Tuesday 23 October 2012

Poem of Canadian history in rhyming cuplets


Canada 1850 - 1914

With the political enmity still unabated,
Bills were created and forever debated.

Canadian in grave situation with American aggression,
The cancellation made the provinces fell into recession.

Sir John A. cried “unite or die!”,
A Great Coalition was worth a try.

In 1867 a new nation was born,
“Canada” the name it shall forever adorn.

A railway would be built and Rupert’s land redeemed,
From sea to sea was Sir John A’s dream.

Oh how the man of orange angered the Metis,
With the birth of Manitoba the uprising seized.

B.C. and P.E.I. were prosperous no more;
The confederation was what they implore.

When the Pacific Scandal debunked and integrity lost,
Sir John A Macdonald was finally tossed.

When Alexander Mackenzie took office,
However diligent he could not suffice.

Unrest and anarchy the settlers feared,
With the NWMP the lawlessness disappeared.

Tariffs, railways, and settlements the people require,
So the National Policy came unanimous aspire.

Petition after petition Sir John A ignored,
The Northwest remained passive no more.

With the CPR finally complete,
The Canadian troops ensured the Metis defeat.

On that memorable day when Sir John A passed away,
Laurier succeeded with dismay.

Thousands came when they heard the temping tale,
Seeking for gold along the Klondike trail.

In 1904, millions were settling in the west,
Alberta and Saskatchewan became like the rest.

The election campaign boiled and heated,
Until Sir Laurier was finally defeated.

Sir Robert Borden proved to be diligent and sincere,
Led Canada through the most arduous years.














The Older the Wiser?


Wisdom, a rather uncanny concept, has a momentous impact on shaping our everyday life as well as our destiny. What is wisdom? It’s obviously not the same as knowledge. You may know how to pick a lock, or steal a car, but it would be wiser to do neither. Therefore, wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge. For many years, people have argued with, or against the famous quote” With age comes wisdom”. I think that the most, if not all, of the quote is true.
Obtaining wisdom is a process of learning from past experiences, seldom would you be taught wisdom. Often, acquiring wisdom is a game of patience-it’s impossible for a person to be wise in the course of a childhood. For most people, wisdom grows with age.
I don’t express these statements out of thin air.
First of all, as a child, you are naĂŻve and gullible with a straight forward brain, impossible to be wise or learn to be wise. As you grow older, your brain would then have the ability to learn, though you would become playful and careless. Children, who are almost capable of learning, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. It’s common for a child to ignore mistakes done and lesson of life, although they would benefit you throughout his/her life. Only by the time you become an adult, you would be more motivated and willing to learn, caring about the community, politics and have morals. As you grow even older, you would never stop to learn with countless experiences up ahead, experiences that you would never understand, if not care as a child.
Secondly, you wouldn’t have the chance to learn when you are young. Lying in a comfortable bed, playing with parent’s dedicated care… You are enveloped by your parents; no experience could be drawn. With the increasing age comes more opportunity to explore the planet and understand more about it- moral standards, critical thinking…  The learning process is tedious and slow, so patience is the best companion of wisdom.
Lastly, some may argue that, an eight years old boy maybe more wise than a 60 years old man. Though unlikely, it’s possible for a child to learn the unthinkable in a short period. Compared with how he would be 40 years later, the wisdom gained then is probably going to be multiplied. No matter how wise you are now, you would always become wiser as time pass by and you grow older. Therefore, time, rather age, is an important part of learning and usually an indication of how wise you are.
To conclude, as time pass by, we should try to learn from the past as much as we can, because age is more than an indicator of wisdom, it’s also an alarm clock that tell us about the time left.

Three Short Halloween Poems


Black Widows
The nasty crunches
Minute and horrendous body
Deadly, dull colors
Tinted with bloody symbol
That truly marked Black Widows
The Halloween Hat
                                                            Livid white, hollow       
With a skull in front that glows
Dusk feathers aside
Turn in to monsters at night
Looking for children to pierce
Ghosts
The pure bloodless spirits
Were once good souls, they wander
Through halls, flying with
Colorless coats, unseen, unknown
Envoys that up rose from hell

