Saturday, January 20, 2007

Barking at the Home Show

Went to the Metro Home Show last night.

It's a great place if you're in the market for showers featuring more electronic gadgets than the space shuttle, or for "lush and vibrant" artificial grass that's resistant to salt damage, fire and nuclear war, or for furniture that looks like it was lifted from the set of some episode of Star Trek.

Yet what really piqued my interest was the "All Terrain Cabin" or ATC.

The ATC is the brain child of a government-funded project called BARK, a British Columbia non-profit "collective" that is supposed to raise the profile of Canadian design and ingenuity.

BARK's motto, by the way, is "Same-Sex Marriage + Crude Oil = Canada".

Inspiring isn't it? Somebody should translate that into Latin and put it on our coat of arms.

Anyway back to the ATC, a 480 sq ft. "mobile, self-contained, low-impact, smart, tough, cool and all Canadian," cabin which is supposed to "provide inspiration for our nation."

Actually, it's not so much of a cabin, as it is a mobile downtown Toronto condo.

I mean how many cabins have Gourmet settings cutlery or or Omer Arbel Hanging Lights or Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas wall murals?

It even has a toilet that makes potting soil. (Note to self: never eat anything grown in an environmentalist's garden.)

What gets me is the choice of videos the cabin includes.

You would think an all Canadian cabin would feature the latest Don Cherry Rock'em Sock'em hockey video.

But no, the BARK "collective" decided the left-wing documentaries The Corporation and Manufacturing Consent better raised the Canadian profile.

Mind you, I wouldn't mind all this, except that as a taxpayer I am forced to finance the ATC, and that doesn't make me happy.

In fact, BARK makes me want to BARF.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately you are uninformed - the ATC is not funded by the Government, it received a grant from Western Diversification to help put it together. BARK is a non-profit as you say, but most of the cost was paid for by the 40+ companies and designers who contributed to the project. Trying to let Canadians and the world know about our innovation and design, as opposed to reinforcing our stereotypes of beavers and igloos, is a worthy cause. In fact, this purpose would actually be a GOOD use of taxpayers dollars, if that were the case. Appreciate that you get your facts straight before publishing. While blogs are not to be taken as gospel, its owners have a responsibility. NOT making sense.