An organized gun range is a beautiful place. It’s a classroom – indoors or out – because it teaches valuable lessons. Lessons in safety and care and maintenance of weapons and ammunition.

Most importantly, gun ranges are places where you learn discipline and respect. Respect for rules and the discipline to ensure that you and others follow them.

Regretfully, there is a gun range in Haliburton County that is not a beautiful place. It’s a place where respect does not exist and discipline is nowhere to be found. It is a garbage-strewn, dangerous place and a disgrace to us all.It’s the abandoned gun range on the former Frost Centre area on the west side of Highway 35 near Margaret Lake Road. It is not the former Frost Centre property bought by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU). OPSEU bought the 40.6 acres of Frost Centre property bounded by St. Nora Lake and Highway 35. 

Some Frost Centre activities, an old sawmill, a maple syrup demonstration site and the gun range, were conducted in the bushland on the other side of Highway 35 but were abandoned when the Frost Centre was closed in 2004.

That area was not part of the OPSEU purchase and is public land owned by the province. The township offers cross-country ski trails through the area and has erected signs saying a pass must be purchased to use them.

The gun range is accessed through a rough dirt road off Margaret Lake Road. It is gated but the chain lock has been broken many times and the gate has been wide open for many months, if not years.

People are still shooting there, without any organization, supervision or usual gun range protocols. They have turned the place into a garbage dump.

One of the first rules a shooter learns is to pick up spent casings. When you finish firing, you bend down and collect the empty shells.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of spent shells litter the range grounds, along with other garbage. There are plastic and brass shotgun casings, plus brass rifle and handgun shells. Some of the handgun rounds are .38 and .45 calibre – the type used by law enforcement.

/Photo by Jim Poling Sr.

There is a building on the gun range. It is a substantial, well-built structure that has been vandalized. Its doors are torn off and the inside is strewn with used targets, empty beer cans and a variety of other garbage.

I have no idea who is using the range. There was shooting there (it sounded like handgun shots) this past weekend.

The place needs to be shut down immediately. Who is responsible for doing that, I don’t know – it doesn’t matter who. Just get it done.

I am not writing this because I am anti-gun or opposed to shooting ranges. In earlier days I was a competitive shooter who competed against Michigan State Police and U.S. Army combat defence teams. It is a challenging fun sport and one that teaches responsibility and focus.

But what’s happening at the old gun range off Highway 35 is a sickening disgrace. 

This is Haliburton County, not some U.S. hillbilly county where people who have eaten squirrels for too many generations do a lot of stupid things and are content to live surrounded by their own squalor.

I try to be Mr. Nice with my critter neighbours at the lake. It is becoming more difficult, however. Much more difficult, especially this spring.

I feed and comfort the little birds: the sparrows, nuthatches and chickadees. And, I don’t shout at the bullying blue jays and crows when they horn in, chasing the hungry little guys away from the feeders.

I’m also calm and gentle with the chipmunks. Obviously, they are not affected by COVID, because they have multiplied by the thousands during the pandemic. They have brought their relatives and friends to my place to dig holes wide and deep enough to swallow an 18-wheeler.

I understand they must dig for their tunnelling systems, but why any tiny rodent wants to claw through hardpan and packed road gravel is a mystery to me. There are hundreds of acres of soft, easy digging soil around my lake.

Playing Mr. Nice is hardest when it comes to squirrels. The black squirrels and their grey cousins are relatively respectful and law-abiding. They don’t chatter at me when I catch them trying to steal something.

Red squirrels, however, are unredeemable career criminals. They respect no property or possessions. When I try to talk to them about leading more  and productive lives, they mock and taunt me. 

Two of their cousins, red flying squirrels, chewed their way into my place a few years ago. 

When they couldn’t get into the food cupboards, they chewed – totally out of spite – a trophy lake trout I had mounted on the wall.

Last month I discovered that red squirrels tried to destroy my new car. I brought it in for routine servicing and a tech came running into the customer waiting room with bad news. The red squirrels had started packing engine spaces with acorns. The cleanout cost me $60.

When I returned home later in the day, two red squirrels were sitting in a tree beside my parking spot. They pointed at me and began chattering and laughing.

Squirrels never seem to have enough places to store their acorns. 

This spring, I decided to tidy up my ATV shed. I have a vacuum there and sometimes the hose is plugged into the blower end instead of the suctioning end. This day the hose was on the blower end and when I turned the power on, it began raining acorns.

