Nov 2008

Early in the morning on November 11, 1918, after days of negotiations, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allied Commander-in-chief, and Matthias Erzberger, a prominent German politician signed an armistice treaty between the Allied forces and German forces, bringing an end to fighting associated with The Great War. The treaty, signed just after 5 in morning in the forests outside of the French town of Compiègne, stated that both sides would stop fighting as of 11 AM that morning. Fighting ceased on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

The Armistice with Germany eventually led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919 that brought an official end to the war.

On November 7, 1919, King George V declared that November 11 should be established as a day of observance for those who were killed during the war. The day, known mainly as Remembrance Day, but alternatively known as Armistice Day or Poppy Day, has been celebrated ever since in the Commonwealth. Americans observe Veteran's Day today, a holiday with roots dating back to 1919, though it has not always fallen on the 11th of November.

Here in London, there are multiple commemorations held around the region. The main, national commemoration happens on the the second Sunday of November, known as Remembrance Sunday, on Whitehall Road in front of The Cenotaph, a war memorial. There is an additional ceremony held on November 11th itself.

The commemoration on Remembrance Day started with a short service conducted by the Bishop of London, which includes prayers, hymns sung by a choir and some music played by the assembled band.

Three veterans from the first World War, now all in wheel chairs, were lead to the Cenotaph, where each laid a wreath in honour of their fallen brothers-in-arms.

Big Ben chimed the hour, announcing the start of 2 minutes of silence.

Once the echoes of the chimes from the Parliament Building's clock die away, there was nothing to break the silence except the wind rustling the leaves of the trees lining Whitehall.

The silence was broken by a lone bugle, playing "The Last Post," a bugle call used traditionally played at military funerals. The Bishop asks us to pray, we the assembled crowd recites the Lord's Prayer. After we had finished, the Bishop added an additional prayer for the Lord to put the peace of heaven into all men's hearts, so that we would never have to face the horrors of war again.

After the crowd finished singing God Save the Queen, I made my way up Whitehall Street, past the statue of Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, who was the commander of the British Expeditionary Force. At its base was a lone wreath of poppies, bright red in the mid-day sun.

The weather was cool but not cold, truly a nice day. Just the kind of day where I love to get out, spend time walking the streets or taking a hike through nature, as I have since I was a teenager. Days worth treasuring and remembering, really.

It is fitting that, then, on a day worth remembering, that we all take some time out to remember those who fought and died, and also those who have fought and lived so that we could walk through the streets on sunny days in peace. And finally for those who are out there fighting now, may they come home safely, and may some day the prayer that the Bishop of London said today come true. That some day, the peace of heaven fills every man's heart, and that the world will be at peace.

Late October and early November must be a great time to be a kid in London.

First you have the sugar-high fun of Hallowe’en, dressing up like a goblin or witch and getting complete strangers to feed your sugar habit. Lucky little sods. You don’t see me going around knocking on stranger’s doors asking for beer.

Then you get November the 5th. Remember, remember...

Guy Fawkes was a member of a group of Roman Catholic revolutionaries who plotted to kill the King of England, his family and the Protestant parliament in the early 1600s. The plan was to fill up a cellar under the House of Lords and ignite it, blowing up the Parliament buildings. The plot failed, ultimately because the opening of parliament kept getting postponed. While today we mostly curse politicians for being lazy and having seemingly endless holidays from legislating, in this case it saved all their lives, so perhaps there is some Darwinist logic to politicians seeming laziness.

Guy Fawkes was found guarding 36 Barrels of gunpowder in the cellar on the 5th of November, 1605, saving the king and Parliament. To celebrate this, English people light big fires and let of fireworks on the fifth of November. The night is known as Guy Fawkes night, Bonfire Night or Fireworks Night. It strikes me as somewhat strange that the spoiling of a plot to blow up a building should be celebrated with explosions and fire, but it is.

For his part in the plot Fawkes was executed, along with his co-conspirators in the gunpowder plot.

