Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 20
April 22, 2020
Still standing and grinning
Finding a laugh in these grim days of disease and isolation is as difficult as trying to light a candle in a snowstorm. I mean, even if a comedian thinks of something funny in the current situation, it’s probably inappropriate to say it out loud.
So here I am scrolling through the nightly TV doomsday reports when I stumble into a barrel of laughs. On the CBC, of all places.
The CBC isn’t exactly known as the fun channel, but there they are, guffawing faces on a thirty-minute show called Still Standing.
The laughter is generated by Jonny Harris, a Newfie comedian with a bedhead hairdo and a mischievously goofy look. (He also plays Constable George Crabtree on the television series Murdoch Mysteries).
“The population here is not even a fraction of what it was back in the 60s,” he chirps in an episode from Bell Island, in Newfoundland’s Conception Bay.
“A decline in population . . . you don’t expect that in a place called Conception Bay, right?”
Then he gives the audience that devilish grin and adds: “Dwindling population, I mean, that might be the case over in Contraception Bay . . . .“
Still Standing is a hybrid comedy/reality show premiered on CBC in the summer of 2015. It has Harris visiting small Canadian towns that have seen better times. He gets to know the people, their struggles and how they are overcoming them, then gathers them together for a stand-up comedy performance that has them laughing at themselves.
In an episode from Schreiber, Ontario last fall he explored the town’s Italian heritage - making Italian sausages and talking about the Filanes Falcons Junior B hockey team, named for the Filane-Figliomeni business family that is involved in everything from restaurants to sports clothing to entertainment.
“I thought there was a bunch of kids on the team named Owen,” Harris says during the stand-up part of the Schreiber show. That was because the coach told him that “early in the season the team was 0 ‘n 4, then later on 0 ‘n 10 and at the end 0 ‘n 28.”
“I think it’s hard for Italian-Canadian kids to play hockey ‘cause your parents keep taking your hockey sticks to prop up tomato plants,” he jokes.
The towns Harris visits are all small, tight-knit communities that you might say have seen better days, although Still Standing highlights how the residents are fighting back and living good lives. They are towns where a main industry has left, businesses have closed and young people have moved to big cities to find work.
Schreiber for instance once was a bustling railway town, a Canadian Pacific Railway divisional point 190 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. Railway jobs declined and a mine that provided significant employment closed.
Joking about the towns and their people before a live audience of residents can be a bit tricky.
“It’s got to be a little bit saucy and cheeky,” Harris has said about the stand-up comedy part of the show in which he singles out individuals, the community’s difficulties and how it has responded to them. “But it also has to be respectful. I’m not there to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”
He has found that folks are “not overly sensitive, and are just up for the laugh.”
He knows the importance of humour to small, struggling towns. He comes from Pouch Cove (pronounced Pooch) a short drive north of St. John’s. It was founded as a fishing and mixed farming community but as fishing declined became more a bedroom community for the Newfoundland capital.
Viewing Still Standing can leave you nostalgic, even sad. It hurts to see so many small towns where prosperity left to live in another place.
But Harris’ light-hearted antics bring out what’s really important about these places: the good-hearted people and how they make the best of lives for themselves, their families and their neighbours.
A bonus of the show are the gorgeous landscapes and histories of seldom-heard about places scattered from one Canadian coast to another. It gives you a deeper sense of our country and its people.
When each show closes, often with Harris pretending to talk with his mom back home, you get a nice warm feeling about being a Canadian.
#
So here I am scrolling through the nightly TV doomsday reports when I stumble into a barrel of laughs. On the CBC, of all places.
The CBC isn’t exactly known as the fun channel, but there they are, guffawing faces on a thirty-minute show called Still Standing.
The laughter is generated by Jonny Harris, a Newfie comedian with a bedhead hairdo and a mischievously goofy look. (He also plays Constable George Crabtree on the television series Murdoch Mysteries).
“The population here is not even a fraction of what it was back in the 60s,” he chirps in an episode from Bell Island, in Newfoundland’s Conception Bay.
“A decline in population . . . you don’t expect that in a place called Conception Bay, right?”
Then he gives the audience that devilish grin and adds: “Dwindling population, I mean, that might be the case over in Contraception Bay . . . .“
Still Standing is a hybrid comedy/reality show premiered on CBC in the summer of 2015. It has Harris visiting small Canadian towns that have seen better times. He gets to know the people, their struggles and how they are overcoming them, then gathers them together for a stand-up comedy performance that has them laughing at themselves.
In an episode from Schreiber, Ontario last fall he explored the town’s Italian heritage - making Italian sausages and talking about the Filanes Falcons Junior B hockey team, named for the Filane-Figliomeni business family that is involved in everything from restaurants to sports clothing to entertainment.
“I thought there was a bunch of kids on the team named Owen,” Harris says during the stand-up part of the Schreiber show. That was because the coach told him that “early in the season the team was 0 ‘n 4, then later on 0 ‘n 10 and at the end 0 ‘n 28.”
“I think it’s hard for Italian-Canadian kids to play hockey ‘cause your parents keep taking your hockey sticks to prop up tomato plants,” he jokes.
The towns Harris visits are all small, tight-knit communities that you might say have seen better days, although Still Standing highlights how the residents are fighting back and living good lives. They are towns where a main industry has left, businesses have closed and young people have moved to big cities to find work.
Schreiber for instance once was a bustling railway town, a Canadian Pacific Railway divisional point 190 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. Railway jobs declined and a mine that provided significant employment closed.
Joking about the towns and their people before a live audience of residents can be a bit tricky.
“It’s got to be a little bit saucy and cheeky,” Harris has said about the stand-up comedy part of the show in which he singles out individuals, the community’s difficulties and how it has responded to them. “But it also has to be respectful. I’m not there to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”
He has found that folks are “not overly sensitive, and are just up for the laugh.”
He knows the importance of humour to small, struggling towns. He comes from Pouch Cove (pronounced Pooch) a short drive north of St. John’s. It was founded as a fishing and mixed farming community but as fishing declined became more a bedroom community for the Newfoundland capital.
Viewing Still Standing can leave you nostalgic, even sad. It hurts to see so many small towns where prosperity left to live in another place.
But Harris’ light-hearted antics bring out what’s really important about these places: the good-hearted people and how they make the best of lives for themselves, their families and their neighbours.
A bonus of the show are the gorgeous landscapes and histories of seldom-heard about places scattered from one Canadian coast to another. It gives you a deeper sense of our country and its people.
When each show closes, often with Harris pretending to talk with his mom back home, you get a nice warm feeling about being a Canadian.
#
April 16, 2020
Young people and the plague
So many things to think about during this time of plague. So many people to be concerned, even anxious, about.
The infirm. The older people with weakened immune systems. People now without work and stable incomes, the homeless on our streets, the homeless in Third World refugee camps, the homeless jammed into First World holding pens because they crossed a border into lands where they are not wanted.
Then there are the essential workers in warehouses and grocery and drug depots moving the supply line of essentials we need to stay alive. The police officers and other first responders at risk while keeping us all safe. And, of course, the medical professionals whose lives are at risk every day because of governments that lacked foresight, despite knowing a plague like this was overdue.
We also need to think about young people and how we might help them cope with this traumatic time in their lives. The pre-teens, the teens and the young adults in the process of forming the identities and values that will be with them the rest of their lives.
This is an especially traumatic time for them because the coronavirus pandemic has blocked them from important rites-of-passage events such as proms, graduation ceremonies, and deciding visits to university campuses where they hope to continue their education.
Adolescents often are challenging to understand and to deal with because they are undergoing hormonal, physical and mental developments. They live in a state of restlessness that generally is restrained by schooling, sports, music and other activities with their friends.
Now there is no school, no organized sports and no social gatherings with friends, which are so important to adolescent life. And, perhaps no summer jobs.
Isolation is something that no adolescent wants. It is understandable that they might feel deprived and act rebellious.
I feel for these young people, and for their parents trying to help them understand and cope. I can’t offer much to the young people in my life, except to share an experience from my childhood.
