Canada’s plan to bury nuclear waste called “deeply flawed”

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

One of the world’s leading experts on nuclear safety says the current process leading to the deep-rock burial of Canada’s growing stockpile of highly radioactive, used nuclear fuel is “deeply flawed.”

“There are too many unanswered questions, including about the science, or lack of it, underlying the Nuclear Waste Management’s (NWMO) Adaptive Phased Management Plan to build a Deep Geological Repository for the long-term storage of  millions of used fuel bundles, Dr. Gordon Edwards, co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) told a crowd of 300 people in the Lake Huron shoreline town of Southampton. Continue reading →

NWMO Asked to Conduct an Initial Screening

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

I am possibly the least surprised person in the Grey-Bruce area to see local communities near Bruce Nuclear starting to show interest in being picked as the central site for the long-term, underground storage of Canada’s growing pile of highly radioactive, very dangerous used nuclear fuel. Continue reading →

Harper Government Hell-bent to Abolish the Long Gun Registry

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

You would think Nathalie Provost had long ago paid her gun-control dues, by a long shot. You would think she deserved universal respect after being shot four times with the unrestricted semi-automatic rifle Marc Lepine used to murder 14 young women. Six of them died near Provost. She was among the 13 others wounded 22 years and four days ago at Montreal’s L’Ecole Polytechnique in the Montreal Massacre.

Yet an article Provost wrote that was published in the Sault This Week a week ago didn’t just get a lot of comments, most of which disagreed with her gun-control point of view. Some were downright contemptuous, disrespectful, and even scary. Continue reading →

Disinterest in Global Warming in Florida

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

There are many places on earth where the effects of global warming and climate change could be economically, socially, and environmentally catastrophic, depending on the severity of such things as rising sea levels, drought, and the increased frequency of extreme weather events.

Florida is one of those places. Its population of close to 19 million makes it the fourth most populous state in the U.S. It’s the state with the lowest elevation on average, with much of the land in south and central Florida along the highly developed coastal areas and inland barely above sea level. Much about global warming and its effects remains inconclusive and needs more study, hopefully with the support of concerned people and governments around the world. But the basic point, that it is happening, and that to some significant extent will have big impact on the world’s natural environment and human life as we know it, should be indisputable by now. Continue reading →

Footage of Muammar Gaddafi’s Capture and Death

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

“Going viral,” the expression used to describe the astonishing popularity of a seemingly modest little item that within a few days racks up millions of “views” has quickly become part of our modern lexicon. Sometimes it seems harmless enough, just a nice little form of entertainment to be able to watch, for example, that really clever and very funny little dog-tease video about a man having a conversation with his dog about food that ended up being fed to the cat. The fact it went viral to the tune of many millions of views on YouTube shows just how much people all over the world are hungry for a little comic relief. Continue reading →

Combining Elementary and Secondary in One School

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

Beginning in 1957, my entire five-year high school career was spent at one suburban Toronto school. Downsview Collegiate Institute had just been built, at a time when elementary and secondary schools could hardly be built fast enough to keep up with that huge demographic wave, the baby boom generation. I, and others of my age, were part of an initial wave of boomers, born or conceived just before our newly recruited father/soldiers went overseas to an uncertain future. The actual post-war wave was even bigger. Continue reading →

Capital Punishment

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

I was digging potatoes down in the bottom field, so I was, when I decided to take an overdue lunch break for a nice, cool glass of, um, buttermilk and a sandwich up at the house, after which I took a look at Saturday’s edition of this newspaper. As usual I turned first to the editorial/opinion pages, to see where my weekly column ended up and check out what the other great minds had to say about the important events and issues of our time.

An unsigned “point of view” editorial under the heading “time to hold referendum on death penalty debate” on the page opposite quickly caught my eye. I was, to put it mildly, shocked and appalled by what I read. Surely we’re not going to seriously consider bringing back the death penalty, let alone have a referendum about it. So what if “millions of Canadians want the return of capital punishment – whether it be by hanging or lethal injection – as punishment for the most heinous crimes against our society,” as the editorial opines? That doesn’t make it right. Continue reading →

Conservative Crime Bill

/ findinghopeness / Leave a comment

Nobody can accuse me of not having a sense of humour. It’s a bit on the dark side, I must admit. Like, I sometimes get a laugh out of things that really aren’t very funny, or so some people might think.

For example, Canada’s Conservative government, newly re-elected a few months ago with a majority government despite getting just 40 percent of the popular vote, now has the numbers in Parliament to do pretty well whatever it wants. And all it took was one day of the new session of Parliament to demonstrate that the Harper government is out of touch with the real pressing issues this country and its people are facing. Continue reading →