Back in the more puritanical ’50s, executives at CBS Television were faced with a situation they had never faced before. Lucille Ball, the star of the wildly popular “I Love Lucy” sitcom about the misadventures of a scatterbrained New York City housewife, had become pregnant.

Network standards were so strict at the time that she and co-star Desi Arnaz, her on-air and real-life husband,  had to be shown occupying separate beds. So strict that even the word pregnant was forbidden on air.

Instead of shutting down production for months, it was decided that the show would do something unheard of at the time: Lucille Ball and her on-air alter ego, Lucy Ricardo, would become the first obviously pregnant woman to appear in a TV show or movie.

It was still such a sensitive topic that “the p-word” remained forbidden, with CBS executives insisting that the word “expecting” be used instead. A priest, a minister and a rabbi were each made available to vet each episode before it went on the air to ensure that nothing controversial went out over the network.

The censorship was only relaxed in the early ’70s when CBS’s All in the Family and Maude became the first TV shows to talk about sex on prime-time television. It was in the same decade that Ball began talking openly in TV interviews about the bitterness and anger caused by now ex-husband Desi’s compulsive philandering.

Those old enough to remember how things were in the ’50s must marvel at how much things have changed. The medium that once forbade the word pregnant now features ads for Viagra, scripts that deal with newer trends like “starter marriages” and “friends with benefits”, and even shows with gay, lesbian and bisexual characters or hosts.

But a couple of things have not changed. Re-runs of I Love Lucy are still on the air, nearly 60 years after its first broadcast; and philandering still tends to lead to angry and even violent outbursts.

Witness the details we’ve learned this week about golfer Tiger Woods and his panic-stricken attempted escape from his Florida mansion, with wife Elin Nordegren in hot pursuit, undoubtedly screaming obscenities and swinging a golf club wildly.

His evasive explanations of the incident and the surfacing of information suggesting that Woods was having an extramarital affair caused much fascination with the story.

Is it fascinating because such incidents are rare, or because they’re common?

Take the following Extramarital Sex Quiz and get a better idea of just how many Tigers (and tigresses) there are out there.

1. The American Sexual Behavior Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, involved interviews with 10,000 Americans over two decades. It found that…

a.) 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once

b.) 7 percent of married men and 1 percent of married women have cheated at least once

c.) 39 percent of married men and 32 percent of married women have cheated at least once

2. A 2007 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study concluded that…

a.) about 14 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period

b.) about 16 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period

c.) about 11 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period

3. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1998 found that…

a.) A total of 19 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 21 percent of Britons

b.) A total of 48 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 58 percent of Britons

c.) A total of 34 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 47 percent of Britons

4. The same study found that in their lifetimes…

a.) 48 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 37 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

b.) 32 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 40 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

c.) 24 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 14 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

5. A study published in the Journal of Sex Research in 1998 found that extramarital sex was considered to be “always wrong” by a majority of the population in each of 24 current (or former) countries, with the exception of the Czech Republic and:

a.) Russia

b.) Canada

c.) The Netherlands

THE ANSWERS:

1. The American Sexual Behavior Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, involved interviews with 10,000 Americans over two decades. It found that… a.) 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once

2. A 2007 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study concluded that… c.) about 11 percent of U.S. men had “concurrent” sexual partnerships or partnerships that overlap in time during a one-year period. (No data available for women.)

3. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1998 found that… a.) A total of 19 percent of American men reported having had only one sex partner during their lifetimes, as compared with 21 percent of Britons

4. The same study found that in their lifetimes… b.) 32 percent of American women reported having only one sex partner, while 40 percent of British women reported having had only one sex partner

5. A study published in the Journal of Sex Research in 1998 found that extramarital sex was considered to be “always wrong” by a majority of the population in each of 24 current (or former) countries, with the exception of the Czech Republic (43%) and: a.) Russia, where only 36 percent said that extramarital sex was always wrong, compared to 63 percent in the Netherlands, 68 percent in Canada and 80 percent in the U.S.  (Responses to this and other questions showed the U.S. to be considerably more conservative in its  sexual attitudes than relatively liberal Canada.)

