Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 35

'We Are Story'

Richard Wagamese completed his life journey last week, leaving behind the only thing any of us leave: his story.
It is a brilliant, inspiring story. A homeless street kid fights alcoholism and the torments of being born Indian to become one of Canada’s most important writers.
Wagamese, 61, died Friday, March 11 at his home in Kamloops where he had lived for the past 10 years. He was born at Wabaseemoong (Whitedog) First Nation near Kenora, Ont. but was taken from his parents by the Childrens’ Aid Society and raised in foster homes.

Wabaseemong is one of the two Ojibwe aboriginal communities ravaged by health and social ills created by mercury poisoning from a pulp and paper mill.
His parents were residential school survivors deemed incapable of looking after him. When he was a teenager he took to the streets and at age 16 stumbled into a library in St. Catharines where he developed a passion for reading and began teaching himself to write.
He returned to his reserve roots at age 24 and became a journalist, landing a spot at a native newspaper in Saskatchewan. He became a columnist for the Calgary Herald, winning a National Newspaper Award in 1991.
Wagamese began writing books, achieving wide acclaim for his two most recent novels, Indian Horse and Medicine Walk. Indian Horse, the story of a residential school boy who finds hope in hockey but despair in racism, is in production as a movie.
How a tormented street kid with a Grade 9 education could teach himself to write with such powerful simplicity is both mysterious and inspirational.
Here is an example taken from Indian Horse:
“We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together . . . . We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks.” 
No big, showy words. No sledgehammer sentences designed to pound a judgment into readers’ heads. Just simple words evoking powerful thought. Writing that is clean and humble. Exquisite.
Wagamese was believed to have suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his childhood, and fought alcoholism on and off throughout his life. In 2011 he pleaded guilty to three impaired driving charges, which court was told occurred during a two-week binge. He was sentenced to house arrest and banned from driving for 10 years.
The best advice he said he ever received was from Norval Morrisseau, the Ojibwe ‘Picasso of the North,’ who told him to “work for the story’s sake.”
“When I work for the story’s sake I leave my ego at the door and the energy of the story emerges without my interference,” Wagamese once said. “. . . because me and my ego are not in the way of the story pouring outward.”
For me, the best words Wagamese ever wrote were not in one of his novels. I found them on his former website some years back, wrote them down and still keep them at my desk:
“All that we are is story. From the moment we are born to the time we continue on our spirit journey, we are involved in the creation of the story of our time here. It is what we arrive with. It is all we leave behind. We are not the things we accumulate. We are not the things we deem important. We are story. All of us. What comes to matter then is the creation of the best possible story we can while we’re here; you, me, us, together. When we can do that and we take the time to share those stories with each other, we get bigger inside, we see each other, we recognize our kinship – we change the world, one story at a time…”
Richard Wagamese is gone, but his story is here forever. 

