Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 31

Play less nice?

Just as I was beginning to think that 2018 is going to be a kinder and gentler year I turned on the television. Definitely a mistake.
Exploding on the screen was an advertisement for a new movie titled Proud Mary. Mary is a killer for hire and the commercial showed me an awesome display of booming handguns and rifles, plus fireballs and violent car crashes. The air was thick with lead as hundreds of rounds were fired in brief clips from the film.

Mercifully it was only a commercial and not the full film, which I will avoid.
I tuned then to the World Junior Hockey Championships and had the misfortune of catching a commercial break in the on-ice action. The commercial was a new Nike creation that shows a nice-guy Canadian hockey player taking his pre-game training run.
In 90 seconds the guy knocks over a row of garbage cans, passes a kid destroying a garage door with hockey stick and puck, terrorizes a motorist, knocks over some mannequins, smashes through a glass plate at the arena and elbows numerous players on ice.
As he skates down the ice he smiles widely, revealing the words Play Less Nice tattooed on his teeth.
The message to Canadian athletes, kids in particular, is that Canadians generally are gentle folks, who when they take to the field or the ice should not play nice.
Am I overreacting by finding the ad offensive and just plain stupid? Maybe I am, because I have heard no complaints or outcries about the ad. And violence has become so common that large parts of society have become immune to it.
Ask people on the street if they feel there is too much violence on television, in video games and other forms of electronic media and a large majority will say yes. Yet violence in media continues to increase.
There are stacks of studies showing that violence in media has become more graphic, more sadistic and more sexual in recent years. There also are hundreds of studies showing that there is a connection between media violence and aggressive behaviour among people, particularly children.
The American Psychiatric Association has reported that by age 18 the average U.S. youth will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence.
Research has shown that people who consume a lot of violent media tend to see the world as a war-like place where aggressive behaviour is normal. Also, the more violence we consume, the less sensitive we become to real-life violence, and less empathetic to the suffering of others.
Perhaps just as important, some people who consume a lot of violence through media begin to see the world as a much more hostile place than it actually is.
A quote in Psychiatric Times some years back keeps coming to mind.
 “You turn on the television, and violence is there,”  Emanuel Tanay, a forensic psychiatrist for more than 50 years was quoted in the medical trade magazine. “You go to a movie, and violence is there. Reality is distorted. If you live in a fictional world, then the fictional world becomes your reality.”
It is easy to begin identifying with the characters we see on screens. We see the characters solving their problems through violence, and find ourselves imitating them to solve our own.
So according to Nike if you are not achieving what you want to achieve by being a nice Canadian, then play less nice.
Americans play less nice and we see the results. The U.S. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence estimates that 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner.
Americans are 25 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than people in other developed countries.
Analysis of FBI data shows that 11,000 people in the U.S. were murdered with guns in 2016 compared with 9,600 in 2015, an increase of roughly 15 per cent.
The Nike commercial was created by Wieden and Kennedy, a large American advertising agency. It’s an American message that belongs among Americans, not Canadians.
Unfortunately that’s not likely because most of what Canadians view on television, video games, movies, and video sites like YouTube comes from America.
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Year of the twins

The New Year brings huge news ­- there will be no nuclear war with North Korea. That’s my New Year’s scoop, based on a remarkable discovery.
Through deep-dive investigative reporting I have learned that  Kim Jong-un and Donald J. Trump are related. They are in fact twins! That’s right, born into the same family, but separated at birth.
So stop fretting about nuclear war because twins, although they sometimes yell at each other, will never harm each other.
Some will say that is ridiculous. Fake news! But look at the evidence.
Kim and Trump look alike. Both are chubby and have penguin-like gaits.
Their dumpy physiques are the result of bad diets. Kim binges on imported Swiss cheese, while Trump inhales four Big Macs at a lunch sitting.

