stephen,
Again, the Elimination Communication seems to be working. Or at least it is working more often than not. This morning at 4:30am Rose awoke and after a feeding I took her to the toilet and we hung out in the bathroom for awhile, and she peed and pooped again. Claudine also reported good successes throughout the day, and she peed again on the toilet with me twice tonight. I had a Skype conference with the third Space board tonight, but only sat in on a couple items on the agenda. I am on the Visioning Committee, and we have our work cut out for us. It seems that UNBSJ might not renew the window display contract, which means the gallery may need to find new digs. The NBM is often suggested as a go-to partner, but I’m not so sure. Wendy Martindale worked tirelessly to integrate Third Space programming at the NBM but she was undergoing cancer treatment throughout the year and finally succumbed last week. She will be missed, she was full of life and energy, it is a shame to lose her to cancer. I honestly don’t know how much energy I can continue to give to Third Space. The board and John are great for implementing events and exhibits, but I feel so distanced from it all, and feel thatthere is a huge gap between the types of exhibitions I want to produce there and the level of understanding amongst our members and board. And there is never, ever anycritical dialogue surrounding the work, as far as I can tell. Maybe I just feel disconnected because physically I am, I don’t see the exhibits, even in photos. Maybe it is time to let go, pass the torch, give some grant-writing tips and let them go for it themselves. We shall see. Anyway, off to write more birth announcement cards, we are aiming to have them all sent out by Friday.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 10:24 PM
subject Kandahar: le Canada passe le relais aux États-Unis; Canada surrenders command of Kandahar City to U.S. forces
Dear Stephen,
We had a photo shoot this morning with Isabelle, a friend of Jo. Jo and Philippe had offered this to us while Claudine was still pregnant with Rose. The shoot was great, Rose was exceptionally cute, and we have about a hundred photos to go through before choosing a final twenty-five or thirty. We did most of the shoot at the apartment, but also took some shots at the market. We ended up with more unexpected shots later in the day as we called Iliana to babysit for an hour while we drove to pick up an armoire that Claudine had found on Kijiji. This is to replace the massive Funkengruven stereo, which we are giving to Kim and Jean-Michel tomorrow. The armoire matches the lockers we have in the salon, part of a halfway decent IKEA set. Anyway, all that to say that while Iliana was babysitting she took a bunch of great shots of Rose as well. Other than thephoto shoots and the furniture pickup it was a very lethargic day, I had a long nap with Rose at the end of the day. The weather turned hot again and the apartment is warm and stuffy, even with the fans going, all the heat seems to gather in the middle, the salon, where we are on the computer the most. Tomorrow we leave for Elgin and a few days visit with Caro and François. We may help them with the construction of their cabin. And continuing with the series of deaths recently, today it was Claudine’s grandmother who passed away. Imelda was 100 years old and had lived a full life. .
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 9:56 PM
subject G-20: la police de Toronto arrête sept autres personnes; Canadian soldier found not guilty in ‘mercy-killing’ of wounded Afghan fighter
Dear Stephen,
We had a great weekend in the little town of Elgin (population 300) visiting Caroline and François. They have rented a cabin for the month and the owner is trying to convince them to buy. It is close by to Caroline’s mom’s house as well as the small 10×10 shack that they are building in the woods. In fact on Saturday I helped François with measuring, cutting wood and then the whole lot of us went and built up the last of the stone walls, adding cement and embedding the 2×8 timbers for the base of the rest of the structure, which will be framed in wood next year. This is the fourth year of their project, wherein they have dug the foundation, poured cement, and built up walls all around to a height of 3 feet in some areas. Rose was, as per usual, super well-behaved, enjoying the woods a lot, shaking her legs wildly as she watched the tree branches sway in the breeze. We drove there taking the Mercier bridge, but it closed due to the construction on the weekend so we drove back through Valleyfield, which was just as I imagined: another dull suburb full of bad strip malls and car dealers. And construction must be like the climate in hitting an all-time high this year. I made the mistake of driving to work today, thinking that I might need the car to pick up materials, but instead waited 45 minutes in trying to cross three streets leaving downtown after work, due to the blocked part of Notre Dame and the horrendous synchronization, or lack thereof, of the stoplights. What a nightmare. Another nightmare is the Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport in New Brunswick. We received notice that the Third Space operating grant has been cut yet again, this time to $8,350 per year. What the hell are we supposed to do with that? I swear the department is run by buffoons and ignoramuses. Idiots! On the positive side, we found the last subletter for our apartment today, which means it is rented for the entire time we will be away, and that even though there is a lot of logistics and management of keys and cleaning, we don’t lose money in paying 2 rents this summer. Yay!Tonight Elie came over for supper, I made sausages on the barbecue and potatoes and cauliflower in the oven. Clo made salad. There will be some leftovers for tomorrow.Only 2 days left of work for me, then 1 day to get my haircut and fully pack. We leave for Gatineau and the funeral of Claudine’s grandmother on Friday. Our journey to NB has been pushed to Saturday. Can hardly wait for vacation, yet I am also piling up other work. Judith wants me to make some illustrations based on Miller Brittain paintings for a new restaurant that will be opening in the Brodie Building this fall, and I have a text to write about Colin Lyons’ show at Eastern Edge in September, but the text is due this week. I am trying to get them to accept it for next week so I have time to prepare a bit as well see the exhibit he put up in SJ last week, the result of his 3-month residency in NB. I also committed to a new painting for Peter Buckland Gallery for a SJ 225 show in October. And then there is the Knapp Lake Olympics, Sappy Fest, OK Quoi, and visits to the family in NS to plan, all in August. Hopefully we will be able to find time to relax!
