Category Archives: Canada

Ph.D. Parents and the Tenure-Track

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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01425-4 (“Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty”)

In the US, “faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged … .” It must be similar in Canada.

In the field of history (their humanities’ example), 26.7% of tenure-track professors have at least one parent with a Ph.D., and 34.3% have at least one parent with a master’s degree. Professors are 25.3 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. than the general population does, whereas all people with Ph.D.s are merely 1.9 times as likely to have such a parent. Both cases, but especially permanent faculty members, approach zero in having–like me–high school completion as the highest level of study of either parent.

It’s unusual for someone of my lower socioeconomic background to have completed a Ph.D. at all and not in any way surprising that I didn’t become a tenure-track professor. It would have been several hundred times as unlikely for me to become a professor compared to people with at least one Ph.D. parent. Ethnicity is rightfully discussed as an important factor in these issues, but I am white, and socioeconomic status is also a major factor.

The Canada Revenue Agency and Canada Post

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The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) won’t accept my additional employment expenses for a used vehicle I purchased in 2021 to work as a Rural and Suburban Mail Carrier (RSMC) for Canada Post for about fifteen months. I kept meticulous records about my purchase and my fuel, maintenance, and repair expenses beyond what Canada Post gave me, but the CRA claims I owe them $2,857.27. Given the number of days I worked 8, 10, or even 12 hours while only being paid for 4, 5, or 6 hours, the federal government should be paying me that amount. I’ve re-sent my paperwork both electronically and in printed form, but they’ve so far ignored my attempts to make them look at my file again. Canada Post relies on a patch-work of 8,000 mainly part-time RSMCs (70% of whom are women) who generally use their own vehicles, and I honestly don’t know how they get away with it.

Happy Canada Day

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Happy Canada Day! I see numerous Canadian flags every day I’m on my rural Ontario FedEx route. However, almost all of them are on the property, including vehicles, of freedom-convoy, anti-mandate people. The flag was established in 1965 (so was I!), the same year as universal health care and around the time that multiculturalism was starting to emerge as official policy. In 2023, there is still much to be done, especially reconciliation for indigenous peoples and addressing climate change. So, let’s celebrate openness, helping each other, and so on. The US continues to move backwards on things like abortion and LGBTQ rights, and the Canadian “freedom” enthusiasts undoubtedly wish that Canada would do the same. Let’s not do that, okay?

New Job for FedEx

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I’m now working full-time as a delivery agent for a FedEx Ground contractor. It’s for a largely rural route about 1.5 hours south/southwest of Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge, but including very scenic stretches along Lake Erie. I get to drive a fancy, almost-new Mercedes Benz Sprinter cargo van and use an excellent package route phone app. I also get benefits (including retirement savings) and a raise after a three-month probationary period. Thanks to Ryan and to Gerry (who put me in touch).

After over a year of getting nowhere, I got tired of working for Canada Post as an on-call relief (OCRE) rural and suburban mail carrier (RSMC). I had only occasional full-time work, no guarantee of continuing part-time work (which they told me I’d have until the end of August), no benefits, no pension, and no way to pay off the used mini-van I needed to do the job much of the time. Other times, I had to drive 20-30 year old, corporate-provided right-hand drive vehicles: Grumman LLV step-vans (which I called “ice-cream trucks”) and a rusty old Honda CRV. That FedEx can be run so much better makes me seriously question a bunch of socio-economic and political issues.

Postal Carrying Update

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I’m in the middle of a two-week vacation fill-in on a nearby rural route. It pays for 5.5 hours per day, but there are so many flyers (which have to be collated with the letter mail) that it’s averaging 7.5 hours, which also includes parcels. Then, I found out yesterday that I won’t be back on my usual 4-hour suburban route next week, and I was supposed to be on that one until August. They apparently want me to “reach out” to other post offices to find more assignments. I have no idea what they’re doing, have been doing this for about ten months, and still have no permanent status, benefits, pension, or route of my own.

A Reflective Canada Day

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Nigel Fox, “Our Home and Native Land,” 2012

I’m glad that many Canadians are finding Canada Day to be a reflective moment about truth and reconciliation for Indigenous peoples. Mass graves of what will probably end up being thousands of residential school children have been discovered. These children were not only stolen from their families, but considered savages and allowed to die (possibly sometimes even directly killed) by members of the Christian denominations running these schools. These things were done with the knowledge and support of various Canadian governments, and the last such school closed in 1996.