Raccoons enjoy hanging around my place and I try to be Mr. Nice with them. It’s not easy because they are sneaky and come at night. They get into the bird feeders, not just taking a snack but tearing them down and carrying them off into the woods.

I’ve taken to trapping them – in safe and comfortable wire cages, of course. I spray their tail tips with fluorescent orange paint and release them into a far-off Crown forest. 

I’m waiting for the morning when I look out and see a cage occupied by a raccoon with an orange tail.

This spring I received the ultimate insult from my critter neighbours. 

Every fall I unhook my dock and tow it down the shoreline and into a protected bay where it will not be damaged by shifting ice. Every spring, I tow it back and reattach it to the shore.

Bringing it back this year, I noticed it was floating very low on one end. I took a crow bar and pulled off some boards to check the floats.

What a shock! Two floats were gone, and so were the boards that held them in place. All that remained of the holding boards were gnawed stubs – the unmistakable chew marks of beaver.

Sometime during the winter, beavers had chewed away the wooden supports, somehow removed two Styrofoam floats and created a cave-like space where they had started to build a comfortable home.

It took several hours and some money to return the dock to its useful state. When the repairs were complete, I sat down exhausted and thought: I must stop being Mr. Nice.

Later, after a few refreshments, my thinking changed. My critter neighbours were here first and I was the intruder.

So, I guess I’ll continue to play Mr. Nice and simply put up with their antics.

The abortion debate has flared into rage again in the United States, spilling of course, into Canada and elsewhere.

Much time, energy and money is spent arguing whether governments should allow women to terminate pregnancies. Wouldn’t all that time, energy and spending be better directed at lessening the chances of a woman having to make an abortion decision

For instance, improving sexual and reproductive health services would reduce the need to worry about abortions. 

Here in Canada, provincial health plans typically do not cover most contraceptive drugs and devices. Many people have to rely on private insurance plans, sometimes available through their employers.

Single women, who have a high percentage of abortions, often do not have the higher-level jobs that provide such benefits.

Much can be done to improve work life for women who must work to feed their children. Many of these are single mothers, who number almost one million in Canada. Nearly one-third live below the poverty line. 

You can chalk that statistic up to inequality. Earnings of single moms lag well behind that of men – roughly 82 cents to the dollar for the same job. The gap is even larger for racialized women.

Also, the median income of Canadian families led by single women in 2020 was about $49,000 compared with $101,000 for married couples.

Working single mothers need improved programs that will help them raise their children while doing their jobs. Many have lower-level jobs with unpredictable work schedules that make it difficult to take care of children. They also need satisfactory paid family leave and affordable quality daycare. 

Affordable daycare is on the way. The federal government has made deals with the provinces to provide $10-a-day daycare. 

In Ontario, which has some of the highest daycare costs in the country, the average daily cost for daycare is roughly $70, which is difficult to handle for a single mother earning food outlet wages. However, earlier this year the province signed on to the federal plan that will lower the cost of daycare to $10, but not until 2025.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit single mothers particularly hard. One study has shown that the employment rate for single mothers has not rebounded as pandemic restrictions have eased.

An analysis of Statistics Canada data found that the employment rate for single mothers with children under age six was down 36 per cent between February 2020 and the end of 2021. Employment of mothers with partners and children in the same age group was up 4.5 per cent.

No matter what laws governments pass to control abortions, they will continue to be done. The plain facts are that the majority of women seeking abortions are poor, or categorized as low-income, and feel they cannot afford to raise children.

The Guttmacher Institute, a global research and policy institution says 75 per cent of women seeking abortions are living below the poverty line or are categorized as low-income. It believes that a comprehensive package of essential sexual and reproductive health services, including contraception and safe abortion care, should be included in national health systems.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide every year. It includes abortions in its list of essential health care services.

Meanwhile the rekindled abortion debate continues to rage in the United States. It is a partisan debate that threatens to further tear the country apart.                 

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to strike down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which said the U.S. Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to have an abortion without excessive government intervention. That decision basically made abortion legal in the U.S. but hard-line conservative groups have been trying for decades to get it reversed.

The Supreme Court’s decision on whether to strike down Roe v. Wade is expected at the end of next month or in early July. A leaked draft of the decision indicates it will strike it down, creating more massive unrest in a country that some people believe is already on the verge of another civil war.