Both men are obsessed with their hair. Trump grows his long on the side and combs it over to cover his bald spot. Kim has gone to a trapezoid doo that looks like an old-fashioned desk telephone perched on his head.
Kim has decreed that all North Korean males wear their hair similar to his. Trump has not gone that far, probably because most American men cannot afford boxcar quantities of blonde dye and hair spray.
Neither is a picture of sartorial elegance. Kim wears a dark and dull Mao tunic while Trump prefers his baggy blue suit and bright red tie that hangs well below his belt so it points suggestively to his crotch.
Their educations have been similar. Neither was very bright in school.
Kim went to a top private school in Switzerland where he became addicted to cheese and basketball. He flunked there so his father moved him to a public school and into a lower grade. Trump went to two different colleges but got better grades in sports than anything else.
Both men are fabulously wealthy, Kim the richer by far. Kim is the wealthiest person in North Korea with access to $5 billion and owns a private island. Trump is only the 248th wealthiest person in America with $3.1 billion.
Kim recruits young virgins to his Gippeumjo, which are ‘pleasure squads’ for his entertainment. Trump says that because he is a celebrity he can do anything with women he meets, including grabbing them by the genitals.
Both Trump and Kim like to be referred to as Dear Leader, and each is Commander-in-Chief of his armed forces, but neither has any military experience. Trump missed Vietnam because of heel spurs that don’t seem to have restricted his golf game. Kim learned war manoeuvres by playing video games.
These twins are loud and boastful guys. Kim brags that he learned to drive at age three and invents cancer cures in his spare time. Trump boasts his greatest asset is that he is not mentally ill but in fact a “very stable genius”.
Recently Kim boasted that his nuclear missiles  can reach any part of the U.S. and he holds the nuclear button at his desk. Not to be outdone, Trump boasted that his nuclear button is bigger and stronger than Kim’s.
Each shouts a lot. When Trump doesn’t like someone, he yells “You’re Fired” and they are gone. When Kim doesn’t like someone he shouts “Ready, Aim, Fire” and staff arrive with a body bag to carry the corpse away.
Sure, they yell at each other a lot, but that’s only sibling rivalry, done in fun. I mean if you had a twin who was obsessed with war toys you too would affectionately call him Little Rocket Man. It’s only natural.
So what more evidence is needed to show that they are in fact twins and will not start throwing nukes at each other?
Even their names give clues to their personalities. The un in Jong-un means peaceful or kindness. Trump in its earliest English form means breaking wind.
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The pain of being mechanically challenged

If there is reincarnation, I want to come back as a motor mechanic.
That’s because my current life has been a series of misadventures with machines that burn fossil fuels.
The latest involve a faithful old truck that will not move until it has been warmed up for 40 minutes, an ATV that shut down because of overheating and a snowblower that never overheats, in fact refuses to start unless its spark plug is warmed with a hair dryer.
I have a woeful history of trying to fix things on my own. It’s not that I am uninterested in motorized things or unwilling to tinker when they break down. But my brain’s tinkering cells go into overdrive and become confused whenever I attempt to fix something.
I tried fixing a cranky snowmobile one time. I seemed to have done everything right until I pressed the starter button and the engine exploded into flames.
Not long after that I forgot to shut the lights on my little sports car and the battery ran down. It was parked on a downward slope and had a standard transmission so the fix was obvious. I would get it rolling downhill, jump in and pop the clutch to get the engine turning.
The slope was slightly steeper than I calculated. The car began rolling and when I tried to jump in, the open door bumped me into the ditch. The car rolled progressively faster toward a sharp bend overlooking the lake.
The car never reached the water, having been grabbed and stopped by a large poplar tree. The auto body shop bill was quite a bit larger than the cost of a battery charger, as I recall.
Then there was the time that a friend gave me an old but perfectly usable snowmobile. It started and ran great just before we loaded it onto the truck. I was going to drop it off at my cottage.
It was mid-February and I was not wearing winter gear, but that was not a problem. I would quickly pull the machine off the truck and drive it the short distance into the cottage where I had winter clothes.
The machine pulled off the truck easily, but would not start. I fiddled with the choke, checked the carb and a variety of other things as hypothermia began to set in. As I shivered and cursed, another snowmobile approached.
Its rider, dressed in black, got off his machine, approached, reached out and turned off the kill switch, then turned the key and my machine roared to life.
The stranger turned and left without a word.