The Catholic Church was the worst offender, and it should own up to it and use its considerable financial resources to do something about it. Meanwhile, Canada should at least immediately make sure that every indigenous community has access to clean drinking water and to other things that the rest of us take for granted.

My own Swiss-American ancestors settled about two hundred years ago on part of the Haldimand Tract, land that was granted to the Haudenosaunee of the Six Nations of the Grand River, within the territory of the Neutral, Anishinaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. 60,000 acres of Block 2 in what is now the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario area was purchased in 1805 by Mennonite settlers who had moved there from Pennsylvania, but the area was supposed to be granted in perpetuity to the Anishinaabe people. So, these issues have been around for a very long time.

Conference Paper – Rush’s “Hemispheres” – Progect 2021

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Here’s a link to my online conference paper bio, abstract, and video for “Rush’s ‘Hemispheres’: Uniting Heard and Mind (and Progressive Rock with Heavy Metal)”. May 2021 Progect Conference, hosted by the University of Ottawa.

https://progectconference2.wixsite.com/website-5/durrell-bowman

Abstract:

If progressive rock and heavy metal sometimes appropriate ideas from classical music—instead of, say, the blues—would that be enough to explain their appeal? Of course not. If they’re often musically and lyrically “complex,” are these complexities straightforwardly more so than the underlying grooves and vocal practices of funk and hip hop? Well … no. On the other hand, even though they may not reach a particularly diverse audience, progressive rock and heavy metal actually espoused eclecticism right from the start. 

The Canadian rock band Rush (1968-2018)—one of the godfathers of progressive metal—would not have developed an eccentric, eclectic progressive/hard style without the example of musicianly progressive rock from 1969-77. However, the band’s music also relates to the influence of blues-oriented hard rock and power-oriented heavy metal from the same period. Rush’s 1978 album Hemispheres begins with its title-track, and with it the band provided its last of three album-side-length compositions. “Hemispheres” establishes a conflict between the left (thought or “reason-oriented”) and right (emotion or “feelings-oriented”) halves of the human brain. The band anthropomorphizes these according to classical/mythological references to the gods Apollo and Dionysus, respectively. 

The paper explores the large-scale design of Rush’s “Hemispheres,” including its sections, form, metrical construction (including 12/8 and 7/8), lyrical features, and tonal complexities. The latter include extended chords, inversions, cross-relations, chromaticism, modes, ambiguous progressions, and various solutions to a particular cadential figure. Among other things, Rush uses nearly identical music to equate a pair of extended lyrical frames as equally inadequate ideologically. The band then converges on additional musical and lyrical frames that themselves become a reconciliation. In this manner, Rush mythologizes the post-counterculture of needing to unite heart and mind into something new.

Vaccines and Politicians

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People with certain pre-existing medical conditions are three or more times as likely as the general public to die from COVID-19 once infected. (Don’t worry: I’m not infected.) All levels of government in Canada are doing terribly at dealing with the vaccines.

I get that seniors need to be the priority after frontline health-care workers and long-term care residents. However, Pfizer and Moderna have flagrantly reneged on signed agreements for delivery schedules, and things are now being delayed by weeks or months, especially for the rest of us.

So, politicians need to do something about the unexpected changes to the vaccine roll-out. I’ve been led to believe that some of them were even trained as lawyers, but I’m now guessing they became politicians because they were actually pretty bad at it.

Follow-up: It took until April 20, 2021 to get a vaccine, which was dose 1 of AstraZeneca.

Two (Three) Guys Talking Rush

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I show up at around 22:50 minutes.

Is It Time for a Guaranteed Annual Income?

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With millions of people applying for government support and millions more (like me) still earning non-living wages to provide “essential” services, it is time for Canada to have a guaranteed annual income. Give every adult $2000 a month from now on. Make it taxable, so people who already earn a lot don’t get to keep much of it. Cut the red tape. Cut the bureaucracy. Easily cover the cost by cutting the costs of having to run so many different government programs (EI, CPP, OAS, GIS, CERB, CESB, provincial welfare and disability systems, etc.).