I just wanted to quickly share an interesting article about downtown parking and urban revitalization by urbanist Roberta Brandes Gratz. This is very relevant to Winnipeg given the ongoing debate about downtown parking, such as the recent arguments put forth by Downtown BIZ’s Stefano Grande and The Rise and Sprawl blog.

Some of the more interesting points from Gratz’s article:

• When downtown revitalization is being debated, there’s often too much emphasis on parking, even when no one knows for sure how efficiently the downtown area’s parking capacity is being used.

• Undo the one-way street system and restore two-way streets downtown.

• Don’t bother trying to implement mall-style parking standards downtown.

• Maximize “upstairs” living opportunities, up above downtown stores and other businesses, in order to increase the number of people living downtown.

• Reconsider the parking provisions required in new projects; don’t assume one size fits all

• Give downtown residents parking privileges  not available to others

• Focus on providing angled or curbside street parking if increasing the number of spaces is important

• Most important of all: Make downtown worth coming to

Full article here.

It was check-out time for all guests at the Howard Johnson hotel at 1740 Ellice Ave. this past Friday as the City of Winnipeg ordered the hotel evacuated due to fire code violations, the presence of bedbugs, missing sinks and other health and safety related problems.

It was perhaps only by following reports in the media that some guests might have found out that the hotel was also being used as long-term housing, resulting in some guests being offered assistance by Manitoba Family Services in finding other accommodations. (I’ll bet that left a lasting impression of our city with a few visiting business travelers, flight crews and weekend getaway travelers drawn in by the low rates.)

Those who are familiar with this property’s track record will not be surprised to see that the Howard Johnson on Ellice is back in the news again, once again in a negative light. Here’s a recap:

• Nov. 27: Hotel shut down and ordered evacuated

• Aug. 23: CJOB News reports that the hotel was held up by three armed males at about 1 a.m., one of whom punched the front desk clerk in the face.

• May 16: Former employee (using what appears to be a real name) confirms Toronto guest’s complaint, noting that “every week it was a different room that we would find bed bugs in” during the six months she worked there.

• May 10, 2009: Two men rob the front desk clerk at gunpoint

• May 31, 2008: Guest writes on TripAdvisor.com of being “greeted by a group of vagrants begging for money in a smoke/gob filled entrance. The hotel was filthy, mold stains all over the walls and carpets, the ceiling was falling down in the corridor from old water damage. “

• April 22, 2008: CJOB News reports that a Toronto man is suing the hotel after being bitten by bedbugs during a stay at the hotel.

Incidentally, one guest wrote in early 2008 that “the health inspector should shut it down” after finding blood stains and stains from other bodily fluids in the room. He seems to have gotten his wish!

I see that the question of whether or not to loosen up Manitoba’s Sunday shopping laws is making waves once again, with the Sunday edition of the Winnipeg Sun and then Monday’s edition of Richard Cloutier Reports on CJOB giving the issue extensive coverage.

This blog argued back in August that extending Sunday shopping hours could have some negative economic side effects. Unless the added employee-hours and higher labour costs were exceeded by an even greater expansion of economic activity, the end result of expanding Sunday shopping hours would be lower retail profits and lower employee productivity — both of which would be undesirable.

However, there is a way out that could placate both would-be Sunday morning shoppers and those concerned about reduced rest-and-relaxation time.

Just look across our western border to Saskatchewan.

While Manitobans are allowed two weeks’ annual vacation per year — the same minimum required in the Canada Labour Code and the labour laws of eight other provinces — Saskatchewan residents  get three weeks’ annual vacation per year.

It doesn’t seem to have hurt their economy one bit. Nor has it hurt Australia’s economy, which also dodged the recession in spite of labour laws that require Australian employees to be offered at least four weeks’ paid vacation per year.

Bringing Manitobans up to par with their Saskatchewan neighbours by giving them an extra week off would help offset any productivity loss caused by longer Sunday shopping hours.

Instead of spreading the same amount of buying and selling (or perhaps a negligible amount more) across more hours — which is a productivity killer — the goal would be to make up for the extra Sunday morning working hours by eliminating hours elsewhere and getting rid of some of the slack.

It would also be a crowd-pleaser — and a potential vote-getter for a provincial government which will be asking for a rare fourth term in the 2011 election.

A busy week has left me with little time or creative inspiration to write something new, the last post having been 11 days ago on the world’s best countries.

