No Hell in a Handbasket This Week or Ode to My Granddaughter

I went to a regional high school track and field meet yesterday. That, in itself, is not remarkable. Across much of Canada and I suspect the US, there are thousands of such events occurring during the months of April, May and June. I also suspect that what I observe at this one meet, occurred at virtually every other meet across Canada. Track and field competitions are different from the team sports plays at high school. It is, I think, easier and safer to compete as part of a team and lose than to compete as an individual where you are not only competing against other individuals, you are also competing against yourself. To compete on your own takes a level of courage that may not always be readily apparent.

There were a lot of teenagers. There may have been more teenagers at this event than I have seen in one spot for a long time. Some of the teenagers were obviously older, perhaps competing in the last track or field event of their lives. Equally as obvious were those younger students who were competing in their first competition. Some of the competitors were both gifted athletically and as well as being highly motivated. Some were less so.  In most of the events that I watched, there were clearly one or two athletes whose natural skill and I suspect hard work put them at the top of their field. There were some competitors who demonstrated both a poise and a skill level that suggested that they had received training and advice from coaches other than high school gym teachers. There were some who were obviously talented enough that they might go on to compete at a university level or perhaps even at a national or international level. But most of the student competing in this track and field day and in all of the others across Canada will not make their fame or fortune through athletics. And that makes their active participation all the more remarkable.

For every student who ran faster, jumped higher or threw further than anyone else, there were ten or twelve students who never came close. For every student who collected some sort of ribbon for placing, there were at least an equal number of students who went home with nothing. And all of them tried and they tried hard. No matter how far back they were in the race, no matter how clearly out classed they were, they did their best. That, at least in my mind, speaks to their character. I suspect it is far easier to work hard and to put yourself on public display when there is a good chance of you winning, than it is to do so when you know you can’t win.

The other remarkable thing about this event were the number of adults that were supervising the students. There were none. There were adults acting as judges or starters, there were a few coaches from every school cheering on their athletes, but the students were, for the most part, on their own.  They were not being “babysat”, their behaviours were not being monitored, they were not being controlled or organized in anyway. They got to their events, warmed-up and competed – all without being told what or when to do it. During their down time the students watched school mates compete, talked to other competitors and just hung around. Attractive young women wearing relatively skimpy running clothes walked by young men – with never, at least in my hearing any lewd comments. There was no language that could be called offensive, nor was there any no loud or boisterous behaviour. They acted as mature competent young adults who had the capacity to be organized, focused and just nice people.

In a world where supposedly wise people and other types of doddering old fools sitting on their rocking chairs pontificate about the impending world collapse caused by the incapacities of young people, let me just say: I see no signs of an imminent collapse. In fact I am quite comfortable trusting my future to such young people as I saw yesterday. I am in good hands. 

On Being a Smug Canadian

When it comes to taking in refugees, it is easy for Canadians to feel just a little bit better, a little bit more noble than other countries. After all we did take in 25,000 Syrian refugees in a few months. There is no doubt that we have the right to feel as if we did the right thing, (once we decided to do something after four years of doing basically nothing). While there have been numerous glitches in the system and quite clearly the bureaucracy was, at times, inadequate to the task, those that came are well on their way to being settled in their new homes. It may be three or four years before anyone can determine how successful the relocation was but I think we can take some satisfaction for a job at least well started.  It is easy for us to feel smug. It is easy for us to feel that we have done it better than other country.  But those who propagate such stories are being disingenuous. We have been reasonable successful because unlike the majority of developed countries, we have an almost absolute control over our borders. Canada has never faced the level of illegal immigrants that the US or Europe has dealt with for the past few decades.

The US, for example has been rightly criticized for its policies or lack thereof on illegal immigrants from Mexico, South and Central America. According to Pew Research there were 11.3 million illegal (or 3.5% of the total population) immigrants/refugees in the US. As they are illegal, those numbers could be much higher as illegal immigrants are for obvious reasons, notoriously difficult to count. The US has almost no control over who sneaks in. Their southern border is just too long. In spite of fences and armed patrols, people cross the border daily. The US authorities may, in many people’s minds, behave badly as it attempts to manage the influx of uninvited people. They may be treating those individuals as second class citizens, denying them and their children the right to education or health care; they may be creating a political environment that can only lead to violence, but US government is dealing with a problem that they did not, at least initially, create. A problem for which there is little political will on the part of tax payers to resolve.

