Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 21

A Night at the Movies

Perusing news from the USA I learn that people now go to a library more often than a movie theatre.
A Gallup poll taken just before Christmas found that people visit a library on average 10.5 times a year compared with only 5.3 times a year for movie theatres.

After reading about and watching Sunday’s annual Academy Awards show, I understand why. I’d rather watch raccoons dining at the dump than pay to view some of Hollywood’s recent offerings.
Take for instance the ridiculous Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. How it made it to the Academy Awards defies common sense, as well as common decency. It has to be one of film history’s all-time duds.
It’s packed with star power: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margo Robbie and Al Pacino. Were they on vacation with nothing to do, so they volunteered to take part in this movie-making catastrophe?
It did work out well, however, for Brad Pitt, who won best supporting actor for his low-key performance as a stunt double to DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton, a washed-up cowboy movie star.
The movie was directed by Quentin Tarantino, and to be totally transparent, I don’t like any of his work. He has a penchant for brutal violence and racial slurs in his films.He is not a natural storyteller and prefers to create movies that are non-linear, with scattered plots sprinkled with absurdity.
If I want to watch disjointed absurdity, I don’t need to go to a movie theatre. I can watch the evening news, or take a walk through downtown Toronto.
That’s just my opinion. Many people love Tarantino’s work, which has included Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
Although I don’t like Tarantino’s work, it is good that Hollywood has it. The movie industry needs diversity, in its people and in its work.
It got a shot of diversity Sunday when the South Korean thriller Parasite became the first film not in English to win an Oscar for best picture. The film’s director, Bong Joon Ho, won best director and it also picked up the Oscars for original screenplay and best international feature.
I haven’t seen Parasite yet because I dislike having to read sub-titles, but I will get to it.  I’m told it is a cutting social satire about economic inequality.
I’m assuming that the Academy Awards voters did their job thoroughly and that it is a much more interesting flick than the competing 1917, Joker, or The Irishman.
I thought they were okay, but not on the top of my Academy Awards list, although some of the acting in the competing films was terrific.
Joaquin Phoenix was outstanding in Joker, getting a well-deserved Oscar for best actor. Rene Zellweger (best actress) in Judy and Robert De Nero (The Irishman) put in good performances but neither film left me with anything really memorable.
I would have fallen asleep during 1917 but the rifle fire and explosions kept me awake. It did win three Oscars – for sound, cinematography and visual effects.
Last year’s offerings were much better, I thought. Films like A Star Is Born, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody and Black Panther were good storytelling while carrying important messages.
Three of the best movies I watched this winter did not figure in this year’s Academy Awards.
The Wife, which won nominations last year, is an intriguing story of a wife (Glenn Close) who writes her husband’s books and he wins the awards. The Good Liar (2019) is about a con man outwitted by a widow (Helen Mirren) he is trying to con and Rocketman, is the biographical musical about Elton John.
I thought each of these was as good or better than some of this year’s Academy Awards offerings. But then again, I’m not a film expert. I’m just a guy who likes to sit down to watch some good storytelling and to leave the theatre having seen something memorable.
Much of the Academy Awards stuff I’ve seen this year is not memorable. Except of course for Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, which was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
However, as my dear old mother used to tell me: “Everybody to their own taste, said the old lady as she kissed the cow.”
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A lesson for America

The first week of February is a time of reflection for me. A time to remember a shocking – yet inspiring - tragedy that occurred on the North Atlantic a lifetime ago.
The U.S. army troop ship Dorchester was steaming south of Greenland, carrying 900 soldiers en route to the war in Europe.  It was just past midnight Feb. 3, 1943 when the ship was rocked by a German torpedo ripping into its starboard side.
Soldiers scrambled for life jackets and life boats as the ship began to sink. Four military chaplains, who gave their life jackets to others, stood on the Dorchester’s deck, arms locked together and singing hymns as the ship listed and went down. Seven hundred and four of the 900 soldiers died in the icy waters.
My reflections this year include a fantasy in which the Dorchester resurfaces for a day, the chaplains on deck looking out over the United States of 2020.  What they see would amaze, and likely sicken them.
There has been progress since they left for war in 1943. Average family incomes have increased substantially. The average standard of living became the highest in the world.