That post seemed to please at least one Swedish reader, who used it as evidence that Sweden is still number one after a Finnish poster to an online discussion forum argued that Sweden is on the “the brink of destruction, or actually already escaping into a gorge.”

Scandinavia, a peaceful place by all accounts, is still home to a long-standing rivalry between the Swedes (who are justifiably proud of their country) and their neighbours (who often feel that the Swedes look down on them).

It goes to show that neighbourly rivalry — Canada vs. the U.S., England vs. Scotland, Ireland vs. the U.K., Australia vs. New Zealand, etc. — is not unique to the English-speaking world.

In the 11 days since I wandered into the world of international rivalries, traffic to this blog has been quite good despite the lack of new content.

I know that there have been at least a few loyal readers who’ve been checking in regularly to see what’s new. Looking through my regularly updated feeds of new and interesting news items that could serve as the basis for a blog post, a few things caught my eye:

• Bad, Joanne! Bad! Bad! Bad! Residents of Crieff in central Scotland could be forgiven for thinking that a scolding along those lines from a judge has been the most that’s ever been done to deal with local bad girl Joanne Mayor. The 27-year-old finally ended up in jail Friday after repeatedly going back to her criminal ways after being released on bail. Mayor, described as a “one-woman crimewave” by a local newspaper, had previously been convicted 86 times for 166 offences in the past decade. These offences, ranging from shoplifting to running topless down a railway line, were cited as evidence of Mayor being “morally bankrupt” in court yesterday before she was handed a two-month jail sentence.

• Forgetfulness might be a sign of attraction. Women who find that men suddenly seem to get forgetful or absent-minded in their presence might want to look in the mirror to learn why. Psychologists at Radboud University in the Netherlands have released new research showing that men become so mentally engaged with a woman they are impressed with that they will become far more distracted from what’s happening around them than either a man speaking to a woman he is not particularly attracted to, or even a woman talking to a man she finds attractive. The study was published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology.

• Horses, humans more closely related than originally thought. New research published earlier this month in the journal Science reveals that genetic testing shows that horses and humans share “unusually similar chromosomal arrangements”. The tests, carried out on the DNA of a horse named Twilight, showed that “more than half of Twilight’s genes appeared on chromosomes in the same order as those on human chromosomes”. By comparison, dogs and humans are only 29 percent similar.

• Passenger opens emergency exit to let fresh air into stuffy plane cabin. An Air India flight from Calcutta to Myanmar’s capital city of Yangon was delayed by more than seven hours on Monday after a Buddhist monk opened an emergency exit to let some fresh air in as the aircraft was about to push back from the gate. The 45-year-old passenger, travelling by air for only the second time in his life, reportedly understood little English or Hindu, and might have been inspired by the images in the in-flight safety card.

• “Tilde, what is with all these e-mails from China, asking if there are tours of Chako Paul City?” Relatively few people planning trips to Europe ever consider going to Sweden on holiday, but Swedish tourism promoters saw a spike in expressions of interest from China in October. This followed a false report from China’s Harbin News Agency about “Chako Paul City”, a community of 25,000 lesbians in the country’s north, guarded by “blonde female sentries”, with a “medieval castle” as its main landmark. Though Sweden is well known for its easygoing attitudes on sex and nudity, brushing off what is still considered controversial in other societies with a shrug of the shoulders and an indifferent “meh”, Swedish tourism authorities deny that there are any such communities to be found there. Tourist organizations, however, were reportedly swamped by inquiries from would-be Chinese tourists following the hoax, which also strained China’s heavily censored Internet systems.

Earlier today, The Economist declared Somalia the unfortunate winner of the British newsmagazine’s ultimate booby prize — The Worst Country on Earth. Previous winners Afghanistan and Turkmenistan would undoubtedly have been relieved to be rid of the title if they weren’t preoccupied with all their other problems.

At the same time, The Economist’s writers put out a challenge to readers to nominate the best country on Earth.

Naturally, I’d be inclined to nominate Canada — but I decided instead to open up a spreadsheet and do a quick calculation of where the 20 highest ranking nations in the latest United Nations Human Development Index stood in three other widely consulted indicators of good government: Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, the Switzerland-based Institute for Management Development’s World Competitiveness Scoreboard and Vision of Humanity’s Global Peace Index.