The situation in Europe is even worse. The BBC estimates that in 2015 over a million refugees crossed over into Europe without permission. In 2016, according the UN, 189,000 people have already travelled by boat to land on the shores of Europe. It may be impossible to even estimate the number of people who have crossed over by land. Britain, theoretically protected by the English Channel from undocumented refugees (the political correct way of saying illegal immigrants), reports that there are thousands of such individuals.(The Telegraph) living in Britain. Some tax payers, even those who have a strong belief in social justice, are debating on how many people can developed countries accept before their infrastructure breaks down.

In spite of some searching on the internet, I could not find any reliable information suggesting that Canada had a significant number of undocumented immigrants. There are certainly a number of individuals who just stayed once their visas expired, there are some who snuck into the country from the US and I am sure there are a handful who arrived under false pretenses and have evaporated into the Canadian landscape. But there are very few illegal immigrants and they have never come across our borders in such huge numbers that our infrastructure was overwhelmed.

Canada has done well (not as well as Sweden) in terms of accepting refugees, specifically those from the Middle East. Canada could and should do a lot more. But the one thing Canada should not do is to pat our backs too loudly over the small number of invited and uninvited immigrant/refugees who come to our country. Our measly contributions pale in comparison to what other countries are experiencing.

Television and Politicians – an only semi-humorous comment

If there was ever a match made in hell, television and politicians would surely be it. I think one could easily hypothesize that many of our current political ills are a direct result of politicians have accessing to the public via television .

Before there was television, politicians had limited opportunity to communicate directly with the public. Yes there was radio, but the listening public had no way of knowing where the broadcast was coming from or what the politician was wearing. It did not matter. There was no attempt to sway the public by wearing V necked sweaters or walking around in perfectly tailored white shirts with the sleeves rolled up. There were no logs burning in the fireplace or perfectly decorated Christmas trees, no office desk with just enough papers on it to look like the person actually worked there, no pictures of the wife and kids to prove you were a family man - just a voice coming through a poor quality radio speaker. One could do other things while listening to the radio, one was not being compelled to watch the speaker. There was no daily, televised question period where politicians preened and performed for a bored and hungry-for-a-scandal public. There were no televised interviews with questions from learned correspondent that only reinforced the party’s platform.  If someone wanted to see a politician speak, one had to actually go out to a meeting to see and hear them.  If one wanted to learn what the politician said they stood for – you had to actual sit down and read. Before there was television, there were not generations of people trained by Sesame Street and other similar programs to get their information in 90 seconds burst.

There are some who argue that television (and all of the social media) has increased our access to politicians; that they are more accountable to the public; that they can get away with less because we are watching them so much more closely. Balderdash!!! While it is true that we have greater access than ever to the images that the politicians want us to see (can there be any doubt that the daily question period in the Canadian Parliament is a scripted play with poorly trained actors regurgitating lines used  hundred times before?), we do not have greater access to the politicians themselves. While it may appear that those politicians are more accountable and therefore more responsive to their public, they are not. As opposed to television making the politicians more accessible and more accountable, it has given them one more avenue to manipulate the oh so gullible public.

Donald Trump’s surprising (at least to the pundits) rise to the position of being the Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. president may be the best example of a superb showman manipulating the airwaves to gain popularity. There are however, many other examples of how politicians shamelessly use our willingness to sit mindlessly front of a screen, on the presumed assumption that one can learn all one needs to learn through osmosis. As a matter of fact it is hard to think of examples of a politician on television when it was not staged to present them at maximum advantage.

