On growing old, and the health care crisis

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agingFirst, full disclosure: I am a senior. I have been for more than a few years. I am also the main caregiver of a much older, beloved family member. For some months now we have appreciated the help of the Community Care Access Center (CCAC) in Owen Sound, and the Personal Support Workers (PSWs), visiting nurses and other medical professionals who come to our home. Their genuinely caring attitude has been an important part of the homecare help they provide.

This first-hand experience with the homecare services offered by the Ontario government has been a continuing learning experience. I have, for example, noted with interest that in difficult negotiations with the federal government the provinces and territories have asked for more health care money, in large part to help cover the increasing costs of homecare. Continue reading →

‘Heat wave’ at the North Pole waves a red flag

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Hope Ness, on the Bruce Peninsula in southern Ontario, Canada, is just a few kilometres south of the 45th Parallel which is halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. It’s not that unsual for temperatures here to still be hovering around the freezing point of 0 degrees Celsius close to the end of December. The moderating effect of the nearby waters of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron play a role in that until they start to freeze over. The really cold weather comes in January and February, unlike the North Pole that normally would be bitter cold, far below freezing by December.

But the temperature at the North Pole on December 22 reached 0 C, the same as it was in Hope Ness and other parts of southern Ontario that same day. From the point of view of the North Pole, and the impact of global warming and climate change, it was appropriate indeed to refer to it as the “melting point,” as many news media outlets did at the time.

That amazing event was recorded by a weather buoy 145 kilometres south of the North Pole. Continue reading →

On the prospects for hopeful renewal in the New Year

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obamas

The Obamas – good people who deserve a Happy New Year and some good-old fashioned renewal time in 2017. All the best.

I happened to catch that part of Michelle Obama’s recent interview with Oprah Winfrey, when the outgoing First Lady of the United States said, “this is what not having hope looks like.” I knew right away what she meant; and so did a lot of you, I’m sure.

But there are millions of people in the U.S. who feel hopeful about the prospect of Donald Trump being formally inaugurated President on January 20 of the New Year and where that might lead. I daresay they are bound to be disappointed, perhaps terribly so. Continue reading →

On the spiritual value of stone

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The view of Hope Bay from the top of the Niagara Escarpment. Dow Chemical’s plans for a huge quarry in Hope Ness 50 years ago included a shipping facility here

The extraction of massive amounts of stone from the bedrock of southern Ontario for use in construction, landscaping, and road-building is expected to increase as the province’s population continues to grow.

The Bruce Peninsula has long been a source of stone for those uses and continues to reflect a continuing and anticipated growing demand as existing quarries expand and new ones are licensed or proposed. For example, a 143- hectare (315-acre) quarry just north of the long-established former Angelstone, now Adair, quarry in the Hope Bay area was approved this past summer over the concerns of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.

The Peninsula is part of the traditional territory of the two local First Nations that comprise the SON. The Supreme Court of Canada  has ruled non-Aboriginal governments have a duty to consult First Nations regarding development in their traditional territories. Continue reading →

“Superwoman” is coming

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(Author’s note: Kellyanne Conway cancelled her planned trip to Alberta just before President Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20)

north-america-relief-map

Some memories are not faded with time.

I can still see him, with his charcoal suit, shirt and tie, close-cropped white hair and ruddy complexion, my old high-school history teacher Mr. Greason, pointing at a topographic map of North America he had pulled down over the blackboards at the front of the class. Continue reading →

Meeting the challenge of changing times

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earth

This is our home. Its fate is in our hands.

The times are changing, to say the least, and how we in this and other countries, and our governments, respond to them, will make all the difference as the future unfolds.

I’m afraid as I write this two days before the U.S. election that country is about to make a terrible mistake, with consequences for the whole world.

I don’t relish the choice my American friends and family were left with; surely such a great country could have done better. But in the final analysis the decision should be, or should have been, clear enough.

At least here in Canada we listened to a message of hope and said “no” to one of hate just over a year ago and elected a “sunny ways” Liberal federal government. It remains to be seen still how our many challenges will be dealt with, but so far the spirit of good-will and, most of all, decency is still alive and well. Continue reading →

Hope is in our DNA

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dna

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance I naturally thought it would be a good idea to offer my worried readers a moment of distraction regarding our shared ancestry; that is to say, the shared ancestry of the human race. And if anyone out there wants to apply that to the upcoming Very Important Moment (VIM) in history, the U.S. election on Nov. 8, then so be it.

(Yes, my friends in the United States of America, it is the future of all of us on the face of the Earth you are about to determine, not just your own.)

The science of genetics has reached the point now where it is fairly inexpensive to have a basic DNA test done showing where in the world your ancestors lived. By “fairly recent” I mean the test results don’t go back millions of years to Lucy and the Rift Valley in Africa, or the otherwise actual moment of creation; and, after all, there has been a lot of coming and going, ebbing and flowing, and mixing of our species since then. But they do go back thousands of years. Continue reading →