Francis is a breath of fresh air on climate change

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Climate-change issues as they relate to my relatively small garden here on the Bruce Peninsula mean very little indeed compared with what other people in Canada, and around the world, are now facing:

But they do at least make the point that we’re all in this together, that climate change and whatever is causing it is a world-wide reality affecting all of us, and this precious little blue-green jewel of a planet on which we all live and call home. Or should.

Here now in mid-July I walk between my rows of sweet corn that at this point should be much higher by now than it is and worry if we don’t get a good, long spate of normal warm summer weather soon I may not have ripe corn to pick before the first frost. I wonder, is all the work of tilling, planting, and now tending in vain. Continue reading →

A well-hit drive is a thing of beauty: a reminiscence

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I feel for the Owen Sound Golf and Country Club. For the course itself, that is. I don’t know the board of directors, most members, that I’m aware of, and even the bank, whichever one it is. But those 18 fairways and greens are crying out for careful, timely manicuring to avoid becoming a natural reclamation area. In some contexts that could be regarded as a good thing. But if you’re a golfer, as I am, or was, I’m sure you’d hate to see that happen. I’m even tempted to take it upon myself to load up the old riding lawn mower and see what I can do to help out. And I bet I’m not alone in that regard. Continue reading →

Long gun registry data destroyed illegally

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The Harper government may have thought it killed the Long Gun Registry more than three years ago. But it’s back in the news again, and likely to stay there long enough to show up like an unwelcome ghost just in time to cast a shadow over Conservative chances of re-election.

One can only hope. It certainly should give voters pause to reflect on the state of Canadian democracy when the issue now before the courts is whether or not the government pressured the RCMP to break the law by destroying Long Gun Registry data while it was still the subject of an Access to Information request.

That’s a serious offence under the Access to Information Act, punishable by up to two years in prison or a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Continue reading →

Lilacs may also fall victim to the emerald ash borer

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Don Cipollini, a plant physiology professor at Wright State University, happened to be on a bike path in Yellow Springs, Ohio, last August when he noticed something peculiar about some ornamental trees along the way.

He stopped and had a closer look. What he discovered could have a dramatic and, some might say, heartbreaking effect on the heritage landscape of Grey-Bruce and southern Ontario, much of Canada, and the rest of North America.

Cipollini and other researchers at the university did follow-up work and discovered the emerald ash borer had infested white fringetrees across Ohio. White fringetrees, an increasingly popular ornamental tree across North America, are the closest relative of ash trees. The bad news was published in the Journal of Economic Entomology and widely reported in the news media this week.

How bad?

“Things aren’t looking good for ashes in North America and now other species,” said Cipollini. He said other trees and shrubs in the ash family now need to be watched for ash borer infestations, including lilacs, forsythia, and privet. Continue reading →

Call it prayer, or not, but make it worthy of the times

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Many years ago – as I often say these days – I had occasion to be sitting in the Press Gallery at the Ontario Legislature.

I was kept busy covering the local controversy surrounding Niagara Escarpment development control in the early 1980s.

That’s by way of background to explain why I was in the Legislature’s Press Gallery one day in 1981 – if memory serves – looking down on that venerable seat of power and authority in Ontario. I believe it was because a local petition was scheduled to be presented to the Legislature.

But after all these years the one thing that still stands out clearly in my mind’s eye is how little the formal opening of the session that day, with the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, meant to the vast majority of the MPPs. It meant even less to members of the Press Gallery.

There I was sitting alone, wondering why just two or three MPPs had taken their seats though the time had come for the session to begin. The Speaker was in his chair, and so were members of the Legislative staff in their formal attire Continue reading →

Oh, Larry, what have you done?

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Oh, Larry.

Larry, Larry, Larry, what have you done?

You certainly haven’t done Canada’s reputation as a peace-loving, tolerant and inclusive country any favours; that’s if it ever really had such a reputation, except in the mind and imagination of Liberal leader Justin Trudeau and his ilk.

I confess I, for example, have indulged myself right here in this space often enough in such possibly wishful thinking. I’ve said Canada is still a work in progress, but it works: it has become in just the past 50 years or so perhaps this troubled world’s best example of a country where people of every different racial, religious, and cultural background can live together in peace.

And, like Trudeau said just last week in a speech in Toronto, that’s important for the world, as well as Canada. It proves there’s hope at this critical time in world history when the extremes of religious, cultural and racial intolerance are threatening to tear the world apart as never before.