My latest misadventure involved my ATV. I was plowing with it last week when a flashing thermometer symbol appeared on the console. I checked the ATV manual to see what that was about.
The manual said a flashing thermometer means the ATV is overheating and should be shut down immediately.
I went to work trying to find the problem. The radiator was hidden under the plastic hood, which had an entry panel. I got to it, but not before breaking the entry panel locking pins.
The coolant was at its proper level so I put the entry panel in place and secured it with my favourite tool – duct tape. I checked out other parts of the machine, found nothing, but determined the ATV the cooling fan was not working.
Broken cooling fans are a bit beyond my mechanical skills so I called the ATV dealer and made an appointment.
I spent an hour shovelling out the ATV trailer, then loaded the machine, strapped it down and hauled it down the highway to the dealership.
The mechanic asked a couple of questions before logging the machine into the repair line.
“So you say the coolant is fine and you checked the fuse, right?”
Fuse? ATV’s have fuses?
He gave me a strange look, pulled the seat off the ATV then opened a little black box that I always had wondered about but never opened. There were rows of little coloured fuses.
He pulled one fuse out and said: “Yep, blown fuse.”
Later that day I was back plowing, my face cherry red, and not from the cold.


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Christmas Memories

The best Christmas presents are memories.Happy memories of times spent with special people, some now gone. Memories that never break or wear out, and are as wonderful and inspiring this Christmas as they were last year, or five years ago.My absolute favourite Christmas memory I have written about many times. The number of times is irrelevant because every time I write about it, tears fall on my keyboard. This is that memory:Fresh-fallen snow protested beneath the crush of my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk cruelly scrapped against too clean a blackboard. Skuur-eek, skuur-eek.
The boots ignored the sounds. They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops creating a meandering wake in the ankle deep snow. From each side of the lane, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there to rest by an impatient blizzard just passed through. Their crests were indistinguishable against the white stucco walls but nearly reached tufted piles of fluffy snow clinging nervously to windowsills and eavestrough lips. The squeaks flew through the still night air, dodging fat flakes that fell heavy and straight onto my cap bill, occasionally splashing into my face flushed warm from the walk. I could have rode back home from Christmas Eve Mass with the family, but the teenage mind prefers independence, and it was a chance to visit friends along the way. Faint strains of music joined the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear the music more clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an open window. I shuffled forward and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then mingle with smoke rising from the chimneys. Notes and smoke rose together into an icy sky illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars and the frosty moon the Ojibwe called Minidoo Geezis, the little spirit moon that appears small and cold early in winter. I held my breath to hear better and determined that the music was the Christmas carol “O Holy Night,” and the notes came from the window in my grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people smoked cigarettes back then and at gatherings cracked a window to thin the smoke. They sang the first verse, and, when they reached the sixth line, the other voices ceased and one voice carried on alone: “Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! O Niiii ... iiight Diii...vine! ...” That’s the part where the notes rise higher and higher until the singer reaches an awesome note. The solo voice belonged to my grandmother, and I knew she was hitting that high note while sitting on the edge of the bed that crippling rheumatoid arthritis had made her prison for sixteen years. She was unable to walk without assistance and had trouble holding a cigarette between her gnarled fingers.The others had stopped singing to listen to her. The second time she hit the high notes at the words “O Night Divine,” a shiver danced on my spine. When she finished singing “O Holy Night,” the other voices started up again, this time with “Silent Night” and other favourite carols. I went into the house and found Christmas Eve celebrants — my mom, dad, and some neighbours — crowded into the ten-by-ten bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They sang long into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the Gauthiers who seldom spoke English to my grandmother and my mother. After the singing ended my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts. I have long forgotten what I got, and it doesn’t matter, because my real gift came many years later: the realization that those high notes were not solely the products of my grandmother’s lungs. They came from a strength far beyond anything that a mere body can produce. They were high notes driven by something far stronger than flesh — an unbreakable spirit. (This column was adapted from my book Waking Nanabijou: Uncovering a Secret Past – Dundurn Group 2007)Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Drowning in Plastic

