Somewhat redacted  😞 A new experience.  

My first Letter to the Editor published under the New Regime 

Those who have known me a long time, know that I take my avocation as an ankle-biter seriously, too seriously, says Ron as I hunker too long over the keyboard. Once upon a time the Chronicle Herald used to publish the Baloney Meter - an in-house fact checker column. It was useful and fun. Now that our paper has been taken over by PostMedia, the Letters to the Editor section has been seriously cut back. Instead we get "Commentaries" on the Opinion page as well as commentaries passing as news elsewhere. I used to have 3 or 4 letters published a year - not all of them ankle-biters - and they were never edited. It offered me a chance to feel I was doing my bit at monitoring the emperor's clothing and offering praise where due. I had good feedback. They had published nothing I sent since the takeover.

We just had a municipal election. I often believe more things can be wrought at the municipal level than elsewhere. I am relieved our excellent district councillor, Sam Austin, has been returned to office. I'm reserving observations on our new mayor.  He defected from the sinking ship that is the Trudeau regime, not, I suspect, before making sure of a win with help from from "professional strategic advisors" - less politely known by some as spin doctors. If there is a word on the planet that I detest, it is "strategic."  Ah well, this is the way the world works.

In the thin Wed Oct 23 edition of the Herald, there was just one one letter from a reader challenging the accuracy of the family physician wait list statistics, a figure far more flexible than Major League baseball statistics - and the following commentary written by that very same  strategic advisor.

Commentary (click the image to read the whole article)

Federal and provincial government bashing is standard operating procedure, but where was this one coming from?  It was certainly a mash-up of issues and targets. I am dedicated to wondering - old librarian DNA I suppose. I googled the author at NorthStar Public Affairs and learned it is a public relations firm whose mission is:

To navigate the intricate and ever-evolving landscape of Canadian politics and government, you need knowledge, experience, a nuanced understanding of public sentiment, and a well-lit path to the policy- and decision-makers who can enact change, take action and provide the solutions and outcomes
you need to win.

The more I read about the author, the more wondering I did about the man behind our new mayor. At least the authorship was transparent enough. I discovered more than I wanted to know. Bragging about his successes for Stephen Harper and Doug Ford certainly did not earn any nuance of sentiment from this member of the public.

This commentary appeared just after Alberta's Big Oil propaganda hijacked our front page and Page 2, as well as YouTube and the MLB playoffs. We'd never seen anything like it. They tried to make it look like "News." I wrote about the flagrant placement of that "ad." My letter was was not published. That's okay. They did publish several other letters expressing similar disgust. From chit chat here and there, there were more than a few of us. Some people cancelled their subscriptions.

I wrote again yesterday in response to the Commentary. They actually published most of it except for the introductory part about the state of the Letters section of the paper which wasn't intended for publication, but omitted the paragraph about the "strategic advisor" some of which I found on his  website bio.

Dear Editor
I have noticed a considerable shrinkage in space devoted to letters from your regular subscribers. I am one - for now. This is not good. The Letters page was my favourite part of the paper - the one I turned to right after doing the puzzles. The Saturday edition featured an entire Opinions Section. I also noticed that the 250 words suggested size seems to be overlooked quite frequently, so I have not worried this time.

Author Fred Delorey was former Director of Field Operations for Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who now promotes superhighway 413 through vital green space; and Director of Political Operations for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, slasher and burner of scientific research. We may see his skills employed closer to home in future. Context.

They also edited my description of myself as a "grumpy old Malthusian letter writer."  Perhaps they considered it too dismal, or they didn't fact check Malthus.  Oh, the trials of being a grumpy old Malthusian. I yam what I yam. 😱

A little background

• The province of Alberta just spent $7 million dollars on that propaganda blitz for Big Oil against a proposed Emissions Cap which would help us meet our climate targets. We're behind. What better use of that money might there have been to help Alberta citizens in ways other, especially when the Premier has stopped all research and development of alternative energy. They had been doing good work. It offered a way to move beyond job dependence on a very toxic form of oil extraction. The Premier is also also up for review with her party soon.
  