Advances in medicine save lives and improve the lives of those burdened with conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
Unfortunately, the main beneficiaries of better lives are the rich and the privileged. Today, an estimated 50 million Americans live in poverty, almost 12 million of them children, or one in every six children. And 500,000 Americans are homeless, children among them.
Poor children are doomed to continuing lives in poverty because educational disparity is so huge in the U.S. The best educational opportunities are available to the rich and privileged, not those from low-income families.
Canadian children from low-income families are twice as likely as similar American children to achieve higher incomes because Canada’s educational opportunities are more equal.
The most distressing change visible to the resurrected chaplains would be the class structure. They would see their country has developed a class system as bad, or worse, than the English aristocratic structure they eliminated in the American Revolution.
The American aristocrats of today are its billionaires, who use their money, power and influence to pile up more and more privileges to pass along to their inheritors.
Authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn note in their new book Tightrope, outlining the crisis in working class America, that billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet possess as much wealth as the entire bottom half of the U.S. population.
The four chaplains I am sure would conclude that America, an empire onto itself, is in decline.
It has become a country of two cultures – the rich who have everything they need and an atrophying working class whose stagnation is breaking down the country’s social fabric with growing anger, racism, political polarization and stress.
A 2019 Gallup poll found that Americans are among the world’s most stressed people. They are tied with Iranians in terms of stress, and more stressed than Venezuelans, whose country is a nightmare of poverty, hunger and bad government.
Americans have good reason to be stressed. They have health care and education crises that are not being solved because needed political action is frozen by political polarization.
The drug epidemic has ruined tens of thousands of families. And gun violence: The figures are astounding – roughly 40,000 gun violence deaths in 2019, including 418 mass shootings.
Some would pin America’s ills on the Trump administration, but the problems have developed over many decades.
At the core of America’s serious problems is its John Wayne philosophy. Individuals who are tough, independent and need no help are ‘good guys.’ The poor and the weak are ‘bad guys’ who can’t make it because of their own faults. America punishes ‘bad guys.’
To stop its freefall from greatness the United States must accept that the world has changed. It is a world requiring less hard-nosed individualism and more collectivism, which means working to help each other, even if it involves self-sacrifice.
That is the lesson of the four chaplains of the Dorchester.
It is a lesson followed by Canada and other strong democracies that provide a leg-up for those trying to get ahead, and safety nets for those who fall.
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Blackhawk finds a home

Amazing news! The Blackhawk is alive and skating.
No, not Blackhawk as in the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League. They appear to be dead for this season, drifting between fourth and fifth place in the league’s western division.
I’m talking about Blackhawk the lost cat, who I’ve just sighted skating – slipping and sliding actually - across the ice-crusted snow behind our cottage.