Sometimes I worry about the strangest things. Like yesterday I worried whether the plastic drink cup I saw tossed from a car window will end up in the ocean.
It’s entirely possible. The wind blows it into a creek that flows into a lake drained by a river that goes to Lake Ontario, into the St. Lawrence River and eventually out to the Atlantic Ocean. Plastic never decomposes completely, so that cup has plenty of time to make the journey.
If it does, it will join the estimated10 million tons of plastic entering the oceans every year. The scientific journal PLOS ONE has published a study that estimates there now are 270,000 tons of plastic floating on the oceans. Some of these floating carpets are dense enough to block sunlight from entering the water.
All that plastic has an impact on wildlife. A University of British Columbia study found that 93 percent of beached northern fulmars had plastic in their bellies. Fulmars are migratory seabirds related to the albatross.
Ocean plastic pollution is estimated to kill or injure more than 260 species around the world.

A good chunk of ocean plastic debris is plastic bags. We Canadians use nine to 15 billion plastic bags a year, says the environmental group Greener Footprints. That is enough plastic bags to encircle the earth 55 times. (Folks in the U.S. use an estimated 100 billion plastic bags every year.)
Plastics are a helpful and important part of life today. They are in almost everything that we use but the problem is that, like many other things, we overuse them.
Plastic bags are an example. Various sources estimate the world uses up to one trillion plastic bags a year, or roughly one million every minute. Only one in every 200 of those bags gets recycled.
There is so much concern about plastic bags damaging the environment that userfees, restrictive laws and outright bans are being put in place. A variety of Canadian cities have, or are considering, measures to control plastic bag use.
Some African nations have placed controls or outright bans on plastic bags. Kenya has passed laws under which anyone selling or importing plastic bags can get up to four years in prison.
Rwanda has declared plastic bags contraband. It is illegal to produce, import, use or sell plastic bags and plastic packaging except within specific industries like health care. Rwandan border guards say women have been caught smuggling plastic bags – tucking them into their bras and underpants.
Plastics are only one part, albeit a large part, of the world’s waste pollution problem. Even all the admirable efforts being made to recycle are hitting snags. Too often there is too much recyclable waste to recycle.
China, the world’s largest importer of waste for recycling, has announced that it will restrict the type of waste it imports for recycling. The Chinese import huge amounts of waste, which they recycle for producing goods they export for sale, or use for themselves.
The U.S. shipped $56 billion worth of scrap to China last year, mainly plastic, metal and paper. European Union countries send 87 per cent of all their plastic waste to China.
The problem is that recyclable waste often contains contaminants that must be sorted and removed before recycling. Sorting and removing contaminants costs time and money. China will no longer will take waste containing more than 0.5 per cent contaminants.
Experts say it will be nearly impossible to meet the 0.5 per cent target. So the U.S. and other major waste exporters to China will be stuck with huge amounts of waste.
The real answer to stopping waste pollution, plastic and otherwise, will not be found only in recycling. We all need to use less; stop our incredible overuse of almost everything. And, focus and educate ourselves about what is happening to our environment.
Some will argue that using more is good for the economy. More products rolling off conveyor belts mean more jobs and more money.
Yes, but we all should pause and consider a quote from Edward Abbey, the American writer and environmentalist:
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