Having said the above, I must confess that I am somewhat confused as to why political leaders go on late night television to be interviewed/mocked by the show’s host. An example of which is Trudeau’s interview with correspondent Hasan Minhaj as part of the Daily Show’s satirical look at the anti-Syrian immigration rhetoric of the American right. While I hope it was clear to most watchers that it was satirical and that the Daily Show is on record of being supportive towards immigration for Syrian refugees, one cannot ever be sure. What possible value does such an appearance have for a Canadian Prime Minister. It does nothing to enhance his or our image, it is difficult to believe that he did it to increase his popularity or that he thought by doing so he would change some American’s minds. He did well and passed on his standard message but why bother?

To Mr. Trudeau and all other politicians – less acting before the cameras and more work when the cameras and lights are turned off would go a long way to convincing me that you  actually care about the issues you profess to and are prepared to do something about them.

Canadian Parliamentarians and Children

 In reading about the latest kerfuffle in the Canadian Parliament where the Prime Minister elbowed a female member of the Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in her chest, it strikes me (not for the first time) that someone must do something to make that institution function in a somewhat more useful way. While the Opposition try to make the event seem more sinister than it was, no one believes that Trudeau intentionally elbowed her. It is just a way for those opposed to the government’s agenda to make things more difficult. It is just a way to embarrass the Prime Minister and to hopefully reduce his approval ratings with the Canadian public. This strategy may even work given how short sighted and easily taken in the Canadian public is. We, like so many other voters in western democratic countries, seem to have an infinite capacity to be fooled or even lied to by our politicians. Still, someone needs to do something.

There are a number of separate but related problems that need to be resolved. One is how people get elected to the house. The Liberals have promised to change our electoral system so that who gets elected more truly represent the will of the voters. The second issue is how the business of the House gets done.

It seems to me that the MPs, specifically those on the Opposition side, are quite content to drag out any discussion as long as possible. In the present Canadian Parliament, because the Liberals have a majority, everyone knows that eventually they are going to have their way. The best the Opposition can do is to delay things as much as possible. Otherwise the ruling party will look to be efficient and effective, which means that they might get re-elected. No matter who gets elected, the strategy is the same.... embarrass when possible, delay always. The Conservatives, who a year ago employed the exact same tactics to speed up the process, are now accusing the Liberals of being the worst thing ever seen in Canadian politics and a danger to democracy. It is fine line between insuring that there is enough reasonable debate and being effective in passing the needed new laws.

 I have a solution to this dilemma.

Many years ago when I was a worker and then the senior worker at a CAS adolescent assessment group home, teenagers who lived there, occasionally refused to do their chores. They were not onerous responsibilities – usually it was doing such tasks as the dishes, sweeping or tidying up. We were not allowed, as Mr. Trudeau did, to grab an individual to help them move long faster. We had in fact, relatively few tools in our arsenal to encourage them to act responsibly and to do their share of the work. My favourite strategy was to sit down and say to the young person “ I get paid to be here, whether you do the dishes now or later, it does not matter to me. You can take as long as you want to get them done. Until you do them, you can’t do anything else. I am happy to sit here and do nothing except watch you until they are done. I am in no rush”. Almost invariably after few minute to save face, the young person would get on with the task. It is difficult for anyone or anything (e.g. the Opposition) to have a fight or argument with someone who won’t argue.

The next time a member of the Opposition wishes to have more debate on a particular topic – let them. The Government of the day should set an agenda, make it clear what will be accomplished by when and allow the Opposition to use their time as they wish. If they want more committee time – fine. If they want longer debates in the house – fine. But those longer debates and extended meetings will happen on their own time. If they want to work harder, discuss more and perhaps look for compromises, then their work day will just have to get longer. They could stall all they want. They won’t get paid any more, but they should feel free to work as many hours as they want. Don’t limit the debate. Challenge the Opposition to work more hours. My bet is that most of them when faced with the choice of being inefficient and argumentative and consequently working more hours or learning how to work together effectively, they will chose the latter option.

Stop treating Parliamentarians as children who can never learn. Give them a clear choice with clear consequences. Trust them eventually they, as did those teenagers, will learn that working cooperatively is better for everyone including themselves.

