A week for billions
It’s been a week for absorbing numbers in the billions. To start off with, I came across the following headline in the National Post: “Your cup of tea could contain billions of microplastic particles, McGill study finds.” Wow; that doesn’t sound so good. A closer examination of the article reveals that the offending cups of […]
A special month
A long time ago I promised a very close friend I would write this column. I thought writing it would be a piece of cake. It’s not. My friend was a victim of spousal abuse. She called out for help many times. Sometimes her call sounded a lot like, “Hi, whatcha doing?” Or, “No, I’m […]
Big feet, smaller footprint
As much as possible, I am trying to make a difference in this big old world by making changes in my little world. I’m trying to consume less, reuse more often and recycle more efficiently. I’ve become tired of people who say things like, “Well, one straw won’t make a difference.” Or people who think […]
Joining the parade
You have to be impressed by the commitment of the predominantly young people who organized and participated in the climate change marches held across the country last Friday. The Montreal march was the biggest, and featured Swedish teen climate star Greta Thunberg. It also featured Justin Trudeau marching along with his family—and dodging eggs thrown […]
Chant d’automne
It seems that the pace of the season shifts with the gathering of the monarch butterflies. One by one, and sometimes in twos, I have noticed in recent days as they seem to be answering the call, winging through my yard to join their congregation destined south. Soon they will be witnessed amassing along our […]
The bombshell announcement
Conservative leader Andrew Scheer is set to make a bombshell announcement in the Bay of Quinte riding sometime in the next week, The Times has learned. The riding was chosen, according to party insiders, because it is a “key battleground bellwether swing riding”—one of just 338 such ridings in the federal campaign. But with an […]
Does this make my face look fat?
Brown face. Black face. Yellow face. White face. Red faced. We did it. It wasn’t right then. It isn’t right now. However, distracting the voting public with photographs of events that took place decades ago is also “not right”. Political party leaders, and their campaign managers, have to stop diverting our attention away from issues […]
The death of democracy
So the tennis season has ended with a glorious victory for Canada, and it is now time to turn our attention to politics. We’ve got a federal election here at home, the Democratic candidates for US president are having at one another and the field is narrowing, and Boris Johnson will get his wished-for election […]
Perspectives
Just when I don’t think it’s possible to learn another thing, I find myself at the Milford Fair with our 10-year-old grandfriend. Honestly, I’d never looked at kids’ works of art, or their Lego or Barbie collections or the pine cone and PlayDoh crafts, the way a real kid does. For the very first time, […]
Lake with a legend
Did you catch that news item the other day in which the study of Loch Ness for DNA from exotic or extinct species found nothing untoward— except for a surfeit of eel DNA. This study concludes that if there is a Loch Ness Monster, it is probably just a 4XL eel. That is a sad […]