As a child I often wondered why my mother walked with a slight limp. I found out why during another time when the country was gripped by fear of another disease.
Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, an estimated 11,000 Canadians were left paralyzed during a polio outbreak that became the most serious national epidemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic.
People were urged to stay away from crowds to avoid spreading the disease. That meant staying away from the most important summer event in the life of any kid in Port Arthur-Fort William, now Thunder Bay.
That event was the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, the annual fair offering rides, games, shows – all sorts of exciting sights, sounds and smells.
I whined to my mother about her refusal to take me to the Ex. It was a mean decision. How stupid to deprive me of a once-a-year event just because of some silly thing you couldn’t even see. How could it hurt to go to the Ex?
My mother, no doubt tired my whining, had enough. She lifted her skirt to reveal a shrivelled left leg and said: “you can’t go to the Ex because I don’t want you to get sick like I did.”
I later learned that my mother was stricken as a child by polio in 1921, the same year Franklin D. Roosevelt caught what was believed to be polio and lost the use of his legs. She was paralyzed and spent years relearning how to walk, with crutches, then a leg brace.
I did not get to go to the Ex. Some other kids did, and some kids caught polio, although no one knows if they caught it in the Ex crowds or somewhere else. If I remember correctly, one kid in our neighbourhood died.
My mother probably did not know the term ‘social distancing’, but she did know that staying away from other people during outbreaks of disease was critical to protecting her children.
It was tough on her trying to get me to understand. It is tough on today’s parents trying to have their children understand that they must accept very difficult sacrifices.
Clear communication, understanding and sacrifice are what will get us through this.
#
The infirm. The older people with weakened immune systems. People now without work and stable incomes, the homeless on our streets, the homeless in Third World refugee camps, the homeless jammed into First World holding pens because they crossed a border into lands where they are not wanted.
Then there are the essential workers in warehouses and grocery and drug depots moving the supply line of essentials we need to stay alive. The police officers and other first responders at risk while keeping us all safe. And, of course, the medical professionals whose lives are at risk every day because of governments that lacked foresight, despite knowing a plague like this was overdue.
We also need to think about young people and how we might help them cope with this traumatic time in their lives. The pre-teens, the teens and the young adults in the process of forming the identities and values that will be with them the rest of their lives.
This is an especially traumatic time for them because the coronavirus pandemic has blocked them from important rites-of-passage events such as proms, graduation ceremonies, and deciding visits to university campuses where they hope to continue their education.
Adolescents often are challenging to understand and to deal with because they are undergoing hormonal, physical and mental developments. They live in a state of restlessness that generally is restrained by schooling, sports, music and other activities with their friends.
Now there is no school, no organized sports and no social gatherings with friends, which are so important to adolescent life. And, perhaps no summer jobs.
Isolation is something that no adolescent wants. It is understandable that they might feel deprived and act rebellious.
I feel for these young people, and for their parents trying to help them understand and cope. I can’t offer much to the young people in my life, except to share an experience from my childhood.
As a child I often wondered why my mother walked with a slight limp. I found out why during another time when the country was gripped by fear of another disease.
Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, an estimated 11,000 Canadians were left paralyzed during a polio outbreak that became the most serious national epidemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic.
People were urged to stay away from crowds to avoid spreading the disease. That meant staying away from the most important summer event in the life of any kid in Port Arthur-Fort William, now Thunder Bay.
That event was the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, the annual fair offering rides, games, shows – all sorts of exciting sights, sounds and smells.
I whined to my mother about her refusal to take me to the Ex. It was a mean decision. How stupid to deprive me of a once-a-year event just because of some silly thing you couldn’t even see. How could it hurt to go to the Ex?
My mother, no doubt tired my whining, had enough. She lifted her skirt to reveal a shrivelled left leg and said: “you can’t go to the Ex because I don’t want you to get sick like I did.”
I later learned that my mother was stricken as a child by polio in 1921, the same year Franklin D. Roosevelt caught what was believed to be polio and lost the use of his legs. She was paralyzed and spent years relearning how to walk, with crutches, then a leg brace.
I did not get to go to the Ex. Some other kids did, and some kids caught polio, although no one knows if they caught it in the Ex crowds or somewhere else. If I remember correctly, one kid in our neighbourhood died.
My mother probably did not know the term ‘social distancing’, but she did know that staying away from other people during outbreaks of disease was critical to protecting her children.
It was tough on her trying to get me to understand. It is tough on today’s parents trying to have their children understand that they must accept very difficult sacrifices.
Clear communication, understanding and sacrifice are what will get us through this.
#
Resurrection in the spring forest
After the long winter illness, color is returning to the cheeks of my bush lot.
A red-breasted robin hops through the newly-exposed layer of dead leaves, looking for a grub, or anything else edible.
Then there’s the slow, silent orange flicker of the wings of an early-returning Monarch butterfly. Or, perhaps it is a Viceroy; the untrained eye finds it difficult to distinguish between the two.
Green patches of wet moss cling to the ancient granite outcrops, and the bases of the naked trees, adding more splotches of colour to a dreary landscape.
And peeking out from the rock crevices are the brightest spots of all – red wintergreen berries glistening in rays of sunshine.
These berries, and their surrounding green waxen leaves, truly are a miracle of the woods. They blossomed into fruit last summer and survived beneath the snow and ice throughout the brutal winter cold.
All are signs of spring’s resurrection from the dank forest floor in which trees stand stiffly silent like skeletons. Small but hopeful signals that warmer, more productive times are coming.
Beyond this forest is the chaos of humanity’s coronavirus pandemic. Out there, spring has become a season of things lost – lost lives, lost important events, lost incomes.
Here, the forest is quiet and ordered, demonstrating the consistency of nature left alone to exist as it has for thousands of years.
This consistency is seen in the moose track along my forest trail. Every April, when the snow begins to disappear, a moose ambles this path, migrating from winter to summer quarters.
I have yet to see a track from the bear who occupies this forest. I know it must be up and about after hibernation, but I have not seen it, heard it or smelled it.
That’s probably because we both practice social distancing. We are both cranky on early mornings before breakfast, so neither wants to come anywhere near the other.
What is awesome about the spring forest is its easy transformation from the cold miseries of winter to the buoyancy of summer.
The little wintergreen plant and its red berries illustrate that beautifully. After so many snowbound months, the berries are ready to do what they were born to do.
Plump and bursting with life, the berries soon will shrivel and rot, dropping minuscule seeds to create new life and fulfill their sole purpose - to endure, to survive and to carry out their role in nature’s plan.
The pandemic and its forced isolation have created time to be out here observing the wonders of the awakening forest. All that time once spent doing other things – many of them materialistic things – now is spent thinking and viewing things differently.
It is amazing how our vision widens and becomes more focussed when we stop doing all those “other things.”
What comes into view more clearly is an important lesson of nature: think ahead and be prepared.
Everything that exists in this forest understands that lesson. The squirrel that procrastinates and does not gather and store enough nuts likely will not survive the winter.
It is a stark lesson: Prepare well or be ready to suffer, or even die.
That was a lesson highlighted by the commission investigating the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak. It emphasized the precautionary principle, which basically is about thinking ahead, preparing and taking action before a situation becomes critical.
There is mounting evidence that if governments, corporations and people in general had paid attention to this principle, the current pandemic would have been less severe.
Another thought prompted by this pandemic, and by a walk in the spring woods, is whether our human activities are drawing us farther away from nature and its many lessons.
We live in a materialistic, money-oriented world. When I look into the forest, I wonder whether we really need to have all those things we think we do. Everything we really need is right here in nature.
Our human world is one we have molded outside of nature. Thinking about how to change it is too deep and too complicated a thought to work through today.
And, it’s likely that the pandemic will end up making some of those changes for us.
#
A red-breasted robin hops through the newly-exposed layer of dead leaves, looking for a grub, or anything else edible.
Then there’s the slow, silent orange flicker of the wings of an early-returning Monarch butterfly. Or, perhaps it is a Viceroy; the untrained eye finds it difficult to distinguish between the two.