Giving Aid

Fairly shortly after the earthquake in Haiti various Canadian media outlets trumpeted with much fanfare and perhaps some justification that Canadians had given more per capita to assist that damaged country than anywhere else. Canadians who heard such statements had every reason to be proud. There have been other opportunities to demonstrate our individual and national will and capacity to assist others. Whether it was refugees from Viet Nam or more recently from Syria, disaster aid to the Sudan or to other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the use of our Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in the Philippines, to our aid in Nepal Canada has been ready and able to provide assistance

 Canadians have however, had relatively few opportunities to demonstrate their generosity within our own borders. Certainly when the rivers around Winnipeg over-flow the banks Canadians have contributed to the disaster relief efforts, when the town of Save Lake burnt in another disastrous fire a few years ago, Canadians were there to help but in general we have been fortunate as a country not to have had the type of disasters that other countries seem to have with discouraging regularity. Due to our lack of practice in donating internally and given the often mentioned animosity between central Canada and the West, one could have assumed that Canadians would not have been responsive, or at least not respond quickly.

However, as demonstrated by the wild fire and the consequent destruction of homes and infrastructure in and around Fort McMurray – Canadians are very capable and more importantly very willing to assist their fellow Canadians. I met a lady on the train who was from Fort McMurray. To things struck me about her and her experiences. One was that at every step of the way there was someone or some organization ready to help. The second thing that perhaps should not have surprised me was how thrilled and how gracious she was about all of the assistance she had received.

It seems to me that with a handful of exceptions (most notably Air Canada who appear to not have been at all generous about assisting people to get out of the area) companies, governments and people have done all that they could to make what must have been an absolutely horrible experience to be as smooth as is possible. The amounts of money donated by private individuals and governments not only appears to be sufficient for the moment, but it was allocated/donated almost immediately. Surprisingly there seems to have been relatively little red tape in at least the early stages.

Hopefully the fires will start to die out, people will then be able to assess the situation, things can get rebuilt and people can get back to their lives. It won’t be easy, it will take months and months before anyone’s life will resemble anything near normal. It will cost billions of dollars to rebuild and many of the residents, especially those without adequate insurance, may never recover completely. While it is wonderful that all of the individuals, companies and governments were so responsive during the crises and the immediate aftermath, the real test of our capacity to care and to be our brother’s keeper will be in the months ahead when the fire no longer is the top news story.

On the Road Again 2016 #4

The train had been on time for the first day and a half. However, by the time we left Edmonton it was a hour or so late, by the time it got to Winnipeg it was at least two hours late,by the time we left Winnipeg, it was even further behind schedule.

I went to the snack bar at some point around supper to see if they had anything that I could eat - nothing not even a slice of banana bread Fortunately I still have a few granola bars and some bags of nixed nuts/dried cranberry to get me through the next few hours.I knew that by the time we got to Winnipeg, everything would be closed but I hoped that the snack bar would be re-stocked with something I could eat.

I managed to get a good internet connection and sent out a Facebook post to say where I was. I aso posted my first two blogs on the trip I had more to send out but the connection was slow and my tablet had decided to use its energies to download all sorts of upgrades for the various applications I do wish I could figure out how to stop it from doing that. It always seems to upgrade at the most inopportune times.

One of my travelling companions had mentioned that he needed to find an ATM so that he could have money to buy some food.I saw him walking through the lobby carrying a large bag of chips. I asked him were he had got tem from. I was pretty sure that there were no corner or grocery stores anywhere near the train station.He told me that he had found a little store inside a rather posh hotel just down the street. While I had already used twenty minutes of the forty minutes we were given to do the internet thing, I decided that I needed to  buy something to munch on. I hustled across one street and down another, popped into this very nice hotel with automated revolving doors and uniformed  attendants found the little shop, bought a bad of chips and hustled back. I needed not to have rushed. It was another ten minutes before we were allowed to board and another hour and  bit before we left the station completely. Why - I have no idea.

The mother and sun from Fort Mac and my guide to junk food and I talked for almost an hour as we waited for the train to get moving. He is originally from Sweden but his accent is more Australian as he worked there for a few years.He is on a one year work visa but right now is travelling around. It is nice to be part of this foursome. We don't talk a lot, but it is nice to have someone to either say good morning to or to occasionally groan abut how slow the train is.

