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EESTI ELU reedel, 24. septembril 2021 — Friday, September 24, 2021
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We’re hiring! The Estonian Foundation of Canada is looking for a roll-up-your-sleeves MANAGER to run the office of this exciting national charity. You will lead marketing, communications and fundraising and help take this charity to the next level. You will also manage the Foundation’s office, funding applications/ EFC agents, donations/donors, awareness campaigns, and ideally plan and write content for platforms such as the EFC website and community news outlets. This position is based in the Toronto office but can provide flexible hours, some remote work, and could evolve in future. You should have a basic understanding of Estonian. We are interested in hearing from you if you have most of these skills or willing to learn. Compensation commensurate with experience. Please apply with resume to: estonianfoundationpresident@gmail.com Tom Napa nearing the end of the Northern Transcontinental 2021 PAC Tour.
Every Last Inch: Tom Napa’s transcontinental cycling tour Vincent Teetsov 17 days into a cycling tour across the United States, Tom Napa was pedalling through the longest, most hypnotizing sections of America’s interior. He was only halfway to his final destination, but keeping him on track were daily and hourly mental landmarks. 3,848 miles (6,193 kilometres), chipped away a little bit at a time. He had started in Everett, Washington and was going all the way to the pocket of New Hampshire’s Atlantic coast, in the town of Rye. He hadn’t always been a long-distance cyclist, though. Napa was born in Toronto and grew up in an Estonian house hold that moved across Canada, until 1964, when his family emigrated to Seattle. After studying at the University of Washington, he worked as a Senior Accountant for Deloitte and, at the end of his career, as CFO of Precor, the company that invented the elliptical trainer. Though this invention cata pulted the company into around 160 million USD of revenue, Precor was eventually sold by their parent company, which led to Napa retiring 21 years ago. At this time, he was already a fitness enthusiast. However, cycling hobbyists at work convinced him that the sport was something social and wellpaired with his love of travel ling. After finding out about the Pacific-Atlantic Cycling Tour (PAC), Napa and his friend, Mike, signed up for their first Northern Transcontinental tour in 2010. 11 years later, they were on their third PAC Tour (and the organization’s “100th crossing”). It was arguably the most brutal one yet. Napa recounts, “It was un believably hot, especially in the first part of the trip... Who knew that Washington state, which is known for rain and clouds, would be the hottest?” On the third day, Napa and his fellow cyclists noted tempera ture readings of 110 degrees
Fahrenheit (43 Celsius). To Napa’s surprise, there wasn’t a single drop of rain during the entire tour. Drinking lots of water was a remedy to this, as was a trick that Napa learned during a serious instance of heat exhaus tion four years prior: fill a tube sock with ice and wrap it around your neck. The combo of melted ice and salty sweat makes a ghastly mess of your clothes; but it kept riders cool while they grew accustomed to the heat through Montana, South Dakota, and Minnesota. They also narrowly avoided being affected by forest fires, moving just ahead of the smokiest areas. On one section of the North Cascades Highway in Washington, the highway was completely closed off just four hours after they passed through. Tack on the headwinds and steep inclines and you have what Bicycling Magazine has declared to be “the toughest tour in the world.” “How can anyone do this?” you might ask. One motivating factor is the friendly competi tion between cyclists. Then there is the hunger to exceed or maintain personal speed records. Finally, there is the mutual commitment and physical strain experienced by everyone on the tour. Tom and Mike have cycled together for a long time and, along with all of the other like-minded people cycling with them, could encourage each other to keep going. Despite an uncomfortable case of saddle sore. Despite eight riders being forced to drop out under dif ferent devastating circumstan ces. Despite one cyclist getting hit by a car in a roundabout. No matter what, Napa was deter mined to propel himself the entire way without rides on the crew trailer or days off. To cycle every last inch. Fortunately, Napa is able to replicate the intensity of these rides when he trains around his home in Edmonds, WA. “I can’t go out into the mountains exactly, but I can [ascend] 3,000 or 4,000 feet in a 50 mile
Estonian Foundation of Canada is a registered charity that supports Estonian cultural and heritage initiatives across Canada.
