Jim Poling Sr.'s Blog, page 37

The Good Thing About Trump

The rise of Trumpism with all its anger, fear, wild exaggerations and other hateful negatives is a good thing.
Yes, a good thing  - in one respect.
Before I get to that, Canadians need to understand that Trumpism is not a U.S-only phenomenon. It has manifested itself in the U.K. Independence Party and the Bexit vote; The National Front in France, the Golden Dawn in Greece, and hyper-nationalistic groups in some other countries.
These political forces thrive by gorging themselves on peoples’ fears. People fear  changes they see occurring every day.

Economic uncertainty is prominent in their fears. Globalization continues to produce economic inequality that is upsetting individual lives, and political structures.
Middle classes are disappearing, leaving an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Ditto the gap between big cities and smaller cities and towns where boarded windows are replacing factories and other businesses.
Terrorism’s constant presence is deepening fear of strangers and certain groups of people. Combined with that are swelling streams of refugees increasing fears of both economic insecurity and terrorism. Strangers viewed by people who fear that if they are not here to drain a shrinking pool of jobs, they are here to kill them.
In all this is the realization that the pillars of our democratic society are doing little to help. Growing numbers of people distrust the justice system, the news media, their religious institutions, and yes, governments.
Governments trowel serious problems with fresh plaster, but the cracks keep returning. Declining job prospects, the growing difficulties of home ownership, infrastructure rot, drug addiction are just a few of the challenges overwhelming our politicians.
Ontario is a classic study. It has been decades since the province has elected a government, of any political stripe, that has done anything more than smooth over, instead of fixing problems.
Sadly, we have a leadership vacuum. The people we need to lead, and the people most qualified to lead, do not want to be drawn into the current political miasma.
So why did I say that the rise of Trumpism is a good thing, in one respect?
In the beginning, Trumpism in the U.S. was dismissed as clownish vulgarism. It was laughable. Now it is being taken seriously and increasingly is becoming the topic of thoughtful writing. The writing has turned from the man, to the factors that have brought Trumpism. And, that’s a good thing.
The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal and others have done impressive pieces on social collapse and other factors contributing to Trump’s rise.
A book titled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance also illustrates what has happened to the social structure of the United States. These works and others are helping Americans to understand the sicknesses in their democracy and help them to find the medicines and healers needed for cures.
This is not happening in Canada, although the same sicknesses exist here. If you don’t believe that, consider these random snippets: Factory workers who have been working 10 years as temps without any benefits, the nightly gunfire in Toronto, the 35,000 Canadians who are homeless every night, the nearly 500 people in British Columbia have died from drug overdoses this year, an increase of 60-plus per cent over last year.
Canadians are not getting much depth reporting about their big issue problems. The Canadian news industry is in ruins, falling apart because of corporate concentration, and dull-witted approaches to the digital revolution.
The industry plays defence against digital, instead of offence to learn from it, adapt to it and get ahead of it. Industry geniuses keep looking for profitable new ways to sell their news instead of how best to serve readers with quality content they are willing to pay for.
But why Canadians are poorly served with quality information about what is behind Trumpism, and what needs to be done to change that, is a story for another day.
Trump hopefully will fade from sight after the Nov. 8 presidential election. He’ll be gone but Trumpism, or whatever other names are attached to ultra-nationalistic movements, will be with us for years to come. 