The Winter-Spring Battle

There is good news and not-so-good news about the weather for Haliburton County over the next three months.
The not-so-good news: What we saw this week is likely what we’ll get for the rest of March and early April. And, what we got was a whacky mix of spring one day, deep winter the next.
Last weekend saw some of the coldest temperatures of this unusual winter. It was minus 24 degrees Celsius Saturday morning, and even a little colder Sunday morning. This week there is rain and the melt is back on, only to be followed by more winter cold.
I asked meteorologist Michael Carter at the Weather Network in Oakville what’s going on. He says wild temperature swings result from competing air masses. That happens in March with warm and cold air fighting to dominate each other.
The original people of this country had that figured out long before meteorology was a science.
The Ojibwe told stories of the earth shaking as Biboon, the old winter giant, and Ziigwaan, the strong young man of spring, would fight to overthrow each other. Ziigwaan always won eventually but sometimes the battle lasted until the arrival of Niibin, the summer.
That is what happened last year when spring, which was winning the battle in March, was pinned to the mat by well below temperatures through April and into May. People shook their heads then and asked what happened to spring?
“There are no indications of a cool spring like last year,” Michael Carter tells me. “It’s a good story overall.”
The winter-spring battle will continue for the next few weeks, but April, and especially May, will see a quick transition toward summer-like temperatures, Michael says.
There is a chance of more precipitation, however. The number of rainy days likely will not be above average, forecasters say, however, rainfalls might be heavier than usual.
Although the spring outlook is positive, we can’t count out some heavy snowfalls. There is more open water than usual and cool air over warm water can bring lake effect snow.
As of last Sunday only 11.8 per cent of the Great Lakes had ice cover, meaning more lake effect snow to come. The lack of ice also means coastal areas of the Great Lakes will see an earlier spring warm-up.
Although temperatures are forecast to be below normal for the next week to 10 days, it has been a relatively mild winter. As far as I can tell, the temperature not factoring in wind chill, did not hit minus 30 once. The coldest day this winter was Jan. 7 when the low was minus 29.5.
By my count there were only 16 days between Dec. 1 and March 6 when the low temperature sank below minus 20. During the same period last winter there were 24 days below minus 20, six of them below minus 30 and one below minus 40.
Snowfall so far has been about 250 centimetres, which is about average.
I have collected this data from a mystery weather site called Haliburton 3, which lists its location at  Latitude 45°01'56.094" N and Longitude 78°31'52.014" W. On my map that’s somewhere on the south side of Haliburton Village.
I call it a mystery site because I can’t find out much about it. It is an Environment Canada site on the Internet, found by searching for Haliburton 3.
The site does not give current weather and lists only historical data like how much snow/rain fell and what the temperatures were on days past.
I have asked Environment Canada several times to tell me about Haliburton 3. They tell me to contact the severe weather department. Neither the site, nor my request, has anything to do with severe weather. Follow-up messages have not been answered.
It is the only site I know that every day measures and records Haliburton County daily snow- and rainfalls, high, low and mean temperatures and snow depth on the ground. It is an interesting and valuable site for anyone following the weather.
I just don’t know who is doing all that valuable measuring and recording and would love to know more about it. If anyone reading this knows, give me a shout.
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Walls or Reservoirs?

When you’ve lived much of your life in snow country, grossly swelling snow banks are no big deal. Certainly nothing to worry about.
Last week, surrounded by snow banks towering 12 to 14 feet high and growing, I began to worry.

I was visiting our daughter and her family in California and accompanied them up to ski country for President’s Day Weekend (some called it Not My President’s Day weekend). The snow appeared at the 6,000-foot level and farther up we entered a world of white passageways cut through towering mountains of snow.
I have never seen snow like that. Driveways into chalets were tunnel-like with snow banks more than twice the height of our car. Snow blocked the view from my bedroom window, located on the second floor.
Throughout the village, tractor snow blowers wheezed diesel exhaust as they chewed and spit streams of snow to keep the passages clear.
On President’s Day Monday ski families scampered to pack up their gear and get down the mountains in case the highway closed. The forecast called for as much as another five feet to fall over 24 hours.
That area, Sugar Bowl ski resort near Truckee, California, gets an average of 500 inches of snow a year. That’s roughly 42 feet, or 13 metres. By Feb. 20, the day we left, it had received about 360 inches (30 feet) with much more expected.
Haliburton County gets an average of roughly 280 centimetres (nine feet) of snow each year. We are close to that this winter with about 250 centimetres up to the start of this week.
Walking the snow-drowned village was scary. Street signs had disappeared beneath the snow. It was difficult to tell directions and easy to become lost in the maze of snow passageways.
The deep snow was welcome news for Californians. The state has just been through its most severe drought in modern history. A drought state of emergency was declared by the governor in January 2014. Water use was restricted by 25 per cent and as much as 50 per cent in some places.
The Sierra Nevada mountains supply 30 per cent of California’s water, so this year’s heavy snowfalls are being cheered by more people than just the skiers. But there is another part of the story, one that should cause everyone to pause the cheering and think about the future.
When the mountain snowpack melts, much of the water it produces will flow out to the Pacific Ocean, never to help quench California’s thirst.
The state has not built any new reservoir infrastructure in 35 years. This winter’s  drought-ending rains have replenished existing reservoirs, some of which are full and have begun dumping water.
The huge Lake Oroville reservoir in northern California was drained partially  when its dam threatened to give way and flood populated areas. Two hundred thousand people were evacuated from the area but were allowed to return when the dam was reinforced.
So California is throwing out water while waiting for the next severe drought. And more droughts will occur. They are a recurring feature of California’s climate, but appear to becoming more severe.
Major droughts have occurred in 1929-1934, 1976-1977, 1987-1992, 2007-2009 and 2012-2016. 
These dry periods hurt people, and the economy. They suck huge sums of money out of government, change ecosystems and wildlife patterns and are devastating to agriculture and the people who work in food production.
More than one-third of the United States’ vegetables and two-thirds of the country’s fruit and nuts are grown in California. The state’s farm sales were $54 billion in 2014, a significant industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people.
To keep that going, the state must have water. And more reservoirs are needed to store that precious mountain snowmelt and other water from being wasted.
After the weekend ski trip we returned to the San Francisco Bay area and watched the rain wash down the hillsides and pour into the ocean, causing flash flooding in some areas.
As I watched I wondered: If I lived here would I want $30 billion spent on wall to hold back people seeking a better life, or more infrastructure to better manage water, which is the source of all life?

