6 Potential New Sister City Partnerships for Edmonton

Commemorative stamp featuring Edmonton's Harbin Gate (source: CTV News)

Edmonton, it is often said, has an identity problem. In spite of the fact that the city is regularly ranked as among the best places in the world to live, it is still a place that most of humanity has never heard of or is barely aware of. And most of the people who know of it, if we're honest, probably think it's a boring, colourless frozen wasteland whose most interesting features are a giant shopping mall and a has-been hockey team.

In defence of the rest of the world, however, it should be noted that Edmontonians have, until recently, not done a particularly good job dispelling this notion. The latter half of the twentieth century saw the Alberta capital fall asleep at the wheel as its downtown core died, its stature as a transportation hub faded, its once vibrant community of corporate head offices disappeared and Calgary became the uncontested economic engine of the province. All the while, Edmonton's notoriously self-deprecating denizens failed to trumpet the city's enduring treasures - its festivals, orchestras, green spaces, universities and research institutes, world-leading construction companies etc. - and as such Edmonton became Canada's Lost City of Atlantis, somehow just off the map.

Fortunately, the Edmonton zeitgeist has changed dramatically since the dawn of the Mandel era in 2004. Edmonton's downtown is vibrant again, the airport is booming, the city's architecture is bolder and more imaginative than ever, public transit is at last being prioritized and the economy continues to thrive. Nevertheless, Edmonton's dream of becoming a global trade and logistics hub continues to be hindered by the city's lack of global profile. People simply don't know who we are as a city.

There are many things we could be doing as a city to change that, some of which might seem frivolous on the surface. One possible tactic would be to expand current our sister city partnerships. While many cities have numerous city twinning arrangements, Edmonton has only four such partnerships, specifically with Gatineau, Quebec, Nashville, Tennessee, Harbin, China and Wonju, South Korea. Of these, Edmonton's partnership with Harbin, the economic hub of China's northeastern Heilongjang Province, has proven the most economically fruitful, with the two cities signing a tourism and business cooperation agreement in 2011.

What other cities around the world would befit a sister city arrangement with Edmonton? Here are six suggestions.


1) Adelaide, Australia

Source: hubaustralia.com

With the notable exception of its famously sublime climate, Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, is arguably the world city that most closely resembles Edmonton. Its population is virtually identical to Edmonton's, as is its status as Australia's fifth largest city. It also serves a similar transportation and logistics role to Edmonton as the main air gateway to Australia's vast mining operations in the country's geographic centre. Want more parallels? It's also home to a thriving arts and culture scene, including the biggest fringe festival in the southern hemisphere. And as I pointed out in my recent post on Edmonton's airport predicament, it's also a city that has faced some of the same hurdles as Edmonton in building connections with the outside world. Adelaide - it's more or less Edmonton in the subtropics.


2) Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine



Source: Wikipedia

Why the hell do we not have a sister city in the ancestral homeland of at least one out of every ten Edmontonians? While other Canadian cities have entered into civic partnerships with Ukrainian counterparts (Toronto with Kiev, Winnipeg with Lviv and Vancouver with Odessa), Edmonton, one of the most Ukrainian cities outside the Motherland has notably not done so. The central Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk would seem to be an obvious choice. Not only does it not yet have a Canadian sister city, this riverside metropolis is of a similar size and economic profile to Edmonton. It is also a major educational centre in Ukraine, whose many post-secondary institutions include the National Mining University, a world-leader in resource extraction technology.


3) Concepción, Chile

Source: ab-imagensincriveis.blogspot.com

While it scarcely compares to the city's Ukrainian contingent, Edmonton's 3,000-strong Chilean community, most of whom came as refugees during the early Pinochet years, maintains an outsized presence within the city's Latin American population. Chilean accents dominate Spanish-language radio in Edmonton and empanadas and ceviche share shelf space with perogies and kubasa in the city's 'ethnic' grocery stores. Which Chilean city would be the best fit with Edmonton? The southern city of Concepción, with its metro population of just over one million, its renown as a "university town" (it's home to 15 universities) and its thriving music scene, would be a strong candidate.