Blackhawk is a pure black cat with brilliant green eyes first spotted in the woods behind us many weeks ago. I can’t remember exactly when, but it was certainly before Christmas.
He (or she) is a domestic cat, either abandoned or lost. Possibly the pet of a cottager who closed up in late fall, not to return until spring.
I was concerned when Blackhawk first appeared. We had been through the mysteriously appearing cat routine before. Many years ago, and it did not end well for the cat.
That cat had gone feral. I made plans to trap it and bring it to a humane society.
That plan changed when it tried to attack two grandchildren playing on the deck. They escaped it by running into the cottage and pulling the screen door shut. The cat threw itself at the screen, hissing and clawing.
Trapping was no longer an option. I decided to follow the famous order given in the movie Apocalypse Now: “Exterminate with extreme prejudice.”
I’m not a great fan of cats but Blackhawk appeared to be a nice fellow, or gal, with no signs of having gone feral. No evidence that it should be treated with extreme prejudice.
It was thin, hungry and lonesome looking. But it would not approach, even when offered food.
We began setting out food at a distance. Blackhawk came to the food regularly and ate hungrily. It remained wary and kept its distance, running off if we tried to approach.
One morning the cat did not appear at the food dish. I scouted the area and a lingering fear was confirmed. A set of fresh coyote tracks led into Blackhawk’s feeding area.
I told my wife that we could give up our attempts to lure Blackhawk into coming in from the cold. He or she had become a hungry coyote’s breakfast.
However, next morning it was back, staring at the kitchen windows with that “where’s my breakfast” look.
We were thrilled to learn that it had not been eaten. Great news, but we had another problem.
We live only half-time at the lake, and were getting set to leave, likely for two weeks. Would Blackhawk survive?
We could leave food out for it, but Blackhawk would likely eat it all at once then be left without anything. Or, another animal could come along and steal the food.
There was nothing much we could do, so we left Blackhawk to fend for itself.
When we returned 12 days later, Blackhawk was alive and well. Somehow, it had survived, despite a couple of mornings with temperatures in the minus 20 Celsius range.
We spotted it behind a tree, watching the blue jays gorging at a feeder. Then it ran from behind the tree and lunged at one of the birds, but didn’t even come close to catching it.
Its hunting skills did not appear to be well developed and we had not been able to determine whether it even had claws. However, somehow it was surviving on its own.
All our attempts to lure Blackhawk inside failed, so we turned to Google for advice. There we learned that domestic cats who live outside for long periods lose their capacity for socializing with humans.
We also learned that such cats, when caught and turned over to a humane society, sometimes are euthanized because there is low hope that they can become pets again.
Catching Blackhawk and finding she or he a good home was complicated. How were we to figure out what was best for this cat?
So, we decided to leave Blackhawk’s fate up to Blackhawk. It had survived the longest stretch of the winter and looked reasonably healthy and happy.
Maybe it has decided it already has a good home outside. If not, our kitchen door always will be opened to a stray needing shelter from the cold and the wild.

The problem with pigs

As if we didn’t have enough worries about the environment, here’s a new one: wild pigs.
These beasts, considered one of the world’s most destructive invasive species, are well established in the Prairie provinces and are showing up in Ontario. They are the hybrid offspring of imported wild boars and domestic swine.

They are prolific breeders and there are fears they will multiply uncontrollably and destroy natural and agricultural areas here in Ontario.
Early last year the Ontario government reported 28 wild pig sightings and has launched a new pilot study to monitor sightings and gather information to determine what can be done to stop a wild pig population from becoming established.
In Haliburton County, two wild pig sightings were reported in 2019, one an escaped pot-bellied pig. Wild pigs can survive winter because, unlike domestic pigs, they have thick, bristly hair.
They are a serious problem in the U.S., firmly established in 35 states. The U.S. government says they cause $2 billion a year in damage, trampling plant life, rooting up huge areas and squeezing out other wildlife. They also can spread diseases to wild and domestic animals, and to humans.
They dig holes up to three feet deep snorting about for food. Their digging also uncovers tree and shrub roots, exposing them to disease and damage.
“Wild pigs are ecological train wrecks,” says Ruth Aschim, a University of Saskatchewan doctoral student who led a research team that studied wild pig expansion in Canada. The study found that territory occupied by wild pigs has increased on average by 88,000 square kilometres a year over the last decade.
They were not always considered destroyers of the environment. In fact, they once were considered helpful critters, which I learned while pursuing my hobby of family tree research.
I have traced my family back many centuries, discovering it evolved from a tribe of Saxon barbarians who invaded southern England from Europe. They settled in what now is West Sussex and, when they became somewhat civilized, established the village of Poling, which exists today.
The Poling villagers had pannage rights to a chunk of forest to their north. Pannage was an ancient practice of letting pigs and other livestock loose in a forested area to fatten on acorns, chestnuts and other delectables. This particular chunk of forest was called Palinga Schittas (Old English for swine sheds of the Polings), as mentioned in an AD 953 Sussex charter of King Eadred.
Letting the pigs run wild in the forest not only fattened them for slaughter but helped create garden areas. The pigs dug up the soil so thoroughly that rototilling - shovelling back in those days - was unnecessary.
Wild pigs saved many back muscles.
Times change and now we have tractors to break the land. Wild pigs are not needed and are considered by some biologists as the greatest emerging wildlife challenge of the 21stcentury.
Pigs are not native to North America. They were brought here by early explorers and settlers, then again in modern times to diversify livestock production and to provide sport hunting opportunities.
Folks no doubt thought importing the beasts was a good idea at the time. However, they have developed into a problem of our own making.
The biggest part of the problem is that they breed like rabbits. They start having sex as young as six months and one female wild pig can produce a couple dozen piglets every 12 months or so over a lifespan of four to eight years.
So it is not hard to believe the U.S. department of agriculture estimate that there are seven million wild hogs on the loose in that country.
Part of Ontario’s new pilot study is to encourage people to report any sightings of pigs outside a fence. It is asking people reporting sightings to include a description and, if possible, a picture. Sightings can be reported by email to wildpigs@ontario.caor on the iNaturalist Ontario Pig Reporting webpage.
The government’s goal is to use information from sightings, and variety of other sources, to decide what measures can be taken to stop wild pigs from becoming fully established in the province. The U.S. has found that trying to eliminate wild pig populations, even through extensive hunting, is almost impossible.  
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A winter cold and wet