They are on their way! You should be spotting them any day now. 
The last time I checked they were crossing Lake Erie and some areas of southern Ontario were reporting sightings.

The arrival of the much-admired ruby-throated hummingbirds will complete another miracle of nature. They have been flying for days to get here, travelling thousands of kilometres from their wintering grounds in Mexico and Central America. Many have had to cross the Gulf of Mexico to get here – an 800-kilometre non-stop flight that takes 20 hours. Then they have to navigate roughly 1,800 kilometres over the eastern United States before crossing Lake Erie into Canada.

How something so tiny and so delicate can travel such incredible distances through winds, storms and fluctuating temperatures truly is a miracle. The average ruby-throated hummingbird is a mere nine centimetres long and weighs three grams, the weight of about three standard paper clips. 

They might be tiny, but can be ferocious. Males use their needle-like bills to stab other males in fights for mates. Fights look like fencing, with the birds feinting, parrying and stabbing, sometimes knocking an opponent off its perch.

The Aztecs admired the beauty of these little birds but also saw them as bloodthirsty warriors. Huitzilopochtli, their god of war, was a hummingbird.
The hummingbirds’ unique bills also allow them to reach deep into tubular flowers to extract nectar. They need a lot of nectar to produce the energy needed for long migrations. 

They need to eat every 10 or 15 minutes to fuel their supercharged little engines and consume as much as 12 times their body weight in nectar every day. To do all that feeding they visit hundreds of flowers every day.
During flight, a hummingbird’s wings flap up to 80 times a second, making them just a blur to the human eye. Those lightning speed wing flaps allow the birds to fly like helicopters, even upside down, often hovering in one place as they poke a bloom for nectar.

Hummingbirds are the only birds that can hover or fly backwards. However, they are not good on their feet. They can’t hop or walk very well because their legs are short and weak.

Their lifespan is three to five years, which seems long considering the extreme weather conditions they face during migrations, plus the predators and human-made obstacles that all birds face.

Hummers are great little birds to have around our places. They pollinate a wide range of flowering plants, carrying pollen on their beaks and feathers from one plant to another.

They are easily attracted to garden flowers and feeders. They favour the colour red and some people hang red ribbons on feeders, trees and other objects to ensure they come.

They will go to any bright colour but one theory is that they are partial to red because red flowers are where they find the most nectar.

All they need to make your place a favourite place is a nectar feeder, water source and places where they can perch when needed. Expert bird watchers say hummers are loyal and will return to a place every year if it has all the things they need.

They also advise to keep feeders well-spaced because hummers are territorial.

Nectar for feeders is basically sugar water – one part sugar to four parts water. Many people add red dye as an attractant, but the experts advise against this.

Red dye No.40 is known to cause cancerous tumours in rats and mice. It is one of the most common colour additives and is found in many foods and beverages, notably energy and sports drinks.

There have been claims that this dye impairs hummingbird reproduction and causes skin and bill tumours. There is no definitive proof that red dye is harmful to hummers, but also no proof that it does not harm them.

Anyone wanting to be better safe than sorry can simply use a non-coloured mixture of sugar and water and tie red ribbons to the feeders and elsewhere.

Just a little more sunshine and warmth and we’ll all be seeing them at our feeders. It will be great to have them back.
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As we brace for a new bug season, I find myself hoping for a banner bug year. 

Not for blackflies, mosquitoes, midges or wasps, but for dragonflies and their cousins, the damselflies.

A single dragonfly can eat anywhere from a couple of dozen to hundreds of mosquitoes 

Every day, depending on what other insects are available. Unfortunately, they’ll also eat butterflies, which might leave them too stuffed to go after many mosquitoes.

Dragonflies not only help us by eating biting bugs, they are entertaining. They are fascinating to watch as their two sets of translucent wings allow them to fly straight up and down, upside down or backwards. 

They are among the earth’s oldest critters, believed to have evolved roughly 300 million years ago. They were much different back then, much larger and probably more ferocious. Some dragonfly fossils have been found with wingspans of up to two feet.

There is some disturbing news about their future. A recent assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says that about 1,000 of the roughly 6,000 known species of dragonflies and damselflies are at risk of extinction.

Of those, 95 are considered critically endangered.

These insects rely on wetlands, ponds and lakes for life, and pollution and climate change are making life difficult for them. So is destruction of wetlands, which humans tend to see as messy things that should be filled in to allow more development.