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The Illumination

News of a death does not always bring only dark sadness. Sometimes it brings illumination.
That was the case last week when we learned that Stuart McLean, an unpretentious Canadian icon, had passed away. He died at 68 of cancer.
McLean’s death came at a time when we needed illumination. Our prime minister had just returned from Washington where his visit was considered of so little importance that they forgot his first name. Sean Spicer, Trump’s vacuous press secretary, called him Joe Trudeau.
That, along with the avalanche roar of attention paid to Trump’s megalomania, fed our Canadian inferiority complex. Once again overshadowed by the loud and hugely important cousin to the south, our Canadian littleness diminished to the size of a crumb fallen from a table.
However, the sorrowful news of McLean’s passing reminded us that small and unassuming always trumps egotism and braggadocio. It reminded us that we are a humble people, willing to listen, willing to help and not afraid to laugh at ourselves.

It was indeed an illumination. The kind of illumination that McLean transmitted across the nation through his Vinyl Café variety radio show.
McLean was a CBC radio and TV reporter who moved away from covering the so-called big and important issues concerning Canadians. He began reporting stories that might be considered less newsworthy. They were stories about everyday folks and provided insights into ordinary Canadians and their communities.
He started the Vinyl Café show in 1994. It was presented before live audiences in smaller communities across the country, and from time to time on the BBC and dozens of public radio stations in the United States. It toured 100 days each year, broadcasting roughly a quarter of those on Saturdays.
The Vinyl Café was a fictional second-hand record store owned by Dave – he never had a last name – a bumbler who too often found himself in a pickle. His wife Morley was the sensible partner, usually extracting Dave from his predicaments.
The show also featured musical entertainment performed by lesser known musicians and McLean reading essays about communities and letters from the ordinary people who lived in them. People who worked with him said he regarded his essays as journalism and did extensive research before writing them.
“He reminded us that everything is important, even little things, and that means we’re all important,” Jess Milton, his producer for the last 13 years, was quoted in the New York Times’ story on McLean’s death.
The Vinyl Café told us about and helped us to understand parts of our country that are seldom reported on.
I recall first meeting Stuart McLean in the hallway at a broadcast industry meeting in the early 1980s, long before he invented the Vinyl Café. He reminded me of an Ichabod Crane character, long-limbed and angular in brown corduroy pants and a tweed jacket hanging off his frame. Hanging from one shoulder was a leather-cased tape recorder - a Sony TC-110 if my memory is correct – on which he captured his interviews.
Stuart McLean moved into fictional storytelling on the Vinyl Café, but he remained a reporter.
He was like thousands of journalists in Canada and the U.S. who work at (in many cases for small money) honestly and fairly reporting the theatre of our lives. They vigorously seek out facts and balanced opinions to get as close to the truth as is possible.
Sometimes parts of society do not like to hear the truth and reporters are given the blame for telling it. But that’s just part of the job.
That’s why it was an insult to Stuart’s memory when Donald Trump this week called journalists the enemies of the American people. And most assuredly he meant that for journalists everywhere, including Canada.
Stuart McLean, through his reporting and his trademark storytelling, illuminated our lives and made us feel proud to be Canadians. He did that in a folksy, positive and humorous way.
Donald Trump, evidently suffering the advanced stages of malignant narcissism, makes the entire world feel afraid. Some worry that someday he will have us feeling like radioactive ash.
And he says journalists are the enemy?           