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Content, Not Style

Like a lot of folks, there was a time when I never went to bed without watching CBC’s The National. Like a lot of people now, I almost never turn the program on.
The National began losing thousands of viewers many years ago when it opted for personalities and style over solid, serious journalism. It became a water-filled balloon that developed a pinhole. Viewers dripped away, then dribbled and squirted out until the pinhole widened into an escaping torrent.
Now it routinely runs behind the CTV and Global national news in audience ratings. Its ratings are somewhere in the range of a specialty channel.
The problem with The National is that personalities are more important than the story. And in journalism, there is nothing more important than the story – the fair and factual story.
The most important personality at CBC, of course, is Peter Mansbridge, aptly named Pastor Mansbridge by Globe and Mail columnist John Doyle. He has announced he is leaving The National but is not retiring from the Mother Corp. He is 68 and will show up doing something else at CBC, no doubt being paid his million-plus bucks.
Nothing illustrates the CBC’s cult of personality more than his departure announcement. His last broadcast of The National will be July 1 next year, Canada’s 150th birthday. How excellent! Two major Canadian events the same day: Mansbridge’s last broadcast of The National and Canada’s 150th. Which would you vote for as the most important?
The National lost touch with Canadians when it decided that its intellectual superiority makes it the best editor of what news the great unwashed should receive. It represents the Toronto left-leaning establishment and Peter Mansbridge is the voice of that establishment.
We’ve all seen the scandalous results of the personality cult developed during Mansbridge’s painfully long run at The National. The Amanda Lang scandal in which the National’s star business correspondent was accused of taking speaking fees from companies on which she reported. She had a too cozy relationship with the Royal Bank of Canada.
Then Evan Solomon, once touted as Mansbridge’s successor, was fired when it was learned that he pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in secret commissions for art sales to people he dealt with as a CBC TV on-air host.
And Jian Ghomeshi, the CBC star who admitted a fondness for non-consensual rough sex and who was accused of sexual harassment and assault. He stood trial for sexual assault and was found not guilty. The CBC had to dump him.
Mansbridge and Rex Murphy, The National’s annoying know-it-all, both crossed journalism’s ethical boundaries by taking big buck speaking fees from companies or others who might be in the news. CBC management said it was disappointed anyone would think that taking large speaking fees would affect any on-air person’s journalistic integrity. Then it turned around and forbid on-air staff from taking paid speaking gigs.
What it should be doing is forbidding anything that nourishes its personality cult. Like Mansbridge accepting the Order of Canada, which should be for people who work tirelessly, often without reward, for the good of their communities.
Mansbridge’s semi-retirement is a huge opportunity for CBC management to return The National to its years-ago position as a powerful news source for Canadians. It is an opportunity to give the news operation back to real journalists who see the story more important than themselves.
A ‘star anchor’ to replace Mansbridge is not necessary. Let a variety of news people with on-air competency present the news stories that they are involved in.             Aside from dealing with its inner cancers, CBC also must reshape itself to become relevant in the online world of news. Online news is a revolution that has brought incredible changes, with more to come. We no longer need to turn on the TV at 10 p.m. to find out what is happening in the world. We already know because we get online news every minute throughout the day.
All traditional news outlets are struggling with how to survive in the new and changing world of news. When it all shakes out, one longstanding axiom will still be there: Content, not style and personalities is the key to good journalism.
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Electrified

Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott had never heard of Ontario when he wrote that line for his play Marmion back in 1808. Ontario wasn’t even a province back then.
Wally didn’t know it then but his words were the perfect fit for the province that has become a Pinocchio factory. Wherever you turn, some political leader or captain of industry is twisting the facts, hiding the facts or outright lying.
A recent example comes from Hydro One, which is owed $105 million by folks who cannot afford to pay their outrageously high electricity bills.
Global News recently asked Hydro One to say how many people in each of the past 10 years have had their electricity disconnected because they did not pay their power bills.