November 5th fell on a Wednesday this year, so many bonfires and fireworks were pushed to either weekend. Additionally, private folks have been loading up on fireworks, and displays of fireworks have been running all week in the parks and other open areas.

So now the kids are juiced up on sugar from Hallowe’en and filled with adrenaline from the fireworks all week. To top it all off, the annual Lord Mayor’s Show happened on Saturday, with a parade, carnival and more fireworks!

Now, stick with me here for a second, because this will take some explaining. I live in London, but I don’t live in the City of London. The City of London is a small area in Greater London, one of 2 cities, 2 Royal boroughs and 29 boroughs. The Mayor of London is Boris Johnson, who is the mayor of Greater London (all 2 cities, 2 Royal boroughs and 29 regular, old boroughs). The Mayor of London is an elected position with impressive executive powers.

The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of the City of London is the mayor of the City of London, which is approximately a square mile (as compared to the 609 sq mi that make up Greater London). The Lord Mayor's job is mostly as a business ambassador to the world, and mostly he travels around the globe and trying to get folks to invest in the City of London. Most of the Square Mile’s businesses are financial services, so mostly it’s chatting up heads of banks. Seems a decent job if you can get it, but you can’t keep it long. The Lord Mayor is replaced every year, and so every year you have the swearing in ceremony for the Lord Mayor.

Since 1215, London has seen the event that is known as the Lord Mayor’s Show. The Lord Mayor is sworn in at his house, Mansion House, and then makes his way to the Royal Court of Justice, in nearby Westminster, to swear an allegiance to the crown. He then makes his way back to Mansion House, where he no doubt sups on fine food and wine. Originally the procession was held each 29th of October, though this was moved to the 9th of November with the switch to the Gregorian Calendar, and then again moved to always be on the second Saturday in November in 1959.

Mansion House, official residence of the Lord Mayor

Royal Courts of Justice

The procession is a very long parade, with many floats, bands, military marchers and fancy types in carriages.

A rare moment of sunshine on an otherwise rainy day had this guy smiling. It didn't last long, as the rain started coming down again about 20 minutes later

You saw puppets sticking out the windows of almost every one of the carriages, which were filled with dignitaries all dressed up in their gowns and sashes. Kind of odd to see someone in a fur-lined cape, grinning like a madman and playing with a badger puppet.

Well, the new Batman is from the United Kingdom, so I guess this makes some sense...

At the end of the parade, the new Lord Mayor comes along in a fancy coach and waves at the crowd. The new Lord Mayor of the City of London is Ian Luder.

Everybody loves a parade, especially kids. And ESPECIALLY if there are puddles to jump in.

After the parade, the little ones can head over to St. Paul’s Cathedral for some carnival fun.

Yeah, that's the kind of image you want just 20 feet from the walls of St. Paul's Cathedral. Real classy...

Then the lights go down, and everyone makes their way back to the Thames river.

Finally, fireworks to top it all off.

Yes, this past week has brought out the kid in me. Smelly, dirty, sugar-filled, hyperactive and pyromaniacal. Late October and early November is a great time to be a kid in London.

Snippets of news from London.

I went and saw the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, which was released a week earlier here than in North America, because he is Britain's super-spy. I liked it, though critics have been pointing out the fact that it is short and not very Bondish - you could have easily replaced Daniel Craig with Matt Damon and called him Jason Bourne instead and had a decent 4th Bourne film. However, I liked the Bourne films and liked the new Bond film too. It takes place (partially) in Bolivia, which long time readers will know as being my first high-altitude nemesis. I was thinking as I watched it that La Paz seemed strangely flat. I remembered it much more hilly, so I stuck around at the end of the movie to see where it was filmed, and it was filmed in Mexico and Chile, so luckily Daniel Craig didn't have to suffer any altitude related problems.

I also noted that they did have the line at the end of the credits saying "James Bond will return," but unlike some of the earlier films, no mention of the title for the next instalment.