It's About the Birds!

Canada is a country of great diversity, so it is odd that we might still want to single out anything as especially special in identifying our nationality.
Yes, we decided long ago that the maple leaf and the beaver are national symbols. But do we really need anything else, like a national bird?
That is the question now facing the federal government, which has been petitioned by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society to officially declare a national bird this year, the 150thanniversary of Confederation.
Two years ago the Society’s magazine, Canadian Geographic, began a project to select a national bird, inviting Canadians to vote for their favourites. It is not clear how many Canadians participated, however the Society announced in November a decision: the whiskey jack, or gray jay, should be named Canada’s official national bird.
The whiskey jack received fewer votes than the loon and the snowy owl. Geographic, however, rejected those two because they already are provincial symbols: Ontario (loon), Quebec (snowy owl).
The feds now must decide whether we really need to have a national bird. Or should it forget the idea and get on with important matters such as infrastructure decay, the drug abuse crisis, the collapsing middle class, criminal electricity rates and planning how to deal with the damaging effects of a changing climate.
Only a fool would enter the national bird controversy, which of course does not rule out the politicians jumping in.
Firstly, naming national things is passé. That is something countries do when they are trying to define who they are and what they stand for. We know what Canada is and what it stands for and have  got along for 150 years without a national bird, and without a national flower as it happens.
Secondly, getting people to agree on anything these days is like trying to corral chipmunks. Picture the circus in the House of Commons as MPs argue the fine points of declaring the whiskey jack our national bird.
Some MPs would argue that both of the bird’s official names – whiskey jack and gray jay – don’t even use Canadian spellings. Gray and whiskey are American spellings. In this country it’s whisky and grey.
(Incidentally, whiskey jack is taken from Wiskedjak, one of many spellings of the Algonquian name of the little greyish bird known by aboriginal peoples as a trickster).

Then, of course, there is the controversy that the whiskey jack is not found in the most populous part of Canada – southern Ontario. The bird’s southern range,  believe it or not, ends somewhere in the northern part of Haliburton County.
I was thinking about all this the other day while alternately watching the Trumpeter’s inauguration on TV and the chickadees at the feeders outside the kitchen window. (The chickadees were much more interesting!)
Trump delivered a scornful, dystopian speech and boasted how he will fix, immediately, all the screw-ups created by the four ex-presidents seated in the audience behind him.
Meanwhile, the chickadees flitted and twittered, broadcasting a message that despite cool temperatures and a bit of grey sky, the world overall is a pretty great place.
If I was voting for a national bird, or an American president, my choice would be the chickadee. It is a humble little creature that always appears positive and hopeful about its surroundings. Also, although its brain is tiny, it is fully functional.
The Cherokee associated the chickadee with truth and knowledge, traits noticeably missing in the new American president, and an increasing number of other politicians.
At any rate, I am not voting for a national bird. We have more than 400 species of birds in Canada. Each has its own qualities and instead of singling out one as special we should celebrate them all.
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Making the Forest Great again