A simple question. An important question because the answer would show how many customers have been hurt seriously by skyrocketing Ontario electricity rates.
Ten years ago, the off peak charge for electricity in Ontario was 3.5 cents per kilowatt hour. Today it is 8.7 centres per kwh. The mid rate back in 2006 was 7.5 cents per kwh. Now it is 13.2. Peak rate was 10.5 and now is 18.
The current numbers will go up again on Nov. 1. Plus, Hydro One has applied for a new set of increases for 2017 and 2018.
So it is reasonable for Ontarians to know how many people are being disconnected for non-payment. Especially considering that unpaid Hydro One bills now total more than $100 million.
Laura Cooke, Hydro One’s Senior Vice-President of Customer and Corporate Relations, did not think it was reasonable. She refused to give the number to Global News. She told the news outfit she reviewed the numbers herself and found no “appreciable difference” in the year-to-year numbers.
We are supposed to believe her. No appreciable difference in the number of people hurt by rates that have almost doubled.
That’s hiding facts that should not be hidden from citizens. Ms. Cooke, however, simply is taking her cue from the government lead by Premier Pinocchio.
Steven LeClair, Ontario’s Financial Accountability Officer, has said the Liberal government is keeping secret financial information on Hydro One and on the health care system and major infrastructure projects. LeClair has said the government has refused to give him information on the financial effects of its move to sell 60 per cent of Hydro One. Or, how it came up with an estimate of the sale’s value. His calculations show that selling off part of Hydro One actually will cost Ontario taxpayers money.
He has said his office has to use other data and do its own calculations to determine the financial effects of government policies.
“Are Ontarians in the dark about it?” he told the Globe and Mail. “I’d say yes. What happens is, the government doesn’t reveal its underlying assumptions and forecasts used in the projections, so it leaves us having to create our own things because we’re not exactly sure where the government has got its information from.”He also says that Ontario does not release fiscal information that would help us all determine if budget forecasts are accurate or pumped up.
The reason the government is withholding information from Mr. LeClair and its citizens has to be obvious: Ontario’s financial situation is much more dire than any of us suspect. The government has promised to balance the provincial budget by fiscal 2017-18. It looks like the only way they will be able to do that is by sleight of hand, which includes hiding facts and spinning out whoppers.
Meanwhile, we know from the Ontario Energy Board that the $105,583,215 in arrears that Hydro One was trying to collect in 2015 was owed by 225,952 customers. That is 1,750 customers more than in 2014.
That still does not tell us how many households have been disconnected because of arrears. My guess is that it is an “appreciable” number.
Just as important; what is the number of people who have cut back on groceries and other life necessities just to pay those outrageous electricity bills?
           
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Thoughts for Food

Summer, its days fading quickly, has been generous and kind this year. Sunshine aplenty, but without the scorching heat predicted to become a regular feature of climate change.
Gardens have done well, despite slightly less summer rain. Our vegetable patch is the best in several years. I’ve never seen apple trees in the region with so much fruit. A couple of trees I pass regularly have branches broken by the weight of the fruit.
Late summer is a time of year when there seems to be enough fresh food to feed the entire world, and then some. Unfortunately, that is far from true. The World Resources Institute estimates that by 2050 the world will need 70 per cent more food than is produced today to feed an estimated population of 9.6 billion people, 2.2 billion more than now.
Simply producing more is not a solution. Creating pasture land for grazing animals is eliminating millions of hectares of forests, which is dangerous to world survival. There is only so much land on earth and we already are seeing the dangers of messing with it.

There has been talk, accompanied by some alarm, about world food shortages eventually forcing us to farm insects for food.
One answer to food shortages is to slow population growth. That is happening but not fast enough. World population is expected to grow by only 50 per cent in this century, compared with an incredible 400 per cent in the last. Still, that’s hundreds of millions of more mouths to feed over the coming years.
One positive approach to a food crisis is lifestyle change. Our society consumes and wastes too much of everything, including food. We waste one-third of the food we produce: 1.6 billion tonnes a year, valued at $1 trillion.  Those figures come from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.
An accompanying problem is that food waste gets tossed into landfills where it produces methane emissions. These add to the world’s greenhouse gas and climate change problems.
No one deliberately sets out to waste food. It happens. Suppliers and growers guess wrong on what will be needed. It happens to consumers as well. We’ve all planned a dinner or a party and ended up throwing out food for a variety of reasons.
Then there are the psychological traps that trick us into buying too much. Sellers want us to buy more and try to entice us with promotions, incentives and special offers that get us to buy things we might not need. One example is the quantity discount where you buy two items and get a third for free. In many cases you don’t need the third, but can’t pass up the deal.
An avoidable factor in food waste is our expectations. We have been lured into the mindset of wanting fruits, veggies and other foodstuffs that will win beauty contests. We have no use for the marred or the malformed. Bruised apples or blackening bananas are ugly ducklings that don’t get taken home.
Fortunately there are a growing number of initiatives aimed at reducing food waste. Denmark, for instance, has become a world leader with numerous initiatives that have reduced its food waste by 25 per cent in the last five years.
A food waste supermarket in Copenhagen has been so successful that a second is scheduled to open next year. It sells food that regular supermarkets plan to discard because of overdue ‘best before’ dates, damaged packaging or incorrect labelling.
You can read more about Denmark’s campaign against food waste at: https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
In San Francisco, a subscription service named Imperfect Produce buys ‘wonky’ produce from farms that will discard it because it does not conform to  industry standards of perfection. It delivers boxes of it at reduced prices.
Here at home Loblaws has launched the Naturally Imperfect program selling ugly duckling produce at cheaper prices.
These initiatives are doing more than working against food waste, or providing food at lower cost. Most importantly they are helping to change attitudes about things that appear less than perfect, and about what we really need.
As Mahatma Gandhi once said: "The world has enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."           
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Yellow Jackets and EpiPens

