What Coach's Corner Didn't Tell You

   Television evenings for me these days are the Stanley Cup games. But between the first and second periods when Don and Ron begin their inarticulate chatter on Coach's Corner my concentration slips and my mind drifts. I get to thinking about things like: who invented that black rubber hockey puck anyway?

   I’m glad I asked. There is no officially recognized answer.

   The first recorded mention of a hockey game was made by British explorer Sir John Franklin. Sir John, who before losing his way and perishing in the Arctic, wrote that his crew members exercised by playing hockey on the ice at Fort Franklin, Northwest Territories in 1825. He did not mention what they were using for a puck. Likely it was a ball, or piece of ice or a frozen musk-ox turd.

   Vulcanized rubber was invented in 1839 but rubber didn’t enter hockey until the 1880s. Cow patties, stones, balls, lumps of coal, frozen potatoes and pieces of wood all were used in the meantime.

   Balls proved too difficult to keep in the playing area. Wood was much better. Game enthusiasts began shaping the wood into squares, then rounds easily produced by cutting tree limbs.

   The Victoria Hockey Club of Montreal began using rubber pucks in the late 1880s. The first rubber pucks likely were made by cutting a rubber ball in half, then trimming the halves.

   Today the standard puck is an inch thick, three inches in diameter and weighs six ounces. They are frozen before play, which helps reduce bounce, making for better control.

   Other non-essential information you might want to have for the remaining days of Stanley Cup madness:

-       The word hockey comes from the French word hoquet, which means shepherd’s hook.

-       Hockey did not evolve from the North American Indian game of lacrosse. It evolved from the British stick and ball games of shinty, hurley or bandy.

-   No one knows for sure where the word puck came from. Probably it is derived from old Scottish and Irish puc and poc, meaning to poke or push. Makes sense. There's much pushing and poking in the game these days.

Bring on the Revolution!

   Ontario, Canada’s most populous and once most important province, chooses a new government on June 12. It does not matter what party is elected to lead that government. Nothing will change because Ontario is a textbook example of the dysfunction and decline in the world’s democratic governments.

   Dysfunction and decline in failing governments are examined a new book published just as the Ontario politicians spilled onto the campaign trails with their wagonloads of unachievable promises. The new book is titled The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State, written by John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of The Economist, and Adrian Wooldridge, management editor at the same news outlet.

   The book makes the case that we must change and re-master the art of governing because our governments have become too large, inefficient, and are going broke.

   In the first half of the last century people lived each day with almost no connection to government. Today, governments influence almost everything we do and are with us most hours of every day. The cost of government in our lives has become unsustainable.

   In 1913, U.S. government spending was 7.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2013 it had ballooned to 41.6 per cent of GDP. Canada’s government spending as a percentage of GDP is 41.9.

   The Europeans are the champs in this category. The European Union contains seven per cent of the world’s population, producing twenty-five per cent of the world’s GDP. Yet it accounts for fifty per cent of the world’s social spending, which has bankrupted some of its member countries.

   Fixing our broken system of government is the greatest political challenge of the next decade, The Fourth Revolution argues.

   But don’t watch for any Canadian government to lead the reform of a governing system headed at high speed toward a cliff. Canadians are second only to the Europeans as hypocrites when it comes to reforming government. We bleat like sheep about ever-increasing taxes and fees, but squawk like famished vultures for government to do something when anything goes amiss in our lives.

   Politicians and parties, who have allowed pandering for votes to become more important than doing what is right, have corrupted the political system. The political health of the party and its politicians takes precedence over what is best for the people. Making the tough choices needed for responsible, efficient government has become abhorrent.

   Voters are not blameless. Most of us are poorly informed on the important issues. We form our opinions on hearsay and spin, researching little on our own. Traditional news media, on which we once relied for facts, is collapsing and new media still has to grow up to become useful and reliable.

    A revolution in governing can’t come fast enough.

All Abuzz About Insects

Bug season has begun in my part of the world with more rehashed research on the benefits of bugs and why we need more of them. More bugs are not something anyone wants to contemplate on a cool damp morning in cottage country. Clouds of biting blackflies are gathered outside my windows hungrily waiting for me to step outside. Millions of stinging mosquitos are breeding in puddles left by the spring rains. Not to mention deer flies, horse flies, gnats, no-see-ums and many others whose sole purpose for living is to drive humans mad.