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Drama from the Brits

I’ve not been caught up in and enraptured by the romantic British drama of Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle.
Much of the world has and is feverishly awaiting answers to the big questions: When exactly will the wedding be? What will she wear? Will Harry shave for the wedding? Will they get pregnant immediately?
I haven’t had time for the American princess drama. Too busy with another British  drama, the BBC television series Peaky Blinders.
Peaky Blinders is a captivating but raw show about a family street gang operating in the industrial slums of Birmingham in the early 1920s. The gang was into a variety of thuggery and corruption, plus illegal betting, horse-race fixing, extortion and murder.
The Peaky Blinders was a real life Birmingham gang, but its story is heavily fictionalized in the BBC show. It operated between the late 1880s and the start of the First World War in 1914. The show sets the heyday of the Blinders much later - after that war and into the early 1920s.
The name Peaky Blinders comes from the peaked Tweed flat caps worn by its members. A gang member would head butt a person, the peak of the cap striking the victim across the eyes, temporarily blinding him. Another version of gang history has members sewing razor blades into cap peaks.

The caps were specially popular among working class men and teenagers in the late 1880s.
The show follows the gang family’s rise from basic street thugs to a sophisticated criminal organization that has police and politicians in its pocket. Thomas Shelby, played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy, is the leader of the gang, composed of his brothers, an aunt and a passel of petty criminals.
Variety, the weekly American entertainment magazine and website, gave the show a brutal review after it first appeared in autumn 2013. It has played three seasons now and a fourth is planned. The first three seasons have been picked up by Netflix.
“Handsome but hollow,” wrote Variety reviewer Brian Lowry. “Even armed with razor blades, it doesn’t quite cut it.”
Lowry’s definitely was a minority opinion. Variety’s website was plugged with comments from viewers who did not agree with the review.
 “This series is phenomenal!!!’ wrote one commenter. “Hollywood is incapable of putting out this quality.” (I tend to agree. Hollywood is slipping behind overseas productions).
Peaky Blinders is a very watchable story with suspense, unexpected twists and a great portrayal of a hard-nosed, tough-talking family whose members, despite their differences, are truly bonded to each other. Characters are well played and the dialogue is excellent, something we have come to expect from British shows.
The show is brutally raw, increasingly so as the series progresses. The violence moves from general thumpings and knifings to the gun play you expect from American television. 
Ditto the sex scenes, which leave little to the imagination as the series rolls along. The final episode of Season 3 features an orgy the likes of which I’ve never seen on TV.
Season 3 was close to being overdone. It confirms my belief that television series are best ended after one or two seasons. When they run longer, producers and writers stretch to get stuff that will titillate viewers.
What I like best about Peaky Blinders is the showing of what life was like in Birmingham (and many other cities) 100 years ago. The poverty, the lack of education, the corruption and the moral rot.
We have come a long way since then. British and North American societies are better today: more civilized, better educated, morally elevated and have learned better health habits. (Tommy Shelby smokes a cigarette in almost every scene).
On second thought, are we really that better today?
We dress better, eat better, have more and better appliances and toys. However, the disparity between our haves and have-nots grows alarmingly, jobs continue to disappear, drug addiction is at a crisis level, gun violence is a daily occurrence in our big cities. Corruption and moral rot remain features of our political systems.
The Harry and Meghan drama, like Peaky Blinders, is a temporary escape from the world around us. And, I guess that’s a good thing.
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Bugs and the End of Life

The bug season is well beyond the coming winter, so it’s safe to write about what wonderful creatures insects are. They do wonderful things for us; pollinate our food crops and flowers, feed the birds, control pests, consume our waste and give us useful things like silk and beeswax.
The most useful thing they are doing now is forecasting the end of life on earth as we know it. They are warning us that we likely are witnessing the earth’s sixth mass extinction.
“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” Dave Goulson, a prominent British biologist was quoted in The Guardian newspaper last month. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects, everything is going to collapse.”
That type of talk sounds laughable to anyone who spends time in Haliburton County during May and June. Outside can be a nightmare at that time of year as the blackflies emerge, followed by the mosquitoes, deer flies, horse flies, sand flies, gnats and a variety of No-See-Ums.
Yet even in the land of bug abundance there is speculative evidence that some species are disappearing. Black flies are far less frequent than they were 20 years ago.