4) Astana, Kazakhstan



Source: Wikipedia

A little-known fact about the Ukrainian diaspora of the late nineteenth century is that at the same time thousands of Ukrainian farmers migrated to the west, ultimately settling in the Canadian prairie provinces, an equally substantial contingent migrated eastward, settling in the steppes of what is now Akmola province in northeastern Kazakhstan. Today Kazakhstan is an independent republic that bears more than a passing similarity to Alberta, with its mountain and prairie vistas, extreme climate, multiethnic population and fast-growing economy dominated by oil and gas. At the centre of Akmola province is the country's new capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan's northern metropolis - and its Edmonton. (Almaty, the country's largest city to the south, is very much its Calgary.) Edmonton's architecture may not be as garish as Astana's, but the cities' roles, and the countries' historical and economic parallels, would make for an intriguing pairing.


5) Pasig City, Philippines

Source: Wikipedia

Of Alberta's total immigrant population of around 644,000, nearly 70,000 - about 11 per cent of the total - are of Philippine origin, making them the largest single immigrant group in the province. Edmonton's Filipino population is over 26,000, representing nearly three per cent of the city's total population. If Ukraine represents the city's ancestral past, the Philippines clearly represents its present. So who would we partner with in the land of Jeepneys and adobo chicken? With Winnipeg partnered with the Manila proper and Vancouver with Quezon City, that leaves Makati and Pasig among major Metro Manila cities without a Canadian partner. Makati, with its major agglomeration of banks and corporate head offices, might be a better match with Calgary, with Pasig, a major educational centre, home to the highly respected University of Asia and the Pacific, would be a logical partner for Edmonton.


6) Juba, South Sudan

Source: ssdnnetwork.com

Edmonton's increasingly diverse citizenry includes around 3,000 immigrants from the recently independent republic of South Sudan. The vast majority came to Canada as refugees in the late-1990s and early 2000s during the worst of Sudan's torturously long and cruel north-south civil war. As a relatively new contingent from a country still beset by instability and destitution, Edmonton's South Sudanese population retains a strong vested interest in their beleaguered homeland. Some have even returned to South Sudan to help set up infrastructure, while others continue to lobby on behalf of the country's people, which last month faced renewed unrest. A sister city partnership with the capital city of this young nation, especially one with strong ties to Alberta, would send a strong signal of solidarity to a country still struggling to survive.

Why Alberta Merits Two International Air Hubs

Source: dialogdesigns.ca

I've been meaning to write a response to Ed McDonald's opinion piece in the Edmonton Journal back on December 2 in which the self-described "professional airline pilot, professional engineer and aviation consultant" criticizes Edmonton International Airport's lofty ambitions to become a full-fledged global aviation hub to compete with Calgary International. In his article, McDonald alleges that Edmonton "never has been nor ever will be an airline hub, despite the promises and dreams two decades ago."

As a communications advisor for EIA, my job, among other things, is to iterate the opposing argument in keeping with the brand promise "more flights to more places." At least between 9 and 5, Monday to Friday, I have to do it because I'm paid to. But as an Edmontonian, and one fairly well acquainted with the issues facing the city's air transportation infrastructure, I also feel compelled to make the case in my free time. This, I should make clear, is not a piece of 'EIA' communication. These are purely my own views, albeit ones that are shared by a great many of the people I work with.

In his editorial, McDonald outlines two basic but different arguments. As one of Edmonton's die-hard City Centre Airport supporters (an issue that was finally laid to rest last month), he contends that Edmonton shot itself in the foot by closing its venerable municipal airport, and in doing so squandered an opportunity to establish itself as an important urban "spoke" airport akin to London or Toronto's City Centre Airports. He also makes the claim that Alberta, with its population of four million (as of this year), simply isn't big enough to support two major international airports, arguing that a single one requires a population base of at least three million.

Let's think about this for a moment. For starters, McDonald's argument appears to be self-contradictory in its allegation that Edmonton ought to have kept two airports open - in spite of the fact that the province as a whole doesn't have the population base to support two major airports. How does this make sense? Indeed, anybody well acquainted with Edmonton's modern history (and not emotionally over-attached to ECCA) will tell you that it was the city's failure to swiftly close and redevelop the Muni that both divided and undermined its status as an air hub, allowing Calgary to supersede what was once the undisputed air capital of the province, and hindered the city's downtown for decades by restricting building height, a factor in the mass exodus of corporate headquarters from the provincial capital to the province's now undisputed corporate capital to the south.

