Staggering on

Our PM and the President had their first contact this morning via telephone and both thought it went well whatever that means. We are in the middle of a federal election campaign and apparently they plan to talk again after the election on April 28 assuming that Carney wins. It's a bit tense in Canada these days due to major tariffs starting next week.

Good gig Saturday night with the seven piece swing/Dixie band and we had our guest vocalist with us again. BL rented a small hall where we have played before and we had around 50+ that included a number of folks who had never seen us and a bunch of our regulars. We also had about six musicians in the audience that most of us had played with in the past or present in other bands, that was a bit different but they all seemed to enjoy the show. I was particularly pleased at the end when the best jazz guitarist in our area and his wife who plays bass complimented me on my playing and especially the sound of my bass. They both wanted to try the bass and checked out my pickup and we had a really nice chat. I have met both of them several times and they have seen me play but I must have been doing something right for them to spend so much time with me after the show. We did our usual three sets, two of swing/jazz and a shorter set of trad/Dixie where I switch to tenor banjo and the sax players go to clarinet and bari sax to play a bass line. The Dixie set was a bit rough with two new songs that we had only played once in rehearsal but all in all a good night. No photos but I was using my Shen SB 100 straight into the Bose PA and the banjo was acoustic, the horns aren't mic'd so I could hold my own in a room that size.

...and that is all part of the master plan.

I hope not. There is some speculation that he moved to Canada and even attended university here as a stepping stone to the USA. He transferred from a Canadian university to an American one after his second year. He had an interesting childhood and was happy to leave South Africa and that may have been to avoid military service and get closer to America, his Canadian passport allowed him to do that. Back on topic... Of course some of the tariffs will affect his businesses but I guess he has so much money he isn't worried and he has political power to go along with his economic power, best of both worlds.

Musk has dual citizenship with both South African and Canadian passports due to the fact that his mother is Canadian. He lived in Canada for several years before heading to the USA. Of course given the recent tariff war we in Canada are well aware of the irony of his Canadian nationality.🙄

You are either attempting to be amusing or you haven't driven on American or Canadian roads very much, check out a trip through the Rockies or along a coast.

He was the head of the Bank of Canada before he headed across the pond, I don't know how well he did things here. He won the party leadership by a huge landslide last night (86% and next closest was 8%) and seemed to to do well in his acceptance speech and the Liberals are happy, certainly a lot happier than many of them were with Trudeau in the last two or three years so it will be an interesting election. No statements yet as to whether he will try to win a seat in parliament or work from outside for a while.

Ontario is applying a tariff to the electricity we sell to the USA and the premier has said that if necessary he is prepared to stop electricity sales to the USA entirely.

And right in the middle of all this our Canadian Prime Minister will be stepping down in the next few days and the recently elected (yesterday) new leader of the Liberal Party (Mark Carney, you may recognize that name from his years in the UK) will become the new PM and will be calling an election. Parliament has been prorogued for some time and at this point the new leader doesn't have a seat in Parliament, it will be an interesting few weeks. Now it seems the Conservatives under a leader some call "mini Trump" may have a lot harder time in the election than they thought just a few days ago. We live in interesting and scary times.🙄🇨🇦

Breaking news: Things just changed again, details are still unclear but some tariffs are now changed to an April deadline. Our federal government is studying the documents before commenting and same for provincial governments. This is really bizarre. 🙄 Edit: Of course this may change at any time.

Tariffs for Canada and Mexico start today, stock markets reacted yesterday after the announcement. It will be an interesting and stressful week for Canadians as our federal and provincial governments and businesses react to a 25% tariff.😟🇨🇦

As the March 4 tariff deadline approaches Trump has once again started to waffle on which tariffs will be applied and when, now saying some may be applied in April. Typical move to keep the whole situation off balance and the politicians and industries here are trying to figure out what to do, the tariff deadline has already been changed once. 🙄

I finally pushed a bit at our seven piece swing band rehearsal last night. One of our members is a music teacher and we can use the music room in her school for rehearsals for free but we almost always leave things where they are in the room to avoid moving the drums. Lately that has had me (DB with my own amp) and the keys at the front of the room and the drummer about 30 feet away at the back of the room with the horns set up between us. It is a terrible way to set up and means that the rhythm section can't hear each other but last night I strongly suggested ( not normal for me) that we should make the effort to move things and it made a huge difference. We have been gigging for about 8 years together and this was the best rehearsal in a long time, when we gig we set up like this so it makes sense to rehearse that way. Glad I raised the issue and so was our guest vocalist who really liked that she could hear the band the way it would sound on a gig. I used to dread these rehearsals but I'm looking forward to next week and will make sure we will set up the same way. 😊

In Canada on February 28 there is a plan to boycott all US owned stores and online services and that includes Costco, Walmart and Home Depot. This of course is in reaction to the tariffs that are coming. When I started reading about this I discovered that a group called The People's Union USA has organized a boycott or economic shut down in the USA on the 28th, the first of many planned attempts to get the American population to wake up and protest some of the economic issues that are or will be hurting them. This includes major retailers and online services such as Amazon, it will be interesting to see what happens. The idea is to not buy anything on the day of the protests. I live in a very rural area but will be in a city with a Walmart and Best Buy and Home Depot on the 28th and I will check the parking lots at these stores, I wonder how many Canadians will actually take part in the boycott. Many stores of all types have been displaying made in Canada products more prominently lately and I know a number of people who look for this when they shop, we live in interesting and scary times.

Definite no for me. I have never been in that exact situation but I went to a few rehearsals of a jazz quintet where the very good keys player played a bass line that left no place for me and when I said this to him he changed it a bit but not much so I told the band they didn't need a bass player and walked.