Alien species
Sylvia Davis has a peculiar job. She is paid by the Ministry of Environment to argue that there is nothing particularly valuable, salvageable or even worthwhile about the environment. Or, at least, not so much that the animals and plants who live there, or their genetic descendants, won’t recover after decades of abuse and industrialization. […]
Late night caller
The phone rings. It’s late. Your son is calling. The connection to his cell phone is poor. It is hard to make out what he is saying. Something’s wrong. There has been an accident—he is away from home and he needs money. Right away. Has this happened to you yet? It will. It is only […]
Hospital-eating disease
Where is the explanation? Where is the justification? Before one more scalpel or tongue depressor is removed from the Picton hospital QHC must explain why it has chosen yet again to cut disproportionately from this hospital. And how it arrived at this conclusion. These answers they owe to this community. But they must also answer […]
Indifference kills
My good friend and sparring partner Ralph Margetson called the other day. He was rather anxious. More than usual. At 95 years of age he has both time to worry and a life of experience to know there is plenty to worry about. He worries about the lack of worry in the community. He fears […]
Who is served?
The attorney for the director of the Ministry of Environment was displeased. Sylvia Davis had come to Prince Edward County to ensure her boss’s decision remained untouched. Unfettered. Undiminished by the bleatings of locals concerned not about the noble green energy goals of her director and political masters, but rather the more pedestrian risks to […]
A parable
Opinion A Shire Hall story The simple farmer couldn’t keep livestock on his land. Year after year he suffered losses as the animals simply wandered off, or were eaten by predators. The farmer didn’t think much about it. It was just the way things had always been on this rather sad and dilapidated farm. Then […]
Undoing the mistake
Going backwards is not an option.” Mary Clare Egberts and Paul Huras are just the latest in a long line of healthcare administrators / consultants / bureaucrats who have come to Prince Edward County since 1998 to wag their finger at this community and scold us for what they see as an emotional attachment to […]
Lost in the spreadsheet
She has lived her entire 82 years in Milford. She raised her family here. Watched them grow up, go off and have their own families. Her health has been failing in recent years but, other than general fatigue, she doesn’t feel that bad. She volunteers a couple of times a week at the hospital, she […]
A wider view needed
When the U.S. looks inward, the rest of the world invariably becomes a little less safe. Many allies and friends of the U.S. are fond of grumbling about that nation’s often heavy handed and oversimplified responses to a complex web of tensions percolating around the world. But when America looks away and instead focuses its […]
Arbitrary power
We cannot be happy, without being free, that we cannot be free, without being secure in our property, that we cannot be secure in our property, if without our consent, other may, as by right, take it away… JOHN DICKINSON, LETTERS FROM A FARMER IN PENNSYLVANNIA Wandering through a museum last week I came across […]