Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

I went with my girlfriend to Mont Tremblant for skiing this week, since we were both on spring break:

Mont Tremblant is in Quebec, Canada. On the way, amusingly, in terrible weather, we passed Mexico:

It was an awesome Spring Break–we stayed at a 5 star hotel, ate good food, and enjoyed driving. I got a speeding ticket–my first. Although the weather for the last couple hours coming back was terrible, I think my driving improved because of it.

If you’ve ever tried to get your Canadian passport, you know the photos are the hardest part. They must be taken at a professional photo studio, stamped and dated, and signed by your guaranteer. They must be shadow-free. Mine weren’t, apparently:

Question: I recently applied for a Canadian passport while I was at home over winter break in Phoenix, AZ. My case number is USXXXXX. However, it was denied due to shadows on the photograph. However, I am a senior at Cornell University and cannot have the photos retaken and re-signed by the guaranteer who is my family Dr. in Phoenix because I am in Ithaca, NY right now. How should I proceed?

The Passport Office of Canada kindly replied:

Thank you for your message of March 7, 2006. You may submit new photos without the guarantors signature. Please include your file number on the outside of the envelope. We trust this information is of assistance to you.

How awesome! I will have the photos redone this Friday.

One of the more interesting things I saw was a guy wearing the following sandwich board downtown in Victoria, BC:

Caption: “Awake. Islam’s a religion of war.”

Caption: Crusader cross.

It seems this guy is downright sick of Muslim fundamentalists blowing stuff up, and offers another crusade as a viable solution. Hold you comments for just one second–there are excellent results from a successful crusade or genocide. You meet your objective of eliminating the thread at hand. However, the collateral damage is usually considered (i.e., should be) to be too significant a cost to pay in exchange for your goals. In this way, most civilized nations prefer to try and isolate and punish criminals as entities-of-themselves and not entities-in-a-state.

You can imagine why I thought this was weird, then. In the US, this kind of reaction is expected. In my peace-loving Canada? No way!

I took a really pretty picture of beach waves and spray at Victoria, but I decided it was too mundane, and spiced it up:

We also walked down this stone pierway made from big steps, which was really fun:

There were always boats … boating … by while we walked:

And, except for a few dead jellyfish:

The water was quite pretty!

If you’re thinking of driving from Seattle to Canada, think again. You might be interested in taking the Victoria Clipper, a slim catamaran–not a barge or ferry–that will get you there in two to three hours. The boat itself looks like:

I didn’t get seasick, and they had great service onboard. The deck looks like:

When the ship first pulled into the seattle port, there were two young, silly blonde girls trying to make it fast, but they couldn’t throw the trailer rope far enough for the guy on the dock to reach it and pull in the bigger rope. Eventually they used a pike!