How to Treat A Night Visitor

(My Minden Times column Oct. 6)

I sit straight up in bed, wide awake even before my eyes open. They don’t need to be open because it is 6 a.m. and pitch black.

And, I don’t need vision or hearing to know that it is out there. I have a weird sixth sense that wakes me when it comes at night.

At the kitchen back door I search in the darkness for the bear banger I keep handy for such occasions. It’s not as handy as I thought. I can’t find it in the darkness.

I don’t want to turn on the kitchen light because it will see me through the windows and sneak off. I decide to turn on the outside light to at least get a better look at it before it bolts.

It’s there alright, not three feet from the kitchen door, head into the recycling bin. The light startles it. It swivels its head, looking about to see what has interrupted its search for tasty morsels.

He or she a bit too large for a this year’s bear, so I guess it is a one-year-old. Young bears are much like human teenagers, unfocussed and a bit goofy. It just sits there, looking around and sniffing the pre-dawn air.

The bear banger not findable, there is only one other way to give it a scare that it will never forget. I swing the kitchen door open, jump forward with my hands above my head and let loose my loudest banshee-like scream. It falls over itself streaking into the nearby bushes.

Hopefully the scare will teach it that this is not a place to stop by on nightly food-searching rounds. There’s nothing here for it anyhow. The recycling bin was washed and empty.

Black bears have excellent long-term memories. I’m betting that the image of a crazed human jumping it front of it and screaming like a demented thing will stay with it at least until the snow flies and sends it off on its winter sleep.  

This was our second bear visit this year following a year or two without any. Night visits and other sightings have increased this year, no doubt because wild berry crops have been devastated by dry weather.

There was a sighting this year on the island across from my place, proving again that black bears are good swimmers. They are believed to be able to swim a distance of three kilometers.

Bears even are showing up in the Big Smoke region with sightings in built up places like Aurora, Milton and Pickering.

One of the scariest sightings this year was in the Lake Superior town of Terrace Bay. A sow and her two cubs padded into the Station Two restaurant through an open back door and began ransacking for food while customers were eating lunch.

The restaurant was evacuated, police shot the mother and the cubs were captured and brought to an animal sanctuary.

In July, just up the highway in Schreiber, a man was walking his dog when he encountered a cub. A mother bear then appeared and attacked the man.

The two boxed each other a couple of times before the cub, who stood watching the fight, squealed and its mother ran off with it. The man suffered claw wounds to his face, shoulder and arm.

Most people survive violent encounters with black bears. Ontarioblackbears.com reports that only seven people are known to have died from Ontario black bear attacks in the last 100 years. The province has a black bear population believed to be 75,000 to 100,000.

My most recent bear encounter confirmed just how fast bears move. They have been clocked at more than 45 kph, which is a lot faster than I can run.

They also are quick and agile tree climbers. So if you meet one, it is a bad idea to run, or to climb a tree. In a bear’s mind, anything running away is weak and likely an easy meal.

A good idea is to stand still and look big and aggressive. Or, if you have just been awakened from a pleasant sleep, you can try acting like a crazy person.

The Good Thing About Trump

The rise of Trumpism with all its anger, fear, wild exaggerations and other hateful negatives is a good thing.

Yes, a good thing  - in one respect.

Before I get to that, Canadians need to understand that Trumpism is not a U.S-only phenomenon. It has manifested itself in the U.K. Independence Party and the Bexit vote; The National Front in France, the Golden Dawn in Greece, and hyper-nationalistic groups in some other countries.

These political forces thrive by gorging themselves on peoples’ fears. People fear  changes they see occurring every day.

Economic uncertainty is prominent in their fears. Globalization continues to produce economic inequality that is upsetting individual lives, and political structures.

Middle classes are disappearing, leaving an ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. Ditto the gap between big cities and smaller cities and towns where boarded windows are replacing factories and other businesses.

Terrorism’s constant presence is deepening fear of strangers and certain groups of people. Combined with that are swelling streams of refugees increasing fears of both economic insecurity and terrorism. Strangers viewed by people who fear that if they are not here to drain a shrinking pool of jobs, they are here to kill them.

In all this is the realization that the pillars of our democratic society are doing little to help. Growing numbers of people distrust the justice system, the news media, their religious institutions, and yes, governments.

Governments trowel serious problems with fresh plaster, but the cracks keep returning. Declining job prospects, the growing difficulties of home ownership, infrastructure rot, drug addiction are just a few of the challenges overwhelming our politicians.

Ontario is a classic study. It has been decades since the province has elected a government, of any political stripe, that has done anything more than smooth over, instead of fixing problems.

Sadly, we have a leadership vacuum. The people we need to lead, and the people most qualified to lead, do not want to be drawn into the current political miasma.

So why did I say that the rise of Trumpism is a good thing, in one respect?