A Wagnerian opera finally over (source: Edmonton Journal)

Had the city of Edmonton closed City Centre Airport back in the 1960s following the construction of what was then (and still is) the second-largest airport in the country by land area, Edmonton might still be the province's primary air gateway. Certainly Edmonton's geographical position along the major transpolar air routes to both Europe and Asia and northerly position vis–à–vis Calgary (not to mention its proximity to major fuel refineries in Sherwood Park) still offer tangible benefits to air carriers, and had more corporate head offices remained in Edmonton, it's entirely likely that Calgary International Airport would have remained secondary to Edmonton had the city consolidated its air service early on and concentrated on building better transit links to the International.

But what's done is done, and with Edmonton's breakneck passenger growth over the past five years, it's clear that the airport's time has come once again. Which brings me to McDonald's second point, which is that Alberta, currently the fastest-growing province in the country, doesn't have the population base to support two international airports. Apart from the fact that his allegation is contradicted by the fact that Edmonton and Calgary are both enjoying both the fastest passenger growth in the country among major airports and the steadiest route expansion, this argument is also simply not supported by comparable international experience.

Three Overseas Parallels: Norway, Scotland and New Zealand

Were it an independent country, Alberta, with its four-million-strong population and thriving oil and gas economy, would be broadly comparable to Norway or Scotland. (Granted, the latter isn't technically an independent country, although it could potentially become one in 2014.) Norway, with its population of five million, its per-capita income of $55,000 and its booming energy industry, is arguably the overseas country that most closely resembles Alberta. It also, in stark contradiction to McDonald's assertion, maintains four international airports, each with passenger totals over four million, of which two (Oslo and Bergen) offer regular scheduled intercontinental air routes.

In the case of Norway, Oslo (Gandermoen) International Airport is by far the country's largest at 22 million annual passengers (and the second-largest in Scandinavia after Copenhagen), and offers routes to destinations all across Europe, as well as to intercontinental destinations like Bangkok, Cancun, Dubai, Goa, Islamabad, Lahore, New York (JFK and Newark), Oakland, Phuket, Seoul, Sharm el-Sheikh and Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, secondary hub Bergen (Flesland) International Airport, while significantly smaller than Oslo, carries nearly six million passengers a year to destinations that include New York, Tel Aviv and Tokyo as well as seasonal charters to Hiroshima and Gran Canaria. Meanwhile, third and fourth-rung airports in Stavanger and Trondheim offer extensive European connections.

The case of Scotland is equally instructive, and perhaps a better parallel to Alberta given the similar nature of the relationship between its two primary cities. At a population of 5.3 million, Scotland is also roughly comparable to Alberta population-wise, and its petroleum-oriented economy and northern latitude also makes it a logical comparison. It is also a country centred on two main urban regions, Edinburgh - the country's political and cultural capital, and Glasgow - its traditional economic hub. Scotland also has an important third city, Aberdeen, which, as the country's main North Sea oil industry hub, serves a role roughly analogous to Fort McMurray in Alberta.

Plenty to dance about at Glasgow International Airport
(Source: passengerterminaltoday.com)

Like Edmonton and Calgary, Edinburgh and Glasgow both have a metro areas of roughly a million people. And both cities also maintain thriving international airports, in spite of being far closer together geographically than Alberta's twin cities. With annual passenger totals of over nine million, Edinburgh International is Scotland's busiest airport and the sixth busiest in the UK - and the second busiest outside the greater London area. Edinburgh is also not hard up for intercontinental routes, enjoying non-stop connections to Cancun, Chicago, Doha, Marrakesh, New York, Orlando, Philadelphia and Toronto. Glasgow's airport is smaller, but only just (and growing faster than Edinburgh), serving over seven million a year - roughly the same number as Edmonton - to destinations that include Calgary, Dubai, Halifax, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto and Vancouver.

Another interesting overseas parallel to Alberta is New Zealand. At 4.5 million, New Zealand is only slightly more populous than Alberta, and is roughly the same size geographically. It is also a  prosperous resource-driven jurisdiction that shares Alberta's propensity for commodity-driven boom and bust cycles. In terms of air traffic, New Zealand has a primary international air hub in Auckland as well as a secondary international hub in Christchurch. As the main urban centre for New Zealand's South Island, Christchurch has maintained its role as an important aviation centre over various economic ups and downs (as well as two devastating earthquakes in 2011), and today enjoys non-stop connections to Bangkok, Dubai, Singapore, Tashkent and Tokyo, and with China Southern Airlines soon to commence non-stops to Guangzhou. So much for needing a minimum of three million people for a single international air hub.