   Meanwhile news sites are reminding us of the United Nation’s report on how insects are good for our planet and good for us to eat. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that 35 years from now the world will have nine billion people and food production will need to almost double. Land scarcity, fished out oceans, water shortages, and climate change will make feeding the world more difficult.  Insects, the UN says, are the solution to feeding a hungry world.

   “In the future, as the prices of conventional animal proteins increase, insects may well become a cheaper source of protein than conventionally produced meat and ocean- caught fish.”

   Raising livestock for beef, pork, lamb, poultry is inefficient, and some people say, unethical. You have to grow billions of tons of grain to feed those animals, then they pass gas which adds to global warming.

   Insects are protein packed and can be reared with little technical knowledge and capital investment. They don’t require butchering; you can eat them whole. And, I gather, they don’t pass gas.

   So there it is: the solution to the spring fly season is to start eating them.

   I’ve unintentionally breathed in and swallowed my share of bugs. I have never found them tasty, satisfying nor healthful. Whenever I feel myself running low on protein I’ll vote for a hamburger or a couple of strips of bacon.

Niagara Falls’ Dirty Little Secret

   Just finished a little holiday celebrating a special anniversary in Niagara Falls. Hotel room overlooking the falls, pleasant dinners out, some sightseeing and a trip to the casino. Totally enjoyable, except for the muggings.

Panorama: American falls left, Canadian falls right

   The first mugging was at the breakfast restaurant when I noticed a charge listed as TIF. It was three per cent of the bill. I inquired and was told it is a tax for “tourism improvement.” I assumed this was just another tax mugging. After all, Canada is a world-class innovator of devious ways to pick its citizens’ pockets.

   The TIF kept appearing to beat me up. It was there when I paid the hotel bill; almost $13. And an hour later when a waitress brought me a bill for breakfast. I became more and more perplexed, so I pulled out the smartphone and consulted Dr. Google. He informed me that TIF, which sometimes goes by other names, is not a government tax. It is an extra charge dreamed up by Niagara hotels and restaurants. The Ontario government has raised concerns about the charge but has never done anything about it. It is three per cent of your bill for food and lodging and is said to raise $15 million a year for the businesses.

   Most interesting: It is VOLUNTARY, although no hotel or restaurant employee will tell you that. There is no legal requirement to pay TIF or whatever other name is being used. If you are in Niagara and see it on your bill, ask them to remove it.

   Niagara hotels and restaurants are scooping enough money without nicking clients another three per cent just because they want to. The place is outrageously expensive because it is a tourist destination (almost $4 for a cup of coffee with your breakfast). People pay inflated prices because Niagara Falls is a scenic, historic and fun place to visit but we deserve better than being mugged for extra cash masquerading as a tax.
  

Smoking Challenges China's Prosperity

   Industrial smog isn’t the only health hazard threatening the future of China. Tobacco smoke is killing an estimated one million Chinese every year and smoking related disease is straining the country’s health care system.

   There are 365 million tobacco smokers in China consuming close to 40 per cent of the world’s cigarettes. The Global Adult Tobacco Survey has shown that 52.9 per cent of Chinese men and 2.4 per cent of the women smoke.

    Getting so many millions of people to quit smoking is a gargantuan task. Compounding the task is a sad fact: Chinese governments, like Canadian governments, are addicted to tobacco revenue. Revenues from tobacco taxes and tobacco production account for fifteen per cent of the Chinese central government’s annual revenue, says the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The annual budgets of Chinese cities in agricultural areas are hugely dependent on tobacco revenue.

   There are millions of tobacco growers in China and the state-owned China National Tobacco Corp. produces two of every five cigarettes produced worldwide. So millions of Chinese are dependent on tobacco money.

   Reducing smoking to save lives and reduce health costs means flirting with economic disaster. That’s why Chinese tobacco policies have been so contradictory.

   Anti-tobacco crusaders outside China have suggested replacing tobacco crops with food crops. The idea is that as tobacco crops dwindle, the state tobacco company will have to pay higher prices to alternative tobacco sources. Paying more for tobacco leaf will mean having to raise consumer tobacco prices. Higher retail prices are touted as a means of getting people to quit smoking.