Their work for the year almost done, the  yellow jacket wasps now have time to explore human spaces, and the leftovers they contain.
There is much to explore. Fruit is ripening on the trees and bushes. The last of the sugary summer drinks are being spilled on decks and patios. The wasps are out in large numbers, tasting it all.   
We appear to be heading into a record fall wasp season. Yellow jackets seem to be everywhere already, especially if they make you nervous.
Most people have little reason to worry about wasps, provided they resist the urge to swat them, and avoid their nests. But for some people the hyper-activity of autumn yellow jackets is the season of fear.
Large wasp populations are likely the result of a milder winter. More queens than usual lived through it. Wasps die off during the winter, except for some queens who live to start new colonies each spring.
My wife recently walked into a yellow jacket nest and suffered about two dozen stings. She is not allergic to their venom, thankfully. Many people who are carry an EpiPen, the epinephrine injector that buys time for anyone suffering severe allergy shock.
EpiPen is the only easy-to-carry, easy and quick-to-use medicine for people who suffer severe allergy shock. This includes many children dangerously allergic to some food items, peanuts to name a common one.
EpiPen is the focus of a yet another pricing scandal in the United States. Profit greed has tripled the price of the life-saving device in the U.S. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, which acquired the EpiPen rights in 2007, has increased its price by more than 400 per cent.
The drug epinephrine itself costs only pennies. The EpiPen allows for super fast, uncomplicated delivery. You simply take it from its plastic case and jab it against your thigh.
So if you live in the U.S., have a severe allergy to stings, or have a child with a food allergy, you have to cough up at least $600 U.S. The pens expire after 12 months.

Teresa Voght Lisek, interviewed for the Mother Nature Network, said her husband and two children each have severe allergies. She says that extra pens must be kept in several locations in case of emergency. Buying enough to cover them safely would cost $5,600.
The cost of one EpiPen in Ontario is just over $100 Canadian plus provincial tax. Our health care system protects us from any outrageous price increase like the one in the States, but don’t be shocked if someone finds a loophole.
The U.S. price of an EpiPen was $57 when Mylan acquired it nine years ago.
Mylan’s EpiPen price increases mean that some people simply cannot afford to buy the protection. They are left to take their chances. Meanwhile, Mylan’s chief, Heather Bresch, 47, received $19 million in compensation last year for doing such a great job.
She is unapologetic about the outrageous price increases on a drug and delivery device that many people need to save their lives.
“I am running a business,” she told The New York Times. “I am a for-profit business. I am not hiding from that.”
Ms. Bresch has experience with controversy.  A report by the University of West Virginia said she was awarded a business degree, 10 years after attending classes and without completing the course work because her father was West Virginia’s governor. He now is a senator.
Senator and daughter might get to meet face to face in Congress. A special  Senate committee has called on Mylan to appear before it to explain the price increases.
Mylan also has angered some Washington politicians for moving its headquarters to the Netherlands in 2014, a move that reduced its tax rate and prevented a takeover that its investors had favoured.
The company will not say how much it makes off EpiPen but sales of the pen exceed $1 billion.
Meanwhile, if you want to keep wasps at bay, try this: Mix one cup of hand soap with 20 drops of peppermint oil. Top up with water and put in a spray bottle. Spray in areas wasps frequent.
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Pretty in Pink?