There are three things I should note here. First, I was forced to drop Iceland and Liechtenstein because of incomplete information. Second, in the Human Development Index rankings, I treated two countries with the same raw score as being tied, which is something the Wikipedia article does not do. Third, countries that did not finish in the Human Development Index Top 20 were excluded as not meeting a vital minimum standard for being considered as one of the world’s 10 best-run countries.

I calculated each country’s average ranking across the four indexes. Wherever there was a tie, I used each country’s worst score — its weakest link — as the tie-breaker. As the countries were ranked from best to worst, the closer a country’s average ranking came to ‘1′, the better.

Keep in mind that this is just for fun, and something I had no intention of working all night on — other people might have other methodologies and criticisms of this one.

Without any further ado, here is a countdown of the world’s ten best-run countries.

#10 -- Luxembourg, average rank 11.5 (Copyright © Albert Nagy; from Panoramio)

 

#9 -- The Netherlands; average rank 11.0 (Copyright © yo-rafael; from Panoramio)

 

#8 -- New Zealand; average rank 9.25 (Copyright © funtor; from Panoramio)

 

#7 -- Australia, average rank 9.0 (Copyright © Daniel Meyer; from Panoramio)

 

#6 -- Switzerland, average rank 9.0 (Copyright © wx; from Panoramio)

 

#5 -- Finland, average rank 9.0 (Copyright © picsonthemove; from Panoramio)

 

#4 -- Canada (yay!), average rank 7.0 (Copyright © Lukas Novak; from Panoramio)

 

#3 -- Norway, average rank 6.25 (Copyright © Matthew Walters; from Panoramio)

 

#2 -- Denmark, average rank 5.75 (Copyright © KWO Tsoumenis; from Panoramio)

 

And now the grand prize winner as the world’s best-run country:

#1 -- Sweden, average rank 5.5 (Copyright © Adam Salwanowicz; from Panoramio)

 

The others:

11. Japan (12.5)
12. Ireland (12.5)
13. Austria (12.75)
14. Belgium (18.75)
15. France (22.5)
16. Spain (28.25)
17. United States (29.00)
18. Italy (41.75)

This blog hasn’t always been uncritical of Air Canada, having noted last April that the nation’s largest airline seemed to be gearing up for a battle within its own ranks.

In July, I also suggested that Air Canada needed to make better use of its fleet in order to get back to profitability after narrowly avoiding a second bankruptcy earlier this year.

However, I’ve also noted some positive developments.

In May, I suggested that those who feel hard done by by Canada’s airlines look at passenger horror stories from around the world to get a sense of how air travel in Canada is still a relatively civilized affair.

Three days later, it was also noted that international air travel has never been more affordable.

It’s time once again to note a positive development that is taking shape in the industry.

Air Canada has announced a new option that will allow passengers to pay extra to pre-book some of the best seats on the airplane, starting from $14 per segment.

Not surprisingly, there has been criticism that this represents another attempt to nickel-and-dime the poor passenger.

I’m going to go out on a limb, however, and praise the move.

Since the advent of the frequent flyer program in the early ’80s, traditional airlines generally haven’t made the best seats in the house equally available to all. The more desirable seats at the front of the cabin were quietly set aside for members of each airline’s frequent flyer program, particularly those with “elite” standing, and for full-fare passengers.

Only once the rest of the seats at the back were spoken for would they consider opening these more desirable seats to the low-fare, non-card-holding riff-raff.

It was a perk that helped keep business travelers coming back to an airline, even if they never really had much love for that carrier.

Over the years, the traditional airlines’ treatment of passengers came to resemble a hierarchy. If you were lucky enough to be counted among the aristocrats by the airline’s computers, you were given privileges such as better seats, access to invitation-only airline lounges and an invitation to board the flight first. (Some airlines even made a point of saying out loud that these perks were for “elite passengers only”.)

If you were in the airline’s middle class — a frequent flyer point collector without elite status or a customer who had bought a ticket between seat sales — you might be lucky enough to get a mid-cabin seat and perhaps to have your slightly-too-heavy suitcase or bit-too-large carry-on overlooked.