The persistent threat of foreign interference in Canada’s democracy
panel of senior officials tasked with reviewing threats to the election – was announced three days before the election. Another 2019 election measure, the Declaration on Election Integrity, was reanimated by the Marcus Kolga, government only in mid-August. The Toronto Star Such half-measures de monstrate that the government’s (The following article has understanding of foreign inter content that transcends the ference has not evolved since pre-election period.) 2016, when foreign interference Since the 2016 U.S. presiden operations were largely seen as tial elections, Canada’s intelli being limited to election periods. gence community and experts have repeatedly warned about Malign foreign actors will the threat of foreign inter exploit any divisive issue at any ference, disinformation, in time, creating and amplifying fluence operations and cyber disinformation. As early as March 2020, the attacks targeting Canada’s European Union warned that democracy and society. Russia would use the pandemic Despite those warnings, the to advance its interests by in Canadian government has failed tensifying COVID-19’s effects. to produce a coherent set of Later that summer, evidence policies to address the threat, leaving Canadian democracy emerged that Russian state media and its proxies were and society vulnerable. aggressively promoting wild Initial measures that were taken by the government to de conspiracy theories, anti-mask fend the 2019 election were and antivaccination narratives largely abandoned after the last and movements. Canada was vote had been counted. Since not immune. then, promises to develop a Canadian anti-mask and anti whole-of-government approach vaccination movements have to foreign interference never transformed into aggressive materialized. anti-government movements An eleventh-hour decision to during the election. A violent reform the Critical Election situation in Canada, like the Incident Public Protocol – a Jan. 6 storming of the U.S.
Capitol, may seem remote, but it’s not entirely implausible, as evidenced by protestors who thew rocks at Justin Trudeau as he left a 2021 election rally. The primary objective of these regimes is to maximize chaos, anger and hate in order to tear apart the fabric that binds our nation together. And their efforts to do so will not end after the votes in Monday’s election are counted. All three major federal parties have recognized the threat. Only the Conservative Party has so far offered a substantive strategy, which includes a permanent task force to monitor and defend against foreign inter ference, and the introduction of a foreign agents registry act. The threat can no longer be ignored. The new Canadian government must act imme diately and with resolve to develop a whole-of-society approach to building national resilience against foreign in terference and impose conse quences on those who seek to undermine and subvert our democracy and society. (Marcus Kolga is the founder of DisinfoWatch.org and is a senior fellow at the MacdonaldLaurier Institute’s Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad and CDA Institute.)
ride.” This would be difficult to practice if you lived somewhere flat like Illinois or Florida; but the bottom line for building endurance is getting six to ten hours of “saddle time” on a regular basis, regardless of rain, cloud cover, or the inertia of personal motivation. Cycling has brought Napa to Australia, Chilean Patagonia, Slovenia, the Swiss Alps, the Dolomites, and through Estonia on a very rainy ride from Tallinn to Tartu in the summer of 2019. It’s also been a means to support causes he cares about. With Napa’s friends do nating for every mile cycled on his first PAC tour in 2010, Napa raised thousands of dollars for the Baltic Studies program at the University of Washington, his alma mater. Founded by Dr. Guntis Šmidchens, Napa has a fondness for the program’s array of courses on language,
Europe are more alluring now. Tours where one can “start at nine o’clock, have a cappuccino whenever you feel like it, have a nice meal, enjoy the vistas, and take pictures.” Though, he wouldn’t have quite as many exciting stories to tell if it weren’t for all of that starting at 7:00 AM and eating sandwiches on the side of the road! ••• You can see Tom and Mike’s past blog entries at: http://2guy scactus.blogspot.com/ Here’s a montage of one day in the 2021 tour that’s among Tom’s top 10 rides in the last 23 years: https://www.relive.cc/ view/vXOd5ZEG946 And here’s the data from his Garmin bike computer for that same day, to give a numerical glimpse into a day on tour: https://connect.garmin.com/ modern/activity/7183362601
literature, folklore, and history. Within the global Estonian community, Tom has also devoted his abilities in the past as Treasurer and President of the Lääneranniku Eesti Päevad in Seattle. After 35 days in the saddle, the 2021 PAC Tour came to an end on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Friends, family, and the tour crew greeted the riders as bemused sunbathers looked on. Napa splashed into the frigid waves with his road bike above his head, victorious once again. And by the follow ing afternoon, all those cyclists who had endured and seen America up-close together, went their separate ways. Back at home, he declares that this is the last time he’ll ever go on a transcontinental tour. He’s grateful for the en couragement from his friends to continue, but shorter tours in