My first glimpse of the bird has my mouth watering. It looks plump and juicy and I imagine it sitting in a roast pan, plucked and sprinkled with rosemary needles and a touch of garlic powder.
A closer look tells me its plumpness is merely feathers puffed out from nervousness over spotting my presence. It actually is a skinny little bird, weak from starvation as it huddles beneath the icy rain-draped lower branches of a young balsam.

My thoughts of it as a savoury meal immediately turn to sadness and shame.
It is a young partridge, perhaps not yet a year old. Or, to be technically correct, it is a young ruffed grouse, which are mistakenly called partridge in some places, notably in Northwestern Ontario where I grew up. The only partridge we have in Canada is the imported Hungarian partridge, a different bird altogether.
The name doesn’t matter. It is a sick bird and a grim reminder of how changing climate is changing nature’s balance.It is not as dramatic a reminder as the one billion animals estimated to have perished in Australia’s wild fires. But a reminder still.
Abnormal summer heat and arid conditions sparked the wild fires that have ravaged Australia’s wildlife.A moody winter of madcap temperature swings, ice pellets and freezing rain are what has weakened this little grouse, and likely others.
Temperatures this winter have been all over the Celsius or Fahrenheit or whatever scale you depend upon. One morning last week dawned at minus 25 Celsius. The very next dawn brought plus two Celsius.
Erratic precipitation hasn’t been helpful either. It rained, at least a trace, on 21 days between Nov. 1 and the first two weeks January. The weekend just passed saw almost two inches of rain fall on parts of Haliburton County.
And, there has been little blanketing snow, which provides winter protection for some forest critters. There have been numerous days of snow flurries and short-lived squalls but no days of heavy snowfalls.
The little grouse that I have come across has spent much of the winter cold and wet. Chilly dankness isn’t good for any living thing with a set of lungs.
In a more normal winter, the grouse would find warmth, and protection from predators, by burrowing in deep and fluffy snow. That type of snow is their friend and does not restrict their ground travel because each fall they grow pectinations, fleshy bristles that act like snowshoes to help them walk across snow.
They certainly don’t need snowshoes this winter. Snow in many places has been only a few inches deep and hard and icy.
The current situation of little snow, icy rain and winds force the birds into thick conifer cover where they lose weight and perhaps starve or freeze. When they do venture out to find food, their weakened condition makes them easy prey for raptors, foxes and coyotes.
Not a pleasant scenario for a bird species already in decline in Ontario, and especially in northeastern states like Pennsylvania and New York, which estimates grouse populations are down 80 per cent since the 1960s.
Grouse are an important game bird, providing enjoyable recreational hunting opportunities, which in turn provides revenue for hunting-related industries and for government programs.
They are an important part of food chains, feeding on plants and insects while providing food for predatory birds and other animals.
They are an icon of our uplands. Their quick, sharp-turned flights and their spring drumming and elaborate courtship dances can’t help but intensify our fascination with nature.I hope this little bird survives until spring when it can find a mate and produce some offspring that will in turn help rebuild grouse populations.
There is a chance it will. Daylight hours are getting longer and stronger and some late winter warm sun will encourage shrubs and trees to begin sprouting the buds and catkins that grouse love and need to survive.
The experts forecast that global temperatures will continue to rise, creating more winters like this one. If they are correct, we need to start figuring out how changed winters will affect our grouse and other wildlife and what we as individuals can do to help ensure their populations always are stable and healthy.
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The perfect Christmas tree

There’s news this week that an electric eel named Wattson is being used to help light up a Christmas tree at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.