Green patches of wet moss cling to the ancient granite outcrops, and the bases of the naked trees, adding more splotches of colour to a dreary landscape.
And peeking out from the rock crevices are the brightest spots of all – red wintergreen berries glistening in rays of sunshine.
These berries, and their surrounding green waxen leaves, truly are a miracle of the woods. They blossomed into fruit last summer and survived beneath the snow and ice throughout the brutal winter cold.
All are signs of spring’s resurrection from the dank forest floor in which trees stand stiffly silent like skeletons. Small but hopeful signals that warmer, more productive times are coming.
Beyond this forest is the chaos of humanity’s coronavirus pandemic. Out there, spring has become a season of things lost – lost lives, lost important events, lost incomes.
Here, the forest is quiet and ordered, demonstrating the consistency of nature left alone to exist as it has for thousands of years.
This consistency is seen in the moose track along my forest trail. Every April, when the snow begins to disappear, a moose ambles this path, migrating from winter to summer quarters.
I have yet to see a track from the bear who occupies this forest. I know it must be up and about after hibernation, but I have not seen it, heard it or smelled it.
That’s probably because we both practice social distancing. We are both cranky on early mornings before breakfast, so neither wants to come anywhere near the other.
What is awesome about the spring forest is its easy transformation from the cold miseries of winter to the buoyancy of summer.
The little wintergreen plant and its red berries illustrate that beautifully. After so many snowbound months, the berries are ready to do what they were born to do.
Plump and bursting with life, the berries soon will shrivel and rot, dropping minuscule seeds to create new life and fulfill their sole purpose - to endure, to survive and to carry out their role in nature’s plan.
The pandemic and its forced isolation have created time to be out here observing the wonders of the awakening forest. All that time once spent doing other things – many of them materialistic things – now is spent thinking and viewing things differently.
It is amazing how our vision widens and becomes more focussed when we stop doing all those “other things.”
What comes into view more clearly is an important lesson of nature: think ahead and be prepared.
Everything that exists in this forest understands that lesson. The squirrel that procrastinates and does not gather and store enough nuts likely will not survive the winter.
It is a stark lesson: Prepare well or be ready to suffer, or even die.
That was a lesson highlighted by the commission investigating the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak. It emphasized the precautionary principle, which basically is about thinking ahead, preparing and taking action before a situation becomes critical.
There is mounting evidence that if governments, corporations and people in general had paid attention to this principle, the current pandemic would have been less severe.
Another thought prompted by this pandemic, and by a walk in the spring woods, is whether our human activities are drawing us farther away from nature and its many lessons.
We live in a materialistic, money-oriented world. When I look into the forest, I wonder whether we really need to have all those things we think we do. Everything we really need is right here in nature.
Our human world is one we have molded outside of nature. Thinking about how to change it is too deep and too complicated a thought to work through today.
And, it’s likely that the pandemic will end up making some of those changes for us.
#
April 8, 2020
When the hammer falls
The lyrics keep riffing through my head . . . ,
Oh, every night and every day
A little piece of you is falling away
But lift your face the Western Way
Build your muscles as your body decays
That’s a stanza from Hammer to Fall, the energetic rock song written in 1984 by Brian May, guitarist for the British rock band Queen. You might have seen Oscar-winner Rami Malek, as lead Queen singer Freddie Mercury, singing it in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody.It is a song about life and death, with May once explaining that "the Hammer coming down is only a symbol of the Grim Reaper doing his job."
It is a song easily identifiable today with the once unimaginable death and destruction wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. More than one million people around the world are infected with the virus. More than 70,000 have died, with thousands more deaths predicted.
The economic toll of the pandemic is being compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Businesses are shuttered, unemployment is soaring, stock markets have been hammered.
All this happening to keep people distant from each other to lessen the spread of the virus.
With so much human suffering and grief it seems almost unconscionable to dwell on the problems of business and industry. However, I can’t avoid thinking and writing about the pandemic’s effects on one industry in particular – the newspaper industry.
The newspaper industry as we have known it will not survive this pandemic. It has been in a weakened state – basically bedridden for several years – and advertising revenue lost during the near global lockdown will cause it to draw its final breaths.
Some daily newspapers have cut publication days. Some have closed their doors and others certainly will follow. Whatever has been cut or lost will not return.
There is nothing that can be done to save the overall newspaper industry as we have known it – news printed on paper and delivered by hand. Some printed newspapers will survive, others will carry on strictly as digital products or others might appear in formats yet to be invented.
What must not be allowed to die is the professional, disciplined journalism cultivated by newspapers.
Journalism is the oxygen-rich breath in the lungs of democracy. When deprived of it, those lungs collapse and the democracy dies.
There are those who would applaud the death of journalism. That would suit their autocratic interests, allowing them to spread unchallenged their misinformation and hyper prejudiced claptrap.
We live in a dark age of information manipulation in which information critical to our lives is twisted like pretzels. Waves of words wash over us daily, increasing the need for more, not fewer, professional journalists who produce balanced news that is fact- checked, edited and put into context.
Good journalism is about reporting truth in the public interest. Good journalism’s only allegiances are to facts and the public interest.
Corporations and governments cannot keep journalism from dying. Only the citizenry, which journalism was born to serve, can save it.
A problem with that is that much of our citizenry is not well informed about journalism. Most people do not understand its workings and complexities, let alone its value to society.
They must become better informed if journalism is to survive to continue shining light into unseen areas and to observe and report the actions of those making decisions that affect us all.
The key to having the general public better informed about the value of journalism is held by society’s influencers. The civic leaders, business leaders and religious leaders; the people whose words and actions are watched and followed by the public.
It is the influencers who need make the importance of journalism, and the need to sustain it, an important topic of conversation.
We just can’t stand by and let journalism die. If we do, we are accepting the final stanza of the Queen song:
What the hell we fighting for
Just surrender and it won't hurt at all
You've just got time to say your prayers
While you're waiting for the Hammer to Fall.
I refuse to accept that. I will not surrender. No one should.
Lungs need oxygen and democracy needs good journalism. That’s a message important to pass along.
Oh, every night and every day
A little piece of you is falling away
But lift your face the Western Way
Build your muscles as your body decays
That’s a stanza from Hammer to Fall, the energetic rock song written in 1984 by Brian May, guitarist for the British rock band Queen. You might have seen Oscar-winner Rami Malek, as lead Queen singer Freddie Mercury, singing it in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody.It is a song about life and death, with May once explaining that "the Hammer coming down is only a symbol of the Grim Reaper doing his job."
It is a song easily identifiable today with the once unimaginable death and destruction wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. More than one million people around the world are infected with the virus. More than 70,000 have died, with thousands more deaths predicted.The economic toll of the pandemic is being compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Businesses are shuttered, unemployment is soaring, stock markets have been hammered.
All this happening to keep people distant from each other to lessen the spread of the virus.
With so much human suffering and grief it seems almost unconscionable to dwell on the problems of business and industry. However, I can’t avoid thinking and writing about the pandemic’s effects on one industry in particular – the newspaper industry.
The newspaper industry as we have known it will not survive this pandemic. It has been in a weakened state – basically bedridden for several years – and advertising revenue lost during the near global lockdown will cause it to draw its final breaths.
Some daily newspapers have cut publication days. Some have closed their doors and others certainly will follow. Whatever has been cut or lost will not return.
There is nothing that can be done to save the overall newspaper industry as we have known it – news printed on paper and delivered by hand. Some printed newspapers will survive, others will carry on strictly as digital products or others might appear in formats yet to be invented.
What must not be allowed to die is the professional, disciplined journalism cultivated by newspapers.
Journalism is the oxygen-rich breath in the lungs of democracy. When deprived of it, those lungs collapse and the democracy dies.
There are those who would applaud the death of journalism. That would suit their autocratic interests, allowing them to spread unchallenged their misinformation and hyper prejudiced claptrap.
We live in a dark age of information manipulation in which information critical to our lives is twisted like pretzels. Waves of words wash over us daily, increasing the need for more, not fewer, professional journalists who produce balanced news that is fact- checked, edited and put into context.