I am not too sure if it is because the springs in this car are shot or if the track has been warped out of place by frost but this trip has been the roughest I can remember. There are sections where the train is swaying so much that I can't type.

It is interesting to note that the trees in northen Ontario are just starting to show their leaf buds.....which makes the trees here about seven - eight weeks behind those on the west coast and at east three-four weeks behind the trees in the Rockies.

I have spent a birthday is some unusual ways....but spending it on the train with no one knowing it is my birthday and not getting any birthday wishes may be the strangest.

On the Road Again 2016 #3

Tuesday Am

I had not slept well on Sunday night. I was wide awake by 5:00 on Monday morning. I had therefore assumed that I would fall asleep fairly quickly on Monday night. And I did, I think sleep for a bit. But I was wide awake when we got to Edmonton just around 11:00. I think I was curious as to how many people would be getting on. I had been told that because of the offer of free tickets, there might be a lot of people deciding to leave Fort Mac for a bit. I was aware that if this was the case, I might have a seat mate for much of the remaining trip. However, only three people got on (and at least four got off) so my seat was safe.

There was some sort of problem with one of the mechanical or electrical components of the train and it took them some time to fix/replace it . There was  large, bright station light just outside of window and falling asleep became impossible. We were there for well over an hour and no matter how tired I was, I just could not sleep. When I did fall asleep after the train got going, it was more fitful than most of my sleeps on a train. When I finally "got up" around 7:00 I felt groggy and sleep deprived. I can remember my first trip on the train. I curled up on the seat and slept wonderfully well - or at least that is how I remember it. I have noticed that I don't curl up as well as I use to.

Unlike yesterday when the sky was clear, I woke up this morning to dull grey skies. It was difficult to initially determine as to whether or not the greyness was due to rain clouds or to smoke drifting down from Fort Mac. I thought I could detect a slight smell of old smoke in the air - perhaps smelling smoke was only my imagination being over active as there clearly were rain drops accumulating on the windows.

I decided to have breakfast in the fancy dining car. Breakfast is the only time that we peons are allowed to enter the holy sanctuary of the rich folks. It was a strange feeling wandering through the narrow passages to the dining car. It felt as if we were trespassing. The space itself was very restrictive, limiting. Narrow corridors that are only wide enough for one person at a time to pass down are lined with doorways leading to little rooms closed off to the world. Everyone is confined to these rather small cubicles. Perhaps their dome cars are larger and well used for socializing. I would appreciate a good night's sleep where I could stretch out, but I think I prefer being in an open space where I can observe and occasionally interact with others.

Breakfast was shared with a retired travel agent coming back from visiting her grandchildren and a mother and son from Fort Mac heading to visit family in Nova Scotia. They were the only two people that took Via Rail up on its offer for free travel. While they ( and her husband who has stayed behind) don't know if their house is still standing - they are some of the fortunate ones. They have house insurance, money in the bank and while they have been laid off from their jobs, they still have access to the health insurance. Still it was clear that they have been traumatized. Breakfast was served nicely on real china and placed on linen table clothes. I got to wipe my dedicate lips with linen serviettes. The food tasted fine but for $12.00 plus tip....I could have eaten better at a Husky service centre or at almost any greasy spoon in Canada.

Because there are fewer people on the train I have gotten to know, even superficially relatively few of my fellow passengers. I think I am also only one out of four or five that are going all the way to Ontario. I did talk to a couple from Newfoundland (who had no accent at all) who were on their was back from an Alaskan cruise, taking the train from Vancouver to Edmonton so that they could visit grandkids before flying home; there are two young ladies in front of me who look to be an age where they should be still in high school- they are great friends and when they are here (they spend a lot of time in the dome car) they giggle almost constantly. There are quite a few young males travelling - all alone. They don't seem to interact very much with anyone. I wonder where they are all going.I have noticed in the past that when the cars reach a certain point of emptiness - it is all too easy for us to build our little cocoon walls.

6:00 PM all afternoon the car has been very quiet. No one has been talking or moving around very much. It looks to be a cool, windy and grey day outside- the sort of day that one would listen to jazz on the stereo, read a good book and drink lots of herbal tea.