This Week's (Feb 9) Minden Times Column
A dark and heavy despondency had fallen over the forest. The creatures who worked and lived there brooded over their declining state of affairs.
The beavers complained about jobs lost to workers in other faraway forests. Rabbits, bears, foxes, birds and others worried about illegal immigrants entering the forest, bringing different cultures, religions, and terrorism.
Meanwhile, the super rich got richer while the poor got poorer. The middle class was evaporating. Forest society was a mess.
Fears for the future drove many to despair. Increasing numbers chewed mind-bending leaves and snorted magic mushroom powders, once available only when prescribed by owls, the physicians of the forest.
The decline in the forest also was marked by a loss of intelligence, and a lessening in tolerance for others’ views. Noisy barking and cawing overran reasoned debates and compromises became impossible.
Most of the noise came from the crows who squawked and jeered about making the forest great again. The loudest voice came from the crow Puffball, named because he swelled up to twice his size whenever he cawed, which was often.
It was said that Puffball dyed his feathers and used hairspray to make himself look sleek and majestic.     
“Terrible. Really bad,” he cawed about life in the forest. “Horrible! Disgusting!”
The crows, then all the other creatures, turned to him in hopes that he could make their forest great again.
“The forest is in trouble. It’s terrible,” he croaked. “But we’re going to straighten it out. OK? That’s what I do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out. It starts now.”
Puffball decided to build a high wall across the forest’s southern border. That would stop the illegals from sneaking in with drugs and intent to rape and pillage.
Construction began immediately. The beavers cut trees with their sharp teeth. The bears and the moose hauled the logs while legions of other creatures set them in place.
One day a crow patrolling the forest border spotted light blinking from an abandoned farm house. He swooped down to investigate and found in the rubble pieces of a shattered mirror reflecting the sun’s beams.
He clamped his beak on one of the pieces and flew back to the grand White Oak where Puffball was signing orders.
“Look what I’ve found, Chief,” the crow cawed excitedly. “If you stand over it you can see yourself in it.”
“Fantastic!” Puffball croaked while trying to get a full view of himself in the small piece of mirror. “Amazing. Are there any larger pieces?”
A flight of crows left the White Oak immediately to find a larger piece. Two hours later they struggled back with a piece large enough for Puffball to see his whole self. He hopped back and forth in front of it, preening and cawing about how the forest already was starting to be great again.
The crows found a spot to place the mirror piece so Puffball could walk in front of it often as he went about his day.
Work on the wall progressed through the summer, which was unusually sunny and hot.
One morning Puffball was passing the mirror and moved it to get a better look at himself. As the sun rose higher during the day, the mirror caught the sun’s rays head on and reflected them onto the tinder dry forest floor.
Soon dry leaves on the forest floor began to smolder and white smoke curled into the air. Within minutes there was flame that grew and leaped into other parts of the forest.
All the birds, animals and reptiles panicked. They gathered their children and fled the best they could as the flames grew higher and advanced greedily through the forest.

A few days later a doe and her fawn walked to the edge of where the forest had been. All that remained was blackened tree stumps and grey ash. The carcasses of some animals that could not run fast enough could be seen rotting in the sun.
“What destroyed our forest, mother?” asked the fawn. “It was supposed to be  great again.”
“Vanity, little one,” said the doe. “Vanity. The ruin that comes when popularity becomes more important than honesty and truth.”
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A Return to 'Normal' Winter?

So, winter returns to normal this weekend. Sort of.
Daytime temperatures are forecast to be below the ‘normal’ of minus five starting this weekend. Overnight lows will drop into the minus 10 to 15 ‘normal’ range.
Those forecast temperatures, although freezing and much more wintery than the past two weeks, will not a normal winter make.
The normals used by weather reporting agencies are deceiving because they are based on only the last 30 years of data. Thirty years takes us back to the later 1980s, when global warming began to become significantly noticeable. Before the 1980s, Haliburton County had harsher, more traditional winters.
 
Up in this part of the country the only place they now record that information is at Muskoka airport and Bancroft. At Muskoka, the record keeping is hit and miss. In December, Muskoka missed recording its weather on 12 days. So far in January, it has missed four days.