If you want to collect evidence of your own, pay attention to your auto windshield next spring. Truckers in developed countries have reported fewer windshield bug splatters in recent years.
Various studies around the world are reporting major declines in insect populations.
One German study conducted over 27 years reported recently that flying insect populations in parts of that country have declined by 75 per cent. The latest State of Nature report by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds suggests that United Kingdom insect populations have declined 59 per cent since 1970.
We don’t give insects much thought because they do not appear to have any purpose except to irritate us. The only bugs that receive much human concern are honey bees and Monarch butterflies.
Also, the pesticide industry is a $50 billion a year business that spreads money around governments and elected officials to receive favourable attention and lessened scrutiny.
Insects make up about 70 per cent of all earth’s animal species. Roughly 80 per cent of all wild plants rely on insects for pollination and 60 per cent of birds rely upon them for food.
Certainly insects can be harmful and destructive. Think emerald ash borer and other nasty bugs that are sickening our forests. Or, malaria and West Nile, diseases that are a curse on humanity.
But we must balance our thinking about bugs. The dangers of insect population declines are serious because bugs are critical to ecosystems that sustain overall life on earth. We need more awareness of the ecological importance of diverse and abundant insect populations.
Back in 1992, a group of 1,700 scientists from around the world issued a warning that humans had pushed ecosystems to the breaking point that could ruin life on the planet.
Now 15,000 scientists from 184 countries have issued a follow-up to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1992 warning.
"Humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse," says the follow-up warning. "Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory."
There is hope, however, that a sixth mass extinction can be prevented. Decisive action on chlorofluorocarbons, the chemicals found in aerosol cans, refrigerators and air conditioners, has shrunk the dangerous hole in the earth’s protective ozone layer.
"The rapid global decline in ozone depleting substances shows that we can make positive change when we act decisively," says the follow-up from the world’s scientists.
We can act decisively by learning more about what is happening in the insect world and how it affects us. Because if the decline of insect populations is a sign that a sixth mass extinction is underway, we need to worry that humanity might be one of the species that does not survive it.
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Come December

December looms on the late November horizon, leaving us wondering how it will treat us this year. Will it be cruel or will it be kind? It has been both in recent years.

Last December was a brute. It was slightly warmer than average but it snowed 27 of 31 days in Haliburton County. Snowfall totalled 134 centimetres, more than twice the average for December.
The year before that - 2015 - was extremely kind. It snowed on only 12 of the 31 December days, and measurable snow was recorded on the ground on only seven days because average temperatures were well above normal.
There is some evidence that this December will not be so gentle.
Expect "a wild ride from start to finish,” the Weather Network said in its Canadian winter forecast released this week. There will be changeable weather patterns featuring extended periods of “high impact weather.”
“High impact weather” is not defined but I translate it to mean rain and freezing rain one week, monster snowfalls the next, then a couple of days of bone shattering cold. A truly genuine mix of miserable winter weather.
Ontario, says The Weather Network, can expect above average snowfall and near normal temperatures.
That forecast follows early predictions by the Canadian Farmer’s Almanac. It predicts much ice, cold and snow for Ontario this winter. Snowfall will be above normal and cold below normal with some places going as low as minus 40 Celsius.
The Almanac says it has 80 to 85 per cent accuracy in its forecasts, except in El Nino years of which 2018 is not one.
Environment Canada, which hedges its bets in statistical gobbledygook and scientific language, appears to be forecasting colder than average temperatures and above average snowfall. 
Generally, this year’s winter forecasts have been hedged and as varied as a pot luck dinner menu. The reason is that forecasters are uncertain how water temperatures on the Great Lakes will affect Ontario’s winter.
Lake Huron temperatures were below average during an unusually wet and cool summer. That changed quickly, however, with a sunny, warm autumn. Lake Huron’s surface temperature was close to 22 Celsius in late October and has remained above normal.
Warm surface water on Lake Huron can bring lake-effect snow to Muskoka and Haliburton. Cold, dry air picks up heat and moisture when it passes over the warm lake surface, creating bands of lake-effect snow.
The warmer the water and the colder the air, the more intense the lake-effect snow bands become.
December is an ideal month for lake-effect snow storms because the lake surface is still warm relative to the colder air passing over them. Extremely cold weather freezes the water, obscuring the moisture and heat and making it difficult for lake-effect snow to develop.
Lake-effect snow bands are long and narrow, averaging six kilometres in width and stretching 50 to 400 kilometres in length.
Wind speed often determines how far a lake-effect snow band stretches. Weak winds usually see the snow falling along Lake Huron’s shorelines and into western Muskoka. Strong winds can bring it into Haliburton County.
The good news is that when winds are exceptionally strong they pass over the lake’s surface too quickly for snow bands to form.
No matter what the weather gives us this December, one thing is certain: Lake-effect snowstorms are going to be an increasing factor in our winter lives.
Annual average ice cover on the Great Lakes has declined 71 per cent in the last 40 years, says the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Centre (GLISA) based in Michigan. Total annual precipitation increased in the Great Lakes region by 11 per cent during the same period.
The centre also says average temperatures in the Great Lakes region have increased two degrees Fahrenheit (1.1C) since 1900.
For anyone who wants to compare this December’s weather as it moves along, here are some statistical averages:
The average high December for Haliburton County is minus 1.5 Celsius. The average low minus 12.5C. The record high for December was 14.5 C recorded on Dec. 5, 2001. The record low was minus 38.5 recorded December 27, 1993. The average December snowfall is 59 centimetres.