If you fit into none of these categories, you would be flagged by the airline’s computers as a mere peasant who probably deserved your fate of sitting in a middle seat way back in row 24. Even the willingness to pay a little more money wouldn’t help you move up in the airline passenger hierarchy.

By creating this hierarchy, the airlines not only failed to create profits: they ignored the fact that human beings hate hierarchy.

Human beings want to be made to feel important. They want control of their destiny. They yearn for equality. They seethe with anger anytime anyone even implies that some other group is superior to them, or that they should “know their place”.

This hatred of hierarchy is the reason why egalitarian societies like Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, Australia and New Zealand remain attractive places to live and eventually recover from their problems, while hierarchical societies like France, Belgium, Russia, India and Japan continue to either lose their best and their brightest to emigration or seem to be permanently unable to get the best out of their people.

Hatred of hierarchy is also the reason why even the bureaucrats abhor the bureaucracy, whether these be government bureaucracies or corporate bureaucracies.

Thus, by creating a hierarchy of passengers, the traditional airlines came to be hated by their passengers, even by frequent flyers who came to feel that they were prisoners of their point balances.

When new airlines came along with more egalitarian ideas, like the U.S.A.’s Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, Canada’s WestJet and Britain’s EasyJet, travelers flocked to them in large numbers.*

With lower costs than traditional airlines, happier employees and an even more loyal customer base, these egalitarian airlines achieved a level of profitability that eluded traditional airlines. In an industry where it’s taken for granted that not every year will be profitable, Southwest for example has remarkably posted a year-end profit every single year since 1973.

By allowing passengers to pay for perks like better seats and lounge access, Air Canada is starting to break down some of the “class barriers” between passengers and to adopt a more egalitarian culture.

There’s still a long way to go. Seniority is still all-important among many Air Canada employees — a form of hierarchy itself that allows senior crew members to be at home with their families on Christmas Eve while the juniors are stuck in a hotel room 800 miles from home.

Air Canada’s membership in the Star Alliance also requires it to honour some of the hierarchical practices of its partner airlines, even industry bums like United Airlines, such as by giving preferential treatment to other airlines’ “elite” passengers.

It’s a positive step forward, however, by an airline that has made more effort than most other traditional carriers to rehabilitate its reputation. For that, Air Canada deserved credit.

–

* – Admittedly, the industry’s failures outnumber its success stories. But it’s still no accident that the world’s most profitable airlines typically fall into one of two categories: a.) Long-haul carriers like Singapore Airlines that can both command a premium from business travelers and keep each aircraft in the air for an average of 12-16 hours per day; b.) Low-cost, egalitarian short- and medium-haul carriers like Southwest and WestJet that also keep each aircraft in the air an average of about 12 hours per day.

I often liked to stop in at the Portage and Fort Second Cup cafe once or twice a week for coffee. After having been out of town for a few weeks, I was looking forward to having my customary Friday after-lunch coffee there.

It was with a great deal of dismay that I discovered today that the store has closed. The sign in front had been taken down, and a sign in the window thanked customers for their patronage.

Yet another setback for downtown revitalization, another example of how the high hopes we had for downtown Winnipeg when Winnipeg Square (’70s), Eaton Place-Cityplace (1979), Portage Place (1987) and the MTS Centre (2004) all opened have been dashed against the rocks.

The shopping centres are themselves part of the problem. I’ve seen attractive city centres in places as large as Paris and as small as Christchurch. None of these attractive centres had as much of their downtown retail capacity as heavily concentrated in a few small pockets of downtown as Winnipeg.

Yes, many of these cities had downtown shopping centres, but none so dominant and so effective at  sucking the pedestrian traffic off the neighbouring streets as Winnipeg’s downtown shopping centres.

The MTS Centre — which is a nice arena and in many ways is an improvement over a huge, vacant ex-department store — has also not had any wider positive effects for downtown beyond the block it sits on.

Maybe we’ll eventually learn from other cities that the key to a revitalized downtown is to have a downtown residential neighbourhood and to have downtown’s retail capacity spread out instead of concentrated in one place.

It’s a change that will come too late to save Second Cup and other businesses that tried their best to bring Portage Avenue back to life.

The sign in front of the old store refers patrons to the Second Cup location on Edmonton St., which has been one of downtown’s most successful yet under-celebrated gathering places.