Good journalism is about reporting truth in the public interest. Good journalism’s only allegiances are to facts and the public interest.
Corporations and governments cannot keep journalism from dying. Only the citizenry, which journalism was born to serve, can save it.
A problem with that is that much of our citizenry is not well informed about journalism. Most people do not understand its workings and complexities, let alone its value to society.
They must become better informed if journalism is to survive to continue shining light into unseen areas and to observe and report the actions of those making decisions that affect us all.
The key to having the general public better informed about the value of journalism is held by society’s influencers. The civic leaders, business leaders and religious leaders; the people whose words and actions are watched and followed by the public.
It is the influencers who need make the importance of journalism, and the need to sustain it, an important topic of conversation.
We just can’t stand by and let journalism die. If we do, we are accepting the final stanza of the Queen song:
What the hell we fighting for
Just surrender and it won't hurt at all
You've just got time to say your prayers
While you're waiting for the Hammer to Fall.
I refuse to accept that. I will not surrender. No one should.
Lungs need oxygen and democracy needs good journalism. That’s a message important to pass along.
March 25, 2020
Pandemics need leadership
Shortages are a serious worry during this coronavirus pandemic. Many places report not having enough medical equipment, hospital capacity, or even masks, gloves and gowns for doctors and nurses as the number of infections soar.
Such shortages allow fast-spreading viruses to overwhelm medical care facilities, allowing more people to die.
The greatest shortage in this crisis is political leadership. The world lacks the truly effective leadership that creates trust and inspires citizens to be strong, hopeful partners in overcoming the virus and its accompanying problems.
Some leaders have said the pandemic was unexpected, coming suddenly out of the blue. That is pure nonsense. Fifteen years ago, the SARS Commission investigating that terrifying outbreak warned the world it must ready itself for another.
Here’s what Spring of Fear, the Commission’s final report, said:
SARS “was a wake-up call and it holds the lessons we must learn, to protect ourselves against future similar outbreaks and against the global influenza pandemic predicted by so many scientists.”
Also, in late 2005 the book Killer Flu: The world on the brink of a pandemic, quoted various experts warning that another pandemic is overdue. (I was the author but this is not a sales pitch because the book is out of print).
So here we are in the midst of a pandemic, predicted by so many experts over the years. And, no government, despite the warnings, was well prepared for it. All, Canada included, took too long to recognize the seriousness of the virus and to take precautions.
The lack of political leadership has been stunning.
Look south where self-proclaimed “wartime president” Donald Trump, a sociopath as shallow and murky as a mud puddle, initially called the virus a hoax and has endangered lives with his falsehoods and unwillingness to listen to anyone smarter than himself.
Now he tweets that physical distancing guidelines might be relaxed to help the economy. Early this week U.S. infections had reached 40,000 people.
Save the economy, let the folks die!
Look east to Britain where Prime Minister Boris Johnson, another egomaniac, initially followed a “herd immunity” policy that would allow hundreds of thousands to get sick and build an acquired immunity that eventually would leave the virus nowhere to grow.
At the start of this week Britain had roughly 6,000 confirmed cases, increasing by 600 to 1,000 a day. The number of deaths was approaching 400.
Canada had roughly 1,400 confirmed cases at the start of the week, and federal leadership has been sort of okay. At least our numbers are not out of control yet, but less talk and more direct action would make us all feel better.
One leadership surprise, at least to me, has been Ontario Premier Doug Ford. He has been calm, but straightforward and firm, taking direct action and calling out businesses and individuals ignoring social distancing warnings.
Good leadership is rooted in integrity, which means being fair, reliable and willing to listen to and accept other opinions. Leaders cannot have integrity, and the qualities that accompany it, unless they understand and admit their own limitations.
Excellent leaders build strong teams of people who have competencies to supplement the leader’s limitations.
Overall, the world lacks the strong, effective leadership needed tackle burgeoning problems in these times of rapid change. The coronavirus will disappear eventually, only to be replaced by another new virus outbreak, and almost certainly an influenza pandemic.
Then there are the difficulties predicted to befall us because of pollution and climate change.
The world has proven time and again that it can overcome huge problems when it has excellent leadership – Churchillian type leadership.
We need to change how we seek out and choose potential excellent leaders. We have to stop selecting them through an outdated political party system. Toss aside political party loyalties and start choosing people who can achieve what the people really need, not what a party believes will win the next election.
In trench warfare it was the people in the trenches who won the battles, not the star-studded geniuses giving orders from afar.
So it will be with the coronavirus pandemic. The folks in the trenches – the doctors, nurses, medical technicians and other healthcare workers – can win this war.
We are fortunate to have them and should never forget to thank them.
#
Such shortages allow fast-spreading viruses to overwhelm medical care facilities, allowing more people to die.
The greatest shortage in this crisis is political leadership. The world lacks the truly effective leadership that creates trust and inspires citizens to be strong, hopeful partners in overcoming the virus and its accompanying problems.
Some leaders have said the pandemic was unexpected, coming suddenly out of the blue. That is pure nonsense. Fifteen years ago, the SARS Commission investigating that terrifying outbreak warned the world it must ready itself for another.
Here’s what Spring of Fear, the Commission’s final report, said:
SARS “was a wake-up call and it holds the lessons we must learn, to protect ourselves against future similar outbreaks and against the global influenza pandemic predicted by so many scientists.”
Also, in late 2005 the book Killer Flu: The world on the brink of a pandemic, quoted various experts warning that another pandemic is overdue. (I was the author but this is not a sales pitch because the book is out of print).
So here we are in the midst of a pandemic, predicted by so many experts over the years. And, no government, despite the warnings, was well prepared for it. All, Canada included, took too long to recognize the seriousness of the virus and to take precautions.
The lack of political leadership has been stunning.
Look south where self-proclaimed “wartime president” Donald Trump, a sociopath as shallow and murky as a mud puddle, initially called the virus a hoax and has endangered lives with his falsehoods and unwillingness to listen to anyone smarter than himself.
Now he tweets that physical distancing guidelines might be relaxed to help the economy. Early this week U.S. infections had reached 40,000 people.
Save the economy, let the folks die!
Look east to Britain where Prime Minister Boris Johnson, another egomaniac, initially followed a “herd immunity” policy that would allow hundreds of thousands to get sick and build an acquired immunity that eventually would leave the virus nowhere to grow.
At the start of this week Britain had roughly 6,000 confirmed cases, increasing by 600 to 1,000 a day. The number of deaths was approaching 400.
Canada had roughly 1,400 confirmed cases at the start of the week, and federal leadership has been sort of okay. At least our numbers are not out of control yet, but less talk and more direct action would make us all feel better.
One leadership surprise, at least to me, has been Ontario Premier Doug Ford. He has been calm, but straightforward and firm, taking direct action and calling out businesses and individuals ignoring social distancing warnings.
Good leadership is rooted in integrity, which means being fair, reliable and willing to listen to and accept other opinions. Leaders cannot have integrity, and the qualities that accompany it, unless they understand and admit their own limitations.
Excellent leaders build strong teams of people who have competencies to supplement the leader’s limitations.
Overall, the world lacks the strong, effective leadership needed tackle burgeoning problems in these times of rapid change. The coronavirus will disappear eventually, only to be replaced by another new virus outbreak, and almost certainly an influenza pandemic.
Then there are the difficulties predicted to befall us because of pollution and climate change.
The world has proven time and again that it can overcome huge problems when it has excellent leadership – Churchillian type leadership.
We need to change how we seek out and choose potential excellent leaders. We have to stop selecting them through an outdated political party system. Toss aside political party loyalties and start choosing people who can achieve what the people really need, not what a party believes will win the next election.
In trench warfare it was the people in the trenches who won the battles, not the star-studded geniuses giving orders from afar.
So it will be with the coronavirus pandemic. The folks in the trenches – the doctors, nurses, medical technicians and other healthcare workers – can win this war.
We are fortunate to have them and should never forget to thank them.
#
March 19, 2020
Learning to live with wolves
I am standing on the deck, drinking coffee and surveying the domain.
