Its funny. I never think about Canada even though its fucking humungously massive and large. It just kind of sits there, right above Trumpsville, minding its own business and being… well… being Canadian. Its a nice place, a sweet place, clean, affluent, pretty and freezing cold for 11.5 months a year. I keep me mate Dave there, just in case anything happens, but it never does. Until this week. Then its suddenly, its like they’ve taken out a PR campaign and its all you see.

Firstly there was that awful van attack in Toronto killing 10 people and injuring loads more. Which, rather than being a boring, zeitgeisty ISIS kind of deal is looking more like it was a specific attack on women. Something we can all understand to a degree. (Can I say that? Can I think that even?? Too late, I’ve done it now). The driver, called Alek, is part of some online group called ‘incels’ which is an abbreviation of ‘involuntarily celibate’, which in turn is posh speak for ‘can’t get laid’. So faced with the choice of becoming a rapist or a mass murderer, Alek obviously took the latter path. Common sense dictated so. I despair.

Then at the University of Toronto there’s more trouble brewing, with more women! Probably all those who refused to have sex with poor Alek.

In an effort to try and dispel stereotypes of ‘women in science’ as being geeky, nerdy, bit ugly, probably slightly greasy, unwashed and wearing protective eyewear when they go out for dinner, a rather fit and lovely science babe, a PhD student, started posting selfies showing how gorgeous a, basically, gorgeous girl can look, even when in a lab, wearing a white coat, doing sums on a blackboard, all kinds of wonderfully sciency, Steven Hawkingy type things. So a fellow student commented that really, rather than showing how these girls (because it inevitably spread) look pretty and smiley, shouldn’t they be better engaged trying to reduce the gender inequality in the scientific world. Which is currently massive. I’m gonna guess at 73%, just because those ‘gap’ statistics are always so stupid as to be totally meaningless. But the sad truth is probably that a few more people are going to take the trouble to look at a photo of a pretty girl than are going to read in-depth analyses of sexism in the scientific workplace. Sadly.

Then lastly, to round of Canada week perfectly, Lila was wearing her brand new Canadian baby-gro, with maple leaves and everything.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx