You can smell hints of summer in the air and the promise of sunny, worry-free times.

A worrisome thing is present, however, but for now it’s something requiring our close attention so we won’t have to start worrying.

We are into the fire season and there are indications it could be a bad one.

Haliburton fire chiefs, citing an extreme fire risk, issued a total fire ban for Haliburton County last week. All burn permits are cancelled.

The ban covers any open flame that cannot be turned off by a valve or switch. That includes fireworks and charcoal barbecues. 

Fire seasons and fire bans are nothing new. There are indications, however, that devastating wildfires are more frequent and becoming a serious worldwide concern. Folks in Alberta and parts of B.C. and Saskatchewan can attest to that this spring.

Already this spring there have been more than 1,400 wildfires in Canada. That’s well above the 10-year annual average of 1,061 fires for this time of year. 

A United Nations report concluded recently that the risk of deadly blazes will surge in coming years as the result of climate change. Produced by more than 50 researchers on six continents, the report estimates the global risk of devastating fires will increase by more than 50 per cent over the coming decades.

“The heating of the planet is turning landscapes into tinderboxes,” said the report, which forecast that we are heading for a “global wildfire crisis.”

The good news is that people are becoming more aware and concerned about the increasing threats of wildfires. A recent survey of 1,500 Canadians found that 46 per cent worry about damage caused by wildfires.

Increased awareness will help make us all think more deeply about what we can do individually to help prevent fires.

The National Forestry Database indicates that 8,000 wildfires occur every year in Canada, roughly one-half of them caused by lightning.  There is little we can do to prevent that but we can do much to prevent the 50 per cent caused by humans.

Most of us know better than to leave a fire unattended. However, how diligent are we in extinguishing fires we have set for cooking, warmth or burning debris? Do we take the time to drown fires, then stir the ashes to ensure they are cold?

Also, how many of us think about the possibility of our vehicles starting a wildfire? Catalytic converter surfaces under a vehicle can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit under certain conditions, so driving or parking over dry grass should be avoided.

ATV exhaust systems also get hot enough to ignite tinder dry grass, leaves and brush.  Grass can build up around the exhaust pipe and engine. It may heat up, fall to the ground and ignite a fire.

ATVs have a small mesh screen inside the muffler to stop sparks from shooting out onto the ground. Some people remove these spark arresters to gain more horsepower, and that definitely is not a good idea.

It is a good idea to carry a fire extinguisher in your vehicle, whether it be car, truck or ATV.

We all need to be more diligent about brush, especially after a winter of ice storms that left us with an unusual amount of downed trees and fallen branches. Dry brush is miracle food for wildfires and we need to be diligent about clearing it away.

Governments and service companies like Ontario Hydro and Bell need to be more rigorous in ensuring dry brush is cleared away. I get nervous driving along Highway 35 and seeing piles of cut brush left to dry under power lines. 

Our world is becoming warmer, drier and windier – all factors that increase wildfire risks. When risks increase so must thinking and planning on how to reduce them.

One of the most important ways of reducing wildfire risks is to strictly observe fire bans. People who think their small, attended campfire is not a risk are not thinking clearly.

We live surrounded by trees and other vegetation that becomes explosive when dried by sun, wind and lack of rain. There is no such thing as being too cautious when wildfire risks start mounting like they are now.

I have never been a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. Probably because I was born and raised in Northwestern Ontario, where most folks disliked southern Ontario and anything to do with it. 

Toronto was the centre of power and privilege, sucking up our resources while giving us little in return. The Leafs were southern Ontario’s hockey team, so most of us Northern Ontario kids ignored them while cheering and dreaming of playing for the Montreal Canadiens. 

Our hockey heroes were the masterful goaltender Jacques Plante, the left-wing legend Jean Beliveau and, of course, Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard, the greatest hockey player of all time. 

We loved the Canadiens because they played the game with pure passion. 

Many of the players, notably The Rocket, came from struggling, impoverished families. The Rocket and others of his era learned to skate, play and practice not in fancy arenas, but on frozen creeks just like we did.

I thought a lot about those great Canadiens teams while watching the hapless Maple Leafs blow another chance to win the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup. They haven’t won the cup since 1967, a full 56 years ago.