This would be wildly exciting news to my dad. He was a starry-eyed Christmas tree connoisseur, and if alive today our living room would have an aquarium filled with electric eels illuminating our Christmas tree.
Searching for and decorating the absolute perfect Christmas tree was an obsession in our house.
The annual Christmas tree project began two weeks before Dec. 25. Dad would start it off by honing the axe. Artificial trees barely existed back then and considering one, instead of a live trophy cut and dragged from the woods, would be sacrilegious.
And, there was no chainsaw. No saw of any kind. Only a hand axe could be used in the devout work of whacking down the perfect Christmas tree.
On an appointed morning, usually during a storm of the century, we would trek into the snowy woods to begin the hunt for the perfect tree.
After trudging for an hour through the deepest part of the woods we would end up back at the forest edge where we began.
“That’s the one!” my father would declare, eyeing a tall balsam that was the first tree we had passed when entering the woods an hour earlier. “It’s perfect.”
The perfect tree always was balsam and always a giant, 20 to 30 feet tall. Balsam held their needles much better than spruce, my father said, and the tallest trees had the best crowns.
The harvesting began with my father cutting away lower branches to make room to swing the axe into the tree’s smooth trunk. The thunking of the axe resounded through the forest as wood chips floated in the air like oversize pieces of confetti.
This was strenuous work and after a minute or two my father’s rimless glasses would fog, making it difficult for him to see the angle of the cut, which determined where the tree would fall.
My father told us precisely where the tree would fall but anyone betting on the accuracy of his precision was sure to lose their money. Or consciousness, if you could not get out of the way quickly.
We children witnessing the cutting were frozen with apprehension as the axe did its work. The first crack signalling that the tree was falling sent us scrambling through the snow, desperately trying to guess where the tree would land.
When the tree was down, and all bodies counted to ensure no one was pinned beneath it, the crown would be measured for living room height and the axe would be put to work again.
There was no enlightened environmental thinking back then. We were surrounded by tens of thousands of trees and no one thought twice about cutting a large healthy specimen and taking just its crown for Christmas.
After being dragged home the tree was anchored in a pail of hard-packed sand and set in a corner of the living room.
Strings of ancient lights that could never pass an electrical inspection were placed strategically on the branches. Then coloured balls were hung on branch tips where they would catch and reflect the red, blue, green and yellow lights.
Then came that final, and most important, decorating step – adding the tinsel.
Tinsel was the real deal back then, long strips of tin or lead foil that were malleable and could be bent around a branch to stay firmly in place. Not like today’s flimsy silvery strips that fly off at a sneeze.
Tinseling the tree was an art performed only by father. He did, however, instruct us in the do’s and don’ts of tinsel hanging so we could participate as we got older. Sort of an apprenticeship in tinsel hanging.
When every branch was fully draped with tinsel all our family would gather around the tree, eyes wide with wonder. No one said a word as the glow from the tree’s colourful lights danced happily off the decorative balls, sparkling tinsel and our awe-filled faces.
No words were needed because no one needed to be told that we were viewing the perfect Christmas tree.   

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Playing at centre ice

The best position in hockey surely is the centre.
The centre player not only needs to be a fast skater, but a fast thinker capable of quickly grasping and assimilating the thinking of both left and right wingers.
Hockey centres often are team leaders. Almost half of the 31 National Hockey League teams have captains that are centres, a high proportion considering each team carries only four centres against eight wingers and six defence.