I walked out of the theatre to a dark, wet and misty night. Actually, it was early afternoon, around 4:30pm. It gets really dark here, really early. Walking back to my flat in the cold, my hands in my pockets as I weaved in and out of the Canary Wharf traffic I felt a little bit like I could be a British super-spy, trying to shake a tail so I could meet my source. Sadly, I just went to Asda and grabbed some chicken to serve on my pasta for dinner.

It is getting quite chilly out, so I was looking at coats to buy. I have a nice winter coat and a good wind-breaker, but I need something in between for those not-quite-winter-but-too-cold for autumn days. I saw a nice coat at Marks and Spencers for £126, which I almost bought. But then I committed the sin of conversion, and realized that the coat was almost $300 (Canadian). D'oh. Instead, I walked home hunched against the cold.

Saturday, November 2nd saw the running of the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix. British driver Lewis Hamilton was 7 points ahead in the standings, and all he had to do was come in 5th or better to win the race. I went to the Sports Cafe on Haymarket to watch the race with like minded F1 fans. Well, at least some like minded fans. There were a few Ferrari fans there, including this couple that had split loyalties.

It was a thrilling race, with rain at the end messing with the running order, and Lewis Hamilton barely passed Timo Glock at the last corner to come in 5th and secure the championship. He is the first British driver to win the championship since 1996, the youngest driver to ever win and the first black driver to win. He also dates a Pussy Cat Doll.

All this was excellent news for Barack Obama. Why, you might ask? Because In the past 32 years, only in years which British champions have won the Formula 1 championship has a democrat been elected, and vice-versa. 1976 was Jimmy Carter and James Hunt. In 1992, Nigel Mansell and Bill Clinton, and 1996 was Clinton and Damon Hill.

In the event my blog is the first news source you have in the last 24 hours, last night Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States of America. Amazingly, this was such big news that it even managed to knock the ongoing saga of Russel Brand and Jonathan Ross' off the front page of the papers. Apparently getting elected to the most powerful political office in the world is more newsworthy than the outrage of people at two comedians known for doing boundary-pushing, tasteless jokes on late night radio doing... well, a boundary-pushing, tasteless joke on late night radio.

With the win last night of Mr. Obama, this year continues the trend with Lewis Hamilton being the world champion and Barack Obama being president-elect. To further the spooky connections, in the same year we see the first black F1 champion and the first black president-elect!

COINCIDENCE?

Well, yeah, okay, it probably is a coincidence. ...but it's still cool.

I am a Canadian living in the United Kingdom. I am a Canadian living in Europe. I am not a European citizen. I am not a British citizen. In fact, I haven’t even really been here long enough to be a British resident, but I will be by the end of the year.

I recently went to a event which was a discussion led by Simon Glendinning, the director of the Forum for European Philosophy at the European Institute within the London School of Economics. The discussion, entitled Is Europe a Place or an Idea?, put on by Big Ideas, who host events that are set up as a casual discussion, starting with someone with knowledge setting up the subject, and then the floor open for discussion.

Mr. Glendinning started off by setting three possible ways to define Europe.

The first was geographic. It seems a simple way to define the continent, but is a surprisingly complex definition. The oldest known map of Europe, the Noachide map from the 7th century, defines Europe as being bounded in the east by the River Don in Russia. Nowadays, most folks would define it as being at the Ural Mountains, further to the east of that definition. How far off-shore does Europe reach? Is Iceland European? Greenland? The Azores? It’s fuzzier than one would think.

The second definition was based on a cultural progression, that Europe is a group of national states that have been and continue to be working towards a better world, that Europe is a global leader and the vanguard of human society. I’m probably not giving this idea a very good explanation, as reading that back it sounds very arrogant, but if you look at this definition within the historical context of moving from barbarism towards enlightened free societies, you can see what the definition was trying to communicate.

The final definition looks at the history, and defines Europe as being the areas where the main base of thought, laws and morality are based on the amalgam of Christianity and Greek rational thought. In fact, prior to the Reformation, it was easy to define Europe as those places where intellectuals all spoke Latin.

