On the cost of Boomer lessons unlearned

/ findinghopeness / 4 Comments
child

A Portrait of A Young Canadian Boomer

I don’t know how much of an impression our local MPP Bill Walker made at Queen’s Park in Toronto with his recent comments and questions about the two big, unresolved issues of long-term-care bed shortages and school closures. But he sure gave me a lot of food for thought.

I’ve lately found out a lot more than I ever thought I’d want to know about Canada’s looming health-care funding crisis, especially as it involves homecare and long-term care for the most elderly and frail among us.

But publicly-funded homecare has its limits, as I’ve said before with full disclosure of my family connection to the issue. Continue reading →

A walk in the morning sun

/ findinghopeness / 1 Comment

morning sun

I’ll be glad when spring finally arrives.

What’s that you say? Spring has arrived?

Oh, alright then, I know: spring technically arrived more than a week ago here just south of the 45th Parallel, in Hope Ness, Ontario, Canada.

And, perhaps more importantly in a real and spiritual sense, the sap has been flowing for longer than that. Continue reading →

Fear and Trembling in Hope Ness

/ findinghopeness / 1 Comment
cloud-979849__340

A storm clod taking shape

(Author’s note, May 23, 2017: since I first wrote and published this post, U.S. President Donald Trump has fired now-former FBI director James Comey. He has offered several reasons for doing so, including to relieve the pressure he felt he was under on account of the FBI investigation into Russia’s meddling into last fall’s U.S. election to allegedly help his campaign. It’s been widely reported Trump told high-ranking Russian officials in the Oval Office the day after the firing that he felt relieved the pressure was off. Turns out it wasn’t, as subsequent events clearly showed. His firing of Comey may yet prove to have been a huge blunder for him, setting in motion fateful consequences. We’ll see. Anything, and I mean anything, can still happen. Trump will not let the investigations, finish, including the one now in the hands of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.)

The definition of the word “terror” is easy enough: The Oxford dictionary defines it as “extreme fear.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “a state of intense fear.”

Some examples of how the word is used include, “a regime that rules by terror; bombings and other acts of terror; a campaign of terror against ethnic minority groups.”

But a suitable definition for the word “terrorism” is harder to come by. “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims,” says Oxford.  “The systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion,” says Merriam-Webster. Continue reading →

Remembering the Home Bank collapse

/ findinghopeness / 2 Comments

 

home bank

The collapse of the Home Bank of Canada was the biggest in Canadian history and led to government regulations aimed at rebuilding and maintaining public trust and stability in the Canadian banking system.

Many years ago when I was living in Toronto I drove a taxi part-time to help make ends meet. One night I picked up several visitors from the U.S. at the airport. We were on the expressway heading downtown when the lights of several tall bank buildings came into view.

“You sure have a lot of big banks here,” one of my passengers said, with a note of wonder in her voice.  I was a bit surprised. Didn’t they have big banks in the U.S.?

I noted Canadians – at that time still largely of Scottish descent – were a frugal people and put as much money as they could into savings.

If I’d had more time I would have regaled them with some relevant, historical background, about the big bank failure that took place years earlier and led to Canada’s stable, government-regulated banking regime. (I note here in passing that it was that very stability that helped Canada cope with the financial crisis of 2008, and earned the country and its banks international praise.)

Continue reading →

Here’s hoping in Hope Ness

/ findinghopeness / 5 Comments

 

IMG_0379

Mirabella helped Grandpa in the potato patch last spring

Potatoes are a semi-hardy crop. You don’t have to wait until all risk of frost has passed, which is traditionally  the May 24th long, holiday weekend here in Hope Ness on the Bruce Peninsula, and most of the rest of southern Ontario. I’ve planted my certified seed spuds as early as mid-April and ran into a frost warning at least once later that month after those two rows young plants had just started breaking through the ground. So, I covered them with a fairly thick blanket of straw and hoped for the best. The frost didn’t actually happen. I pulled the straw aside and later used it as mulch around those plants. That’s how, by chance, I happened to discover mulching your potatos with straw is a fool-proof way of avoiding the major insect pest of potato plants, the Colorado potato beetle. Those two rows remained totally bug-free, while my many other rows that weren’t straw-mulched got the usual invasion, necessitating the usual early morning inspection and, well, crushing, one bug at a time. I later found from an agricultural professor at the University of Guelph who I happened to interview on another topic, that, with the straw mulch, “you interrupted the life-cycle of the potato beetle.” So, ever since then, I’ve mulched my potatoes with straw and never had Colorado potato beetle problem, thus saving myself a lot of time and money spent over the years on the organic pesticide known as bacillus Thuringiensis.