What Edmonton Could Be: The Australian Example

So if size and location haven't held Edmonton back from becoming a bona-fide international hub, what has? The twin culprits, as many Edmontonians both inside and outside the industry know, are a hidebound national carrier determined to limit all of its international traffic in and out of Alberta to a single hub and a protectionist national aviation policy that has worked to limit international carriers' landing rights at Canadian airports. (These problems are further compounded by prohibitive landing fees and tariffs which conspire to make Canadian airports uncompetitive internationally - and drive as many as five million Canadians to stateside airports like Bellingham and Buffalo in pursuit of cheaper fares.)

What would Edmonton's airport look like were Canada to loosen its protectionist airline policies and ease the financial burden on its airports? While Bergen and Glasgow are still worthwhile points of comparison, the best parallel is to be found in the Asia-Pacific country most readily comparable to Canada.

YEG Down Under? (source: good-wallpapers.com)

Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia, is very much the Edmonton of Australia. It's the country's fifth-largest city and has a similar population at 1.2 million. Like Edmonton it is also home to the country's fifth busiest airport, and one that, like EIA, serves a strategically important function as the closest air gateway to the country's mining sector, largely concentrated in country's vast geographic centre, straddling South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. It is also similar to Edmonton inasmuch as the country's national carrier, Qantas, has always made it a policy to use Adelaide International as a "spoke" rather than a hub, opting to funnel international traffic through its main hubs in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

However, the Australian government's embrace of open skies legislation broke Qantas' monopoly on international flights to and from Down Under, and with that opened up opportunities for the city of Adelaide. Result? By June 2013 Adelaide was enjoying year-on-year international traffic growth of a staggering 14.8 per cent and now has non-stop flight to Dubai with Emirates, Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific, Kuala Lumpur with Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia X and Singapore with Singapore Airlines, as well as Bali (Denpasar) and Auckland with Aussie low-cost carrier Jetstar, which this year established a new pilot and cabin crew base at Adelaide - a clear sign of things to come at this growing air hub.

At the risk of milking the Edmonton-Adelaide parallel to death, the two cities share a remarkable amount in common. Adelaide, in spite of long being Australia's 'forgotten' city, is an industrial city known known increasingly  for its thriving arts sector and festival scene (the Adelaide Fringe Festival is the largest arts festival in the southern hemisphere). In terms of liveability Adelaide as been repeatedly listed in the Top 10 of The Economist's World's Most Liveable Cities index, and has also been repeatedly ranked as the most liveable city in Australia by the Property Council of Australia. In other words, it's the city people tend to forget about unless they actually live there, in which case they can't imagine living anywhere else. Sound familiar?

Conclusions?

Cities like Adelaide, Bergen, Christchurch, Glasgow and Edmonton all clearly have the demand, and the need, for good international air service. It's also colossally myopic - and frankly untrue - to assume that such air service necessarily comes at the expense of other centres, or in Edmonton's case Calgary. The numbers clearly indicate otherwise. Of Canada's major airports, Edmonton was the fastest growing in 2012 at 6.4 per cent. The second fastest growing? Calgary at 6.0 per cent. Similar trends can be seen elsewhere. In Norway, Oslo-Gandermoen grew by 4.8 per cent in 2011-2012 while Bergen-Flesland grew by 3.8 per cent over the same period. Meanwhile in Australia, overall traffic at Adelaide actually dropped in 2011-2012 (due to the collapse of domestic carrier Tiger Airways) but international traffic surged across the Big Five airports, even as the country's largest carrier continues to suffer labour difficulties and sliding profits.

Rovinescu: he's not your boyfriend (source: Toronto Star)

Last month in Vancouver, Air Canada CEO Calin Rovinescu rebutted Vancouver International Airport's calls for open skies legislation, arguing that unrestricted competition in the airline industry would harm Canadian business interests and reduce airports like YVR into 'feeder' airports for global carriers. In it he specifically mentioned the Australian case, in which he alleged that the country's open skies policies had effectively allowed Emirates to run roughshod over its airline industry. "Now, there is a choice for Australian customers (travelling abroad), as long as their choice is Dubai," he said. Personally I have my doubts that many Australians outside the Qantas board room share his sentiments, particularly in cities like Adelaide where, until recently, the only choices for international travel were Sydney, Melbourne or Perth.