• The Isthmus of Chignecto is the narrow strip of marshland that keeps Nova Scotia from becoming an island. The Feds offered to pay 50% leaving 25% each to be covered by Nova Scotia and New Brunswick respectively. Our premier is snapping at them because he wanted them to pay 100% as they are doing for restoring the Historic Quebec Bridge across the St. Lawrence River.  Work on the isthmus is underway. It needs to be done now before another super storm takes it out and breaks the transportation link to the rest of the country and brings economic chaos. I don't feel hard done by to think some of my tax dollars are directed toward this. I confess, some nuance of my public sentiment may come from having been born there. I also cherish the privatized Via Rail line that has to cross the isthmus to the rest of Canada. Rail service to our part of the country is constantly in danger from the vicissitudes of weather and politics.
  


• In addition to slashing scientific research funding, and holding a flashy "victory" parade for the   Libyan misadventure, Harper also slashed the National Archives and National Library, then  claimed a substantial tax credit for donating records from his nearly ten years in power to Library and Archives Canada. They should be put there as a matter of course. I cannot pretend to admire the successes of this man.
  
  
• The Nova Scotia Premier shelved the Coastal Protection Act after it had been approved by a consensus of all parties. The timing was "curious," but that's another story .
  

Published on Oct 26, 2024

Reflections on having survived more than three quarters of a century

 

Thank You Dear Kith and Kin

I am beyond being overwhelmed by all the birthday greetings that have arrived via FaceBook, Jackie Lawson and a few tradition bearers using Canada Post. Thank you all.  I feel a verbal effusion coming on. I seem to have had so many lives in so many places on solid ground and on-line. 

When I was working for the Newfoundland public libraries, the library in Stephenville was presided over by the wonderfully, lovably eccentric Gilbert Higgins, rather a black sheep of a prominent legal family in St. John’s. He held his birthday party in his library every year. It was a movable feast. His birthday orations were worth the drive out to Stephenville. I tried to record one on primitive equipment.  Alas, this failed. They were worthy of the Newfoundland Archives.

I don’t usually make a big deal about birthdays, although people in Corner Brook may remember my 60th when I held a large fund-raising-and-thank-you-world party several years after events described below. Upon reflection, this birthday, too, is worthy of celebration.

Twenty years ago I spent my birthday in the ICU unit in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, with lines and tubes coming out of or into almost every orifice. Several weeks earlier I found myself in pain so bad I couldn’t move. We had to call an ambulance.  I foolishly told them it was probably arthritis. No fever? “Mummy” says you have to go to school, eh? They sent me home with Darvon. Lesson:  Never Self Diagnose!  Five nights later we went back. This time they did bloodwork. The locum doctor I had never met phoned me at home in the morning. “Who ordered this bloodwork? Your white blood cell count is through the roof. I’m having you admitted to the hospital immediately.”  Five doctors appeared around the gurney and asked me if I had had sex in Africa in the last 30 years.  I might have said, “I’m not that interesting,” or “I might’ve had sex with an African but it was in Denmark” but it’s all a rather merciful blur. It wasn’t tropical. It wasn’t highly contagious. It wasn’t contagious at all. No flesh-eating spectres appeared. Twenty four hours later the blood culture results came back: plain old Staphylococcus aureus sepsis. We never did figure out how I got it. It is everywhere. You can develop it after a paper cut if your immune system happens to be off duty. I was in the hospital for seven weeks, survived on popsicles and lost 25 pounds.   

As soon as I left the hospital I said to Ron, “Take me to the mall. I want to buy a pair of white jeans.” Ron, dearest pragmatist, said “You’ll spill red wine on them, and next year they won’t fit.” He took me to the Mall. I spilled red wine. I gained back weight. I had to use a walker for weeks and when I had gained a bit of strength worked with a trainer at the gym for almost a year.  But I gloried in those white jeans for the summer. I was monitored regularly for pleural effusions and was lucky that the only permanent damage was to one ankle and one shoulder. I was also lucky that I had found a new passion a decade earlier in storytelling. It was not quite so difficult to bid adieu to belly dancing and trying to play the fiddle.

For awhile I wandered in a lovely bubble amazed by everything upon which I gazed, filled with the greatest love for everything around me. I wanted to stay in that place forever but couldn’t quite manage it without mind-altering drugs. I once read an article about one of my favourite actors, Timothy Spall, who after surviving acute leukemia, described something similar; then one day he realized he was being petty and realized he was back in the world as we know it. I can’t find that article now, but I found a similar one online in The Express

“When you’re in a state of not knowing whether you’re going to live or die or not, you’re in a state of profundity,” Timothy continued. “So I remember going out to the park in between treatments and looking at a tree and for the first time really thinking what an amazing thing it was. “And for about 10 minutes, I thought, 'That is a really nice tree.' And then after a while I did it again, and after a while I thought, 'You know, this profundity thing is a bit overrated.”

Septic shock killed almost as many soldiers in World War I trenches as enemy fire. It still kills 15 - 30% of the people who develop it today. Just before Christmas, Martin, a member of our church choir and a truly fine human being, was stricken after testing positive for COVID.  He did not survive. It was a terrible shock to us all.

How I managed to draw a long straw on this one I’ll never know, but the last 20 years have been a gift. Amazing people were on my team working in a hospital in conditions that were not always “world class.” Great gratitude is due to Dr. Barry May, who died of a heart attack the year after my experience, and seemed determined I would survive. I hope I have done enough worthwhile things over these two decades to justify the tax dollars spent on me at Western Region Memorial Hospital.  

These 20 years have been filled: remarkable people I would have never met, places I would not have seen, stories I would not have heard, books I would not have read, ankle-biting letters to the editor I would not have written. I would never have been diagnosed as a soprano and sung “The Celtic Mass” with a Canadian choir at Carnegie Hall, where I hit the high B flat while my feet were asleep. Psst: We did have to practice.

I would not have been spared waking on my birthday in 1982 to the dreadful news of the Ocean Ranger disaster, which devastated people I know and love. I would not have seen the destruction of our only planet unfolding faster than my worst pessimism at the time,  nor been locked down in a global pandemic, during which I saw many random acts of community. 

I try, but cannot always rise above the weltschmerz. I’m not good at pretending it isn’t there, and that there are no monsters under the bed. Sometimes I think our bodies can feel the axe stroke of every tree that is cut, every resource torn from Mother Earth's belly or the sound of the last words spoken in a dying language, to allow us to live our lives  of privilege, far enough up the food chain - for now - to be warm and comfortable. Everything IS connected. We cannot really tell our cells that everything is OK.  

We can breath and listen to beautiful music - as we did on the weekend at two wonderful chamber music concerts.  We can enjoy Ron's creation of  a "Retro" meal of French Onion Soup, Boeuf Stroganoff on fresh noodles and a bottle of Beaujolais Villages and watch another episode "Masters of the Air," as we reflect on our parents'  earlier lives - my mother, a Sargeant in the Womens' Division of the Royal Canadian Air Force keeping maintenance records for the planes in which airmen trained in Eastern Canada before heading overseas; my father in the Signal Corps of the Canadian Army, sleeping in slit trenches under the heavy artillery and slopping through the Dutch fields in the The Battle of the Scheldt. He told a story  of a time when most of the soldiers on both sides was suffering from dysentery and the marshy air was beyond fetid. 

I tell fairy tales in which monsters are punished and kind children survive. Would that it were so.  And, if you love people enough, you can turn them into real princes, princesses or rabbits. A few nights ago Prince Ron and I took an absurdist break and watched “The Death of Stalin” It was on Obama's list of favourites from 2018.  

Frequently, Ron and I reflect upon a cartoon, that was posted years ago on a colleague's wall at Grenfell College, which was recently the victim of bad ransomware attack.  It has taken a long time to track it down but I finally traced it via JStor.  Somehow ...

