Halloween Week: Coda

It was a short week.


Abolish teachers' unions:

Catholic parents rallied to cancel a high school trip to Ohio after some said it would have seen students going door to door in support of U.S. President Barack Obama.

A group of 52 local students from St. Peter's and St. Matthew's high schools had planned to head down to the important swing state in the days leading up to the U.S presidential election.

It was alleged that the students would be campaigning for Obama, which outraged some parents who say the Democratic leader eschews Catholic values because of his pro-abortion views.

Theresa Pierre, president of Parents as First Educators, said she had several calls from parents furious about the board's decision to allow the trip. Following complaints on Thursday, the trip was scrapped.

"Parents were complaining that students would be supporting a politician holding pro-abortion views," Pierre said.

According to reports, the trip was organized by civics teacher Scott Searle, who is listed as a volunteer for the Obama for America campaign.

Obama would be bad for Canada, by the way, o anti-Catholic socialist US president supporting teacher.



Related: Kathleen Wynne, who helped develop an explicit sex education program for school children, resigns so she can run for the leadership position of the Ontario Liberal party:

Ontario Municipal Affairs Minister Kathleen Wynne has announced that she is stepping down from cabinet, a precursor to launching a bid to succeed Dalton McGuinty as Liberal party leader.

 Appreciation for veterans who destroyed the Nazi war machine trumps Quebecois provincial designs:

In response to an outcry from Canadian veterans, Premier Pauline Marois will no longer pin the symbol of Quebec, the fleur-de-lis, to her poppy.

Marois was sporting a fleur-de-lis pin inside her poppy when she gave her first inaugural address at the Quebec legislature Wednesday.

Veterans were outraged, and Margot Arsenault, the Legion's provincial president, accused the Parti Québécois premier of playing politics.

"I find it's very political and, right now, the veterans are very, very, very upset because they fought for Canada not just for Quebec," she said. "We are in Canada. If she wants to wear the poppy she should just wear it like it is."

She said she received about 15 phone calls and a dozen emails Thursday from veterans who complained the premier's gesture was not acceptable.

Arsenault said she sent a letter to the premier, saying it's not proper to wear the poppy with a pin inside.

The mystery of Angkor Wat stones solved at last:

The massive sandstone bricks used to construct the 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat were brought to the site via a network of hundreds of canals, according to new research.

The findings shed light on how the site's 5 million to 10 million bricks, some weighing up to 3,300 pounds (1,500 kilograms), made it to the temple from quarries at the base of a nearby mountain.

"We found many quarries of sandstone blocks used for the Angkor temples and also the transportation route of the sandstone blocks," wrote study co-author Estuo Uchida of Japan's Waseda University, in an email.

In the 12th century, King Suryavarman II of the Khmer Empire began work on a 500-acre (200 hectare) temple in the capital city of Angkor, in what is now Cambodia. The complex was built to honor the Hindu god Vishnu, but 14th-century leaders converted the site into a Buddhist temple.

Archaeologist knew that the rock came from quarries at the base of a mountain nearby, but wondered how the sandstone bricks used to build Angkor Wat reached the site. Previously people thought the stones were ferried to Tonle Sap Lake via canal, and then rowed against the current through another river to the temples, Uchida told LiveScience.

To see whether this was the case, Uchida's team surveyed the area and found 50 quarries along an embankment at the base of Mt. Kulen. They also scoured satellite images of the area and found a network of hundreds of canalsand roads linking the quarries to the temple site. The distance between the quarries and the site along the route Uchida's team found was only 22 miles (37 kilometers), compared with the 54 miles (90 km) the river route would have taken.

The grid of canals suggests the ancient builders took a shortcut when constructing the temple, which may explain how the imposing complex was built in just a few decades.