This is the situation Edmontonians continue to face. Although a major victory was achieved this fall with Icelandair's new Edmonton-Reykjavik non-stop, our flag carrier's refusal to offer any international non-stops out of Edmonton (apart from the now-downgraded London-Heathrow service) and the federal government's still restrictive policies regarding international carriers, comes at a colossal disadvantage for non-traditional hub cities like Edmonton. Not only would we love to have more intercontinental non-stops out of Edmonton, but we've shown we can support it. Statistics from the UK's Civil Aviation Authority clearly show that Air Canada's Edmonton-London flights have remained competitive compared with comparable flights out of Calgary and other centres, in spite of claims to the contrary, and early sales for the Icelandair's services out of Edmonton were enough to persuade the airline to launch the route earlier than previously planned.

None of this need come at the expense of Calgary's steady aviation growth, and there is clearly a need for two major airports in this province. While YYC and YEG will invariably continue to joust for passengers and routes, at the end of the day the two airport authorities are on the same team, as both are important drivers of Alberta's economy. Ed McDonald's view of the Alberta aviation scene might have held water back in the 1970s when the province's population first cracked the two-million mark, but it's clearly woefully out of date now, contradicted by both local demand and international parallels.

More flights to more places: it's not just a corporate mantra. It's a raison d'être. And while we at EIA will invariably continue taking pot shots at our rivals down the QEII, at the end of the day what's good for Edmonton is also good for Calgary. Open skies legislation may not be good Air Canada share prices, but more choices for Canadian air travellers and overseas business people and tourists wanting to come to Canada is a good thing all around. And at the end of the day, isn't that the whole point of aviation?

10 Sexiest World Leaders of 2013 (File Under Shameless Fluff)

Hottie meets hottie at Government House in Bangkok in November 2012 (Source: www.gawker.com)

Happy New Year! Just about every blogger out there has at least one new year's resolution. Mine is to have more fun here on Brush Talk and to write more 'fun' posts. Yes, there are still a myriad 'serious' issues pertaining to writing and communications that I intend to dig into in the coming months, but when it comes down to it I get the best responses from posts that are lightweight, funny, irreverent and fun to read. December's 'How To Drive Like An Edmontonian' was easily my most popular post of all time. And here I was expecting a barrage of angry rebuttals from Edmonton motorists convinced that they and their fellow citizens don't drive like complete lunatics. How wrong I was!

In keeping with the spirit of fun, my first post of 2013 is dedicated to all the world leaders out there who have raised the bar for politicos everywhere in the sex appeal department. Back in November 2011 I wrote a post entitled 'Gross National Sexy' in which I outlined ten ways in which Canada could boost its international sex appeal. One of the steps I suggested was simply "Do something about Stephen Harper," in which I insinuated that our current prime minister, while he has his admirable qualities, is sadly among the last world leaders any of us would like to see sprawled out on a tiger rug in our living room with champagne and strawberries at the ready and an Isaac Hayes album throbbing away on the stereo. Sorry.

It's not that Stephen Harper is a physically unattractive man. Sex appeal is more than this. The late Québec premier René Lévesque was hardly an Adonis, but he had more sex appeal in his perpetually cigarette-clutching middle and index fingers than Harpo has in his entire body. By contrast, recent US presidential contestant Mitt Romney, while a superficially decent looking man, makes Harper look like a suave Casanova. Sometimes politicos get sexier in their autumn years, as Hillary Clinton's smoky foreign policy-cured mezzo voice and new-found party girl persona clearly show. Other leaders lose their sex appeal over time. Vladimir Putin's Slavic Chuck Norris schtick has grown ever more tiresome as his Stalinist tendencies have become harder to overlook. Similarly, Binyamin Netanyahu's once appealing Zionist boy scout image has taken a hit by his new-found friendship with Israel's far-right.

Sex appeal is like good writing: it's undefinable and subjective, but you know it when you see it. So who are the dreamiest among today's world leaders? Here are my top ten candidates, in no particular order.

1) Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

During his 34-year reign as King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck oversaw the transition of his remote Himalayan kingdom from a medieval backwater to a fast developing South Asian economy with an increasingly democratic political culture. In 2006 he abdicated in favour of his then 26-year-old son, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the fifth and current Dragon King (Druk Gyalpo) of Bhutan. The young king has continued in his father's footsteps, strengthening the country's democratic institutions, promoting public works projects and forging tighter trade relations with neighbouring India. And with his teen idol looks and charming demeanour, the 'People's King' has been a PR godsend to the Bhutanese people, with his 2011 marriage to his radiant commoner bride Jetsun Pema breaking hearts from Bangkok to Tokyo.

2) Yingluck Shinawatra

Between 2008 and 2010, Thailand was rocked by political and social upheval driven by a West Side Story-like rift between rival Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt factions, which threatened to roll back the country's previously impressive economic gains. Then in 2011, the Thai people elected Yingluck Shinawatra, the younger sister of controversial exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, unseating the dashing but ineffectual Abhisit Vejjajiva and ushering in a new era of uneasy reconciliation and renewed economic growth. While Yingluck's first two years at the helm of Thai politics have hardly been faultless, the US-educated former telecommunications executive has thus far proven an adept economic steward and a canny reconciliator in spite of her divisive family ties. And at the very least the Reds and Yellows can agree that their current prime minister, with her Catherine Zeta-Jones-meets-Michelle Yeoh looks, is easy on the eyes.

3) Jens Stoltenberg

Prior to the horrific shooting spree on Utøya Island in Norway in July 2011 and the concurrent bomb blast in Oslo, few people outside Scandinavia had heard of Jens Stoltenberg. The Norwegian Prime Minister's tearful address to the nation following the massacre and his inspiring exhaltation to his people to respond with 'more openness' and 'more democracy' put his chiselled profile and charismatic demeanour firmly in the public eye and solidified his country's international reputation as a place that, while disgustingly successful, is definitely too nice to inspire hatred. It certainly helps when you have a leader like Stoltenberg, a former left-wing radical turned pragmatic socialist father figure with dreamy eyes and Nordic Hugh Jackman looks. It's hard to hate a country with a leader this handsome!

4) Helle Thorning-Schmidt

In the same year that Jens Stoltenberg rose to public prominence with his plea to his fellow countrymen not to abandon their social democratic principles, another left-leaning Scandinavian hottie made waves of her own. Elected in October 2011, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt got straight to work reversing the conservative course set by her neoliberal predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, relaxing restrictions on immigrants and asylum seekers and increasing welfare funding while pledging to increase Denmark's level of renewable energy to 45 percent of the nation's total by 2025. The former Danish representative to the European Parliament has also positioned herself as a staunch supporter of European integration and stronger economic ties with now-autonomous Greenland. One could do far worse than this feisty blonde Marcia Cross lookalike at the helm.

5) Enrique Peña Nieto

While the jury is still out on Mexico's newly elected president, it can at least be said that Enrique Peña Nieto has the option of becoming a telenovela star should his political career bite the dust. Inaugurated in 2012, the boyishly handsome leader of the centre-left PRI played an instrumental role in reviving the fortunes of Mexico's longstanding 'government party' and ridding it of its reputation as being corrupt, authoritarian and out of touch. Peña Nieto has made big promises to the Mexican people, which include government-sponsored life insurance for single mothers, a universal pension program for seniors over 70 and the creation of a national paramilitary police force aimed at combatting the country's vicious drug cartels. How well he does at fulfilling any of these promises remains to be seen, but at the very least he'll look guapo trying. 

6) Julia Gillard

There's something about those Aussie chicks - an intoxicating combination of convict-blooded sunburnt sex appeal and zero bullshit tolerance forged over centuries of putting up with their insufferably macho male counterparts. And after two years of a 'Sheila' in power in Canberra, Julia Gillard's fellow Aussie womenfolk have had much to celebrate. After usurping former ally Kevin Rudd in a palace coup, she has since galvanized her reputation as a man-slayer by publicly upbraiding her opponents for sexism and injecting a heavy dose of feminismo into Australia's frat-boy parliamentary culture. Her record has been uneven, receiving criticism from LGBT groups criticizing her for her unresponsiveness on same-sex marriage while being applauded by environmentalists for her Green Energy Bill. Love her or hate her, the flaming redhead with the acid tongue has certainly kept life interesting Down Under.