Dropping the Penny



It is a piece of currency, quite frankly, that lacks currency – Senate Committee.
  Have you ever felt that the penny, as a type of currency, is troublesome for various reasons? You are not alone. For decades, the ongoing debate about whether we should keep the penny or not had been concerned by many Canadian citizens. I, personally, think that the penny has simply out-lived its purpose and should be dropped.
  According to the Royal Canadian Mint, in 1858, when penny was first created, it was 96 percent of copper. 150 years later, even though the penny is made out of steel with copper plating, it now costs 1.5 cent to create a cent. Some might say that it’s only half a cent’s difference, but consider this: Canadians had made 500 million of those last year alone! This would be a $2 500 000 loss! On top of that, roughly 31 billion pennies had been produced since 1908; the Canadian Government had wasted billions of tax payer’s money on this worthless currency.
  In 21st century, it’s certainly impossible for us to purchase even the cheapest products in stores with a cent due to inflation. Prices of almost all products had climbed up high enough that a penny doesn’t make a difference anymore. Today, penny has lost 95 percent of its purchase power since 1908, which means the penny today is equivalent to the toonie back then. Therefore, it may have been a great help decades ago, but now, it has became a useless piece of metal as currency.
  As we all know, pennies are also notably inconvenient. According to the Royal Canadian Mint, as I mentioned before, roughly 31 billion pennies have been made, assuming one-third of it had disappeared, and that still left us with 600 pennies per person spreading over the house. All that could’ve been 6 loonies instead. When you are in supermarkets, hospitals, restaurants or banks, it’s extremely time-consuming to spend a large amount of time counting over pennies, the most worthless currency we have. It is not helping trading as it is suppose to be, on the contrary, it increases the trading cost.   
Minting penny is also a waste of resource. For instance, it costs nearly 20 percent more to mint penny than nickel and it costs 90 percent more to mint penny than loonie if try to mint the same value. Although we Canadians have a rich amount of non-renewable resources such as steel and copper, but none of them should ever be wasted. 
  Some might say that after dropping the penny, if we ever, there’s no way that we could pay for prices $199.97 anymore. This problem can be solved by rounding the prices to whole numbers. For instance, Australia dropped their 1 cent coin in 1990 and a study showed that it had no effect on inflation since prices got rounded both up and down.
  Canada’s Senate Committee on National Finance has recommended dropping the penny. It’s still a mystery if The Canadian Government is going to act, but one thing’s for sure: Let the penny drop, it certainly helps the Canadians’ everyday life. 
Kevin Wang 703

The Lady or the Tiger


  It must have been excruciatingly painful, given a dilemma – sweet vengeance upon the lady, or the life of the dear, handsome suitor – and days to ponder to and fro. The princess, faced with the unprecedented problem, had withstood days of agonizing thoughts and nightmares before waving her hand of fate. The outcome, unfortunately, remains a mystery, though I fathom that that awaited the poor man was anything but rapture and redemption.
   One must have a thorough understanding of the devious psychological behavior before truly apprehending the princess’s decision. Although she had always loved and cherished the former fiancĂ©, hatred and bitter jealousy was sure to blind and irrationalize her. The more one embraces one thing, the harder it is to let go of it. The more she thought about her lover’s beauty and conduct, his ecstatic delight after seeing the lady, the more she would lamented over losing him to her bitter rival, for she cannot bear seeing his former lover exult over another lady. The anger stacked in her heart until it reaches the point where it engulfed her. By then, even if she had formerly decided to spare him, selfishness and hatred would’ve prevailed, leading her to choose the gorier of the two options.
  The princess, like the king, has a soul wild and reckless, which means that “when she and herself agreed on anything it was done at once”. Thus, there was nothing that could’ve hampered her if she had decided for him to die at once and await her in the enchanted realm where they could live for eternity, not even the thought of the cruel-fanged beast. Being young and foolish, she could not have valued the importance of life. She would’ve killed him and resent later. Furthermore, living in a semi-barbaric society, one can presume that the princess would’ve had no trouble bearing the sight of her lover being torn into pieces by a savage tiger. A sight as disturbing should be commonplace to her, thus would not have influenced her decision.
  When finally deciding on the man’s pathetic future, another major factor that might had influenced the princess is romance itself. Over the course of the previous several months, the love for each other was so great and turbulent that she developed the fallacy that he loves only her, and for him to love other woman would be just as torturous. Thus, by killing him instantaneously, she might have thought that it was saving him from a life that would otherwise be contained with affliction. Eventually, although anticipated, when she saw how her lover begged for her mercy cowardly, and relenting to the fact that he was going to be married to another woman, the princess’s will to kill hardened. After all, what’s the point of saving the man if that he had already devoted to another? 
  The ending of the story is not one to be lightly considered, and one can only look at it from their perspective. The outcome, regardless of the discussions, is a mystery that will not be, nor meant to be, solved.