I had a great time last night at the opening ceremonies for the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG). There are more than 6500 young aboriginal athletes participating from 26 regions (mostly states and provinces) of the US and Canada. Manitoba has the largest team with about 900 athletes competing.

Judging from the opening ceremony last night, it's going to be a great week of sports and cultural exchange for participants and spectators alike.

Despite the relatively low key media coverage (mostly APTN... the Globe and Mail didn't even report on the opening ceremonies in today's newspaper), this is an incredibly important event for helping people to understand that North American indigenous people are not something to be found only in history books. Despite having to deal with centuries of racism and military/legal warfare, these are living, evolving, proud cultures.

I really wish I had my camera with me last night... mostly to capture one image: a young native man in overalls (off-the-shoulder) and a white tank top hanging out with his friend - one of the traditional men's dancers with a turkey feather (?) headdress and fully painted face. Two guys; one future.

Over the last couple of days, I've been watching a lot of TV news coverage of World Youth Day. Any time you put a few hundred thousand young people together for an event, something interesting is bound to happen. Having grown up Catholic, attended a Jesuit university, and continued studying theology over the last few years -- the future of the Catholic church intrigues me.

For me, the most intriguing story emerging has been the relationship between "Challenge the Church", the official WYD organizers, and Toronto police.

As CBC has reported on the story, the Toronto police have taken some creative license with how they enforce city laws. For example, at the request of WYD organizers, they determined that the public area OUTSIDE the WYD venue was off limits to young Catholics who were handing out condoms. Later, they set aside standard policy and only gave repeated verbal warnings to US anti-abortion activitists who protested outside a clinic for the afternoon and confronted the doctors working there (normally, these protestors would have been physically removed).

You tell me... where is the line between being a gracious host for an event and bending the law to support a particular view of a moral code?

Yesterday, Linda was walking along the street in Calgary. A man approached her and asked for spare change. She grabbed whatever was in her pocket and gave it to him. The change included a Belgian 5 Franc coin that she had left over from our trip last fall. She apologized to the man.

His comment, "No problem. I'll save it in case I'm ever homeless in Belgium."

I don't want to live in a perfect world. Or maybe, it's just that I don't want to live in a world that pretends to be perfect, but isn't. One that buries the problems... hides them under a rug... out of sight... pretends they are not there.

Minneapolis freaked me out last week when I was down there visiting. I expected to love the city. EVERYONE I had met said it was a goregous city. That I was going to love it. Tons of beautiful houses. Nice restaurants. parks everywhere. Free festivals. Nice socially conscious people.

But, it freaked me out. I felt like I was in some sort of weird Pleasantville spinoff. I couldn't handle how wealthy everyone seemed. How perfect everything seemed.

It was such a relief to arrive home to Winnipeg and find an arson in progress across the street from where we had to drop the rental car off. Call me crazy, but little and/or obvious problems make me feel better. I like the organic craziness that is humanity. Push it down, put it into clean little cages for too long, and things start to really erupt.

Many thanks to everyone here for all of their support over the last couple of months (and the last few weeks in particular). I feel like I dropped the ball for a bit on the Youth Creating Digital Opportunities initiative while dealing with stuff at home.

But, life has a way of sorting itself out eventually.

As of this morning, I finally felt like my partner and I had made a 100% committed decision to turn down a job offer she had in Minneapolis. It was a great job. It just wasn't right for us at this time, since it would have consumed all of her time and energy, leaving very little left for doing projects in the community or for our relationship. Hard call. Most of the people in her company think she's crazy for turning down the chance at a "promotion" with more money and interesting learning opportunities. They don't seem to understand that there's more to life than work.

The only part of our explanation that they do seem to understand is that in Canada our relationship is legally recognized, while in the US it is not. The province of Manitoba is passing legislation that includes same sex couples under common law designations. In the US, they keep trying to pass "Defense of Marriage Laws." That really doesn't make me want to live there. Long live Canada :-)