Blink a couple of times and the fall hunting season will be here. So it’s time to start checking the hunting gear.
 It used to be enough to check just the shotguns, rifles, ammos, knives and other stuff we need for the annual trek into the autumn woods. Not any more. Now you need to check your fashion. It is becoming necessary to be fashionable in the forest.
The clothing industry is here to help you, while of course, increasing corporate profits.
The clothing folks have a problem. They have produced too many real leaf/tree camo outfits. Almost every piece of human apparel now comes in camo. There are camo underpants. Camo thongs. Camo jock straps. Camo bras.
 Almost everyone already has a camo hoody or T shirt. So the industry has been looking for other ways to sell more. They have found it in the colour pink.
The clothing lobby has been all over the politicians and they are getting what they want. Wisconsin, New York State and Louisiana will allow pink hunting clothing this fall as an alternate to blaze orange.  Other states are considering doing the same.
I can hear the sewing machines whirring already, spinning out those hot pink vests, caps, gloves, jackets and pants. We already have seen pink gunstocks, pink camo bows and other pink outdoor accessories.
All this pink supposedly is about attracting more women into hunting. More women hunters means more hunting clothing and equipment sales. And, more money for governments through sales taxes and licensing fees.
Many women are not impressed. Promoting pink in hunting is sexist, they say.
“We felt like it was demeaning to us,” various media quoted Sarah Ingle, Women’s Hunting and Sporting Association president in Wisconsin. “I feel that the legislation should have taken a deeper look into why the sport was declining.”
The Wisconsin government’s time would have been better spent determining what women really need to become interested in the sport, she said.
It’s hard to argue against pink as an acceptable hunter safety colour. Fluorescent  pink, or hot pink, is easily seen in the woods.         
Pink certainly will not bother the deer, who are essentially colour blind. Their vision is limited to the blue-green spectrums, so blaze orange or pink does not stand out for them.
Deer do see ultraviolet, which can cause some objects to glow, or fluoresce. That’s why hunters are told not to wash their hunting clothing in detergents with brightening agents that absorb light in the ultraviolet and violet region.
Allowing pink as safety colour is part of a drift toward making hunting a more upscale pastime. Urbanites are seeing it as a fit with the locavore/farm-to-table movement in which people want to grow, gather or kill their own food.
In trendy neighbourhoods of California, you’ll find a growing number of fashionable chicken coups, where more people are said to be signing up for butchering courses.
Another factor has been the Becoming an Outdoors Woman (BOW) program started back in the 1990s but which has gained increasing popularity only in recent years. Many U.S. states and six provinces now have BOW inspired programs that teach shooting, hunting and handling game.
I don’t have any issues with blaze pink as a hunting colour. It doesn’t compromise safety and it’s always nice to have more choice. It is insulting, however, to say that allowing women to be pretty in pink hunters will attract more into the sport.
“That’s terribly insulting,” Peggy Farrell, national director of BOW in the U.S. was quoted in Peterson’s Hunting. “I don’t want a youth-model shotgun, and I don’t want pink on everything I wear or carry when I hunt.”
Women who hunt don’t want pink gear for hunting. They want gear and clothing that is designed for women’s bodies. Gear and clothing that fit properly an comfortably.
Malinda White, the Louisiana politician who introduced that state’s blaze pink bill, is also a hunter and says she didn't consider the concept sexist.
"It also will generate commerce - I guarantee there are sewing machines going off right now," she said.
Do you think the clothing lobbyists were whispering in her ear?
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Lessons from the Birds