(An aside: the title of this blog is, I think, Latin for “Europe, who are you?” But I don’t speak Latin, so it was translated using an online translator. It might actually say, “Europe, pork yellow chariot.” I wouldn’t make a very good pre-Reformation intellectual.)

What is interesting about the last two definitions is that without the bounds of geography, there are suddenly lots of nations that could be considered “European” without being anywhere close to geographic Europe. Most every country in the Americas, as well as New Zealand and Australia, are “European” when you consider that their populations and governments are based on the systems and people put in place during the period of European colonialism.

After the floor was opened for discussion, a few other potential definitions came out, including a political definition (i.e. whoever the EU says is European), places where there was an intermarrying of Royal families and even a definition based on any place that takes place in the Eurovision song contest, though I think that last definition might have been a joke.

Some may ask why this question is important. The answer has to do with Russia and Turkey. Both are being considered for inclusion into the European Union. Geographically, both have small regions within Europe. Turkey is especially controversial, because despite having a secular government, they have a large Muslim population. Turkey’s inclusion has become a major point of debate. One of the key criteria for joining the European Union, known as the Copenhagen Criteria, and set out originally in the Maastricht Treaty, states that “Any European State may apply to become a Member of the Union”

About half way through the discussion, we had a quick break to use the facilities and refill our glasses. Upon return to the discussion, Mr. Glendinning asked a question to the group.

“How many of you would have defined yourself as primarily European?”

Interestingly, I’d say most of the folks put up their hands, though people who come out to a discussion entitled “Is Europe a Place or an Idea?” probably aren’t a representative sample of the entire population of Britain, especially seeing as a number of the people there weren’t British, but rather from other places in Europe.

While the sample may not have been representative, Europe is a place that does define itself as more than a collection of countries. I think you’d be hard pressed to find more than a handful of people who would say “I am a North American,” whereas here in Europe you’d find that close to half of the people would define themselves as “European”.

Mr. Glendinning went around the room and asked those who didn’t put up their hands how they would have identified themselves. Some defined themselves are British or English. One guy defined himself as being from London, dismissing the idea of national identities altogether.

When he asked me why I didn’t identify as European, I answered, obviously that I am Canadian.

Secretly, though, I really did want to say that I was European.

As I said in my entry back in September on Brussels, “...one of the reasons I moved out of Canada was to be part of something larger. I wanted to be part of the international community, be part of something that was happening. Europe seemed to be that place.”

I moved to the United Kingdom for expediency and ease, but really I would have been happy to have moved anywhere in Europe. One of the good things about the UK Ancestry Visa which I have is that after a 6 year period of residency in the UK, I can get a UK passport which will then allow me to work and live anywhere in the EU.

I have a definition of Europe. Not what it is, but what it isn’t. It isn’t Canada and it isn’t North America. It isn’t, in short, where I have lived before.

In my entry back in September, I said that, “Europe is coming together. The European Union is growing, the coming together of nations to form a larger community, an international meeting place.”

I was sitting in a pub last night, eating dinner, ruminating on the talk on Europe, and I heard something that made me realize that it was that last point that was the real driver of why I came here.

There was an Aussie and his girlfriend sitting at the bar, chatting with the bartender. I overheard him say, “...and so I wanted an international experience, and what is more international than London?”

That thought triggered in me a realization that is why I am here as well, for the international experience. Not just living in a place that isn’t my home country, but living in a place that is an important international city.

My old home of Toronto is very multicultural, but it isn’t very international. Toronto is important in Canadian business and politics, and has a mild importance to North American business, but a lot of it doesn’t look out beyond the borders of North America. That happens in other places in North America - New York for finance, Houston for energy, Los Angeles for shipping, etc.

Living in London, you don’t just have a meeting place for international citizens, but you also have a lot of international business and politics interacted from here. I realized that London is not just my gateway to Europe, not just my chance to live abroad, but it is my chance to look further afield too. It is my chance to be an international citizen.

I am a Canadian. And some day I hope to say I am a European, and I am international.