Down at the lake one of the young folks is on the family-built rink, stick-handling a tennis ball while the three family dogs chase it.
Farther out on the lake, about 200 yards beyond the rink, a four-legged animal comes into view. It isn’t one of our dogs.
I fetch binoculars and focus on the animal, trotting calmly, tail almost straight out, pointed ears erect. It is a charcoal black wolf.
It stops and stares intently at the dogs on the rink. Then it turns its gaze to the two-legged guy with the hockey stick and breaks into a trot towards the woods farther down the shore.
It is exciting to see a wolf in the wild and the sightings seem to becoming more common.
Some years back two grandkids playing in the snow watched two wolves pull down a deer on the ice-covered lake in front of our cottage. It was a savage scene but a valuable lesson about life and nature.
Last year, on a trail behind the cottage, I came face to face with a wolf. Normally it would have been well aware of my presence and stayed hidden but it was preoccupied chasing a snowshoe hare.
It ran right into my path, skidding to a stop in the snow and giving me a look of complete shock before bolting into a dense cedar patch.
It was amazing to be that close to a wolf and brought on a flood of memories about the controversy over whether wolves will kill and eat humans.
The patriarch of the newspaper where I got my first journalism job made a career promoting the theory that wolves will not eat people.
James. W. Curran was publisher of the Sault Ste. Marie Daily Star early in the 20th century and promoted the surrounding Algoma District through his defence of wolves. The newspaper’s logo was a howling wolf and J.W. wrote two books about them, the most famous titled Wolves Don’t Bite.
J.W. offered a cash award to anyone who could prove he was “et by a wolf.” It was a publicity promotion and of course no one ever claimed the reward.
Sadly, there is evidence that wolves, given a safe opportunity and the right circumstances, will kill and eat a human.
A most recent Canadian case is documented in a newly-released book titled Cry Wolf: Inquest into the True Nature of a Predator by author Harold R. Johnson.
In November 2005, Kenton Carnegie, a geological engineering student from the University of Waterloo went for a walk at a mining camp in northern Saskatchewan. He never returned because he was attacked and killed by wolves.
Wolf attacks are so rare and the subject so controversial that the Saskatchewan coroner’s office hired a wolf expert to investigate. The expert concluded that Kenton had been attacked and killed by a bear.
Kenton’s parents refused to accept that finding. It was November, with snow on the ground, bears presumably hibernating and wolf tracks near the body. They hired Harold Johnson, a Metis, Harvard Law graduate and retired Crown prosecutor to represent them at the coroner’s inquest.
The coroner’s jury, according to Johnson, “saw through the biased report” by the wolf expert and hearing expert evidence gathered by the parents and presented by Johnson, concluded that Kenton had been attacked and partially eaten by wolves.
Johnson later decided to write a book about the tragic case and it is an intriguing read.Intriguing because Johnson included a theory raised by some Indigenous elders.
The theory is that wolves were almost eradicated in North America because humans hated them for killing wildlife like elk and caribou, and more importantly, livestock. Many places offered bounties and wolf populations crashed.
The Indigenous elder theory is that the wolves slaughtered through hateful attitudes and government bounties were older wolves, the ones that train the pups.
Now we see more wolves; wolves chasing snowmobiles, wolves coming into yards to attack dogs. Wolves that haven’t been taught fear by their elders.
Johnson writes that to survive in future, humans must save the ecosystem that includes wolves as well as humans. And, we must figure out how our two species can share the planet.
Down at the lake one of the young folks is on the family-built rink, stick-handling a tennis ball while the three family dogs chase it.
Farther out on the lake, about 200 yards beyond the rink, a four-legged animal comes into view. It isn’t one of our dogs.
I fetch binoculars and focus on the animal, trotting calmly, tail almost straight out, pointed ears erect. It is a charcoal black wolf.
It stops and stares intently at the dogs on the rink. Then it turns its gaze to the two-legged guy with the hockey stick and breaks into a trot towards the woods farther down the shore.
It is exciting to see a wolf in the wild and the sightings seem to becoming more common.
Some years back two grandkids playing in the snow watched two wolves pull down a deer on the ice-covered lake in front of our cottage. It was a savage scene but a valuable lesson about life and nature.
Last year, on a trail behind the cottage, I came face to face with a wolf. Normally it would have been well aware of my presence and stayed hidden but it was preoccupied chasing a snowshoe hare.
It ran right into my path, skidding to a stop in the snow and giving me a look of complete shock before bolting into a dense cedar patch.
It was amazing to be that close to a wolf and brought on a flood of memories about the controversy over whether wolves will kill and eat humans.
The patriarch of the newspaper where I got my first journalism job made a career promoting the theory that wolves will not eat people.
James. W. Curran was publisher of the Sault Ste. Marie Daily Star early in the 20th century and promoted the surrounding Algoma District through his defence of wolves. The newspaper’s logo was a howling wolf and J.W. wrote two books about them, the most famous titled Wolves Don’t Bite.
J.W. offered a cash award to anyone who could prove he was “et by a wolf.” It was a publicity promotion and of course no one ever claimed the reward.
Sadly, there is evidence that wolves, given a safe opportunity and the right circumstances, will kill and eat a human.
A most recent Canadian case is documented in a newly-released book titled Cry Wolf: Inquest into the True Nature of a Predator by author Harold R. Johnson.
In November 2005, Kenton Carnegie, a geological engineering student from the University of Waterloo went for a walk at a mining camp in northern Saskatchewan. He never returned because he was attacked and killed by wolves.
Wolf attacks are so rare and the subject so controversial that the Saskatchewan coroner’s office hired a wolf expert to investigate. The expert concluded that Kenton had been attacked and killed by a bear.
Kenton’s parents refused to accept that finding. It was November, with snow on the ground, bears presumably hibernating and wolf tracks near the body. They hired Harold Johnson, a Metis, Harvard Law graduate and retired Crown prosecutor to represent them at the coroner’s inquest.
The coroner’s jury, according to Johnson, “saw through the biased report” by the wolf expert and hearing expert evidence gathered by the parents and presented by Johnson, concluded that Kenton had been attacked and partially eaten by wolves.
Johnson later decided to write a book about the tragic case and it is an intriguing read.Intriguing because Johnson included a theory raised by some Indigenous elders.
The theory is that wolves were almost eradicated in North America because humans hated them for killing wildlife like elk and caribou, and more importantly, livestock. Many places offered bounties and wolf populations crashed.
The Indigenous elder theory is that the wolves slaughtered through hateful attitudes and government bounties were older wolves, the ones that train the pups.
Now we see more wolves; wolves chasing snowmobiles, wolves coming into yards to attack dogs. Wolves that haven’t been taught fear by their elders.
Johnson writes that to survive in future, humans must save the ecosystem that includes wolves as well as humans. And, we must figure out how our two species can share the planet.
March 11, 2020
What the maple teaches us about living
I struggled this year with what to give up during Lent.
Lent is the roughly six-week period of penitential preparation leading into the Christian celebration of Easter. During Lent many Christians abstain from something they enjoy, as a way of focussing on the meaning of Easter.
Others, not necessarily following religious practices, find the Lenten period a good time to give up something as an exercise in self-control.
I considered giving up following the news, a daily habit that would take some effort to stop.
Then I read a piece by Margaret Renkl, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, who I enjoy because she is a fine writer with a good sense of the outdoors. Ms. Renkl also thought about giving up the news for Lent, then decided that responsible people in a democracy cannot afford the luxury of tuning out what is happening around them.
She is right, of course, but I had another reason for not giving up the news: I realized that it might be more of a comfort than a sacrifice. Not reading or hearing about the violence, political pandemonium and general mayhem infecting our world would be a relief.
Then came a thought offering a different approach. What if instead of giving up something, I took up something?
I needed to think about this so went to the best thinking place – the woods.
As I walked, a glimmer caught my eye. It came from a stand of maples off to my right and I walked over to investigate.
The glimmer was sunlight hitting drops of sap running down the bark of one maple. A wood pecker had broken the tree’s bark, causing it to bleed sap. Early March is the time that sap flows freely and can be tapped to collect and boil down into maple syrup.