One hundred and two years ago - at 1 p.m. on Sept. 1 to be exact - someone walked past the Cincinnati Zoo bird cage and saw Martha on the cage floor, drumsticks up.
Martha died of old age at 29. She was the last living passenger pigeon, North America’s most abundant bird species, once numbering three to five billion.
Early European settlers described flocks of passenger pigeons so large they blacked out the sun. When they roosted in trees for the night, branches often snapped under the weight of their numbers.
Martha’s passing confirmed the species extinction and helped to bring about another important event two years later. On Aug. 16, 1916, 100 years ago this week, Canada and the United States signed the Migratory Bird Convention in which both countries agreed to uniform systems of protecting migratory birds.
The agreement was aimed at stopping the “indiscriminate slaughter” of the billions of birds that       made their remarkable journeys north in the spring, and south in the autumn.
Indeed, the slaughter had been indiscriminate. Ducks, geese, pigeons and others were shot by the thousands and shipped in barrels to markets and restaurants in big cities such as Toronto, New York and Chicago. Thousands upon thousands were packed in crates destined for factories where their feathers were used in fashionable clothing.
There is one story of one million bobolinks and rails killed in one month near Philadelphia to provide feathers for women’s hats.
Until late in the 1800s it seemed impossible that North America’s huge numbers of birds could become extinct or see their populations dramatically reduced. As the 20th century approached, however, people began to realize what was happening.
Organized hunt clubs were diligent in recording kills in club registers. Entries from the register of the Winous Point Club near Port Clinton, Ohio show what was happening.
Year                Canvasbacks           Mallards        Blue-winged Teal
1880                           665                 1,319                          2,110
1885                           237                     943                         1,019
1890                           697                     394                         603
The migratory bird convention brought some sanity into a society that believed  wildlife resources were limitless and existed solely for human satisfaction. It led to prohibition of hunting non-game birds, closed seasons for hunting game birds, limits on the length of hunting seasons and bans on the sale of any birds, eggs or nests.
The convention could not bring back the Marthas that once blackened the skies. It was a start, however, to changing attitudes about wildlife and slowed the possibility of other extinctions.
Extinction still threatens many species today. The latest North American Bird Conservation Initiative report notes that without significant conservation action 37 per cent of our bird species are at risk of extinction.
Nearly 20 per cent of wetland birds are on a Watch List indicating extinction concerns. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says wetland losses have increased 140 per cent since 2004.
Habitat loss and climate change have replaced uncontrolled harvesting as the biggest threats to birds. Both, of course, are the result of a soaring human population.
Bird Life International reports that 150 bird species are facing world extinction. Also, it lists 197 species as critically endangered.
Populations of common birds seen in urban areas also are decreasing. Various bird organizations have reported declines in common species once considered widespread. Bird surveys have reported that some common species have lost more than half of their populations over the past 40 years.
Declining numbers of birds show that diversity of life on our planet is shrinking. Earth continues to fall behind in the struggle to regenerate from the beatings we humans give it.
Three-quarters of the world’s fisheries now are fully or over exploited. (You probably already figured that out if you bought those mushy farm-raised trout that have been raised on pellets).
More than 350 million people do not have guaranteed clean water to drink every day. (And, if you think that’s just a far-off problem, read up on the roughly 100 Canadian First Nation communities that are without potable water).
So all this is not just about the birds. There is a good chance that sometime off in the future it won’t  be just Martha lying drumsticks up in her house. It will be humankind. 
           
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Beer Glasses and Conversation

