Lawrence Grassi was a trailblazer. An immigrant from Italy he was a respected mountaineer and guide who built and maintained many of the original trails throughout the mountains around Canmore, Alberta. Short of stature and eschewing alpine guide stereotypes for suspenders and hobnail boots Grassi was one of the key personalities in Canmore's early history. And the school that bears his name, Lawrence Grassi middle school, has blazed a trail much in its namesake's fashion. Nothing too fancy, but a lot of hard work and common sense can go a long way.

As reported earlier this week, the fine folks running The Toronto District School Board have been up to a few things which have led me to conclude that they do, in fact, hate kids, or at the very least have some bad ideas on what to do with them. First on the docket was this little number. Now in the perfect world, an all gay school, or one that allows the "free expression of homosexuality" would be awesome, a big step forward as they say. But here's the problem with it. It is, for all intents and purposes, segregation. Removing a visible minority from the public high schools, and placing them in their very own school. Sounds good, but isn't that what they did in Little Rock, AK circa the late 50's. If I recall history class, there were riots and national guard deployments over that. And also note the idea of having an "inclusive society" generally implies having everyone working together, not in their own little sectors.