Watching the sap drip, it occurred to me that these maples have lessons to offer about living.
Every year, no matter what convulsions rock the world, maples carry on doing what they have done for many hundreds of years. Wind storms might shake them, their branches might sag painfully under the weight of heavy snow. Temperatures might fluctuate crazily, warming and freezing their juices.
But when temperatures settle to about plus five Celsius during the day and minus five during the night, the sap runs and can be collected to boil down into the excellent food source of maple syrup and maple sugar.
Whatever happens the maple does nothing in haste. It persists, living and working quietly and patiently. When tapped, it releases its sap not in a quick stream but drop by drop.
The maple expects the same from those who harvest what it produces. It rejects the human world’s fast food thinking that encourages getting it all, and getting it quickly.
The maple never hurries. It takes five and a half days on average to give up the 40 gallons of sap needed to boil down to one gallon of maple syrup. It teaches that there are no high-tech solutions, just hard work and patience.
I decided to follow the example of the maple and take up practising patience for Lent and beyond. It will be a sacrifice; patience is not something that comes easy to most of us.
It has been said that patience has its limits and taken too far it can be considered cowardice. True enough in critical situations such as war and disease epidemics. Wait too long in battle before taking decisive action and the enemy will overrun you. Or in a health epidemic, delay action while waiting for more evidence and the disease runs unchecked and out of control.
But patience should not be seen as procrastination. It doesn’t mean never objecting to something, or simply giving up.
Patience is taking the time to think things through to try to understand others and how they feel. In other words, taking time to prepare yourself before making decisions.
Patience is difficult to practise because it is so much easier just to become frustrated and angry.
Getting anything done thoroughly and successfully takes time. Patience is the ability to recognize that.
The maple has practised patience for centuries. It is an essential reminder of how we should behave during stressful times.
#
Lent is the roughly six-week period of penitential preparation leading into the Christian celebration of Easter. During Lent many Christians abstain from something they enjoy, as a way of focussing on the meaning of Easter.
Others, not necessarily following religious practices, find the Lenten period a good time to give up something as an exercise in self-control.
I considered giving up following the news, a daily habit that would take some effort to stop.
Then I read a piece by Margaret Renkl, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, who I enjoy because she is a fine writer with a good sense of the outdoors. Ms. Renkl also thought about giving up the news for Lent, then decided that responsible people in a democracy cannot afford the luxury of tuning out what is happening around them.
She is right, of course, but I had another reason for not giving up the news: I realized that it might be more of a comfort than a sacrifice. Not reading or hearing about the violence, political pandemonium and general mayhem infecting our world would be a relief.
Then came a thought offering a different approach. What if instead of giving up something, I took up something?
I needed to think about this so went to the best thinking place – the woods.
As I walked, a glimmer caught my eye. It came from a stand of maples off to my right and I walked over to investigate.
The glimmer was sunlight hitting drops of sap running down the bark of one maple. A wood pecker had broken the tree’s bark, causing it to bleed sap. Early March is the time that sap flows freely and can be tapped to collect and boil down into maple syrup.
Watching the sap drip, it occurred to me that these maples have lessons to offer about living.
Every year, no matter what convulsions rock the world, maples carry on doing what they have done for many hundreds of years. Wind storms might shake them, their branches might sag painfully under the weight of heavy snow. Temperatures might fluctuate crazily, warming and freezing their juices.
But when temperatures settle to about plus five Celsius during the day and minus five during the night, the sap runs and can be collected to boil down into the excellent food source of maple syrup and maple sugar.
Whatever happens the maple does nothing in haste. It persists, living and working quietly and patiently. When tapped, it releases its sap not in a quick stream but drop by drop.
The maple expects the same from those who harvest what it produces. It rejects the human world’s fast food thinking that encourages getting it all, and getting it quickly.
The maple never hurries. It takes five and a half days on average to give up the 40 gallons of sap needed to boil down to one gallon of maple syrup. It teaches that there are no high-tech solutions, just hard work and patience.
I decided to follow the example of the maple and take up practising patience for Lent and beyond. It will be a sacrifice; patience is not something that comes easy to most of us.
It has been said that patience has its limits and taken too far it can be considered cowardice. True enough in critical situations such as war and disease epidemics. Wait too long in battle before taking decisive action and the enemy will overrun you. Or in a health epidemic, delay action while waiting for more evidence and the disease runs unchecked and out of control.
But patience should not be seen as procrastination. It doesn’t mean never objecting to something, or simply giving up.
Patience is taking the time to think things through to try to understand others and how they feel. In other words, taking time to prepare yourself before making decisions.
Patience is difficult to practise because it is so much easier just to become frustrated and angry.
Getting anything done thoroughly and successfully takes time. Patience is the ability to recognize that.
The maple has practised patience for centuries. It is an essential reminder of how we should behave during stressful times.
#
March 4, 2020
Lessons from the SARS epidemic
The bad boy virus COVID-19 is on Canada’s doorstep, trying to smash down the door.
The betting is that it will break through and spread into communities across the country. It has infected people in more than 60 countries and is about to become a global pandemic.
The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis of 2003-2004 gave us good lessons about how to handle infectious disease emergencies. I’m not certain how well we have learned from those lessons, but I guess we are about to find out.
One important lesson of SARS is: Keep the politicians out of this. Medical crises need to be handled by medical professionals basing decisions on science, not politicians acting on the whims and wishes of their parties and their supporters.
The SARS Commission, an independent panel established to investigate the introduction and spread of SARS, reported that crisis demonstrated the importance of “medical leadership that is free of bureaucratic and political pressure.”
“SARS showed us that while co-operation and teamwork are important, it is essential that one person be in overall charge of our public health defence against infectious outbreaks,” the commission said. “The Chief Medical Officer of Health should be in charge of public health emergency planning and public health emergency management.”
The United States has ignored this lesson, and that’s bad news for us because it is our closest neighbour.
President Donald Trump has appointed politically toxic Vice-President Mike Pence to lead that country’s efforts against the virus. Pence was governor of Indiana during the 2015 HIV epidemic there and was criticized for his handling of that health emergency. It took him two months to declare an emergency, then critics accused him of saying that prayer, not science, was the way to stop the epidemic.
Another key lesson from SARS was the importance of effective communication that is factual and undistorted: Effective information provided by medically-trained people whose jobs are to make decisions on rigorously tested evidence.
U.S. medical authorities now are forbidden to make COVID-19 information public without having it vetted by Pence.
We individual citizens need to ignore misinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories and other factless information that floats through the airways as easily as the virus itself.
We all need to listen to our medical professionals, and not overreact. Fear tends to give people louder voices, and emptier heads.
For instance, don’t run out and stock up on medical masks. Masks bought off a drugstore shelf will not prevent you from getting the virus. They don’t stop tiny particles from being inhaled into the lungs.
Masks that do block tiny particles, such as the N95 respirators, often are in short supply during epidemics and should be reserved for medical workers.
The other thing about masks, even those effective in filtering tiny particles, is that you just can’t slap them on your face and be guaranteed safe. They need to be properly fitted by someone who knows what they are doing.
Health professionals say that the best way to prevent infection is to be vigorous in practising basic hygiene.
Wash your hands regularly, and properly. Most of us do that after using a washroom, but don’t after touching handrails or something else used by hundreds of other people.
Wearing rubber gloves is not recommended because they pick up germs just as your skin does. If you are washing your hands regularly, you don’t need gloves.
Health professionals also advise avoiding crowded places, and touching things that a lot of other people touch. Keep a few feet of distance from people who are coughing or sneezing.
The SARS Commission emphasized the precautionary principle: That where there is reasonable evidence of a public health threat we should not wait for absolute proof of the threat before taking action against it.
COVID-19 is a threat requiring individuals to take precautions – based on accurate medical information - in a calm and reasonable manner.
“Public co-operation is essential in the fight against any outbreak of infection,” the SARS Commission said in its final report . . . . “It was voluntary public co-operation, not legal orders or emergency powers, that won the fight against SARS.”
