Pay equity For the Rich

The was a brief article in some of the national media earlier this week that questioned why Bianca Andreescu, who won the Roger's Cup Women's Tournament earned approximately half of what the winner of the men's tournament won. The only reason why CBC and others even cared about this story was because Andreescu is a Canadian. Without wanting to seem too cynical, if Andreescu had been an Australian or a Brazilian, we could not have cared less who got paid more.

None-the-less - it is a fair question. On the surface (or anywhere else for that matter) there cannot be a good reason why a woman would get paid less than a man for playing the same sport - except of course for those sports where there are insufficient viewers to attract enough fans to pay the salaries (and more importantly to make the owners rich). Tennis appears to be one of those sports where women's tournaments attract as many fans as do the men's tournaments, it is therefore obvious that both the men and the women champions should be paid the same amounts for winning. However, I find it noteworthy that we can get all concerned about the inequality of income amongst professional athletes while ignoring the extraordinary difference between the average Canadian's income and the earning of some athletes.

According to https://playerswiki.com/bianca-andreescu, this 19-year-old has made $2,417,873 this year in prize money. I would imagine that the amount she has made in sponsorships, especially since winning the Roger's Cup is equally as impressive. I accept that she may have significant costs as she jets across the world playing tournaments. I am sure that she has coaches and perhaps a number of other people who work with her, help her stay organized etc. to pay. It is also true that she will not always be a champion and she needs to make enough money to support her in the style she is used to when her earnings drop. I fully support her advocating for herself and other women to get paid equal pay for equal work but I am not prepared to invest any energy in that exercise. Quite frankly, I do not think that anyone else should either.

Watching sports is an activity that is reserved for those who have a significant level of disposable income. Many (perhaps most) Canadians cannot afford to buy tickets to any professional sporting event with a reasonable view of the field/court. While we may call a team our team, and we may cheer them on from the bar or from our living rooms, we have almost nothing in common with the owners of those teams or any of the players, some of who are multi-millionaires.

Pay equity is a fundamental human rights issue. It needs to be addressed at all levels of Canadian society - but can we start with those who are at the bottom of any pay scale - not somewhere near the top?

End of Canadian Manhunt

In the past few weeks, many of us have been closely following the RCMP's manhunt for the two young men accused of murdering at least three people. After finding the bodies of McLeod and Schmegelsky I suspect that many people, specifically those who live in the general area where what appears to be their last known vehicle was found, have breathed out a collective sigh of relief. I am equally as sure that some of the RCMP officers who were doing the search in the muskeg are equally as relived.

In Canada, we have so few manhunts, that this one attracted a lot of attention. People who normally are not interested in who killed whom - wondered what happened to the young men and whether or not they had escaped. Now that their bodies have been found - we will all move on to other things to gossip about. The myriad of questions that remain including why did the original murders occur may remain unanswered forever.

The press has created the general assumption that McLeod and Schmegelsky did commit the murders. To the best of my knowledge, the police have not released any evidence proving that they did kill the three people. We may never see whatever evidence suggested that to the police. Certainly, it would appear to be highly unlikely that anyone will come forward with any sort of motive for the original murders. But one thing is clear - the families of the murdered individuals are rightly shattered. And in at least in one case, the family are angry at one of the fathers for producing such a dangerous young man(1).

I cannot imagine what it would feel like to lose a child. The pain must be overwhelming. I suspect that even the simple acts of living such as breathing are almost impossible. However, I am not sure if the pain of losing a child through violence is all that different than losing a child through an accident or a drug overdose. We allow families of individuals who have lost a child through violence to publically grieve - in fact, the media actively seek out comments from the family. However, it would appear that we are less ready to accept that the parents of the dead, alleged perpetrators are also grieving. Furthermore, there appears to be an expectation that the parents of the individuals charged need to apologize for the actions of their adult children.

