Coming Around Again

A new episode is coming next week, but a couple old episodes somehow seem to fit with some current events.

In Description 46, I talked about working "location support," and did a soundseeing tour of one of my long days guarding a location film set. The film in question was The Time Traveler's Wife, which is finally getting its release this weekend. In the previews, I've already spotted a scene (in front of a tv store in the '70's) in The Junction neighbourhood where I had a couple shifts, and even the gazebo/bandstand in Kew Gardens, where I started the tour of the last episode. Other settings where I stood/paced/sat for 12 hours at a time included a very wood-lined mansion (the Christie Mansion, where I finished Description 45) and an old hospital ward (actually an abandoned part of the Centre for Mountain Health Services, aka Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital). But if you check out the movie and notice scenes inside a house where you can see snow in a yard outside, that's where I was for Description 46, with leftover "snow" cushioning my butt on the concrete steps and keeping me warm in the autumn dusk. It's more than likely you won't notice a thing beyond the romance of the story, which is testament to the talent of the hard-working Art Department and those people whose job I would not wish on my worst enemy: the Location Managers. I don't know if I'm going, but if I do, I'm sticking around to see their names (especially A.J., Warner and Don) way down in the credits, and applaud.

And for something completely different...perhaps you've noticed the "debate" in the U.S. about proposals for reform of the healthcare system. I've been a bit more vocal about this on Twitter and Facebook, but suffice it to say it's been fantastically stupid and most of its stupidity has been fueled by very distinct economic interests. One element of the stupidity has been fearful and silly attacks of the healthcare systems in Great Britain and here in good ol' Canada (NDP leader Jack Layton said his piece about the matter in Huffington Post a couple weeks ago). I remember in the miniseries "Prairie Giant," the protests Tommy Douglas had to deal with a few decades ago from doctors spooked about his proposed introduction of healthcare reform in Saskatchewan (which eventually led to the systems we have today). Douglas must have thought the doctors' strike was pretty scary at the time - it's not quite like the more literal "strike threats" President Obama is dealing with now.

Anyway, a couple years ago, without such clouds of comparison over me, I did an episode illustrating a typical experience of mine with the healthcare system in Ontario (healthcare being under provincial jurisdiction) with a soundseeing tour of my trip to St. Michael's Hospital to get my first mammogram. So you can follow along in Description 52, but don't expect any death panels. ;-)