Outside of hockey, centre has become an almost forgotten position. Too few of us consider the centre these days, preferring to lock ourselves into the right or the left wings. And too often, tight against the boards on the very extreme sides of those wings.
It wasn’t always that way. Politicians, and the folks that put them into power, used to listen to the views of the other wings, consider them and sometimes work them into their own positions. That’s the way things got done – bipartisan thinking building consensus to do the things needed.
The concept of left and right wings in politics is relatively new. The terms were coined during the French Revolution of 1789. Since then they have morphed into the nightmarish chaos we now see in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Canada.
In recent times the wings have taken on distinct colours. Red, the colour of Communists, social democrats and generally liberal thinkers in many countries, now is associated with the right-wing Republicans in the U.S.  Blue is the colour of the left and so we have red states and blue states.
It’s the opposite in Canada where Liberal-leaning areas are red and Conservative areas are blue.
Sadly absent in my opinion is white, the colour of centre ice before the logos are painted on.  
Why people and their politicians have moved from centre ice thinking off to the wings is difficult to explain. Perhaps they fear being labelled wishy-washy for sitting in the middle considering all sides of a position or argument. Or maybe it is because solid white, certainly in the case of a flag, is the symbol of giving up and we don’t want to be seen as weak.
Whatever, no one should assume that taking a position at centre, thoughtfully weighing facts and considering all sides of an issue, should be taken as a synonym for weakness.
White is a positive colour associated with illumination, understanding and clearing away clutter. It also is a colour known to aid mental clarity.
Mental clarity certainly is needed in these raucous and confused times. It simply is not good enough to yap something unintelligent on a complicated issue presented by a person you do not like.
For example, I am no fan of Premier Doug Ford’s style. But I understand his government’s spending cuts.
Ontario simply cannot afford to go on spending the way it has. The provincial debt is projected to hit $325 billion for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, depending on whose figures you choose to believe.
Whatever the figure, we all know the provincial debt is far too large. If we don’t get it under control, we all are going to suffer greatly in the future.
So, we can criticize Ford but cuts are necessary. Where he is making them is another matter – a question that should be open to calm and rational debate.
Government program cuts always hurt someone. No one wants cuts where it will affect them. That’s why someone needs to initiate some centre ice discussions to build a consensus on how to cut back with the least impact on fewest people, and the most vulnerable.
Similarly, I am not a fan of Justin Trudeau, particularly his judgment. However, I understand his dilemma of allowing more pipelines that will help worsen global warming, or not allowing them and risking more western uprising and possible separation.
There are many such problems that will not be solved with only wild right- or left-wing play. We voters need to get our sticks on the ice and spend more time at the thoughtful centre.
You score more goals by keeping your head up and considering all the play than by skating about wildly, shouting polarized and radical opinions.
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The lessons of hunting

Three brittle jeers break the blessed stillness of the woods.
I am found out.
I was enjoying the stillness, feeling totally alone and unnoticed. Observing, presumably without being observed. Now I am the centre of attention.