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 10:31 PM
subject Arctique: le Canada et les États-Unis travailleront de pair; WikiLeaks report cites previously unknown “friendly fire” incident involving Canadians
Dear Stephen,
Made it to NB. The drive, split up into two days, still seemed to take twice as long as usual. Must have been the baby and the cat, though it was mostly Rose who dictated a change to the driving schedule. Stops that would normally take five minutes max stretched to an hour. We spent the night at an over-priced motel in Montmagney, though at least it was clean. Had supper last night at my folks, dropped off Kuan, then headed back into the city to Judith’s house. It didn’t take us long to disrupt the clean lines and soothing design with a carload of crap. I did a shit-load of shopping in Hell’s Creation this afternoon, though I only went to Canadian Tire, skipping the thrill of the new Costco completely. I don’t think the developers or most citizens will be happy until all is mall from downtown to the West Side to as far east as the suburbs sprawl. I bought chargers, rechargeable batteries, and solar lights. I bought groceries from the City Market and talked to Alison about Third Space gossip while getting some art supplies. I have to work on some sketches this week for the restaurant but also want to get into the habit of sketching more in general. Not tonight though. Had some wine. Though maybe if I finish this letter, finish redacting it, post it, finish compulsively checking Facebook, then maybe I’ll have or make some time to put pencil to paper and exercise some rust off my drawing abilities. Maybe.
-chris
from chris lloyd
to pm@pm.gc.ca
date Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 5:49 PM
subject L’épave de l’Investigator est retrouvée dans l’Arctique; Team finds famed Arctic ship missing for 155 years
Dear Stephen,
Had a marathon of a third space committee meeting at the house last night with Alison, John, Jacqueline and Alex. Alex can talk, problem is she rambles a bit sometimes, no, almost all the time, she is the tangent queen. I tried to keep the agenda to four items but we segued all over the place, talking about the future (it was a visioning committee, after all) but also grants, the abysmal level of provincial support, potential partners, from the SJAC to the NBM and back again to UNBSJ, even maybe possibly a random person’s foyer on the corner of Princess St. somewhere, because Alex saw some interesting weird shit there while walking Oscar. Anyway, I think some progress was made, but for someone who is trying to do less, it sure feels like I keep adding things to my plate. There is of course the successful grant for the East Goes East project in January-February, but in between then there is grant-writing coaching, and a gazillion aesthetic changes I’d like to see made, certainly to the window space (if we keep it) as well as the possible Library space at the SJAC. All of this is taking away from the text I am supposedly writing at this very moment on Colin Lyons for the Eastern Edge. His Oceanex Avalon show travels there in September. We saw the show at the NBM yesterday, I had to haggle with the lady at the front desk to let us in for free. No way I am paying $8 to see the show I curated and helped bring here. The show looks good, despite the huge column in the middle of the entrance to the gallery and the hideous domestic-grade ceramic tile floors everywhere. Honestly, what were the folks at the NBM thinking when they had their ENTIRE MUSEUM covered with that tile? The worst of it is that they probably covered industrial cement, which would have looked beautiful if ground and polished. Then again, they might have thought, what difference does the tile floor make? We are, after all, in a mall, our galleries located in former storefronts and food courts and kitchens. The cruise ship passengers from New Jersey feel at home on it, and according to Alex, that is the target clientele for the NBM, the cash cow, so to speak. Anyway, Rose is waking up, she spent the night with her grandparents, Nanna Jill and Pappa Bob, and when we got her back we went for a walk to Lily Lake, watched the birds, listened to the constant pile drivers smashing pavement everywhere, which seems to be the #1 summer activity in Saint John. Woke us up at 7:30 and it hasn’t stopped yet. Will enjoy the sound as I grill up a T-bone on the barbecue. Hopefully it will stop by evening and Clo and I can finish the text in peace and quiet, and no distractions save each other.
-chris
DEAR PM 