Another excellent piece, which appeared in The Orcadian, drew attention to The John Rae Society website, which is conducting a fund-raising compaign.  

Many of you know all this. I highlight it here to put it on the record. The Forces of Darkness (those who, having a vested interest, continue to undermine John Rae) are with us still. As we approach Westminster, we can expect a flurry of denial, distortion, and obfuscation. Nobody familiar with the three books illustrated here -- Fatal Passage, Lady Franklin’s Revenge, and The Arctic Journals of John Rae -- will be surprised. John Rae lives!

James Joyce is alive and well today in Dublin. He has surfaced in multiple incarnations and numerous places to celebrate the 110^th anniversary of Bloomsday. That’s the day -- June 16, 1904 – during which the action of Ulysses unfolds in what Joyce called “dear, dirty Dublin.” Rambling around the city today, everywhere we went, we encountered people tricked out in Edwardian gear, playing characters in the novel – Leopold and Molly Bloom, Stephen Dedalus – but also looking like Joyce himself in middle age, when he wrote his masterpiece. The James Joyce Centre has been celebrating all week, running Joycean walking tours and talks, marking the 100^th

Bygdoy alone would make me hate this city. But Oslo offers a welter of corollary reasons. Number two has to be the spectacular waterfront. OK, it can’t quite compare with that of Sydney, which is arguably the most beautiful in the world. But that is mainly because, with a metro-population of 1.5 million, Oslo is considerably smaller. Even so, a Torontonian has to face a transit system that works, and that includes not just buses, LRTs, and subways, but also ferries that transport commuters up and down an eye-popping fjord to towns and communities along the water, always in the never-ending sunshine. And the waterfront itself features a superb promenade lined with high-end restaurants, in which you can sit and watch the passing parade of sailboats and kayaks and cruise ships. For a Torontonian, it’s mortifying.

The third reason I hate Oslo is Edvard Munch. Everybody knows The Scream, his most famous painting, but that is just one of numerous towering works he created. I know this because Oslo has devoted an entire museum to Munch, as well a vast room in the National Gallery. Munch evokes and represents this city’s attitude towards its great artists and writers, which is one of pride and joyful celebration. Any Torontonian, and indeed any Canadian, knows that the appropriate posture is one of indifference and disdain. So there you have it, three good reasons to hate Oslo: the Museum Island, the waterfront, Edvard Munch. If those seem insufficient, we have a couple more days here, and already I see more reasons coming.