Today we celebrated International Women’s Day, that special day set aside to honour the female gender.
On October 18th, 1929 women were declared “persons” under Canadian law.
One day equality…
We’ve come a long way, us women; and there’s yet a ways to go.
But the fact remains…
We’re women everyday; mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, friends, lovers, neighbours… and everything else.

One day, in a perfect world we will have no need for special days honouring a specific set of people.
And in that perfect world, there will be no need to erect memorials to honour people we’ve wronged.
Until that day…
Happy International Women’s Day!

Did I ever tell the story of how we stumbled upon a yet another protest in Paris?
No, not that protest.
This was a much smaller demonstration; we saw them, on our way someplace, just when we realized we’d walked too far and were probably lost.
Alas this story doesn’t have a happy ending, it’s not particularly interesting either, but I’ll tell it anyway.

It was our sixth day in Paris, the day we chose to visit Le Bon Marché.
I was especially looking forward to visiting La Grande Epicerie, I’d practised saying it just like the French.
It was supposed to be a thirty minute walk, but after we’d passed the Latin Quarter, we got seduced by the glitz of Boulevard Saint-Germain, missed our turn and kept going.
There are so many shops, galleries and restaurants on that street, oh and the lovely Saint-Germain-des-Pres church.

We saw the protestors a little further down, just as we were about to turn back.

Initially we were just going to observe them from a distance, but then this guy we met from Miami, he’s all brave and adventurous and he inspired us.
They were a small group, mostly men, mostly French-Africans, protesting the plight of undocumented workers.

We went over, talked, walked, listened, took pictures and empathised.

In July 2009 a group of undocumented immigrants moved into an abandoned building on Rue Baudelique in Paris.
With their formed coalition, they hope to move from out of the shadows, and bring the plight of the undocumented immigrant to light.
They want to work towards finding a solution towards legalization.
They assert that they have jobs, contribute to society and have lived in France for a long time, some for up to twenty years.
They want a chance to make their case, a venue where they’d be heard.

The crowd moved on several minutes later, and we parted ways, but we were still lost.
We felt a little ridiculous asking our new ‘friends’ for directions to Le Bon Marché, so we didn’t.
Instead, we asked the cops who’d been standing there all the time, looking menacing, watching the protest.
They, of course, were no help; they were actually curt and a little mean.

Here’s a link to the newsletter in the picture, if anyone’s interested in reading it (I don’t think there’s an English version).

There are times when getting lost frustrates me, but this wasn’t one of those times.

You’ve probably heard about the Pension reform protests that took place all over France today.
We walked couple of miles with the protest in Paris…
There were tens of thousands of protestors, singing, chanting, marching – I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.
The pictures and this video doesn’t capture the magnitude of the crowd and their passion.
Outside of France, I was one of those who’d thought what’s two more years?…. It’s a measly two years.
It’s a little bit more than that though; it’s about rights, dialogue and what’s constitutionally right.

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This past Sunday was Vancouver’s Pride Parade.
And with Pride comes a sad realization that summer is creeping to an end.
About 700,000 people lined the parade route this year to take in the show and we weren’t disappointed.
It was fun, euphoric, colourful, risqué and above all amazing.
Here are some pictures and two videos;

I hurried home from work on Friday to catch the opening ceremony of the 2010 Paralympics on TV.

It was a lovely and inspiring show; I look forward to the next two weeks

The Paralympics are going to be a mellow and calmer affair than what the Olympics were

I’m sure this image has been making its round on the internet.

The boss sent this in an email; the first picture is Granville Street on the last day of the Olympics and the one beneath is Granville Street a week later.

Pretty amazing huh?

One other thing to come out of the Olympics is this video for Haiti recorded in Vancouver during games.

A group of Canadian artists dubbed Young Artist for Haiti recorded K’naan’s Wavin’ Flag.

Proceeds from the song will go to Free The Children, War Child Canada and World Vision Canada.

Here’s where you go to find out more about getting the single and contributing towards a worthy cause.

PS: I have a picture and video heavy post coming soon from the K’naan concert last month.