I'm looking for good vegan sushi in Montr al. I'm looking for fairly standard things that I'm used to find in Japanese places in Vancouver, and some of the nicer places in Toronto. It should have things like Natto, Kanpyo, Ume Shiso, Shitake, and Inari for their rolls. It would be nice to order a bowl Edamame to share, or to get a bowl of steamed rice. Anyone know of some? If it also meets the constraints of 1) Being accessible by M tro 2) The rice is done reasonably well, then I will cheerfully take you out and buy dinner for both of us. Interested? Email me jbailey@raspberryginger.com (Fine print limitations: 1 per restaurant, first come first serve for a particular restaurant; one per month; I'll pay up to for your meal; a limit of 12; No promises after a year, if we move from Montr al, or if I suddenly find myself unemployed, dead, allergic to rice, etc.

From CBC News: Harper reopens same-sex marriage debate:

Some observers say the Tory stance against gay weddings cost the party crucial support in urban Ontario and among younger voters. But Harper may have raised the issue to pre-empt his critics, who say he's intolerant and has a secret agenda.

I am a Canadian citizen living in Montr al.
I'm sad and disappointed at the Conservatives party's politicking.  You
appear to be opposing tax cuts.  You appear to be opposing paying down
the national debt (Which was largely created by a conservative prime
minister).
You and your party keeps chanting that the Liberals have lost the "moral
authority" to govern while at the same time acting like children who
won't play along with others.  Nothing in your current behaviour would
inspire me to vote for you.  I would expect Her Majesty's Loyal
Opposition to conduct themselves in a better manner and I feel strongly
that if anyone has failed to govern effectively in this minority
parliament, it's you.
I urge you to stop trying to get an election called two months earlier
than it would come anyway, I urge you to move to a platform of fiscal
conservativeness which supports the sitting government in debt
repayments, and I urge you to begin working on keeping Qu bec in Canada.
I see these as the highest priority items for the House during the last
6 months of this government.
Acknowledgement of receipt is kindly requested.
Tks,
Jeff Bailey

Two Sundays ago, Jim and I walked down to Ubuntu Love Day. The Ubuntu Below Zero conference is being held at the Holiday Inn in Chinatown. That's the one with the fake Chinese tiles on the roof, which is sort of tacky. We found our way downstairs to the conference room and sat down. The previous night's revelries still had quite the effect, so I'm afraid I drifted in and out while listening to people speak. I thought I had rid myself of this habit, but apparently university has trained me to consider digital projectors as sleeping aids. I'll have to do something about this one day. I got to see some fairly interesting people: Mattias Klaus, whom I met earlier at Jeff Bailey's place; Fabio Di Nitto, who is incredibly jolly; Chris Peterman, who was with his classmates from Clarkson; Colin Watson, whom I thanked for working so hard on Debian; Jeff Waugh, who dressed up as an inmate; and plenty of others. Oh, I managed to meet Andrew Mitchell in person, but we failed to have a proper CHUG meeting while we were all in town. We broke for lunch, which was held in the hotel restaurant. A buffet, with some Chinese-style dishes, was being served. There, we had to negotiate with the unilingual (Cantonese) staff to find out what Jeff could eat. We had a special order of plain white rice brought for him and we were informed that it was safe for him to eat the stir-fried vegetables. I suggested to Jeff that he ought to keep a phrasebook on him whenever he travels. On each page, one per language, there should be a written description of what he can and cannot eat. Then, he just has to show this to waiters who don't speak English or French. For reference, the characters that mean "vegetarian" in Chinese are and . Most of the time, they mean "vegan", but there are some places where eggs and oysters are considered vegetarian. After lunch, Mark Shuttleworth gave Jeff a very nice birthday speech. He also gave Jeff a nice bottle of wine, which was very nice. And Matthias came up to give Jeff a bottle of fish-oil pills, which was very odd. Then, there were two Birds Of a Feather sessions, involving how to make an Ubuntu package and how to be an Ubuntu advocate. Being upstream to both these issues, I sat in the middle of the room and listened to both presentations at once. This was quite interesting, and slightly taxing. After this was done, we broke up once more. The plan for the evening was to meet for dinner in the hotel lobby. This transformed to meeting outside the front door. Jim, wlach, and I showed up and were greeted by this mass of people. Since there were stragglers and I knew where dinner was to be held, Jeff took a group of nineteen people in the metro. I followed about ten minutes later with a group of eighteen. We met up on St-Denis, and by this time we had lost some of the more impatient, and more hungry, people. Eventually, a group of twenty-three were milling about outside Le Nil Bleu. Angie had made arrangements for us to be served a set meal, and they had agreed to seat twenty-five of us. I went inside to let the staff know that we had arrived. When 20:30 came around, we were let into the restaurant and seated. I think the kitchen was still preparing food, because we had to wait about an hour before being served. Unlike my previous experience there with Jeff, the food was quite good this time and the service was very attentive. We enjoyed ourselves very much, and Jeff seemed to be having a very excellent birthday dinner. Some of the guests were not so happy, because the food was a little spicy for their European palates. Since gratuities are not standardised around the world, we discovered that some people had not tipped. To cover the embarassment, Angie and I made sure that the wait-staff were adequately compensated for their efforts. I'll be sure to go back to this restaurant again, but with a more significant crowd to ensure good service. After eating, a group of us including Matthias and Tollef went up to B l K , which was just a little north on Mont-Royal. That's a really interesting bar with beautiful tiled floors and ostrich heads on the walls. We enjoyed the lovely music, had a very good conversation there, and laughed until we were all exhausted. Since the Canonical people had to be awake for the 09:00 keynote speech the next day, they left early. Jim and I bid goodnight to them before we staggered home.