It is a blue jay, of course, that has sounded the alarm, warning everything with ears that I am slinking through their territory. I can’t see it, but it hears and sees me from some hidden perch.
I was hoping to spot some game. The day certainly is right. A bold blue sky with an abundance of late autumn sunshine illuminating the darkest corners of these woods.
The jay’s screaming has lessened my chances of spotting anything. I have a feeling that there is not much to spot anyway. There are few tracks and little other fresh sign.
The winter-like weather of early November seems to have alerted birds and animals to start moving to winter quarters. The bears likely have gone into hibernation; the deer are moving off to winter yarding areas where they have a better chance of avoiding starvation.
The official start of winter is three weeks away, but the signs of it bearing down are everywhere.
Bare-branch oaks and maples surrounding me are shivering. It’s not really that cold so I assume they are shivering in anticipation of what is to come.
From the ridge where I am standing, I see the lake below. It is frothing and spitting to protest the lashing it is taking from the wintery north wind. Soon the lake will be calmed and stiffened by relentless overnight freezing temperatures.
The freezing and the heavy-duty storms that accompany it will lock in winter for the coming five or six months.
I think about how lucky I am to be enjoying these woods before the big snows close them off.
Then it hits me: this is the first time I can remember being in the autumn woods unarmed. No shotgun for partridge, no rifle or bow for deer, moose or bear. In fact, I don’t even have a hunting licence, for the first time that I can remember.
I have decided not to hunt this year.
Some folks say age reduces the urge to hunt, but I still have that urge and still know the excitement of hunting.  
I guess I am hunting during this walk in the woods. I hope to see a deer running down the ravine that leads to the lake. Or, hear the rush of a partridge flushing from beneath an evergreen. I’m just not carrying a weapon.
I have decided not to hunt this year because I see game numbers steadily decreasing in the woods that I travel. I have seen only one partridge this year, and if I saw it again while carrying my shotgun, I could not in good conscience shoot it.
The same applies to deer, although their numbers fluctuate from year to year and location to location. They could be abundant next year or the year after.
Not so the partridge. Where I wander the flocks no longer exist. The decline is a trend that I, and other hunters, have seen develop over the past 20 years.
My decision not to take any game this year is strictly personal. In no way do I advocate it as a decision to be followed by others.
Hunting is a valuable part of Canadian culture. It provides enjoyment and food for many people and is an effective management tool in areas where game management is needed.
Also, the licensing of hunting provides governments with money, which hopefully is used to better manage wildlife resources and ensure that hunting can continue for the many thousands who enjoy it.
None of my favourable thoughts on hunting apply to one aspect of the sport – trophy hunting. Killing any animal specifically to pose with its corpse, or simply to wall mount its head or horns, is not hunting. It is killing to feed one’s ego.
Hunting is about learning to become part of nature. That involves understanding that everything in nature – including you – is equal.
Parts of nature kill other parts. They do it out of need.
Humans kill animals, plants, fish and insects.  When they do, there should be some form of need, and a great deal of respect.

Education: the best climate change tool

A whopping majority of we Canadians believe that climate change is real, despite the fact that we are not well educated about the topic.
That’s the conclusion I draw from a new study published this fall by Lakehead University Orillia. The study has a local connection; its principal researcher is Dr. Ellen Field, a post-doctoral fellow and teacher at the university in Orillia, and the niece of well-known Haliburton resident Sharon Lawrence.

The nationwide study of 3,000-plus Canadians found that 85 per cent believe climate change is really happening. However, there’s a huge gap between what we think we know about climate change, and what we really do know.
While 51 per cent of those surveyed felt well-informed about climate change, 43 per cent failed a climate change knowledge test, answering four or fewer of 10 knowledge questions correctly.
Those figures confirm what I suspect about people’s knowledge of other subjects. We have opinions on everything, but few of our opinions are based on knowledge that is factual and deep.
That’s because many of us get our information from television, word of mouth and social media. We used to get much of it from print newspapers and magazines, which had the resources and staff to provide more lengthy and comprehensive reporting but have been pushed aside by digital culture.
Television news is a good thing, but it provides only summary information because of time limits. Nothing deep. Nothing comprehensive.
News from friends and relatives usually is some fact mixed with gossip. Much of what we hear from other people comes from social media, where too many people dump whatever is floating loose and unorganized in their heads.
Climate change is a critical factor in our future. We all must become properly educated about the issues so we can make decisions based on facts.
The survey found that roughly two-thirds of Canadians, and an even higher percentage of educators, feel that the education system should be doing more to educate youth about climate change.
“Students, parents and teachers agreed that schools should be doing more to educate young people about climate change and that climate change education is the responsibility of the school system,” Dr. Field says.
Only 35 per cent of teachers surveyed reported teaching about climate change. And, students who did get some instruction on the subject experienced only one to 10 hours instruction a year or semester.
“There is variation in teachers’ level of preparedness when it comes to teaching about climate change,” says Pamela Schwartzberg, president of Learning for a Sustainable Future, the non-profit organization that was a partner in the study.
The survey also was put to students 12 to 18 and found that 46 per cent of them are aware that climate change is occurring. However, they do not believe that human efforts will be effective against it.
I take that to mean that many students feel nothing can be done so we should just carry on until we all burn to a crisp or are floated away by rising sea levels.
The Lakehead study was released just after 11,000 scientists from 150-plus countries declared a “climate emergency,” predicting “untold human suffering” if more is not done to stop human contribution to climate change. The declaration noted that the world population is increasing by 80 million a year, more than 200,000 a day.
The Lakehead study makes a number of recommendations for providing more climate change education in school systems. It calls on education ministries to put out policy statements to guide climate change education and to begin embedding climate change in curricula.
What the study indicates, but does not shout out, is that Canada is far behind in climate change thinking and education.
The federal government jacks up gasoline taxes and hopes climate problems will disappear. Some provinces object and the fighting begins.
Our politicians need to get fully focussed on this issue and understand that education is a key force in the fight against climate change.
Australia has been at the forefront of education for sustainability for almost two decades now. It’s time for Canada to start catching up.
We have become a country of talkers when we need to be a country of doers.