Now there is research indicating that winter road salt leaching into roadside storm ponds is harming dragonfly populations. Both dragonfly and mosquito larvae develop in these ponds.

Dragonfly larvae have huge appetites and one healthy dragonfly larvae can consume 11 mosquito larvae in just two hours. That’s a lot of mosquitoes that will not become biting adults that drive us crazy.

The research indicates that dragonfly larvae exposed to large amounts of road salt have smaller appetites, and develop into weaker, less healthy flying adults more susceptible to infections. As luck would have it, mosquito larvae do not suffer the same unhealthy results from road salt exposure.

That is interesting, helpful information and we are lucky to have it. Research on dragonflies is hard to come by because they have short lifespans, emerge as flying insects at different times in different places and are not easy to catch because of their nimble flight movements.

The ICUN said that there is not enough research data to determine the conservation status of more than 500 dragonfly species. Conservation status indicates whether a species still exists, or if it does, how likely it is that it will become extinct in the near future.

Dragonflies are not the only insects affected by changing weather patterns and human development. Research indicates that 40 per cent of insect species are declining and one-third are in danger of extinction.

Scientists who analysed 73 insect studies estimate that the world’s insect population is declining by 2.5 per cent a year and that in another 100 years insects could disappear completely. 

Others say that is alarmist thinking and a world without insects is very unlikely. They say that reported declines are worrying but too little is known about insects to say anything definitive about their future.

In other words, we need to learn more about insects by devoting more effort and time to studying them.

Meanwhile, the bug season begins. While the scientists debate the future of bugs, the rest of us will continue to put up with them. Bring out the head nets and lotions, sprays and creams that are touted as the best stuff to keep them away.

As much as they irritate us, insects are critically important to the environment and all life on earth. No one should wish for their extinction.

It would be nice, however, to see fewer of the pesky types around and more of the good guys like dragonflies and damselflies. 

Despite all the gloomy talk about the future of the good guys, there is hope. We are starting to appreciate the environmental value of wetlands and are doing more to protect them. And, there are enough smart folks around to figure out ways of preventing road salt from getting into their living rooms. 

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 The changes that show we have moved from winter into spring are almost complete. Most ice has gone from lakes and ponds. The woods are brown and bleak without snow.Well, not totally brown and bleak. Bits of pale colour flicker in areas lucky enough to have young beech trees.

 These beeches stubbornly refused to drop their leaves last autumn and held them tightly to their branches throughout the brutal winter. Their blanched and shrivelled bodies dance in the breeze, fake signs of life in the still sleeping forest. 

Juvenile beeches, and some young oaks and hornbeam, don’t turn off the sap flow to their leaves in the fall. Most trees do, allowing a blocking layer of cells to form between the leaves and their branches, causing the leaves to die and fall.

No one seems to know exactly why these juvenile trees don’t follow the usual process and insist on keeping their withering leaves in winter. They finally drop them in spring when new leaf bud growth forces the old leaves off their branches.

There doesn’t seem to be any advantage to holding on to leaves in winter. It’s almost as if these young beeches simply don’t want to accept change.
Watching the wilted leaves flutter aimlessly in the breeze starts me thinking about the state of our human world. We need so many changes, yet like the young beeches we stubbornly hold on to old thinking, refusing to accept change.

We won’t get needed change until we confront our leadership issues. Recent years have seen failed leadership throughout the world. 

COVID-19 and conflicts like Putin’s war have brought failed leadership clearly into focus. We have somewhat okay, but mediocre, leaders like U.S. president Joe Biden, Canada’s Justin Trudeau, and the clownish Boris Johnson of Britain.

 Decent enough folks, but not the strong, decisive leaders we need for these critical times of armed conflicts, climate change, infectious disease, food insecurity and refugee crises.

It is our own fault. We have the leaders we deserve. We continue to elect them through a political party system no longer suitable for the times. 
Our political party system is based on ideologies – my party’s thinking is better than yours. Yours stinks, so elect ours.

 We need to elect leaders who take the best thinking from wherever they can and build policies that change the serious problems facing our world. Leaders not beholding to any party or ideology. Leaders who do not fear making decisions that might cost them votes.

Ukraine has provided an example of the type of leadership we need here. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses his people unshaven and in a T-shirt. He is genuine, saying what he is thinking, not what he thinks others might want to hear.