There are moments when you miss the ‘good old days.’ Well, maybe just pieces of the ‘good old days.’
We live in times with so many important issues to talk about. So many challenges to meet. We have access to torrents of information.
Yet there is never time to really talk; never enough time to sort what is authentic and what is superficial.
Social media connects more of us more often but it also has distanced us from our traditional interpersonal communication. So many information exchanges and conversations are the digital banter of abbreviations, snippets, Emoticons and other shortcuts that save time but dilute context.
One part of the ‘good old days’ that I miss, TBH, is the beer parlour. Yes, to be honest, I miss the beer parlours, or hotel beverage rooms.
Beer parlours were abundant in every settled Canadian landscape. Any place there was a factory, mill, mine or timber operation, there was a beverage room nearby. They were working class social meeting places where the news, information and opinions of the day were shared F2F.
In Ontario they popped up like mushrooms in 1934, six years after Prohibition ended. Ontario allowed them in hotels, where they quickly became the most popular places for men to drink. After the Second World War, women were allowed into beverage rooms, but they were restricted to separate rooms marked ‘Ladies and Escorts.’
Beer parlours were simple places in simpler times. In their original form they were rooms with tables and chairs and seven-ounce glasses of draft beer on round trays delivered by waiters.
You had to be sitting to be served. There were no stand-up bars like in the western movies. And, you needed a government card to drink and the government kept an interdicted list of persons forbidden from being served.
There was no entertainment, no food, no gambling. No distractions, unless a fight broke out. Just beer, cigarettes and conversation – face to face with friends and colleagues, usually after work.
There was context in those conversations because you could read the faces and body language of the people sitting across from you.
My introduction to beer parlours was in Sault Ste. Marie, which being a steel plant town had by my fuzzy memory close to two dozen beverage rooms. The most popular were the Roosevelt (The Rosie), The New American (The New A), The Beaver Hotel, The Nicolet, The Algoma, The Lock City, The Royal, The New Ontario, The New Toronto and The Empire. And, of course, The Victoria House (The Vic).
The beer parlours attracted all kinds of characters, and some of the most interesting were the owners and the servers.
The Sault’s Victoria House was owned by a Chinese family – the Chows. Charlie Chow established the place and his five sons took it over in 1951 after he died.
Each of the Chow brothers – John, King, Joe, Albert and James – had a distinct role in running the beer parlour.  But any one of them could be seen pouring beer behind the bar or delivering it to the tables.
The trademark of the Chow brothers was their uncanny knack of knowing the favourite beer of each of their customers. The regulars arrived at The Vic, took a seat and were served their favourite without ordering.
The memories of the Chow brothers were remarkable. I returned to the Sault for a visit after a two-year absence. I went The Vic to see if any of my former colleagues were still about.
I took a seat at an empty table and saw Jimmy Chow place a bottle of beer on a tray and head in my direction. One hand covered the bottle label as he approached my table. The other held a bottle opener.
“Ole We-enia, Jim,” he said in his sing-song accent.
I hated Old Vienna beer and always drank Crystal lager. I threw up my hands in protest. “No, no Jimmy. Wrong one!”
Jimmy snapped the cap on the beer and placed it on the table, turning the label toward me. It was a Crystal Lager. He went back to the bar, giggling all the way.

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Home Runs and History

In Cooperstown, New York it’s all baseball. All baseball, all the time. All baseball everywhere.
I’m part of the baseball mania here, cheering for my grandson and his team, the Orinda Thunder from the San Francisco area. Thunder is one of 104 teams competing in a week-long national tournament for 12-year-olds.
There are, by my guess, 1,500 youngsters playing the game day and night on 25 very professional-looking ball fields. When they are not on the fields the players are lining up to get into the world famous National Baseball Hall of Fame on the village’s main street. The Orinda Thunder
Yes, village. Cooperstown is a village, cuddling the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Population 1,800, which explodes to 50,000 during times of baseball mania. One short main street. One traffic light.
Baseball is fun and so is being around 12 year olds. However, too much of anything is not healthy, so I sneak away from the baseball action to find something interesting, other than baseball, about Cooperstown.
On Pioneer Street, not far from the Hall of Fame, I pass an ancient building. It is the Tunnicliff Inn, Est. 1802, and on the large front window is painted: The James Fenimore Cooper Dining Room.
Of course, James Fenimore Cooper (1759 -1851) the famous American author! I skip down to the village library to discover if he had a connection to the village. Connection indeed. His dad, William, founded the frontier settlement in the late 1700s and James lived there on and off for much of his life.
James Fenimore Cooper was the United States’ first famous novelist, writing 32 novels about the roughness and romance of frontier life. Some of his more popular efforts: The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, The Last of the Mohicans.
His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper, also was a writer, and an amateur naturalist. She wrote mainly about country living and nature in a time when nature was much more natural.
Her most important achievement, however, was founding a home for orphans and destitute children. It was established in a large house on the shore on Otsego Lake and across from the village cemetery.
All intriguing history but nagging my reporter’s mind is how a village with one traffic light became the Mecca of baseball.
Craig Muder, Hall of Fame communications director, has the answer, which he shares with the Orinda Thunder sluggers during a visit to baseball’s shrine.
A misty piece of folklore had it that Abner Doubleday, an army general, invented the game for his troops encamped at Cooperstown back in 1839. The legend, nourished by some bad research, grew and was accepted by major league baseball owners and fans.
The Cooperstown area also was known for growing hops used to brew beer. But by the early 1930s, Prohibition and the Depression had knocked the stuffing out of the Cooperstown economy.
Enter Stephen C. Clark, a Wall Street financier who had a home in Cooperstown. He was the owner of what was known as the “Doubleday Ball,” which the legend said General Doubleday and his troops used for the first baseball game back in 1839.
He displayed the ball at the Cooperstown Village Club, which began collecting donated baseball artifacts. Clark proposed a national baseball museum for Cooperstown and in 1939 the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum became a reality.
It is impossible to say where first baseball game was played. That’s because it grew out of Rounders, an English stick and ball game dating back to the early 1700s.
Certainly one of the earliest forms of North America baseball was played in Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia says that a baseball-type game was played June 4, 1838 in Beachville, in southwestern Ontario. That was two years before the Doubleday game in Cooperstown and seven years before the birth of the New York Knickerbockers and the “New York game,”  which introduced nine-man teams.
No matter where the first baseball was pitched, Cooperstown is an excellent venue to celebrate the game. It is here that young players every summer learn about team play, and how wholesome sport can build better citizens.