No parent is perfect (ask my kids). We all mess up. Sometimes we get lucky and our kids turn out better than we could have ever dreamed. I am not sure if the parents should get all or even any of the credit. Similarly, when our kids struggle or do bad things - it is not always our fault. There are just too many events and too many people in a child's life to blame a single person. It seems to me that there are a number of people grieving over the series of events that led to five people being dead. None of those families will ever know what really happened. However, some of the families will be supported in their grief while others will be blamed and left to cry behind closed doors. As a dad, that feels unfair to me.

Why is it so Hard to Stay Positive?

I swear, I do try to look for the positives in most people. I always try to focus on the behaviour not on who they are as individuals. I believe it does little good to insult the individual even when I profoundly disagree with their comments or actions. But it is so hard to maintain that outlook when people such as the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford uses words such as "animal" or "nutcase" when describing someone who has a mental illness.

Premier Ford used those words to describe a patient of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto who had been on an authorized, unaccompanied trip into the community. He did not return when he was supposed to and has since left the country. The individual in question had committed murder but had been declared not criminally responsible. As his mental illness had been progressively dealt with - assumingly by medication he was given more and more privileges. Whether or not he was released too soon, whether or not he needed more supervision are questions that should be answered, but to call him an animal is just wrong. To further suggest that such individuals should be sent to jail (rather than a mental health facility) because jails can just as easily deal effectively with such individuals demonstrates a profound ignorance of mental illness and even worse a complete lack of any awareness of how our correctional system functions.

One might accept or at least understand how an uneducated, perhaps somewhat intellectually slow and certainly a socially isolated individual might hold such beliefs. If one lived in some far distant backwater of our country and had no opportunity to learn about mental illness, perhaps one could forgive the use of such words. If within that individual's family there had never been anyone who demonstrated aberrant or illegal behaviours perhaps one could at least partially understand the lack of human compassion. But I would hope that anyone who runs and gets elected to be premier of a province would be better educated, brighter and more compassionate than that.

It may be too much to expect that those who get elected to our highest political offices have a clear working knowledge of all parts of our society. It may be a fantasy of only the most naive amongst us that our leaders will base their statements on facts and commonly accepted reality. Our most devout wish the government's actions will be based on some compassion and understanding of the fragility of humans may be a prayer forever lost amongst the debris of fallen stars and dreams. Instead, the people get stuck with politicians who spew the rhetoric of the illiterate, the uneducated or the narrow-minded who are only interested in maintaining their status quo. Instead of leaders who serve everyone - we get politicians who only serve those who will re-elect them.

Lord knows, we might not deserve better- but we surely need better.

On The Road Again 2019 - Epilogue

Before I left on my journey I had had this vision of the perfect trip. I would get great rides with only short waits in between. The weather would be nice (no rain but not too hot with just enough wind to keep the bugs away). If I slept outside it would be a glorious evening with the sky full of stars, soft grass to sleep on and no bugs. It was going to be my final hitchhiking trip - one more time across at least half of the country -celebrating my 70th birthday. My sense of the romance of hitchhiking was going to be fulfilled in every way imaginable.

It was instead not the best of trips. The weather for at least 24 hours was terrible; the rides, while they were great when they came were bracketed by long waits in between. My sore foot made walking and even standing uncomfortable and occasionally downright painful. And the trip took at least a day longer than I thought it should.

Perhaps even worse, some of the rules I had created for myself, rules that in the past seemed to garner me good rides - were demonstrated to be rather irrelevant. The person with the skateboard that I met at the Flying J just outside of Winnipeg, the one who was fairly aggressive seeking rides with the truck drivers and who was annoyingly hyper - got to Vancouver Island the same time as I did. The nice young man with the large dog ( a husky/shepherd mix) got just as many rides as I did, hitchhikers who asked if we could stop and then begged for smokes so they could smoke when we stopped - went as far as I did. I didn't hear any of my travelling companions tell stories nor or do anything else to get that few extra miles - but they got them anyway.

At least on this trip, it didn't matter where I stood, what I wore or whether I had a sign saying where I was going (no one else did). It was, quite frankly a little bit depressing. I felt silly that I had tried so hard to be a "good hitchhiker". When I got home - just over a month ago - I was clear. That had been my last trip. I was done with hitchhiking. My body was no longer in good enough shape to make it fun, I was just too damn old to be out on the highway with my thumb stuck out. I did not need to prove anything to anyone. I had hitchhiked across the country numerous times, made a few epic trips like the summer I crossed the country twice or the time that I went from Sudbury to Yellowknife to Duncan and then back to Sudbury. I was done. But......