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Silence of the Birds

I am in my deer hunting stand, watching and wondering. Wondering where they all have gone.
Not the deer. I am beyond the days of anxiety over seeing a taggable deer. I am just content being here, soaking up the forest sounds and sights.
My wondering is about the birds. Each November that I sit in this stand there seem to be fewer birds.
Today there are no noisy Jays flashing by, squawking and shrieking their concern about my presence. No chickadees flitting nervously, trying to decide whether to get closer to see if I have anything to eat. Not even a patrolling crow or raven croaking a warning about my presence as it passes overhead en route to doing whatever crows and ravens do early in the morning.
I am certain that the numbers of birds in the forest I hunt are declining every year. I have zero scientific evidence to support that, just my own observations and my gut feelings.
Years ago I used to see flocks of grosbeaks and finches at my lake home. The blue jays always were around in numbers, especially if you tossed out a handful for peanuts. There also were some more exotic breeds, like the cardinals, and the warbling vireo whose constant song drove me crazy at dawn and dusk.
Partridge (ruffed grouse) used to be especially abundant. Now there are so few that I won’t hunt them, despite the fact that they are one of my favourite foods.
Certainly there are many studies that support my gut feeling about declining bird populations in general.
A Partners in Flight study from last year says that there are one billion fewer continental birds today than there were 40 years ago. That study was done by a coalition of activists, academics and government agencies in Canada and the United States.
The State of North America’s Birds 2016 reports that 37 per cent of all North American bird species require urgent action to save them from extinction. There is moderate concern for the future of another 49 per cent.
The Red List published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) includes 1,227 world bird species threatened by extinction – 192 of them critically endangered.
Older Canadian studies say that Canadian breeding bird populations declined 12 per cent between 1970 and 2010. The biggest declines were among birds that migrate, and those travelling the greatest distance showing the biggest declines.
Forty-four per cent of all Canadian bird species have declined while 33 per cent have increased and 23 per cent have stayed constant. Arctic shore birds have been particularly hard hit as have aerial insectivores such as swallows and other birds that catch insects in flight. Their numbers are declining faster than any other group of birds but no one seems to know the reason.