“What’s going on in the Arctic is really very impressive; this year was ridiculously off the chart,” Gavin A. Schmidt, head of a unit of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration that tracks global temperatures, said in the New York Times recently.

These wild changes in the Arctic climate will continue to impact us, notably in late winter. Forecasts done in the U.S. call for warmer than usual weather this coming February and March.

Our local 14-day forecast calls for highs and lows in the minus six to minus 15 range. So far, no bursts of huge cold or heavy snowfalls are forecast.

That doesn’t mean that we should expect a balmy ride into spring. Arctic cold fronts will continue to appear, bringing those bitter cold February and March days that were so common in the past. However, predictions are that we will see more milder days than usual in the coming weeks.

So far the changing climate in our part of the world has not been devastating. This winter’s snowmobile season has not been the best, but it has not been a washout. This weekend’s return to colder temperatures should help to improve trails.

Also, the ski season has had a good start with plenty of early snow.
Weather forecasting has become progressively more accurate. The same cannot be said for weather recording.

Environment Canada continues to cut back its historical weather record keeping. That’s the info that tells you the temperatures and precipitation amounts on each day of the month.

Bancroft has done much better, not missing any days.

Trying to figure out snowfall amounts has been almost impossible since Environment Canada stopped reporting snow depth on the ground. It now simply records daily total precipitation, rain or snow, in millimeters.

Climate change still is denied, or explained away, by too many people including The Trumpeter, now Narcissist-in-Chief of the United States. He says climate change is a hoax perpetrated by China to make the U.S. less competitive.
However, the changeable winters we have seen in recent years are increasingly explained by scientific data. Of the 17 hottest years in earth’s recorded history, sixteen have occurred since 2000. Last year was our planet’s third consecutive warmest year in recorded history.
There is more warmth and more change to come and we should be prepared for it.
There seems to be pattern developing in our part of world. Cool air moving over warm open waters, bringing heavy snowfalls at the start of winter. Then January thaws increasingly warmer and longer than in the past.
February and March winter conditions seem to have been less severe in recent times. Again, there is some scientific study to explain that and to indicate that even milder late winters are coming.
A new study by Princeton University researchers says that northern latitudes can expect more mild weather days. And, areas in the more southern latitudes can expect fewer mild weather days, which are defined as pleasant outdoor days with fewer heat extremes and less precipitation.
All this is tied to dramatic changes in the Arctic where temperatures are said to be rising more quickly than other parts of the planet. Temperatures last autumn were 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in parts of the Arctic waters.

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I Scooped the Washington Press Corps

You read it here first!
Through fantastic reporting, I have obtained Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration speech. Obviously I can’t reveal how I got it, except to say that brilliant reporting was involved.
So while the entire world waits with eyeballs glued to televisions you, dear readers, have the speech now. Here it is:
My Fellow Americans. And, of course, your lovely ladies as well.
Happy 2017 to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Sad! Very sad!
Welcome to you fans who have come from all corners to witness this historic day. Great people out there. Like Vlad Putin, in the second row, He’s a great guy and his girlfriend Alina Kabaeva has great legs.
Vlad is a leader. You know, unlike what we have in this country.
One thing, though. He is not as good looking as me.  I mean do I look like a president? How handsome am I, right? How handsome? You betcha!            I think it’s important that I say something never said here before: Many scores and years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Well, they got that wrong! Nobody is created equal. You have to know the right people and work the dollars to get that way.
I’m going to work at making a lot more people more equal. Nobody can do it better than me.
I have a great temperament for getting that done. My temperament is very good, very calm. Everything I’ve done virtually has been a tremendous success. In fact everything I have done actually has been tremendous.
I’m going to help the poor, because they need a lot of help. I mean if they have been poor for so many generations, how smart can they be? Basically they are morons and they need help.
I’m also going to do foreign affairs. Foreign affairs, without the help of the State Department. The level of stupidity there is incredible. I'm telling you, I used to use the word incompetent. Now I just call them stupid.
I’ll be consulting myself a lot. Speaking with myself – No. 1 – because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things.
I’ve already seen how our free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people.
There has been a bunch of snivelling about having too many rich men, and too few women, in my administration.
I want to make clear that I cherish women. I want to help women. I’m going to be able to do things for women that no one else could do. They are going to love it.
(Pause as the President summons an aide to bring him a pair of ear muffs).
That feels better. I didn’t want my ears to get frostbitten on my first day as president.
You know all this global warming talk was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive. Now any and all weather events are used by the global warming hoaxsters to justify higher taxes to save our planet!
And of course there’s the carbon footprint thing and the hole in the ozone thing. They say, don't use hair spray, it's bad for the ozone. I want to use hair spray. I’ve got a fantastic head of hair and I want to keep it in place. What’s more important, my hair or the ozone?
Hey, it really is getting cold outside. I see Hillary sitting out there in Row 236 and can hear her teeth chattering. She’ll warm up when we get her locked up.