As Craig Muder told the Thunder players: “Baseball stands for something.”
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Our Shrinking Sand Box

Just when you think the world has enough to worry about . . . .
Now it seems our planet is running out of sand. Yes, sand. Who would have thought it? I mean there are millions of square kilometres of sand in places like the Sahara, The Kalahari, the Arabian, and many other deserts. 
However, a United Nations environmental report says that sand and gravel are being mined faster than earth can replace them. Sand is made by wind and water erosion, a process that takes thousands of years.
It has been estimated that we humans are using 40 billion tonnes of sand and gravel every year to construct buildings, bridges, roads and other stuff. That is twice the amount of sediment produced each year by all the rivers in the world.
Sand and gravel, of course, are bound with cement to make concrete. The 40 billion tonnes of aggregates we use every year is enough to build a concrete wall 27 metres high and 27 metres wide around the equator. (It wouldn’t take nearly that much to build Donald Trump’s wall between Mexico and the United States.)
China has become the world’s biggest user of concrete. Between 2011 and 2013 China is estimated to have used more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th century. In just one year it built 146,400 kilometres of road.
Sand also is used in the production of glass, electronics and aeronautics. Land reclamation is another use that consumes huge amounts of sand and general fill.
Most of our aggregates are pulled from obscure gravel pits found off the beaten track. We pay scant attention to them.
However, sand mining is a serious environmental problem in some parts of the world where everything from monster river dredges to labourers with shovels are used to extract sand for building. In some places sand is even being taken from beneath the seas.
The environmental costs of this mining are mounting and environmental organizations are fighting for practices and laws to control it.
They blame erosion of San Francisco beaches on sand mining. And, they say sand extraction from India’s rivers is harming ecosystems, killing fish and birds. Also that hundreds of acres of forest in Vietnam have been torn up to extract sandy soil. Bridges have been undermined in some places and coral reefs have been damaged in Kenya.
In Cambodia, the big dredges moved into the Ko Kong area almost 10 years ago to pluck huge amounts of sand from the coastline. Critics say the sand is being taken illegally to support the rampant expansion of Singapore. They say mangrove and estuary ecosystems are being ruined, killing the livelihoods of local people, including those who fish for a living.
Sand is worth money and money attracts corruption faster than bear poop attracts flies. A recent New York Times opinion article estimated that sand extraction is a $70 billion industry and that’s plenty enough to attract criminal syndicates.
The UN report says that half the sand used in Morocco comes from illegal coastal sand mining. Sand is removed from beaches to build hotels, roads and other infrastructure needed for the tourism industry. Which leaves the question: when the beaches are gone, what happens to the tourist industry?
With so much sand in the world’s deserts why don’t sand mining companies pick up their pails and shovels and go there? Well, apparently desert sand is not suitable for concrete production or land reclamation because most of it is round, wind-shaped grains that do not bind well.
Environmental groups demand stiffer regulations to control sand mining. But more controls could bring other problems.
Sand is heavy and costly to transport. Trucking greater distances creates more pollution, more traffic problems and all the fallout that comes from that. So you want to get sand and gravel as close as possible to the place that you are using it. Unfortunately, the closest place often is a beach, or an environmentally delicate estuary.
The world is a complicated place, and becoming more complicated every day. Who would have thought we would ever have to worry about running out of sand?
Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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