Memorial to the Victims of Communism — Canada, a Land of Refuge

I read that the taxpayers of Canada are going to be stiffed $6 million toward the shortfall on this project:  Memorial to the Victims of Communism — Canada, a Land of Refuge     

I thought we had stopped this ill-conceived project once and for all. Thank goodness we have journalists whose job is to remind us when our emperors have no clothes.This project came back to my attention in my morning paper The Chronicle Herald. I think Maxwell Mason has covered the territory very well.

"Our tasteless and unseemly statue tradition continues" by Maxwell Mason

The project was initially a private one to be hoisted on the land by the Supreme Court of Canada - not precisely a judicious use of government real estate for many reasons. It was initially to be funded by "private" persons - some of whom are known Nazis. One can understand a desire for revenge but building monuments won't bring anyone back. A little sober second thought may allow us to recall that we were not a Land of Refuge for everyone back then and the land we offered was not really ours to offer. Canada was one of many nations that refused to admit Jews trying to flee the antisemitic oppression that would culminate in the Holocaust.

Yes, indeed, communists killed a lot of people, fascists killed a lot, imperialists and colonists killed a lot. Capitalists and religious zealots are doing a fine job, too. Global warming will step up to get a lot more of us. Homeless people are living in tents by our local War Monument and dying in our streets -  one just last week. Where will their monuments be? Our public broadcaster is underfunded so we won't have as many people to check the emperor's deshabille, and if the opposition leader becomes emperor, he says he will shut down the CBC.

I wrote to the usual suspects as well as Pascale St-Onge, the Minister of Canadian Heritage which facilitated the project and Maryse Gaudreault, Chair of the National Capital Commission which commissioned it.

This is embarrassing.

 

Plastic words, climate change and the value of CBC

Yesterday I happened to take a brief look at our municipality’s Central Plan, now under revision   It was aglow with "plastic words" like, stakeholders, strategic, visioning, frameworks, etc.  I hate trying to read these things. The very word strategic planning almost sends me into apoplectic fits.  During my career as a civil servant, I began to see strategic planning exercises as an invitation from government to help them figure out how best to cut your budget using empty rhetoric - in my case, the libraries.  It is far more palatable to cut something called a resource centre than a library

I was trying to remember who developed the concept of "plastic words" – those words that are vague and deliberate diversions from more sinister meanings.  “Not Noam Chomsky,” said my husband over breakfast.  I searched.

First up:  a March 2023 article by Andrew Nikiforuk, especially timely as we observe a climate change conference taking place in an authoritarian city with a culture of human rights abuse. Dubai boasts of its sustainable development but owes its great wealth to the oil industry and nearly enslaved foreign workers. It began its climb as a pearl fishing centre. It is hardly a society to emulate.

How Plastic Words Mask Reality: Latest example: The BC government’s reluctance to say ‘oil and gas.’ 

I have subscribed for a number of years to The Tyee - an online journal based in British Columbia, which offers independent journalism that swims against the current. I should send them more than my humble five dollars a month.

I am forever grateful to my High School Journalism teacher Mr. Brockman who taught us to read the media critically looking for manipulation and fallacies in logic. Every now and then, I need to go back to that list of fallacies for a refresher. Had the concept “plastic words” been around then, he would surely have introduced it. Thanks to Nikiforuk I finally tracked the source: German linguist, Uwe Poerksen:  Plastic Words; the tyranny of a modular language, written in 1988, long after Mr. Brockman’s challenge.

I then recalled that there had been a CBC “Ideas” program about Plastic Words hosted by the well respected Canadian journalist Lister Sinclair.  It featured Uwe Poerksen. Thirty years on, the transcript is well worth revisting.

We have just experienced the announcement of serious layoffs (10%) coming for the CBC, our national Broadcaster, made by a Liberal Government that campaigned to support it. This plays right into the agenda of Pierre Poilievre, our prime ministerial contender who wants to axe our public broadcaster completely.  He is from the Stephen Harper school of politicians who hate the media and has a large vocabulary of plastic words himself.  My inner crone wonders if this was a sop to the supporters of Poilievre who are currently polling too high for comfort.  My inner crone has had enough ankle biting for the day.