In the beginning, Trumpism in the U.S. was dismissed as clownish vulgarism. It was laughable. Now it is being taken seriously and increasingly is becoming the topic of thoughtful writing. The writing has turned from the man, to the factors that have brought Trumpism. And, that’s a good thing.

The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal and others have done impressive pieces on social collapse and other factors contributing to Trump’s rise.

A book titled Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance also illustrates what has happened to the social structure of the United States. These works and others are helping Americans to understand the sicknesses in their democracy and help them to find the medicines and healers needed for cures.

This is not happening in Canada, although the same sicknesses exist here. If you don’t believe that, consider these random snippets: Factory workers who have been working 10 years as temps without any benefits, the nightly gunfire in Toronto, the 35,000 Canadians who are homeless every night, the nearly 500 people in British Columbia have died from drug overdoses this year, an increase of 60-plus per cent over last year.

Canadians are not getting much depth reporting about their big issue problems. The Canadian news industry is in ruins, falling apart because of corporate concentration, and dull-witted approaches to the digital revolution.

The industry plays defence against digital, instead of offence to learn from it, adapt to it and get ahead of it. Industry geniuses keep looking for profitable new ways to sell their news instead of how best to serve readers with quality content they are willing to pay for.

But why Canadians are poorly served with quality information about what is behind Trumpism, and what needs to be done to change that, is a story for another day.

Trump hopefully will fade from sight after the Nov. 8 presidential election. He’ll be gone but Trumpism, or whatever other names are attached to ultra-nationalistic movements, will be with us for years to come. 

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y

Content, Not Style

Like a lot of folks, there was a time when I never went to bed without watching CBC’s The National. Like a lot of people now, I almost never turn the program on.

The National began losing thousands of viewers many years ago when it opted for personalities and style over solid, serious journalism. It became a water-filled balloon that developed a pinhole. Viewers dripped away, then dribbled and squirted out until the pinhole widened into an escaping torrent.

Now it routinely runs behind the CTV and Global national news in audience ratings. Its ratings are somewhere in the range of a specialty channel.

The problem with The National is that personalities are more important than the story. And in journalism, there is nothing more important than the story – the fair and factual story.

The most important personality at CBC, of course, is Peter Mansbridge, aptly named Pastor Mansbridge by Globe and Mail columnist John Doyle. He has announced he is leaving The National but is not retiring from the Mother Corp. He is 68 and will show up doing something else at CBC, no doubt being paid his million-plus bucks.

Nothing illustrates the CBC’s cult of personality more than his departure announcement. His last broadcast of The National will be July 1 next year, Canada’s 150^th birthday. How excellent! Two major Canadian events the same day: Mansbridge’s last broadcast of The National and Canada’s 150^th. Which would you vote for as the most important?

The National lost touch with Canadians when it decided that its intellectual superiority makes it the best editor of what news the great unwashed should receive. It represents the Toronto left-leaning establishment and Peter Mansbridge is the voice of that establishment.

We’ve all seen the scandalous results of the personality cult developed during Mansbridge’s painfully long run at The National. The Amanda Lang scandal in which the National’s star business correspondent was accused of taking speaking fees from companies on which she reported. She had a too cozy relationship with the Royal Bank of Canada.

Then Evan Solomon, once touted as Mansbridge’s successor, was fired when it was learned that he pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in secret commissions for art sales to people he dealt with as a CBC TV on-air host.

And Jian Ghomeshi, the CBC star who admitted a fondness for non-consensual rough sex and who was accused of sexual harassment and assault. He stood trial for sexual assault and was found not guilty. The CBC had to dump him.

Mansbridge and Rex Murphy, The National’s annoying know-it-all, both crossed journalism’s ethical boundaries by taking big buck speaking fees from companies or others who might be in the news. CBC management said it was disappointed anyone would think that taking large speaking fees would affect any on-air person’s journalistic integrity. Then it turned around and forbid on-air staff from taking paid speaking gigs.

What it should be doing is forbidding anything that nourishes its personality cult. Like Mansbridge accepting the Order of Canada, which should be for people who work tirelessly, often without reward, for the good of their communities.

Mansbridge’s semi-retirement is a huge opportunity for CBC management to return The National to its years-ago position as a powerful news source for Canadians. It is an opportunity to give the news operation back to real journalists who see the story more important than themselves.

A ‘star anchor’ to replace Mansbridge is not necessary. Let a variety of news people with on-air competency present the news stories that they are involved in.            

Aside from dealing with its inner cancers, CBC also must reshape itself to become relevant in the online world of news. Online news is a revolution that has brought incredible changes, with more to come. We no longer need to turn on the TV at 10 p.m. to find out what is happening in the world. We already know because we get online news every minute throughout the day.

All traditional news outlets are struggling with how to survive in the new and changing world of news. When it all shakes out, one longstanding axiom will still be there: Content, not style and personalities is the key to good journalism.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
Profile: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K8FY3Y