Public cooperation means voluntarily isolating yourself if you feel ill during this COVID-19 epidemic and checking with your healthcare professional sooner than later.
#
The betting is that it will break through and spread into communities across the country. It has infected people in more than 60 countries and is about to become a global pandemic.
The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) crisis of 2003-2004 gave us good lessons about how to handle infectious disease emergencies. I’m not certain how well we have learned from those lessons, but I guess we are about to find out.
One important lesson of SARS is: Keep the politicians out of this. Medical crises need to be handled by medical professionals basing decisions on science, not politicians acting on the whims and wishes of their parties and their supporters.
The SARS Commission, an independent panel established to investigate the introduction and spread of SARS, reported that crisis demonstrated the importance of “medical leadership that is free of bureaucratic and political pressure.”
“SARS showed us that while co-operation and teamwork are important, it is essential that one person be in overall charge of our public health defence against infectious outbreaks,” the commission said. “The Chief Medical Officer of Health should be in charge of public health emergency planning and public health emergency management.”
The United States has ignored this lesson, and that’s bad news for us because it is our closest neighbour.
President Donald Trump has appointed politically toxic Vice-President Mike Pence to lead that country’s efforts against the virus. Pence was governor of Indiana during the 2015 HIV epidemic there and was criticized for his handling of that health emergency. It took him two months to declare an emergency, then critics accused him of saying that prayer, not science, was the way to stop the epidemic.
Another key lesson from SARS was the importance of effective communication that is factual and undistorted: Effective information provided by medically-trained people whose jobs are to make decisions on rigorously tested evidence.
U.S. medical authorities now are forbidden to make COVID-19 information public without having it vetted by Pence.
We individual citizens need to ignore misinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories and other factless information that floats through the airways as easily as the virus itself.
We all need to listen to our medical professionals, and not overreact. Fear tends to give people louder voices, and emptier heads.
For instance, don’t run out and stock up on medical masks. Masks bought off a drugstore shelf will not prevent you from getting the virus. They don’t stop tiny particles from being inhaled into the lungs.
Masks that do block tiny particles, such as the N95 respirators, often are in short supply during epidemics and should be reserved for medical workers.
The other thing about masks, even those effective in filtering tiny particles, is that you just can’t slap them on your face and be guaranteed safe. They need to be properly fitted by someone who knows what they are doing.
Health professionals say that the best way to prevent infection is to be vigorous in practising basic hygiene.
Wash your hands regularly, and properly. Most of us do that after using a washroom, but don’t after touching handrails or something else used by hundreds of other people.
Wearing rubber gloves is not recommended because they pick up germs just as your skin does. If you are washing your hands regularly, you don’t need gloves.
Health professionals also advise avoiding crowded places, and touching things that a lot of other people touch. Keep a few feet of distance from people who are coughing or sneezing.
The SARS Commission emphasized the precautionary principle: That where there is reasonable evidence of a public health threat we should not wait for absolute proof of the threat before taking action against it.
COVID-19 is a threat requiring individuals to take precautions – based on accurate medical information - in a calm and reasonable manner.
“Public co-operation is essential in the fight against any outbreak of infection,” the SARS Commission said in its final report . . . . “It was voluntary public co-operation, not legal orders or emergency powers, that won the fight against SARS.”
Public cooperation means voluntarily isolating yourself if you feel ill during this COVID-19 epidemic and checking with your healthcare professional sooner than later.
#
February 26, 2020
Fox for the ‘Fiver’
I can’t think of a better person to put on future $5 bills than Terry Fox, the most inspirational Canadian of the last half century.
The Bank of Canada is redesigning the banknote, sometimes called a “fin” or a “fiver”, and has invited nominations from the public on whose picture should appear on the front of the new bill. Nominations close March 11.
Port Coquitlam. B.C., Terry Fox’s hometown, has mounted a full-out campaign urging people across the country to nominate their most famous citizen.
“Terry has just an amazing legacy, not only here in his hometown of Port Coquitlam, not only in British Columbia, not only in Canada, but around the world,” says the city’s Mayor Brad West. “He has inspired, and he continues to inspire, millions of people.”
Terry Fox was an athletic teenager in 1977 when he was diagnosed with cancer in his right leg. The leg was amputated but he continued long-distance running on a prosthetic leg.
After the amputation and 16 months of chemotherapy Fox concluded that his life had been saved by medical advances and decided to raise money for more research and to help other cancer patients have hope and courage.
In the spring of 1980, he began a Marathon of Hope in which he planned to raise money by running across Canada from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Vancouver. He ran for 143 days, covering 5,373 kilometres before having to give up when the cancer returned, this time to his lungs.
Forty years later, many people, me included, continue to be powerfully impressed by the courage and selflessness of Terry Fox.
He is a true hero in my eyes and my memories of him have been little dimmed by the passage of four decades. One reason they remain so bright and clear perhaps is because our lives intersected at several points.
In 1980 I was a journalist working for The Canadian Press news agency in Vancouver and news of Fox’s Marathon of Hope was a story of great interest. When he dipped his leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s we journalists in Vancouver began thinking about news coverage plans for when he got close to home.
Fox was well into Northern Ontario in August when I got news that my mother was ill in Sault Ste. Marie. I went there to be with her.
She died and I was in charge of carrying out her last wishes, including bringing her body to Thunder Bay to be buried with my father. Crazy as it sounds, that included written instructions to have her body driven from the Soo to Thunder Bay because she had a lifelong terror of airplanes.
I could not ignore her wishes and her body was driven around Lake Superior, passing Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope along the way.
In Thunder Bay, I stood on the steps of the funeral home waiting for visitors to arrive for my mother’s wake when I saw flashing red lights down the street. They were at St. Joseph’s Hospital, a place I knew well because I was born there and my father died there.
A passerby informed me that Terry Fox had just been brought into the hospital. I started running towards the hospital until I realized that being at my mother’s funeral was more important than covering a story, as big a story as it appeared to be.
Terry was brought back home for hospitalization and treatment. Nine and a half months later, on June 19, 1981, I found myself at a New Westminster, B.C. hospital with Leslie Shepherd, one of the finest journalists I have worked with. There at 4:30 a.m. we flashed the news that Terry Fox had died.
It was an incredibly sad event, even for journalists used to covering sad things. But with the sadness came the realization this was not just another passing story. It was a story that would live and inspire for decades.
It has and I hope it will continue to live and inspire with Terry Fox’s face on the five-dollar bill.
Also, putting Fox on the fiver would be a tribute to young Canadians, whose talents and achievements are not often recognized enough.
#
The Bank of Canada is redesigning the banknote, sometimes called a “fin” or a “fiver”, and has invited nominations from the public on whose picture should appear on the front of the new bill. Nominations close March 11.
Port Coquitlam. B.C., Terry Fox’s hometown, has mounted a full-out campaign urging people across the country to nominate their most famous citizen.
“Terry has just an amazing legacy, not only here in his hometown of Port Coquitlam, not only in British Columbia, not only in Canada, but around the world,” says the city’s Mayor Brad West. “He has inspired, and he continues to inspire, millions of people.”
Terry Fox was an athletic teenager in 1977 when he was diagnosed with cancer in his right leg. The leg was amputated but he continued long-distance running on a prosthetic leg.
After the amputation and 16 months of chemotherapy Fox concluded that his life had been saved by medical advances and decided to raise money for more research and to help other cancer patients have hope and courage.
In the spring of 1980, he began a Marathon of Hope in which he planned to raise money by running across Canada from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Vancouver. He ran for 143 days, covering 5,373 kilometres before having to give up when the cancer returned, this time to his lungs.
Forty years later, many people, me included, continue to be powerfully impressed by the courage and selflessness of Terry Fox.
He is a true hero in my eyes and my memories of him have been little dimmed by the passage of four decades. One reason they remain so bright and clear perhaps is because our lives intersected at several points.
In 1980 I was a journalist working for The Canadian Press news agency in Vancouver and news of Fox’s Marathon of Hope was a story of great interest. When he dipped his leg into the Atlantic Ocean at St. John’s we journalists in Vancouver began thinking about news coverage plans for when he got close to home.