7) Goodluck Jonathan

When Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as President of Nigeria following the death of his predecessor Umaru Yar'Adua in early 2010, his given name sounded more foreboding than fortuitous. He was after all taking the helm of one of the world's most chaotic countries - an oil-rich but strife-torn poster child for the term 'resource curse'. Three years later he's still there, having won a contentious but internationally recognized election in 2011, and with the national economy growing at a steady clip he looks like he might be around a while. What does it take to be the successful leader of a hard-boiled West African petrostate with difficult ethno-religious relations and endemic corruption? This mild-mannered former marine biologist does it with a winsome smile, a seductive Niger Delta accent and a wardrobe reminiscent of Miles Davis circa 1979. In this land of '419' scammers and Afrobeat bad boys, being able to rock the fedora is definitely a plus!

8) Andry Rajoelina 

In 2009, a confusing sequence of events in Madagascar saw Andry Rajoelina, a babyfaced former DJ, event organizer, mayor of the capital city of Antananarivo and Ralph Macchio impersonator, oust the unpopular conservative president Marc Ravalomanana with a crane kick to the head in a coup d'état, thus becoming the world's youngest president the age of 34. At the outset few in the international community took him seriously, and his early move to ratify the country's constitution so as to lower the minimum age for presidential candidates from 40 to 35 did little to inspire international confidence. Nevertheless, the teen heartthrob president enjoys widespread support, particularly among the urban poor in the capital city who helped vault him to power, and the past few years have seen the international community warm up to him. Still, one can only assume he still gets asked for ID at NYC nightspots when he visits the UN.

9) Laura Chinchilla

With its stunning beaches, lush rainforests, pacifistic tree-hugging people and sensuous lilting dialect, Costa Rica was already one of the world's sexiest countries when it elected the glamourous Laura Chinchilla as its first female president in 2010. Blessed with a style that's half Condi Rice, half Eva Longoria, the socially conservative but fiercely environmentalist Chinchilla has had a rough ride since becoming president, facing a crisis on the Nicaraguan border and drafting an unpopular fiscal reform plan that aims to reduce the country's $997 million deficit while faced with growing economic disparity and rising crime. Environmentalists love her for her government's moratorium on oil exploration and emphasis on ecotourism while social progressives and many women hate her staunch opposition to abortion and the Morning After Pill. But all agree she looks great as head of state.

10) Barack Obama

Sigh. America's current commander-in-chief has received brickbats from conservatives on a multitude of fronts since assuming the presidency in 2008, but nobody has ever faulted him for lack of sex appeal. He's even managed (as far as is known) to be a poster boy for marital fidelity, something which the sexy presidents of yesteryear have had some difficulty with. It's little wonder that a commanding 55 percent of American women voted for Obama in the 2012 election, with unmarried women backing the president by a remarkable 38 percentage-point margin over Mitt Romney. Granted, the fact that the GOP's leading Neanderthals could barely last a week without making some boneheaded remark about rape and women's anatomy was an important factor in this outcome. But the contest between the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz and the sinewy, hoop-shootin', honey-and-Bourbon-voiced hunk with the beautiful family was, in the end, no contest. Sexy won. Hands down.

Inigo Montoya Teaching Moment #4 - Sexism vs. Misogyny

Last week I wrote a post on the Amanda Todd suicide, in which I expressed the opinion that the media ought to be focusing more on the issue of misogyny than that of bullying and the role of social media. 'Misogyny', it turns out, has been a newsworthy word as of late, and as such I think it's worth digging deep into the word itself in the latest of the 'Inigo Montoya Teaching Moment' series of posts on misused - or allegedly misused - words and expressions.

Misogyny and discrimination against women in both the developed and developing world has been in the news a lot in recent weeks. When not making news in Metro Vancouver in the aftermath of the Amanda Todd tragedy it was doing so in Pakistan's beautiful but chronically unstable Swat region, where a 15 girl by the name of Malālah Yūsafzay became an international heroine thanks to a passion for education, a Taliban thug willing to kill in the name of preventing girls from being educated, and by valiant intervention by surgeons in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Birmingham.

Meanwhile in Australia, the word itself became the centre of a media frenzy following a tirade by Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard against opposition leader Tony Abbott. Gillard's rant, which quickly went viral over YouTube, was delivered in the Australian parliament two weeks ago following demands from the opposition leader for the firing of House Speaker Peter Slipper, accused of making derogatory comments about women in a series of text messages. The prime minister, while stopping short of defending her colleague's actions, took the opportunity to expose her the famously macho and socially conservative opposition leader's hypocrisy in this 15-minute verbal smackdown. If you haven't seen it yet, it's well worth watching.

