As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been scarce over the last few weeks. This is because I went to London, Ontario to attend the Obligations VI conference (which covers private law: contract, tort, unjust enrichment, property, trusts, equity etc). The theme of the conference was “Challenging Orthodoxy”. If you know anything about legal academics, you’ll know that we weren’t too shy to rise to that particular challenge! Naturally I presented a paper based on the work I’d done in my book, with some updated content. It was a good conference. I enjoyed all of the presentations I saw, and I got to catch up with a lot of academic friends whom I only see at these conferences. I refer to and repeat my comments about private law made in the wake of the Obligations IV conference: private law oils the wheels of society. It is really important that our private law operate justly in order for our society to run fairly and smoothly.
Here’s my photo of the place where we were staying. It was really hot in Canada (something I didn’t quite expect) but the grounds were lovely. 
I went exploring in the woods around. I noted that they looked oddly like the kind of woods that form alien planets in the Stargate TV series (hmm, I’m guessing that’s filmed in Canada).
Yeah, that last one is a rather blurry photo of a wild turkey, which really did say gobble gobble as it skedaddled away (much to my delight).
A bunch of us also braved the drive to Niagara Falls. Kudos to our Anglo-Australian driver who never once strayed near the wrong side of the road (and I’m glad it was he who was driving, not I). It was 38 degrees C, and boiling hot, so the spray from the falls was welcome. I don’t know if this video of water going over the edge of Niagara will work, but if it does, please do take a look – it’s simply hypnotic. [Update: click on the hyperlink, then click on the Niagara.mov hyperlink and you will see it.]
Update: Edited to add this gem from Lorenzo:
20 Comments
Congratulations on presentation, hard work, the catching up, the wildlife, the ICONIC waterfall experience and thanks for sharing, but … but dear Lawyer you must never be skeptical about that saying BEARS ARE IN THE WOODS. I am so glad you have not posted a bear photo. The best one you get is the one right before the bear rearranges your major organ.
Ann…tee hee…with that in mind, I checked that there were no bear before I went into the wood. Apparently the black ones that you get down south are not so bad…the bad ones are the Grizzlies. They sound terrifying.
The main dangerous animals around this area were apparently: (a) rabid racoons (b) running into a stationary moose on a dark highway (moose goes through the front windscreen). Fortunately I saw neither. I did see: a small woodpecker, some groundhogs, some rabbits, two turkeys, one white tailed deer, one cardinal, three fluffy yellow finch things and the five Canada geese.
Try the other end of the season! I’ve been to Niagara when some water was going over, but there was ice everywhere, and the spray turned to ice as soon as it hit anything. I’ve never been so cold. But it was an awe-inspiring sight then, too.
Don, that’s more what I imagine when I think of Canadian weather! Apparently it was THE hottest day of the Canadian summer. I hadn’t brought sunscreen, but luckily we all availed ourselves of a friend’s SPF20 face moisturiser…
We were really impressed with it. I didn’t expect to be quite as impressed as I was!
Continental climate: it goes to the extremes.
On bears, there is a Microeconomics I joke that goes like this:
Two guys run into an angry bear.
The first starts running.
The second says, “You’ll never out run it”
The first replies, “No, but I might outrun you”.
Thus is the concept of incentives made vivid
Welcome back and nice pics.
LE, welcome back. I get the impression that a picture (or video) cannot do justice to the awesomeness of the falls. I’m surprised to see a temperature of 38 in Canada, although I suppose it wouldn’t be as relentless as the heat we get here in Queensland.
L@5, so is that what they mean by a bear market?
Yes indeed, the Stargate series was filmed in Canada, though it always gave the impression of being a lot cooler than it was at Obligations 6. Contrast Farscape, which was filmed in Oz, hence the sun-drenched planets the plots are always set in. I’m still waiting for a decent Irish setting for a scifi film, presumably involving planets with a lot of rain, green grass, and cows.
D@7 Only the fleet footed survive, so I guess yes
Edited to add a gem Lorenzo sent me (re Canada and Stargate).
Steve, yes, well there must be a planet featuring lots of rain and green, green grass. Oh and cows.
The US sci fi shows should have the greatest variety of alien planets – they could do desert, temperate forest, swamps, rivers, mountains, snow etc.
Is it me of does the turkey picture look like a tiny dinosaur?
Ripples, no it’s not just you. It even had a featherless and very dinosaurish head – kind of blue and red patterns.
There’s a wild turkey photo gallery which discloses the dinosaurish nature of these birds more clearly… I’d say the blurry one I photographed was a young and/or female one – the other one I found was much more imposing but I didn’t manage to photograph it.
The turkey looks rather like the ones we get around UQ, except without the red head. Although I don’t recall ours going ‘gobble gobble’.
My extensive research (i.e. a quick look at the wikipedia entry on Australian Brushturkeys) discloses the following:
I guess that’s why they don’t gobble – not the same species. I think the one I saw in Canada must have been an eastern wild turkey. When it gobbled at me, it first made a sort of gutteral cluck cluck, then went gobble-gobble-gobble. Don’t know what it was telling me.
“No pictures! I said – NO PICTURES!”
Yep, I’m sure that was the gist of it. It was certainly the essence of the look it gave me as it wandered into the wood.
Thanks for the clarification LE, I was starting to worry I had been dealing with too many cryptozoologists of late and was starting to suffer from paradolia.
Or maybe thats actually a picture of a very young Lockness monster in the wilds of alien Canada and it cleverly went Gobble Gobble to mislead you.
How about this site? It’s not quite “Wild Turkeys”, but it seems to be going in the right direction.
Hungover Owls
Steve, love ‘em. I feel like those owls when I wake up…no need even for a hangover to produce the effect!