So that’s about it. I want to cut this short because it really is getting cold. Half the country is in a deep freeze. It’s a major freeze. Weeks ahead of normal.
Our planet is freezing. Record low temps, and our scientists are stuck in ice.
Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!
Catch ya on Twitter!
Email: shaman@vianet.ca

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At the Cash-for-Access Party

A courier arrived at my door and handed me an envelope embossed with the Canadian coat of Arms. You know, the one with the scowling lion and a silly unicorn, each holding a flag.
I tore it open and found an elaborate card, embossed with gold JPJT lettering, inviting Mr. Po Ling to a Cash-for-Access party.
I had no idea who JPJT was, and there seemed to be some confusion about my name. But a party is a party so I rummaged the basement for my tweed suit, knitted tie and the pork pie hat I wore when I was a young reporter.
I arrived at the party site, a castle-like mansion in a leafy Toronto neighbourhood. The place looked like it cost $20 million so I assumed it was owned by an offshore drug lord, or a baseball player.
Inside, I presented the invitation and entered a huge reception room tightly packed with knots of chatting people. A cloud of sweet smelling smoke hung over the room and I saw a guy circulating with a silver tray stacked with what appeared to be hand-rolled cigarettes.
“That’s Billy Blair, the former Toronto police chief,” I muttered to myself. Billy now is the prime minister’s dope czar. He looked a bit foggy, but then he looked that way even when he was chief.
He approached me with an offering but I declined and walked to the bar, trying to decide whether to order a Perrier and water, or a beer.  
“I’ll have a Molson Canadian,” I told the bartender.
The bartender scanned my tweeds and pork pie hat with a good deal of disdain, then sniffed:
“The prime minister has asked that tonight’s guests be offered Chantereines Blanc de Blancs Grand Cru.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I can knock back those craft brews just as quickly as a Molson.”
I wandered about sipping my Grand Cru and watching the people. I heard some giggling from a knot of folks gathered in a corner. I sauntered over and saw Jane Philpott, the federal health minister, talking animatedly, her head wreathed in smoke.
“The opioid overdose epidemic will disappear as soon as we get the weed legalization bill through Parliament,” she giggled, taking a pull from her rollie.
“Yes,” one listener nodded enthusiastically. “And, you will be getting taxes from all that dope, which will mean you won’t have to raise our taxes as the prime minister has suggested.”
I spotted the prime minister in a group gathered in another corner. He was wearing one of those satin smoking jackets guys wear in Turner Classic Movies re-runs. The front of the jacket was embroidered with the large letters JPJT, which I now realized stood for Justin Pierre James Trudeau.
“We need to increase your taxes just a tad,” JPJT was telling the group, “to help the middle class pay their electricity bills. When they are back on their feet, we increase their taxes again, allowing us to reduce yours. It’s a fantastic plan. We’re gonna make Canada rich again.”
“Fantastic!” said one of the billionaires in the group as he raised his glass of Grand Cru. “Here’s to sunny ways and tax-free days!”
“Oh I almost forgot,” said another, pulling out a cheque book. “I have that $50,000 donation to help build the statue of your dear old dad.”
“And here’s my 200 grand for the Trudeau Foundation,” said another.
Suddenly I found myself dragged toward the front door by two large goons wearing Mountie hats. The front doors of the mansion flew open and I was propelled down the stairs, arms and legs flailing in every direction.
“Jim. Jim,” I heard a distance voice calling. “Jim, you are having a nightmare.”
I opened my eyes to see my wife shaking me by the shoulders.
I realized I had fallen asleep reading. I took the book from my lap and opened it at where I left off.
The book was Orwell’s Animal Farm and I was at the scene where Benjamin the donkey is observing the changes to the new society’s commandments painted on the barn wall. Only one commandment remained and it had been edited to read:
 ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS


Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Our Drug Overdose Epidemic

Back in 2003, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) arrived in Toronto from China. Roughly 400 people got it, 43 died, Ontario declared a public health emergency and the rest of the country lived in fear waiting for it to spread.
As this is written, hundreds of people are overdosing on illegal drugs across Canada. It is an epidemic more widespread and damaging than SARS, yet there is no concerted national effort to stop it.

No seems to know exactly how many people are dying, but British Columbia reports 622 overdose deaths between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31 this year.
Ontario says it had 2,471 opioid overdoses between 2011 and 2014. It doesn’t say how many involved deaths, or why in this computer age of Smart Meters that pick the pockets of electricity users, it can’t provide up-to-date, current statistics.
At any rate, we don’t need exact figures to know that every day people in every part of Canada are dying of illegal drug overdoses. It is a national health emergency, but no emergency is being declared.
Deaths from illegal drug overdoses are soaring because of synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Fentanyl is a pain killer and anaesthetic used in medical situations and is much more powerful than morphine.
Fentanyl products manufactured by illegal labs in China, and here in Canada, have no dosage controls. Criminals mix it haphazardly with other drugs to give bigger, better highs. It is said that in some cases a fentanyl amount the size of two grains of salt can kill a healthy adult.
The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reports that every day in the U.S. 78 people die from an opioid overdose. Between the years 2000 and 2014 almost half a million Americans died from drug overdoses.
The epicentre of the Canadian opioid epidemic is Vancouver, where emergency medical teams, social outreach workers and police are unable to keep up with the flow of opioids and the numbers of people overdosing. But the tragic effects are being seen across Canada.
Last week four young children in Calgary woke up to find both their mom and dad  dead from drug overdoses. The parents were drug users and the suspicion is they took drugs laced with a fatal amount of fentanyl.
Calgary police have said the force, and Calgary citizens, are fed up with the car thefts, home break-ins and other crimes tied to the drug epidemic.
Alberta authorities believe the problems will get worse, with the introduction of carfentanil into the illicit drug market. Carfentanil, used to sedate large animals such as elephants, is said to be 100 times more potent than fentanyl. Alberta has confirmed 15 carfentanil  deaths, 14 this fall.
B.C. declared a public health emergency earlier this year in response to the drug epidemic. It had seen drug overdose deaths rise from 364 in 2014 to 475 in 2015, a 30 per cent increase, then 201 deaths in the first three months of 2016. The numbers continue to rise and probably are at 700 or more by now.
Last week the province began opening emergency overdose prevention sites. The sites likely are not legal under federal laws governing supervised injection sites. At the emergency overdose sites, addicts will shoot up on their own while trained workers will be on hand to administer advice and overdose antidotes.
The sites are an effort to reduce the increasing number of calls handled by emergency responders.
“We are doing this because we have to,” B.C. health minister Terry Lake said. “It is a bit like putting out forest fires – you just have to do it and piece together the costing details later.”
Good on him for not fiddling while the bodies pile up in the streets.
There have been high-level calls for the federal government to declare the drug epidemic a national public health emergency. The House of Commons health committee has recommended an emergency declaration.  
However, federal health minister Jane Philpott said the situation cannot be solved overnight and needs more study.
More information on the fentanyl epidemic can be found in an interesting CBC report at: http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/episodes/...
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y