Gillard's rant - noteworthy even within Australia's famously bellicose political culture - quickly became international news, winning her praise in many corners both in Australia and overseas for her unapologetic stance against entrenched sexism and - a word she invokes frequently in her rant - misogyny. It also resulted in changed the PM could hardly have expected. Within a week of her 'misogyny' tirade, The Macquarie Dictionary, which bills itself as Australia’s National Online Dictionary, announced that it was changing its definition of misogyny from "a pathological hatred of women” to “entrenched prejudice against women."

This linguistic shuffle prompted a degree of backlash, particularly from Australia's opposition Liberal Party. "Ms. Gillard called Mr. Abbott a misogynist. Mr. Abbott clearly does not hate women," asserted Senator Fiona Nash in the Sydney Morning Herald. "It would seem more logical for the Prime Minister to refine her vocabulary than for the Macquarie Dictionary to keep changing its definitions every time a politician mangles the English language."

Political pleading notwithstanding, the incident begs the question of what precisely misogyny is, and how does it differ (if at all) from garden-variety sexism. In the aftermath of the Gillard attack, The Guardian asked six leading feminists to define the term. In the end, all of the them more or less agreed that 'misogyny' was simply a darker, more malicious form of sexism. British feminist author Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett characterized the difference between the two being akin to the difference between Benny Hill and Rush Limbaugh, noting that "While sexism demonstrates a disregard and disrespect for women, I always have associated misogyny with something darker, angrier, and more cynical."

When a man claims that women are naturally maternal, or are by default, bad drivers, he is a sexist. If he was to add that women are only good for a fuck and should be confined to servicing men and their children, it is misogyny.

- Julie Bindel

American author and renowned Third Waver Naomi Wolf digs deeper, contending that while 'sexism' is the product of unthinking prejudice, 'misogyny' is the product of a deeper, more emotionally charged contempt for women. "A public figure who tolerates the systemic under-prosecuting of rape is guilty of serious and unforgivable sexism," she explains. "Making rape jokes or explaining away the damage of rape in public [see Missouri Congressman Todd Akin] or legislating, as over a dozen US states are now doing, transvaginal probes that are medically unnecessary, simply to sexually punish women for choosing abortion – well, that is misogyny."

Note to Tony Abbott: appostrophes are your friend, even if women aren't!

This then begs the question as to whether or not the 'misogynist' tag truly apply to the man at the centre of the controversy, the man who the Australian Prime Minister attacked saying "If [Mr. Abbott] wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia he doesn't need a motion in the house of Representatives; he needs a mirror." What exactly is Tony Abbott's track record for misogyny? Wolf argues that Gillard used the term accurately in her characterization of Abbott's view of abortion as "the easy way out" and his anti-Gillard placard campaign in which he urged Australian voters to "ditch the witch, wherein she was also described as '[Senator] Bob Brown's Bitch'."

Other Abbott classics might be more aptly described as sexist, such as his famously thoughtless on-air remark in 2010 when he referred to "What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing," or when he notoriously quipped that mandatory paid maternity leave would happen "over this government’s dead body." Such declarations clearly reveal the opposition leader's adherence to an antediluvian view of the proper place of women in society - unquestionably sexist but not quite misogynistic. The 'Ditch the Witch' campaign and his acerbic and patently untrue dismissal of women seeking safe and legal abortions, on the other hand, betray an active mean spiritedness that can only be described as misogynistic.

Perhaps the most apt characterization of the difference between these two states of mind comes from Julie Bindel, British feminist author, LGBT advocate and co-founder of the group Justice For Women. "When a man claims that women are naturally maternal, or are by default, bad drivers, he is a sexist. If he was to add that women are only good for a fuck and should be confined to servicing men and their children, it is misogyny. Misogynists are always sexist, but sexists are not always misogynists."

Was Australia's leading dictionary right in revising its definition of 'misogyny' from 'a pathological hatred of women' to 'entrenched prejudice against women'? In my opinion, probably not. Moreover, I believe Julia Gillard was bang on in her characterization of her rivals views as being both sexist and misogynist, and that no such dictionary revision was needed in the aftermath of her now legendary knockout round.