Strange Connections

Ingrid or Monique...take your pic

Funny...while researching my last St Albert Trail blog (now freshly updated) I wondered what that big, creepy, abandoned, building was. Turns it out it's the old Charles Camsell Hospital.

[wiki]

1946 - opened as tuberculosis hospital 

1964 - housed Northern Medical Research Unit for the changes to Inuit lifestyle with the coming of the DEW Line and increasing southern influence.  [DEW is Distant Early Warning radar Line from the Cold War]

1945 to 1967 - occupational therapy program for aboriginal patients.

1990 - hospital donated over 400 arts and crafts items made by patients in the program to the Royal Alberta Museum

1996 - closed and abandoned, condemned due in part to asbestos

2009 - building and grounds sit empty

The hospital was an "Experimental Hospital" run by Indian Affairs and was known as the "Indian Hospital". Stigma surrounds the hospital as it is alleged that the aboriginal population was treated poorly, abused, and murdered. It is also alleged that south of the building near what used to be the staff garden is a mass grave of aboriginal children, though officials say that most of the people who died were buried St Albert. These rumours and others regarding hauntings of the hospital are based more in urban legend than fact.

Link to Creepy Pics of Camsell Hospital

The movie "White Coats" was filmed in this hospital.  Apparently a wretched Dave Thomas movie, but it starred Ingrid Kavelaars, who's married to the Oilers' ex-coach Dallas Eakins.  The film was released in 2004.

Ingrid has a twin sister Monique Kavelaars, who won a silver medal in fencing at the Commonwealth games.  She's also the only Canadian woman to win an individual match in Epee (type of fencing).  She did it on my birthday in the same year as the film came out: 2004.  

Creepy.  I knew something was strange about that place...probably a secret insane asylum too.

Won't Back Down

Shorter blog this time - by popular request. Actually I don't think Dusty's that popular. Still, a shorter blog:


On Sportsnet they're running Oilers commercials. Pretty simple idea: Taylor Hall staring defiantly at the camera while Johnny Cash sings "Won't back down..." I like it. Very dramatic. I like the Oil, I like Taylor Hall, I like Johnny Cash, and I like the simplicity of it. It works for me on a lizard-brain level and makes me like the new attitude of the Oilers and all the excitement they're bringing this year. I'm all ready to go to war with the boys.






So what commercial does Sportsnet run the other day? Some Calgary Flames clown staring defiantly at the camera while Johnny Cash sings "Won't back down..." Gee, thanks Sportsnet. Yeah, we're all the same fans here - as long as it's Alberta. Possibly even Vancouver or the northern States. And of course we always want to see the Leafs at every possibility - they're Canada's team after all.

Being a sports fan is silly and largely irrelevant - but we like it. We like being mad and irrational - it's fun. We love laughing at the fans of the opposing teams and how silly they look in their outfits while they're cheering on a bunch of players who obviously don't want to play for that city. But hey Sportsnet - remember that that's how your broadcasting bread is buttered.

For fudge sake, how hard would it have been to make two different types of commercial? What are they...15 seconds? Thanks Toronto, for once again lumping everything west of Hamilton into one group. I guess we are one group though - both of our Alberta teams have won the Stanley Cup in the last 40 years and made the seventh game of the final round of the playoffs in the last 7 years. And Calgary and Edmonton both hate you just a little bit more now.

And while I'm at it - I grow more pissed that the National Energy Policy existed or was even suggested. I blame Toronto, the Maple Leafs, the Blue Jays, the Argos and the Raptors for this...and now Sportsnet too. I think Trudeau was innocent.

Link to The Toronto Song

Are You Positive?

Like batteries, all people are both positive and negative. I would say that the percentage of each shows one's character. Sounds kind of formulaic, but that's who I am - I loves me the formulas. If you're negative and petty, you get a fancy German word: Schadenfreude. It means to delight in someone's sorrow or misfortune. If you're positive, you get a less-well-known Buddhist word: Mudita. It's usually translated as: sympathetic or altruistic joy, the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people's well-being rather than begrudging it.

Why am I blabbing about this? Because the Chicago Blackhawks just won the Stanley Cup. More importantly Chris Pronger, of the Philadelphia Flyers, didn't win it. After the incredible bad-mouthing he's given Edmonton after he left the Oilers, he's an easy target. He said that we burned his kid's crib on the street when he left town. Sheesh - the company who he rented it from flatly denied that anything was amiss. I don't want to be against him, and I normally avoid it, but this is one where I'm okay with it. I did think the picture of Pronger with a woman's legs and the title "Chrissy Pronger" was stupid though. He's probably the best defenceman in the NHL right now, and one of the greatest of all time - but since he embarked on a Scorched Earth Policy after the Oilers had bent over backwards for him...I don't have to cheer for him.

On the Blackhawks' side, Marian Hossa has played on the last two Stanley Cup finalist losing teams (even shifting away from the team that won it the next year), and some people were hoping against him just for that - kind of like the Buffalo Bills losing four straight Superbowls back in the 90's. I couldn't cheer against him though - he's good, and I've never had reason not to like him and his effort. He was even classy when people were quizzing him on how it felt to leave the winning team.

I can see why people would cheer against someone like him, but it's petty. I don't want to be petty. Being petty and jealous stems from self-loathing, and I believe acting like that furthers it. That's another Buddhist thing. The way you act reinforces that pathway - when you're judged, your next phase is based upon how righteous your path is. How well-worn your Buddhist path is will tend to make you go down that path in your next life as well - and judged upon your results at the end of it again. And again. I'm not a Buddhist, but they've got some cool things. Humble and sensible things.

Instead of cheering against Pronger, I looked a little harder at the opposition and found reasons why they would be good stewards of the Stanley Cup. That's a bit nit-picky, but it was as good as I could do in this case.

Chicago Deep-Dish Pizza vs Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich was a draw, so here's a few reasons I found to cheer for Chicago in the final:

• The Hossa thing.
• The hard work of young Captain Jonathan Toews (pronounced Taves) for Canada in the Olympics, and previously in the World Juniors.
• They hadn't won The Cup since 1961.
• They have a guy named Byfuglien (pronounced Bufflin or Buglin, I could never tell).