November meanness

November is the saddest month.

The second last month of the year carries a realization of growing old, reaching an end. Everything is dying or about to die and the crying starts, in the form of the November rains.
The month enters dark and spooky following Hallowe’en, the haunting evening for ghosts and ghouls. Nov. 1 dawns as All Saints Day when some religions honour the dead who were saintly in their lives. And that’s followed by All Souls Day Nov. 2, a day of memorial for all dead.
The month seems to be all about gloom.
There is little life in the woods. Cold and approaching snow have sent birds winging south. The bears have taken to hibernation. Deer are hoofing off to wintering areas where they face less chance of starvation.
The landscape is bleak. Deciduous trees are embarrassed in their nudity, their leafy clothing tossed aside revealing not only their private parts but a wide open view of the terrain that supports them.
The forest floor, revealed totally only briefly in November and April, looks like a battlefield. It is littered with the decaying bodies of the fallen – branches and complete trees that have dropped unseen and silently, victims of age, disease or perhaps vicious winds.
Once vibrant participants in forest life, they are but dark lumps trying to blend into the ground, now turned a sepia tone by the rotting leaves that fell in October.
Everything is different in November. The shocking blue skies that amplified October’s brilliance now show sooty grey, the colour of ashes in woodstoves being fired up across the county.
Even the wind is different. It is more often northerly, pushing naked tree branches together, clicking and rasping like dried bones rattling in a bag.
Nature never keeps us in a bleak and sorrowful state for long, however. November is a short month and almost always before it ends the snows come to blanket our dull and weary landscapes.
Not everyone appreciates the whiteness, but it does cloak November’s decay. It also heralds more interesting times ahead – winter sports, the joy of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays that promise ebullient gatherings with friends and family. And, of course, the Dec. 21 winter solstice that brings increasing hours of daylight and the march toward spring.November’s change from dark decay to snowy whiteness brings hope for days to come after January and February.
But there is something different about November this year. Something nasty and negative.
There’s a meanness present this year. A meanness present in all our discussions, whether they be about the country’s political divisions or the rightness or wrongness of the firing of television hockey commentator Don Cherry.
For example: Don Cherry is a loud-mouth racist unable to accept the changes in hockey, or in Canadian culture. Or, Don Cherry is an honest and generous person crucified by “left-wing liberal snowflakes.” Hard line opinions tainted by meanness and with little rational thought.
There is no middle ground in that discussion, or it seems any other discussion these days. Everything is argued in extremes with a meanness that is becoming a part of our daily lives.
This meanness is a significant social problem. We see it in political debates, schoolyard bullying, domestic abuse and even mistreatment of animals. It is like a virus has drifted in and infected a once stable and reasonable society.
Meanness develops when people feel small and powerless against the changes and pressures in the world around them.
The world today is one of massive change. People lacking the ability to think about change in a reasonable and wise manner feel overwhelmed and helpless. Trying to solve the problems brought by change seems impossible, so they turn to an easy defence – lashing out strongly and with little thought.      
Nature understands change as inevitable and an important progression in a natural cycle.
The current cycle of our human civilization is not natural. It is out of whack and nature can do little to help us. We have to do that ourselves.
We won’t fix our problems with meanness. Loud swaggering threats never have done much to help define and solve problems.
That’s something for our political leaders - in fact all of us - to think about.

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