Have to say I’m a little sceptical on this. In the early 2000s we had that giant power outage that hit everywhere from Ontario down to the US eastern seaboard. It’s all one giant, tightly-integrated grid. Both sides milk Niagara Falls for all its worth, for example.

If it were Quebec making this threat, I would take it seriously. They spent a lot to rebuild their grid with DC isolation and everything after a horrific ice storm took it down. If they said “we’re cutting you off”, then yeah, they could realistically do so. But this is Doug Ford in Ontario. What a blow-hard.

If he’s talking more about gas/oil pipelines, well, what’s the point? Trump’s tariffs will already cause prices to soar at the pump in the US. No need for an embargo. Talk about shooting yourself in your foot. I cannot believe he has any support, and yet here we are.

I consider myself a practicing non-Catholic and a non-practicing Anglican. I haven’t attended an Anglican service since childhood but play music with my wife at her Catholic church, so I have to attend a practice for that every week.

I love my ebike! It’s been a game changer for me. I can give you a few safety pointers that apply to cycling in general.

• invest in a rear-view mirror so that you can watch for people coming up from behind and cutting you off with a sudden right turn (the right hook, as it is sometimes called)
• at intersections, try to make eye contact with anyone turning across you
• get front and rear lights (most jurisdictions require these for night time riding but they are good to have on in daytime also)
• get a bell (again, generally required) and use it when you are approaching pedestrians who can’t see you or in general when your sight lines are obstructed
• watch out for parked car doors swinging out (if you need to take over a lane to pass a car safely, it is your right to do so)
• when you need to maneuver (e.g. change lanes, turn, etc.), use hand signals and do so gradually from a good distance

The nice thing about an ebike is it doesn’t cost you a lot of effort to get going again after slowing down or stopping, so you should do so if you’re facing an uncertain traffic situation.

Also, regarding risks, you need to weigh them against the risks of not riding. In my case, I work a sedentary job and this is my primary means of exercise. (Yes, even ebikes can give you exercise!) I was developing type 2 diabetes, but since I started the bike commute, I’ve been losing weight (albeit very gradually) and my numbers have been going down.

There was a woman who died recently when her ebike was hit by a pickup truck along a route I often also ride an ebike on. He was making a left turn at an intersection. It bothers me that a collision of that nature was still enough to cause a fatality. I mean you would expect a turning vehicle to not be moving at great speed?

But I guess as the article points out, the higher profile and greater weight of trucks takes its toll. Also, I think there is a certain segment of muscle truck drivers who like to floor it with reckless abandon, though I don’t know if that was the case here?

Your first one reminds me of something that happened awhile back. I was at a donut shop staring out the window when a scruffy dude in a pickup truck slammed into a traffic light, tipping it over across the street.

Now as it happens, said donut shop was a watering hole for police officers (yes, the stereotype is real), and about a dozen buff uniforms trotted out within seconds. The guy climbed out of the truck and tried to light a cig and it fell out of his mouth as he saw them rushing up.

Cool. I’ve been using croc lately to move files around, but this differs in that they are supplying temporary off-site storage so that the host doesn’t have to remain online.

I wish there were more regulation on the size of private vehicles, particularly in North America. It’s pretty clear at this point that what is contributing to higher pedestrian/cyclist fatalities despite better urban infrastructure is the increasing curb weight and ground clearance of automobiles. We can hope that collision-avoidance tech in newer models may reduce human-error type accidents, but at the end of the day, kinetic energy is a bitch.

I wonder how the EV transition will affect things? On the one hand, an EV would weigh more than an ICE of the same class since batteries are heavy. On the other hand, batteries are also the most expensive component by far and you need more in a larger vehicle, so from a dealer’s perspective, the margins may not necessarily grow the bigger you go like with an ICE. The sweet spot might actually be something smaller. (In fact, for me, it’s actually ebikes.)