Continue reading →

On the discovery of new worlds

/ findinghopeness / 5 Comments
trappistblogpic

An artist’s conception of what one of the newly-discovered Trappist-1 planets might look like (a NASA image)

I bet I’m not the only one whose initial reaction to the big news this past week was the remarkably good timing of it, regarding the possibility of escape from this increasingly hate-filled world.

Continue reading →

Proud to be Canadian

/ findinghopeness / 1 Comment
rcmplove

The expression of love on that RCMP officer’s face is wonderful. The child he is holding in his arms is one of a group of people that broke free from a U.S. border guard and ran through the snow into Canada to seek asylum Friday, Feb. 18. The whole world should see and celebrate this photo taken by a Reuters photographer.

I lucked into this story on the CBC today. That RCMP officer with the big-hearted smile made my day, and then some. Talk about renewing one’s faith in humanity, and our “better angels.”

I think it’s entirely possible that photo could become a classic, a fortunate and powerful expression of compassion and hope that helped get the world through a dangerous, hateful time.

There are a lot of good-hearted people in the U.S. who don’t agree with the direction their great country is taking. Of that I have no doubt. They are “the people” too, and I daresay they’re in the majority. I trust they can see past fear and hate, and through unscrupulous demagogues who exploit it.

I hope they continue  to make their voices heard, individually and collectively. Now is not the time to be silent, or beaten down. And that includes the free press: they are not “the enemies of the people.” That’s what tyrants, or would-be tyrants say: they don’t want the people to find out the truth about them.

Canada is not perfect. We have fear and the hate it engenders in our midst too, as recent events have shown. But we are heading in the right direction, with a generous spirit that wants to celebrate, welcome, and nourish the capacity of human beings to live together in peace and mutual benefit. We affirm humanity.

In that respect I think it’s fair to say Canada is a timely example to the world.

That RCMP officer made me proud, again, to be Canadian.

But finally, above all, he made me proud and hopeful again to be part of the human family and a citizen of what the great Canadian philosopher Marshal McLuhan years ago called “the global village.”

 

This post was also partly inspired by the daily prompt word for the day, blur.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding hope in a dangerous time

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

 

philippe-couillard

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard at the press conference after the Quebec City Mosque murders 

We need more like him, a lot more, to tell us the essential truth, in a few well-chosen, thoughtful words:

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard put his finger tight on one of the biggest problems leading to the murderous attack on Muslims at prayer in their Quebec City Mosque: the irresponsible use of words, including political rhetoric, that stirs up and feeds a dangerous climate of hatred in human society.

“Words matter,” Couillard said in a press conference after six Mulsim men were murdered and 18 others wounded, several critically, by a lone gunman as they knelt at their evening prayers. Continue reading →

The day I saw Trump in my garden

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

Well, in a manner of speaking. He was in my head while I was in my garden.

trump

My concerns about Donald Trump being elected President of the United States of America go back quite a while. I’ve written a fair number of blogs posted on this site over the past year. I’ve just organized them under a new category called The Trump Files.

I work a fairly large garden here at the end of Cathedral Drive, Hope Ness. I’ve often found my muse there during the growing season, as hoe in hand I hill my potatoes and spread straw to keep the potato bugs down. The hard work is good for the old brain, I guess.

The garden is now under snow now, of course, but I do what I can to stay alert, thoughtful, and well informed – like browse the on-line news, or take my good dog-friend, Buddy, out for a long walk in the crisp, cold winter air. Snowblowing the driveway with my trusty Massey-Ferguson 65 tractor in sub-zero temperatures is also pretty stimulating.

More than a year ago I started following the emergence of Donald Trump as an unlikely candidate for President of the U.S. He chose the Republican Party, sometimes referred to as the GOP (Grand Old Party). He used the populist approach, whipping up a certain small-c conservative segment of the American population by saying things he appeared to know instinctively would resonate with their fears, insecurities and prejudices. He was a proven reality-TV showman and knew how to get attention. Continue reading →