I am quite sure that when springtime comes around again I will think about all of the drivers that I have never meet, of the endless possibilities that are out there if one only trusts the gods of hitchhiking. I suspect that I will miss my dreams of being on the open road and I may, just one more time, be seduced by those dreams.

Who says I am too old?

Looking for the Good Stories

When I am a vendor at one of the markets, of course, my primary goal is to sell some of my stuff - ideally some small things as well as a shawl or/or a rug. Not only does selling something feel good in that it validates what I do but as well the money I earn helps pay for my food and my hydro bill. But as great as it is to sell things, there are times when the people that I meet and the conversations that I have with them are far more interesting and important than any money that I may make. On a busy weekend, I may have 20-30 people a weekend coming up to me, watching and asking questions.


Sometimes it is just a brief conversation with a young person who wants to learn how to weave or spin. They ask me if I would teach them or did I need another apprentice. As flattering as that is - I always redirect them to someone who is qualified to teach, but I always encourage them to try. Sometimes it is a parent with a child of the right age and both are interested in what I am doing. They ask all kinds of questions about the spinning wheel, about dyes and about wool. Part of my mission is to demystify spinning and weaving. It is always fun to share what I know and to encourage others to just play. I have had numerous conversations with usually older people who start off their conversation with.... " I can remember my mother doing that when I was a little child". It seems to be such a fond memory for those people, one that they have probably not thought about for decades. I am glad that they share those memories with me. Because I sell within the Cowichan Valley, I fairly often have Indigenous individuals coming up to me and talking about the "spinners" their parents used to spin the wool for the sweaters. Making Cowichan sweaters was and is such a recognizable part of the local culture that the individuals are rightly proud of the sweaters they have knit.

At the Duncan Market this past week, an elderly woman in a power chair rolled up to me and watched me spin for a bit. Then she told me that her grandmother had immigrated from the Shetland Islands (a place well known for its wool and its knitters) to Vancouver Island and that she had taught some of the Indigenous women how to knit. The lady then told me that she had shown some of her mother's knitted toques to someone who was knitting a Cowichan sweater. The knitter showed how in the piece that she was working on, she was using exactly the same knitting stitch that was in the toque. Somehow, in spite of the fact that my visitor and I have different experiences with wool, we felt connected to each other and to wool. It was an important moment, we need to look for and to recognize the points of connection. I asked my visitor if I could share the story with others, she said yes and I have.


The following day, as I was eating breakfast and scanning the over-night headlines, it struck me that I could do a whole blog, day after day just listing all of the bad stuff that is happening in the world. I would not have to even comment on the news - just say - "here is some more bad news" and leave it up to people to decide what to think or feel. But that would get really boring and I suspect, would get really depressing to write and to read. While there are times (more often than not) when news stories are worthy of a comment or a reaction, I think one of the secrets of staying sane is looking for the positives of life. I have little patience for those who only see the world through rose coloured glasses, but there are individual and collective successes that need to be celebrated; there are great stories that need to be told.

I heard one such story this weekend.

Looking for the Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

It would be so easy to become and stay depressed for the whole day. All one has to do is to read the news' headlines. For example, this morning there are stories about the two mass shootings in the US; the fact that India has changed the semi-independence status of the Kashmir region, thereby making the region a potentially even more explosive point between Pakistan and India; Trump has cancelled the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons between itself and Russia so that it has the option of placing land-based nuclear weapons close to China; the climate is getting even warmer than the scientists anticipated; there may be a shortage of medically needed drugs in Canada; the authorities in Hong Kong are still beating up their citizens who are protesting; some 17 year old has apparently tossed a younger person of the roof of the Tate Museum in London and the prevalence of ticks means that we need to always check ourselves for them after going for a walk in the forest. Ugh!!!