Closer by, if you’re looking for a coffee or a bite to eat, there’s also The Human Bean at the Millennium Library, where the Addictive Turtles really are addictive. There’s also Gabernik’s Cafe (open weekdays) in the RBC Building, just off of Winnipeg Square, which offers good sandwiches, friendly service and great value for money.

More than three weeks have passed since I last posted to this blog. I know what you’re thinking. No, I wasn’t in jail!

I was enjoying a much-awaited holiday in New Zealand and Australia. As I usually do when I go on holiday outside of the country, I made a clean break and maintained minimal contact with home, including a strict ban on visiting online news sites.

For example, having departed Winnipeg on the day of the NDP leadership convention, I only learned the identity of Manitoba’s new premier six days later while checking my personal e-mail at an Internet cafe in Wellington, N.Z.

One of the things I love about travelling is that by learning about other peoples’ communities and societies, you learn a bit more about your own.

A few things I learned:

1. The rest of the world gives little thought to Canada, and that’s a good thing. I heard a saying once to the effect that every human being wears an invisible sign around his or her neck that says, “Make me feel important”. As a result, many humans want to think that their nation is important, too.

During more than two weeks on the ground in New Zealand and Australia, I made an effort to watch the news every day, usually on New Zealand’s One network or on Australia’s Sky News cable channel. During that time, there was only one news item about Canada — a brief report on Sky News, lasting about 15 seconds or so, about the Olympic flame arriving in Canada.

This lack of coverage of what’s happening in Canada is pleasing, and not just because bad news is more newsworthy than good news. Travelling Down Under and elsewhere in the world over the past few years, I’ve come away with the impression that much of the outside world sees Canada as a benign presence in the world — a big, scenic country where people speak with American-like accents and don’t seem to experience much trouble except when the “daft” Quebec separatists stir things up. Since familiarity often breeds contempt in international relations, there’s no harm in leaving these vaguely pleasant perceptions of Canada undisturbed.

2. Get people living downtown and revitalization will follow. Some years ago, Wellington, New Zealand was concerned about the declining state of the city’s downtown area. Did they create more parking spaces to compete with the suburban shopping centres? Nope.

Instead, they encouraged the conversion of empty and under-used downtown buildings to residential use. As more and more Wellingtonians moved into these spaces, new shops and cafes opened to serve this growing residential population. Today, Wellington has an attractive and bustling downtown core.

3. Closing a downtown street to traffic can be good for business. Years ago, part of Wellington’s Cuba Street was closed for maintenance. When the closure was announced, many of the retailers along Cuba Street feared that they would lose business. They were stunned when sales actually improved during the closure. Wellingtonians loved the wide-open space that the closure had made available to them, and appreciated the lack of traffic. It quickly became a more bustling street without traffic than it had been with it.

Today, Cuba Street Mall is permanently closed to traffic, with the retailers’ blessing.

No, Burger King hasn’t arrived in Havana: The Cuba Street Mall in Wellington, N.Z.

4. It’s about time Winnipeg got an airport-to-downtown shuttle service. I visited three major cities during my visit: Wellington and Christchurch in New Zealand, and Melbourne in Australia. In all three cities, private fixed-rate shuttle services competed with taxicabs for airport-to-downtown traffic. These shuttle services invariably offered both good value for money and courteous service.

5. Distant hills always look greener. Winnipeggers might envy other cities for their lower crime rates, nicer downtowns and higher incomes, but there are now a few people in Melbourne, Australia who envy us. Invited to a longtime Australian friend’s home for a little dinner party, I was peppered with questions about life in Winnipeg. They were amazed to hear that there were homes available in Winnipeg for less than $200,000 (compared to an average price of about $400,000 in metro Melbourne), that a litre of milk cost less than $2 (compared to $3+ there), and that 15 kilometres would be considered a ‘long’ commute (imagine an uninterrupted urban mass stretching all the way from Selkirk to Steinbach, and anything within the Perimeter being an ‘inner city’ neighbourhood, and you’ll get an idea of Melbourne’s sprawl).