I read the transcript of Trudeau’s speech about how he believes the tolerant, inclusive nature of Canadian society and its democracy has become an integral part of our identity as a country. And that’s despite terrible mistakes that were made when the country was far less tolerant and inclusive, when people of certain races and cultures were treated badly by the dominant white culture.

But as I read a nagging worry kept coming to mind: maybe it’s an illusion, maybe Canada isn’t anywhere near as tolerant even now as some of us would like to think. Maybe an undercurrent of racial and cultural intolerance that has long run through “traditional” Canadian society culture persists.

Then Tuesday just after noon, a little later than usual, I Googled my daily check of news headlines.

I was certainly surprised, to say the least, to see Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound MP Larry Miller’s name right at the top, in the space normally reserved for the biggest, national or international breaking news of the day.

It just took a moment to find out what it was about: all the coverage from the various news media sources from across the country understandably focused on the most inflammatory and controversial of Miller’s comments on last Monday morning’s CFOS phone-in show. Continue reading →

Playing the war card a dangerous game

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Playing the war card is the lowest, most cynically opportunistic political manoeuver in the book. Is Stephen Harper playing that card?

Has he found the election platform that’s going to win him a majority in the next federal election, in October, or sooner?

Might Canadian voters have started asking questions about the Harper government’s ability to manage the internal economy in the wake of the collapse in crude oil prices and its impact on the Canadian economy and the government’s balanced-budget plans?

Is it convenient then to able to tell Canadians they have something much more serious to worry about, that being the threat of “violent Jihadism,” as Harper called it time and time again, at a well-staged recent political event in Richmond Hill? Continue reading →

Seniors’ and children’s use of food banks rising

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A set of shelves near the entrance to the village grocery store caught my eye this week as I stood in line at the check-out. It was filled on several levels with ready-packed bags of non-perishable food customers could purchase to donate to the local food bank.

That image alone said a lot about the need in and around the small Bruce Peninsula village, a need reflected elsewhere in the Grey-Bruce, Owen Sound area, throughout Ontario, and across Canada.

Coincidentally, just the day before I had heard one of the leading stories of that day, about the continuing high number of people in Ontario and across Canada who have to go to food banks because they can’t afford the cost of such a basic need as food.

Not to diminish the pain of hunger anyone on their own is suffering through, but that there are thousands of children in Canada who would be going hungry without vital access to a local food bank is surely a national disgrace. Continue reading →

Great nations must work together

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(I initially wrote this “Counterpoint” column about a year ago. Since then Russia has become embroiled in the Syrian civil war, largely in support of the country’s brutal dictatorship. Though it claims to be targeting terrorists, Russian jets are said to be targeting other opponents of the Assad regime other than the so-called Islamic State, often referred to as ISIS or ISIL. As I write this a negotiated truce deal involving the U.S., Russia, and others, appears to be falling apart as the war rages on, with many thousands of Syrian civilians dying, or desperately fleeing the country. Meanwhile, there are growing sings the conflict could escalate into something much bigger, even a “world war.”)

I wasn’t born yesterday. On the contrary I’m having to face the reality of not just growing old, but actually being there, every time I look in the mirror and see less and less hair on the top of my head, and a lot more laugh lines on an increasingly less familiar face.

It’s a bit of a shock really because it just doesn’t reflect the way I feel inside, which is still young at heart – a boy really, if I dare say that, for fear of revealing too much. But there you have it, like I used to joke with my girls, until they were tired of hearing it to the point of rolling their eyes, “I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow.”

It’s true though: many dreams have come and gone. And yet, though tired, I dream on, despite the passage of more than enough time, as if anything is still possible. And so, I am still hopeful.

Suddenly I am reminded of the wise man who years ago told us over coffee, after signalling his intention to say something important, with the usual, “I tell you something, boys,” and then this particular time went on to say, “the man who invented time was a fool.”

I wonder what the well-travelled, mysterious, and no doubt long-gone Dan would say now in his deep, rather mysterious European accent, about the changes wrought in the world with the passage of more than 50 years of time, and especially now, about the state of global affairs. I doubt anything would surprise him, though even he might occasionally raise his eyebrows from time to time over the sheer weight of world-changing events, the decline and fall of late 20th Century empires, and the dangerous time in which we now live as a new world order, or lack of order, emerges. Continue reading →