It is hardly worth getting up. It would be so much easier to just stay in bed, with the covers pulled up over our heads, pretending that tomorrow will be a better day. But it won't. Or at least tomorrow will not be any better unless we do something to change the world today - and then do something every day thereafter. I suspect that our collective inertia and chronic depression over the state of the world has as much to do with the realization that we need to all work hard, all of the time if we want our grandchildren and their children to have a future. It just sounds exhausting.

However, there are rays of hope shining through the dark grey clouds that are formed by stupid politicians and their frightened acolytes. One of the tasks that we can do every day is to find those little but startling beacons of hope and to talk about them, to disseminate the positive news, to tell our neighbours, our friends, our families that there are some good things happening in this sorry world of hours.

My favourite news story of the weekend is the fact that our Prime Minister, and the leaders of two other, frequently opposing political parties all marched in the Vancouver Pride Parade - beside each other, talking about the importance of diversity and the acceptance of differences. Trudeau (Liberals) May (Green Party) and Singh (NDP) will all, in a few months, be hotly contesting the right to run the country. They will face each other in public debates and do their best negate (if not destroy) the opposing points of views. They will walk and on occasion cross the line of personal attacks. At least two of them run the risk of losing their jobs as heads of their parties if they lose the election. But in spite of the enmity that can exist in Canadian politics, in spite of the political stakes that the election will challenge, in spite of the frustration they each must share with the opposing points of views - they walked together in a parade that recognized people have the right to be who and what they want to be.


I know that marching in a Pride parade is an attempt to garner votes. I know that being seen at such an event, especially on the West Coast is not politically risky. In fact, the leaders would have faced more of a public backlash if they had not appeared. But they appeared together, looking as if they were having fun. There has to be hope in the world when competing political leaders can have fun together - doing a good thing.

Pass it on.
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2019 On The Road Again #16

I had decided that I would get to the Island via the Duke Point terminal. The terminal is just a bit south of Nanaimo and I thought it would be easier than going to Departure Bay which is in downtown Nanaimo. That terminal is a long from the highway and I have never been able to figure out how to use the Nanaimo transit system effectively. Duke Point just seemed to be a better option.

I am fairly familiar with Vancouver's transit system - or at least I thought I was. I had never been to the station where I was let off and I was a bit confused. I had to make a call on the transit systems helpline to know what bus to take. I did eventually find the right bus, got detailed and complicated instructions from the bus driver and a young man standing beside him, found the right Skytrain, and then the right bus to Tsawwassen terminal. It felt like it took a long time to get to the terminal.

In my fantasy life, I hoped that someone on the ferry would see my sign "Duncan" perched on top of my pack and offer a ride. That did not happen. My second fantasy was that I would get off of the ferry quickly and catch the cars as they were leaving the ferry - that did not happen either. The cars on the ferry were long gone by the time I could walk to the point where I could see the cars. However, I was quite sure that it was not that far to walk to the Trans-Canada. I was wrong about that too. It is about six kilometres and it is all uphill. Not all of it was a steep climb, but it was all uphill. It was hot, I was tired, my foot hurt and I was done. I just wanted to get home.

Shortly after I started walking, a young man with a skateboard approached me....he said to me " I can't believe that we got here at the same time...actually as I got off first if we were racing, I would have won". I did not recognize him, but apparently, it was the young man I had met at the Flying J outside of Winnipeg. He kept pace with me for a bit, every time a car would go by I would stick my thumb out but there seemed little chance that anyone would stop - there seemed even less chance that anyone would stop and pick up two of us. I finally suggested that I needed to hitch alone - he said that he had been thinking the same thing and skateboarded ahead of me. I think he thought that he was keeping me company.

It was an interesting walk. I had no idea that there was a bit of an industrial park in the area. It was surprisingly busy with workers coming and going. None offered a ride. Finally, I got to the highway. The long walk had consumed any of the daylight, it was now just a few minutes into dusk and I knew that the possibility of getting a ride was limited. My daughter-in-law had texted me offering a ride. I accepted.

I slept at home in my own bed, and the next morning I got up had a shower and some brown rice for breakfast. It was good to be home.