And a few other things I learned, not necessarily related to Winnipeg or Canada:

6. To tell a Kiwi from an Aussie, listen for the “e” and the “i”. Just as many Australians and New Zealanders have difficulty telling a Canadian accent from an upper midwestern American one, many of us have difficulty distinguishing Aussies from Kiwis. It’s a useful skill to have, however. Australians and New Zealanders have a long-standing but good-natured rivalry with one another, so New Zealanders appreciate not being mistaken for Australians.* One of the easiest ways to identify a Kiwi is to listen for the “e” that sounds like an “i” (in Kiwispeak, “ten” becomes tin and “pen” becomes pin), and the “i” with an “ee” sound (where “six” becomes seeks).

7. Never send children to get your food for you. On a crowded Interislander ferry linking New Zealand’s North and South islands, a young lad had just bought some french fries from the onboard cafe and was excitedly returning to his seat with his deep-fried snack. Running along, he accidentally spilled some of the fries on the carpet in a high-traffic corridor. I watched in horror as he simply scooped up the errant fries, tossed them back in the container, and continued merrily on his way. Blecch!

8. Wash your backpack before travelling internationally. I wasn’t the least bit concerned when I was selected for secondary screening at Australian Customs on arrival in Melbourne. It’s a fact of life anytime that you clear Customs that there’s a small chance it’ll be your lucky day (as the customs officer put it) and you’ll be selected for inspection. I always assume that I’ll be among the ones chosen. With nearly five years having elapsed since my last “lucky day”, I figured I was overdue anyway.

What seemed like a routine process was turned into a nasty surprise when I learned that my backpack had tested positive for minute traces of cocaine, even though the sniffer dog had shown no interest in me at the baggage claim and the fact that I have never used illicit drugs and never even seen cocaine anywhere except on television and in photographs. After answering a few frank questions from the unfailingly polite customs officer, having other items tested for contamination (negative, I’m happy to say) and my personal effects x-rayed and looked over, I was cleared to enter Australia.

After helping me repack and giving me directions on how to catch the Skybus shuttle service into Melbourne, the customs officer told me that such contaminations are not entirely unusual.

“Cocaine residue is very adhesive,” he explained. “It sticks to everything that comes into contact with it.”

“If a new bank machine is installed, once 20 people have used it it will test positive for cocaine.”

I still have no idea where the contamination came from. I use my backpack as a gym bag, and there have been rumours (likely true) that drug dealers are operating out of the locker room. Or perhaps it came from one or more of the dozens of library books that are carried in my backpack every year. Or maybe it was a false alarm caused by that 80% pure cocoa chocolate bar I had in my backpack a few weeks earlier (a possibility that only occured to me days later).

Nevertheless, I’ll be washing my backpack at least twice in the days before travelling internationally from now on (the last washing being at the closest possible hour to departure). I’d recommend that others do the same — or even use an upcoming trip as a good excuse to buy a brand-new backpack.

It’s good to be home again.

–

* – Which reminds me of the following exchange between a New Zealander doing a comedy act/magic show in Christchurch, N.Z. and an Australian tourist watching him from behind. Turning around, the performer bellowed to the tourist, “You’re from Australia, aren’t you?” Tourist: “Yeah — how did you know?” Performer: “Because you’re looking at my bloody arse!” For good measure, Australians have their fair share of equally crude ‘Kiwi jokes’, many of them containing references to sheep. Involving me in his act, the street performer joked about Canada being “Little America on top”. Other nationalities suffered the same or worse treatment.

(Update, Oct. 15: KNRR is reported to be back on the air. Digital TV owners in Winnipeg are already filing reception reports online.)

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I’ve covered a lot of topics in this blog since it was first launched earlier this year, but the July 11 post on the uncertain future of KNRR-TV in Pembina, N.D. has stood out among them as being one of the most frequently visited and re-visited pages over the past three months.

KNRR might have been licenced to serve tiny Pembina and the surrounding farms and small towns of northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota, but the station had actually been meant to serve Winnipeg, 100 kilometres to the north.

The business plan seemed to make sense. It was the brainchild of Fargo independent station KVRR, which had decided to put up a 1,400-foot tower near Pembina to relay the Fargo station’s programming into Winnipeg. If a sales office in Winnipeg could just sell enough commercial airtime to cover its own costs plus those of keeping the Pembina transmitter up and running — a fraction of the cost of running a full-service TV station — it could generate a tidy profit for the station’s owners.

