Ontario is taking steps to introduce gender neutral birth certificates. At the moment, there is work being done to ensure these legal documents will be accepted in other jurisdictions. If it wasn’t already, inherently, obvious: we have lost our minds. The plumbing you are born with is what needs to be used for legal identification. If, later in the life, you wish to change your gender or do something that makes you genderless then you can do so and the rest of us will respect that. But, legally, absolutely not. Imagine the person goes missing and a description needs to go out. Worse yet, imagine this individual is a criminal and needs to be assigned a male or female jail. I suppose that will be next. Non-binary prisons. I’m sure there will be no manipulation to get into one of those. It’s gotten me to wonder why do we even have birth certificates? It’s not cool to know the year someone was born. That’s nobody’s business. And, who cares what town you were born in so long as it’s Canada? Nothing more needs to be said. Now that I think about it, birth certificates are offensive. Just ban them. What’s really happened is we’ve lost our ability to tell people ‘no’.
Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar found himself in hot water for using a word that is deemed to be homophobic after he struck out in a game against Atlanta. Before you jump to conclusions, I’m not condoning the use of the word; but suspending him seems silly to me. Is that what we will do now every time two guys exchange words? “Your Mom wears army boots.” Need to suspend him because some players out there may not have a mother and a phrase like that could cause tremendous mental anguish for a professional athlete. I guess it’s not enough to look at a guy like Pillar and just make up your own mind if he’s the type of person you wish to cheer for or not. The word isn’t illegal. Insensitive, sure. Does it indicate what type of human you are? Definitely. But, you can’t suspend people for being bad humans otherwise there wouldn’t be many professional athletes left.
I realize this is a dead horse, but the roads in this city are deplorable. I drive in a lot of different cities and towns across Saskatchewan and we should be embarrassed. Yes, it costs money and times are tough; but what a sad state we are in. I’m debating creating a Facebook page to have people vote for the worst street in Yorkton and maybe we can enact real change and get one street a year completely redone, properly.
The decision to close 7th in favor of a lumber yard continues to look more and more ridiculous. Forget the fact you have plastic bags and similar type garbage blowing around downtown (I saw one in a tree that was so high up, it’s never ever coming down) or the fact you have streetlights just tossed to the ground very close to the sidewalk (apparently, this is acceptable beautification). But, closing off 7th and then spending however many years it’s been now on Dracup has resulted in massive logjams on 8th and 6th because there are no stop lights. Not to mention the condition of 8th is worse than a Dominican backwoods trail. I’m also thankful that 6th was repaved last year (for selfish reasons). But, it wouldn’t have been on my top five list of streets to fix. I don’t know how much longer officials can ignore the landmine that is the merge lane from Broadway onto Highway 9 South.
Furthermore, these scattered reports I’m getting from newer businesses being pressured by City Hall to bring their surroundings up to beautification code lack credibility to me when there are other businesses that have had a lot of time to straighten out and just aren’t complying. I look at my own situation, where I was given 10 days to ensure tree branches were four metres high and not at all infringing on the back lane. There are many city streets where this is very stipulation goes ignored, but maybe it’s only a bylaw for homeowners and not the city itself. Who cares if branches hit the top of the truck on Dunlop Street, for example. And, then there are many other back lanes who are breaking the bylaw, but for some reason it was me that got singled out.
Here’s my other road gripe: last week I was driving on Highway 10 near Melville and came across a 60km sign because of construction. It was a good 5km before I saw anything at all and then it was one half ton truck working in the ditch and not on the highway. Then, later in the week, I am travelling on the same highway with no signs anywhere and an entire crew working on the shoulder of the road.
Nice person mentions this week: Jessica Riley, Tracey Alcorn, Rob Kozak, Lea Nakonechny, and Brent Zimmer.