Fox was well into Northern Ontario in August when I got news that my mother was ill in Sault Ste. Marie. I went there to be with her.
She died and I was in charge of carrying out her last wishes, including bringing her body to Thunder Bay to be buried with my father. Crazy as it sounds, that included written instructions to have her body driven from the Soo to Thunder Bay because she had a lifelong terror of airplanes.
I could not ignore her wishes and her body was driven around Lake Superior, passing Terry Fox and the Marathon of Hope along the way.
In Thunder Bay, I stood on the steps of the funeral home waiting for visitors to arrive for my mother’s wake when I saw flashing red lights down the street. They were at St. Joseph’s Hospital, a place I knew well because I was born there and my father died there.
A passerby informed me that Terry Fox had just been brought into the hospital. I started running towards the hospital until I realized that being at my mother’s funeral was more important than covering a story, as big a story as it appeared to be.
Terry was brought back home for hospitalization and treatment. Nine and a half months later, on June 19, 1981, I found myself at a New Westminster, B.C. hospital with Leslie Shepherd, one of the finest journalists I have worked with. There at 4:30 a.m. we flashed the news that Terry Fox had died.
It was an incredibly sad event, even for journalists used to covering sad things. But with the sadness came the realization this was not just another passing story. It was a story that would live and inspire for decades.
It has and I hope it will continue to live and inspire with Terry Fox’s face on the five-dollar bill.
Also, putting Fox on the fiver would be a tribute to young Canadians, whose talents and achievements are not often recognized enough.
#
February 20, 2020
A Clear and Present Danger
From Shaman’s RockBy Jim Poling Sr.
The hit movie Parasite, winner of this year’s best picture Oscar, may be fiction but it reflects what is happening in real life today.
Parasite tells a story of class prejudices and greed creating violence between a rich, privileged family and a poor, low class one.
It is a story that many of us see developing around us every day. In real life, social inequality is creating class conflicts that threaten the health of our democracies. More and more people, including some wealthy ones, are beginning to blame all this on failures of our capitalistic system.
Our capitalism simply is not inclusive – not producing good things for enough people. It is making the rich more rich and the poor more poor. A variety of polls and reports show that most economic growth is going to the richest part of the population.
The development charity Oxfam says that in 2018 the world’s richest 2,200 billionaires saw a 12-per-cent increase in wealth, while the world’s poorest people saw an 11-per-cent decrease.
Ekos, the Canadian research company, has reported that 70 per cent of those it polled feel that almost all economic growth in the last 20 years has gone to the top one per cent of the population.
Anand Giridharadas, author of the 2018 book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, says that “we live in an age that has been absolutely punishing for perhaps the majority of middle and working class . . ..”
Few could argue truthfully that the middle class is not suffering. Most of us in the shrinking middle class see our monthly bills increasing while our incomes remain stagnant, or even shrink.
Our capitalist system is broken, but I don’t think it needs to be replaced. It needs fixing, and even some well-known capitalists admit that.
“I’m a capitalist and even I think capitalism is broken,” Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater hedge fund, said last year. “The problem is that capitalists typically don’t know how to divide the pie well and socialists typically don’t know how to grow it well.”
A U.S. Gallup poll conducted in 2018 reported that only 45 per cent of Americans, ages 18 to 29, are positive about capitalism, a 12-point drop over two years. In 2010, 68 per cent of this age group were positive.
A 2019 Forum Poll found that 42 per cent of Canadians have a negative opinion of capitalism. Those Canadians most likely to view capitalism negatively were in the 18 to 44 age bracket.
The social damage caused by this inequality is being reported more often now, notably in films such as Parasite and in fairly recent books such as Hillbilly Elegy, Tightrope, and Educated, all of which document the damaging toll on families unable to access education and economic opportunities.
One suggested way of starting to fix capitalism is to tax the rich more heavily. Both Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz have argued for higher taxes on the rich.
Also, reforms that would allow low-income families better access to education, health care and housing would make the system more equal.
Certainly, the warning signals of revolutionary upheaval caused by the widening crevice between rich and poor are becoming obvious.
The 15th edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report has warned that financial inequality continues to intensify, and a result could be economic confrontations and domestic political polarization. We’ve certainly seen the latter in both the U.S. and Canada.
Bridgewater’s Dalio has warned that growing inequality in the U.S. could lead to “great conflict and some form of revolution unless capitalism is reformed.”
Reform is needed, and urgently, so that our capitalistic system produces better lives for everyone, not just those who already are getting an unfair share.
The World Economic Forum warns: “The challenges before us demand immediate collective action, but fractures within the global community appear to only be widening. Stakeholders need to act quickly and with purpose within an unsettled global landscape.”
Strong leadership is required to get the fixing done. Strong leadership particularly in politics. Strong leadership by people who do what they know must be done, not what their political parties or rich friends want.
The hit movie Parasite, winner of this year’s best picture Oscar, may be fiction but it reflects what is happening in real life today.
Parasite tells a story of class prejudices and greed creating violence between a rich, privileged family and a poor, low class one.
It is a story that many of us see developing around us every day. In real life, social inequality is creating class conflicts that threaten the health of our democracies. More and more people, including some wealthy ones, are beginning to blame all this on failures of our capitalistic system.
Our capitalism simply is not inclusive – not producing good things for enough people. It is making the rich more rich and the poor more poor. A variety of polls and reports show that most economic growth is going to the richest part of the population.
The development charity Oxfam says that in 2018 the world’s richest 2,200 billionaires saw a 12-per-cent increase in wealth, while the world’s poorest people saw an 11-per-cent decrease.
Ekos, the Canadian research company, has reported that 70 per cent of those it polled feel that almost all economic growth in the last 20 years has gone to the top one per cent of the population.
Anand Giridharadas, author of the 2018 book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, says that “we live in an age that has been absolutely punishing for perhaps the majority of middle and working class . . ..”
Few could argue truthfully that the middle class is not suffering. Most of us in the shrinking middle class see our monthly bills increasing while our incomes remain stagnant, or even shrink.
Our capitalist system is broken, but I don’t think it needs to be replaced. It needs fixing, and even some well-known capitalists admit that.
“I’m a capitalist and even I think capitalism is broken,” Ray Dalio, billionaire founder of Bridgewater hedge fund, said last year. “The problem is that capitalists typically don’t know how to divide the pie well and socialists typically don’t know how to grow it well.”
A U.S. Gallup poll conducted in 2018 reported that only 45 per cent of Americans, ages 18 to 29, are positive about capitalism, a 12-point drop over two years. In 2010, 68 per cent of this age group were positive.
A 2019 Forum Poll found that 42 per cent of Canadians have a negative opinion of capitalism. Those Canadians most likely to view capitalism negatively were in the 18 to 44 age bracket.
The social damage caused by this inequality is being reported more often now, notably in films such as Parasite and in fairly recent books such as Hillbilly Elegy, Tightrope, and Educated, all of which document the damaging toll on families unable to access education and economic opportunities.
One suggested way of starting to fix capitalism is to tax the rich more heavily. Both Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz have argued for higher taxes on the rich.
Also, reforms that would allow low-income families better access to education, health care and housing would make the system more equal.
Certainly, the warning signals of revolutionary upheaval caused by the widening crevice between rich and poor are becoming obvious.
The 15th edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report has warned that financial inequality continues to intensify, and a result could be economic confrontations and domestic political polarization. We’ve certainly seen the latter in both the U.S. and Canada.
Bridgewater’s Dalio has warned that growing inequality in the U.S. could lead to “great conflict and some form of revolution unless capitalism is reformed.”
Reform is needed, and urgently, so that our capitalistic system produces better lives for everyone, not just those who already are getting an unfair share.
The World Economic Forum warns: “The challenges before us demand immediate collective action, but fractures within the global community appear to only be widening. Stakeholders need to act quickly and with purpose within an unsettled global landscape.”
Strong leadership is required to get the fixing done. Strong leadership particularly in politics. Strong leadership by people who do what they know must be done, not what their political parties or rich friends want.