All they had to do was to get the station on to Winnipeg’s cable systems, to which the vast majority of the city’s TV sets were connected.

That turned out to be easier said than done.

Winnipeg’s cable companies applied to the CRTC to add KNRR to their lineups shortly after the Pembina station went on the air in January 1986. However, the owners of Manitoba’s TV stations, who were already competing with each other plus WDAZ’s Winnipeg sales office, had no intention of allowing yet another competitor on to their turf.

The broadcasters lobbied the CRTC to keep KNRR off of Winnipeg’s cable systems. In October 1986, they got their wish.

For the next 23 years, KNRR would stay on the air nevertheless, delivering its parent station’s signal to northeastern North Dakota, northwestern Minnesota and the dwindling number of Manitobans using rabbit-ears and rooftop aerials to receive TV signals.

During those years, KNRR was something of a money pit for its owners, generating neither profits nor cash flow. In 2008, however, the economic crisis in the U.S. and the $1-million price tag to convert KNRR over to digital by the June 2009 deadline made the station’s losses intolerable.

The station’s owners appealed to U.S. broadcast regulators to allow KNRR’s analog signal to stay on the air beyond the June 12 digital-switchover date, admitting that they were seriously considering shutting down KNRR, turning in its broadcasting licence and dismantling its tower.

When the appeal was denied, KNRR was left with no choice but to shut off its analog transmitter on June 12. It looked as though the station was dead.

On July 11, this blog suggested that Prairie Public TV give some consideration to buying KNRR while it still had its tower up.

As Winnipeg TV stations were then pleading with government regulators to relieve them of their local programming commitments, and KNRR’s owners seemed to welcome any opportunity to get the station off their hands, it appeared to present Prairie Public with the opportunity to strengthen its brand in southern Manitoba.

Half of Prairie Public’s audience and many of its donors lives north of the border, and four of the corporation’s 17 directors are from Winnipeg — including the chairman of the board — so why not use the Pembina frequency to shoot a signal across the border tailored to its Manitoba audience?

To my surprise, I then found out that KNRR’s owners had decided to keep the station on the air as a “public service”, informing U.S. broadcast regulators in early July that they intended to have the station back on the air with a digital signal by Oct. 18.

An employee of parent station KVRR indicated in an online discussion forum Monday that the date is real, writing that, “KNRR will also be lighting back up very very soon.”

When the station goes back on the air any day now, it will be the first over-the-air digital TV signal to cover Winnipeg and southern Manitoba.

According to TVFool.com, it should be possible to receive a passable signal in Winnipeg if you use a rooftop aerial or live in a high-rise above the ground clutter. Reception is expected to be good to excellent in Morden, Winkler, Altona, Morris and Carman.

KNRR's expected coverage area when it returns to air any day now. (© TVFool.com)

The arrival of the first over-the-air digital signal should be good news for Manitobans who have watched with envy as broadcasters fired up digital transmitters in Vancouver and Toronto while putting off upgrades in Winnipeg until closer to the Aug. 31, 2011 deadline for all Canadian TV stations to go digital.

KNRR’s resurrection is also a good opportunity to reconsider the station’s exclusion from Winnipeg’s cable systems.

In 1986, Manitoba broadcasters objected to KNRR getting a slot on the cable dial out of fear that their Winnipeg-based sales reps would undercut the rates charged by Canadian TV stations and undermine the local programming those advertising dollars helped pay for.

Today, there’s little likelihood that KNRR would ever open a Winnipeg sales office. Just ask WDAZ what a worthwhile pursuit that was — they closed theirs long ago. KNRR would get a less-than-stellar place in the cable lineup to boot, taking over WUHF Fox Rochester’s channel 49.

Even then, whenever a popular Fox show is on a Canadian channel and a U.S. channel at the same time, CRTC rules require that the Canadian signal be carried on both cable channels — which would block out KNRR’s signal during several hours of prime time every week.

Without a Winnipeg sales office, there is no reason to believe that the Pembina station poses any significant threat to either the Winnipeg stations’ profitability or to their (ever decreasing) local programming commitments.

Now that the signal is almost back on the air, MTS and Shaw might as well seek to add it to their offerings.