A main reason that there are fewer birds in many countries is habitat loss. Much forest and grassland habitat throughout the world is going to agriculture. Logging continues to reduce bird homelands.
Pollution from toxic spills, pesticides, chemicals and heavy metals remains a major factor against bird life despite our efforts to be more environmentally conscious. Many toxic pesticides and harmful chemicals banned or controlled in North America still are freely used in other parts of the world.
Human activity is a major factor in bird kills. Collisions with buildings, power lines and vehicles kill an estimated 900 million birds a year in Canada and the U.S. Cats, feral and domestic, kill another 2.6 billion a year.
We don’t know much about how climate change has affected bird populations. More frequent, stronger storms already are being seen and will impact bird migrations. Coastal flooding might destroy habitat and food opportunities in long-established stopover areas.
Mass Audubon, a Massachusetts conservation society, has climate change projections showing that 43 per cent of species it evaluated are highly vulnerable to climate change over the next 30 years.
There is some good news about bird populations - Canadian waterfowl numbers have been increasing. So have raptors. This is attributable to better wetlands and hunting management and pesticide controls.
This gives hope that with more awareness and more dedicated action, population declines in other species are reversible.
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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No safe distance

One bug season ends, another begins. The one just begun is one to be concerned about.
The late autumn-winter flu bug season already is showing evidence that it will be more severe than usual.
Australia’s winter flu season is just ending with the most laboratory-confirmed flu infections in the last 25 years. Some 222,000 cases were confirmed there this year, more than two and one-half times the number last year. As of mid-October, 504 flu patients had died, Australia’s health department reported.

This year’s main flu culprit is A(H3N2). It hits older people hardest.
There is no such thing as a safe distance in today’s world and Australia’s outbreak will be seen elsewhere. Early surveillance shows above normal Canadian flu activity already and the majority of cases are A(H3N2).
Flu statistics in most places, Canada included, are notoriously unreliable. Our federal  government says tens of thousands of Canadians fall ill from the flu every year and thousands die from its complications. However, its figures are pulled out of guesswork.
Most of us who contract the flu do not go to hospital so no one knows how many get it. All anybody knows is how many people are hospitalized with influenza and how many confirmed deaths there have been.
Last year there were roughly 5,300 flu hospitalizations in Canada and 331 confirmed deaths.
We should pay less attention to the numbers and focus on the future threats of influenza, notably the possibility of a pandemic. Many respected medical agencies and medical minds believe we are overdue for a pandemic that will kill tens of thousands, even millions, depending on how we prepare for it.
A virus capable of igniting pandemic already is circulating. It is a bird flu named H7N9 that has mutated to enable itself to jump from birds to humans. In one study, 88 percent of people infected with H7N9 got pneumonia, and 41 percent died.
What that strain cannot do yet is transmit easily from person to person. Researchers believe that could change. If it does, and if the strain retains its potency during mutation, we will have a pandemic in which millions die.
H7N9 is ranked by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the flu bug with the most potential to cause a devastating worldwide outbreak.
This winter and spring will mark the 100th anniversary of the greatest pandemic of modern times – the Spanish flu. That flu, misnamed because it did not begin in Spain, killed an estimated 40 to 50 million people worldwide.
It travelled to Canada with troops coming back from the First World War. It spread rapidly, reaching deep into the nation, including remote areas. Quebec and Labrador were particularly hard hit.
An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 Canadians died. The disastrous outbreak led to the formation of the federal department of health in 1919.
The death rate for a usual influenza is only a fraction of one per cent. The death rate for the Spanish flu worldwide was 2.5 per cent and it particularly attacked and killed young adults. Researchers calculated that life expectancy in the United States fell to 39 years of age from 51 during the 1918-19 pandemic.
This year’s flu shot will not prevent takers from getting the flu. Health authorities say, however, that it should lessen the severity and keep people out of hospital.
Much has been written to describe our annual influenzas and how we live, and die, with them. One of my favourite descriptions is my own, written in the opening to my 2006 book Killer Flu: The World on the Brink of A Pandemic.
“Influenza is like the village madman. He prowls the shadows of our communities, emerging occasionally to disrupt our lives and hurt relatively small groups of people.
“Once every few decades, he runs screaming into the streets maiming and killing in much larger numbers. We fear him during these insane episodes, but we know we are incapable of killing him, or even banishing him. So when he returns to the shadows,we nervously accept his presence as a distressing part of the life cycle, and then try to forget him.”
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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