4 good things caught my attention today:

• The Toronto chapter of Fair Vote Canada reported that most of an all star panel at a CPAC broadcasted event spoke in favour of proportional representation.
• Two of the executive members of the Ottawa chapter of Fair Vote Canada will attend a similar event tonight and reports that 3 members will attend.
• A security certificate against Montrealer Adil Charkaoui will be dropped;
• The UN approves a nuclear disarmament resolution, pushed forward by president Obama.

Its a good day to be an active citizen of the Earth.

Members of the Fair Vote Canada - National Capital Region Chapter Executive will be attending the broadcast recording of a talk by Michael Enright, host of CBC’s The Sunday Edition, on the state of Canadian democracy. They will be there to make sure that electoral reform is discussed in front of a nationwide audience and to identify more potential supporters/members.

Thursday, September 24 at 7pm at St. Paul’s University in Ottawa (223 Main Street). You must call (613) 288-6725 to reserve tickets, and please email jenandyan@storm.ca to let Fair Vote Canada know you’ll be there!

PR is going to be part of the discussion tonight and we have to make sure that it will be healthy, positive and not misinformed.

A while back I had written a module that generates a letter about wasted votes customized to the statistics of a specified riding. It caught the attention of the executive director at Fair Vote Canada, so I’m reposting it now.

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If you havn’t volunteered or donated to Chris Chopik campaign, then you’re missing out on supporting a fantastic candidate. You’ve got 7 days left to rectify that!

I was at a fund raiser on Wednesday night. The guy cycles everywhere - which I hear will get him a story in the Globe & Mail. Plus he is a great speaker and has an unmatched capacity to connect with people.

I’ve seen campaigns with lots of volunteers and ones with no volunteers. Volunteers make the difference. Although I can definitely see Chris coming back for the general election, there’s nothing like volunteers to make the campaign fun, exiting and feel supported. So far this campaign has had 150 volunteers, but Chris needs & deserves more.

So if you’re in Toronto, go help Chris!. You can even phone canvass from home if you’d like.

Day 3 of my folding bike experience unfortunately ended with an accident. It has left me perplexed: either I am doing something wrong or these bikes are less safe than conventional bikes.

Here’s how I reconstruct the accident in my head. On Wenesday 9th of September 2009 at about 22:55 I was going down south on Yonge St. and signaled a right turn before Temperance St. I then hit a “pseudo-manhole”, lost balance and couldn’t regain balance since I had only the left hand on the handlebar (the right hand signaling the turn).
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Dave Meslin, a well known community activist in Toronto, made an excellent blog post on the recent cycling death and underlining the importance of staying focused on what we are trying to accomplish:

Bryant may spend the rest of his life behind bars. And he also might be found not guilty on either charge. Based on the facts I’ve heard at that point, I might be content or angered by either outcome. Either way, I’m unlikely to relate it back to the cycling issues that I’m passionate about. I’m also unlikely to attend the trial, or organize around it, or comment on it while it’s in progress.

However, if Michael Bryant were charged with being complicit in a government that puts cyclists’ lives at risk through negligence and lack of action, now that’s a trial that I would attend religiously, and I would organize rallies that demand justice.

Update: On my second day of cycling with the Tikit, I’ve been thinking a little more about the pricing. I think this posting was somewhat unfair. Had the bike not been custom built, the price would have been closer to my regular commuting bicycle (a Giant Inova). I still think Bike Friday erred about the rack, saddle and peddles (details below), but otherwise I was very happy today to have a bike friday tikit.

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Sunday the 6th of September 2009 was my first day commuting around on a folding bike. Its a Bike Friday Tikit and my first day of using it was in Toronto.

I’ve enjoyed it so far. However, although I wouldn’t recommend against the same purchase, my opinion so far would be summed up by the words “shop around first”. Hence, I’d say the folks at Bike Friday did a fairly good job and any dissatisfaction is mostly my fault. It was a really rushed purchase.

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Les membres de Représentation équitable Canada était présent à la parade de la fièrté et la foire d’information, difusant le message que tous ont droit à la représentation. Nous avons distribués des centaines de brochures à la parade. La foire d’information nous a donné l’opportunité de faire du réseautage avec d’autres organisations et expliquer plus en détail la réforme. 29 personnes ont demandé d’être abonné à notre liste d’annonce ou, dans certains cas, de devenir membre!

Merci à Kelsey Wagner, Kristina, Ute Thomas, Jan Heynen, Jinqi Zing, Andy Blair, Bairu Feng et Claudia Defuentes.

Over at Cycling in Ottawa, Mike found a pretty good quote from Christie Blatchford writing in the Globe on the motorist - cycling dynamic:

It worked: At the next light, he got out of his car and put a boot through my door. I was so shaken, and simultaneously mortified by my own conduct, that I reported him neither to police nor insurance company, and just paid for the damage myself – and that was in a clash with a peer, a fellow motorist driving a vehicle as big and powerful as my own. We were for the most part in our moving bubbles, seat-belted and air-bagged and roll-barred unto safety.

But a cyclist is never in a bubble like that.

Thus, it is the motorist who has the greater responsibility – not just because he is the only party licensed by society to drive, by which I mean granted the privilege of driving – but because on some level, all of us understand the rules, one of which is that behind the wheel, we are driving a potential weapon. The burden of sucking up the insult, the raised finger, even the punch, and acting like a grown up is always and forever with us.

Two years ago I recall a certain referendum to change the electoral system. The argument from status quo defenders was that proportional representation would bring instability to government. Yet Canada is now close to having a fourth election in 5 years. Stability, you say? I think not.

The argument that first past the post can bring stable governments is now moot. Oh, the entrenched powers that be will still point to Italy and Israel, but Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland all have proportional representation and they are doing fine.

During the next referendum on electoral reform (and there will be, it is only a question of time), advocates who gain from the phony majorities will have to go back to their books labelled “fear, uncertainty and doubt rhetoric” to pull out more lies and distortions. Fortunately they will not be able to advocate any longer that first past the post brings about stability.