When Biden offered to evacuate him from his war-ravaged country, Zelenskyy replied: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Effective leaders speak plainly, but forcefully, unafraid to talk about their dreams and their mistakes. And, they just don’t talk about wrongs that need to be righted – they push ahead to fix them.

Easter weekend provided an example  of a leader making difficult change despite vigorous opposition from those opposed to change.

On television was the 1968 religious movie The Shoes of the Fisherman, in which Anthony Quinn plays the newly-elected Pope Kiril who shocks the Catholic Church hierarchy by announcing that all the church’s wealth, including its art treasures, will be turned over to help feed starving people.

 Pope Kiril’s shocking decision to make change, instead of just talking about it, is pure Hollywood fiction. Fiction, but food for thought.

Our society and election processes have become so tribal it is almost impossible to accomplish any important change. We need to change our thinking about leaders and how we elect them.

 Shocking as it may seem, maybe it’s time to toss out the political system that provides leadership and governance based on the thinking favoured by one group of people.

We are all in this together and working together to elect honest, authentic and decisive leaders is the only way we will achieve the changes needed to solve the world’s problems. 

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It has been more than 150 years since Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, but the main character of his famous novel could well have been today’s Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Dostoyevsky’s Rodion Raskolnikov is a character who considers himself Superman, a superior person above the laws governing the rest of humanity. In the novel, his friend Razumikhin describes him as “sullen, gloomy, arrogant, proud; recently (and maybe much earlier) insecure and hypochondriac.”

Does that sound like someone who is in the news every day recently?

Sad Vlad Putin has spent years building his image as Superman, and is a domineering introvert lacking any sense of empathy. He is so much more superior to the rest of us that he doesn’t have to follow the same laws. A word from him and war begins, or all free speech is suspended.

Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov kills an unscrupulous pawnbroker, justifying the crime as removing a louse from society. Putin is killing thousands of Ukrainians, justifying his crimes as removing neo-Nazi louses.

His ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine is not a war against another nation. It is a war against civilians; a deliberate slaughter of citizens, including women and children, who he treats as louses to be stomped. His plan appears to be to destroy Ukraine and scatter millions of Ukrainians throughout Europe, where the strains of so many refugees will create political upheavals.

Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov turns out not to be a Superman, just a mediocre human driven half mad by the guilt over the pawnbroker’s murder. He pushes away people trying to help him and finds himself more and more isolated.

Putin’s murders in Ukraine have left him isolated, throughout the world and to some extent at home. Thousands of Russian anti-war protesters have been detained by police since the invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24.

Guilt and emotional upset eventually force Raskolnikov to confess to the pawnbroker’s murder. He is sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison but later experiences a mental and spiritual rebirth with the help of a prostitute.

Surely Putin is experiencing some guilt and mental distress over his murderous campaign in Ukraine. How could any human not cringe at the murders of innocent people walking the streets, riding their bicycles, or waiting at train stations while trying to flee the country.

Perhaps someone who is physically and mentally ill?

Many close observers suspect that Putin is suffering from thyroid cancer, or possibly Parkinson’s Disease or a stroke. They say his unusual gait and finger movements are signs that something is wrong.

British media outlets have reported that Putin has been visited 35 times by a thyroid cancer specialist flown to his Black Sea retreat. They also have reported that he has been treated with steroids, and has been taking baths in deer antler blood.

Steroids are a common drug treatment for thyroid cancer and can cause anxiety and hallucinations. They also are known to cause bloating and facial puffiness, which some media reports have noticed in Putin.

The question now is how long before Putin’s transformation into Raskolnikov becomes complete. How long before Putin’s crime chapters end and the punishment chapters begin?

Evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine is being collected, and appears to be plentiful. Putin subordinates, and perhaps the man himself, might be charged as war criminals to be prosecuted before the International Criminal Court.

Putin probably never will be put on trial, and certainly never will see the inside of a prison cell. Things like that do not happen to the rich and powerful in today’s world.

And certainly, the mental and spiritual rebirth experienced by Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment never will be experienced by Putin, the thin-skinned KBG thug who lacks substance and soul.

His punishment will come when his health problem, or the outrage of his own people, can no longer be contained. 

Cancer can be contained, but not so the anguish of thousands of moms and dads whose soldier sons and daughters never returned from Ukraine. Nor can the disgust the world feels for Russia, which already had a reputation as a dark and ugly place.