Miguel bought me a jigsaw puzzle. 750 pieces, a sort of pastoral scene of a stone wall with a wrought iron gate in it, and trees behind. So lots of stone pieces and lots of leaf pieces. I've been working on it every spare moment since the weekend. It's done now. He says he won't buy me any more because I was obsessed with this one.

I've been working on compiling our domestic violence statistics, at work, for a community plan intended to address family violence. The research makes for depressing reading, on the whole. I had to plough through a lot of cases, because the statute for assault (sec. 266) includes all kinds of assaults. So in some cases I had to ask around -- a man assaulted a woman but are they partners? Although jealousy seems to be a common flashpoint, most of the reports are also linked to over-consumption of alcohol. And then I found a statistic on the StatsCan site, to the effect that if your partner is a drinker -- that is, drinks five or more drinks at least once a week -- you are SIX times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence.

One thing that surprised me with the cases here is that although some of the women who were assaulted eventually refused to cooperate and no charges were laid (the Crown will not support the police going ahead with charges if there are no co-operative witnesses) all of the men who were assaulted by their partners were co-operative and charges were laid against the women. Granted, more men were still charged than women.

So I don't know if this is just a Nunavut thing? We've got such huge rates of personal victimization in the first place. Statistics are interesting... (really...)