   Canada has tried that. And, Canada has a continuing contraband tobacco problem.

   Canada also tried crop replacement in 2008, forcing a majority of tobacco farmers out of business. However, since then the Canadian tobacco growing business is growing again with production up 140 per cent by some estimates.

Smoke Shack in SOntario - Ron Poling

   Much of that new growth has been in southern Ontario where Grand River Enterprises on the Six Nations Reserve has developed into a major cigarette producer. It has a contract to supply 12 million pounds of tobacco to China.

   Higher taxes and more law enforcement are not the most effective ways to reduce smoking rates. The most effective tool in getting people to stop smoking is education. It’s a long and slow and difficult process but it works. 
   The good news from China is that the country is making a start in that direction.

The Starving Writer Story

   Except for a small literary elite, Canadian writers are starving. More Canadians are being published than ever before, but very few are earning enough to keep themselves fed. Dozens of first-time authors appear daily because of the relative ease and small expense of self-publishing, but few even recover their costs. 

   Publishers Weekly reports the number of self-published titles in the U.S. jumped from 133,036 in 2010 to 211,269 in 2011. There are no provable figures for Canada.

   Traditional book publishers continue to struggle meanwhile, with authors suffering smaller advances, smaller royalties and smaller promotional efforts. For most writers it is impossible to earn even a basic living writing books.

    One place where it is easier is Norway. In that country of five million people the Arts Council of Norway buys 1,000 copies of every new book published and distributes them to libraries. The authors receive royalties on those copies. More than one-half of the Norwegian population aged nine to 79 uses a public library and the Norwegian literacy rate is said to be about 100 per cent.

    Also helpful: books are not subject to Value Added Taxes and there generally is no charge for anyone to attend a public university. Norway, like some other European countries also bans deep discounting of books.

    In Canada, books are subject to taxes, deep discounting is rampant and the Supreme Court has allowed educators to photocopy books without compensating the authors.

    Hundreds of thousands of words could be written on how a combination of neglect and bad policy is killing the Canadian writer.

    However, one fact taken from 2011 Statistics Canada data clearly illustrates the problem: There now are 4.1 public relations professionals for every journalist in Canada. So, the number of people being paid to tell you what their companies want you to hear is rising against a declining number of people who try to get you the unvarnished facts.

   More and more people who set out to be writers are becoming public relations professionals because being a journalist or an independent writer has become a hard way to keep food on the table.

The Missing Middle Ground

   It is an increasingly polarized world in which we live. The search for middle ground through intelligent debate has gone missing. One example:

   Dick Metcalf, one of North America’s best known gun journalists, has been shunned and banished. He was fired from Guns and Ammo magazine where he was the back page columnist. His TV show on firearms was cancelled.

   Metcalf became a pariah in the sporting arms community because he wrote a column last December titled Let’s Talk Limits. It raised the argument that some gun regulation is not an infringement of the U.S. Second Amendment granting the right to bear arms.

   “The fact is all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be,” he wrote.

   Guns and Ammo fired him after hearing from readers and a gun industry that  will not tolerate discussion of gun regulation. Metcalf received death threats.

   He isn’t the first gun journalist banished for trying to broaden the discussion on regulating guns. Jim Zumbo, one of the more famous names in sport shooting and hunting, was banished after he posted in 2007 an Outdoor Life blog saying that military style weapons are terrorist weapons best avoided by hunters.

   The Canadian gun control debate has followed the other extreme: regulate every aspect of guns in an effort to make all guns disappear. Fortunately, debate has been allowed and has resulted in some sanity being restored to gun control. The federal government has dismantled the stupidly bureaucratic and costly gun registry while maintaining licensing of gun owners and rules for training and safe storage.
   More changes are needed in Canada to create a system that is fairer for legitimate sporting arms owners while ensuring public safety. One change needed is to remove gun control decisions from the RCMP and give it to a competent civilian authority. 
    Meanwhile, how Americans deal with their gun issues is their business and they will work them out in their own way.  The shame is that any discussion of gun control is smothered even when it comes from gun enthusiasts and Second Amendment defenders like Metcalf and Zumbo.