The Leafs’ barely got past Tampa Bay Lighting in Round One of the playoffs. Their four-games-to-one loss to Florida Panthers in Round Two was pathetic, especially the uninspiring play of their “Core Four” players – John Tavares, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner.

Those four – paid a total of US $40.5 million this season – failed to score once in the first three games against the Panthers. The amount of passion they played with could be placed in an eyedropper. 

Passionate play drove Montreal’s Rocket Richard to become the first player in NHL history to score 50 goals in one season and the first to reach 500 career goals. He was a member of eight Stanley Cup winning Canadiens teams.

Richard played hard and rough. He was known as fire on ice for his lightning drives at the opposition net. 

“When Rocket came flying towards me with the puck on his stick, his eyes were all lit up, flashing and gleaming like a pinball machine,” Hall of Fame goalie Glenn Hall once recalled. “It was terrifying.”  

The Rocket and the Montreal Canadiens exemplified what the game of hockey is all about – the passion for scoring goals. Goals get scored when teams play with passion that lights fire in their eyes and their bellies.

It’s been a very long time, but Toronto once had teams that played with fiery spirit. They made 71 NHL playoff appearances, winning 13 Stanley Cups between 1918 and 1967

This year they had an excellent regular season record and fans expected to see them in this year’s final – something they have not seen in decades. If the team had shown the same passion as the fans, they might have been there.

When a team that should go deep into the playoffs and doesn’t, its problem is not just on the ice. There is something missing on the bench and in the executive offices.

The Leafs management was missing the ability to infect their players with the passion that wins championships. Management also seemed to lack confidence in itself, making continual lineup changes despite having one of the best regular season records in the NHL.

The Maple Leafs appeared to have had everything needed to be in the Stanley Cup final this year. Everything except passion and team spirit. They’ll have to find those two things if they want to go anywhere next season.

How and where will they find it? A good start would be to look down the street and take a few hints from that other Toronto team – baseball’s Blue Jays.

The Jays played some games on the same days the Leafs were suffering one playoff loss after the next. I did a lot of channel hopping to follow both teams. 

On the Leafs channel I saw a lot of glum faces and dispassionate play. Turning to the Jays I saw impassioned, happy faces on guys enjoying playing the game. Smiles and laughter that build the team spirit that scores points and wins games and championships.

 So here comes the heat. And, the heavy rains, big thunderstorms and the wild winds that accompany them.

That’s what the professional forecasters are telling us. Their climate models suggest that the world average temperature could reach a record high this year. 

Last year was the world’s fifth warmest year on record, they say, and this summer could see even hotter temperatures.

That might seem like good news to Ontarians who have just been through the gloomiest several months in more than 80 years. Clouded skies, rain, sleet and snow were the main weather features most days from December through April.

Now the world weather pattern is changing from La Niña to El Niño, the naturally occurring phenomena that cool or warm the central Pacific Ocean surfaces. La Niña is a cooling phase, and El Niño is a warming phase.

Both develop over the tropical Pacific Ocean region, altering weather patterns in various parts of the world. El Niño could dramatically impact Canadian weather this summer, depending on when it fully develops.

If El Niño fully matures within the next three months Canada could see a cooler-than-normal summer, some climatologists say. However, if it takes hold later we’ll see hotter temperatures and more rainfall in the back half of this year, and into 2024. 

It already has a good start. By the end of March surface waters of the tropical Pacific had reached an average 21 Celsius for the first time on record. The temperature reached 21.1C in the first five days of April, surpassing the previous record of 20.0C set in March 2016.

El Niño occurs every two to seven years. The most recent ones were in 2018-2019 and 2014-2016. That latter resulted in 2016 being recorded as the world’s hottest year on record.

“If El Niño does develop, there is a good chance 2023 will be even hotter than 2016 . . .” British climatologist Friederike Otto told the media recently.

The climate forecasters are uncertain about when El Niño will appear and therefore exactly what it will have in store for us.

One month ago the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issued a watch saying El Niño likely will develop over the next six months. It is expected to release an update within the next day or two.

Whatever El Niño has planned for us this year and next there is no question that our world is getter hotter. The world’s average global temperature now is 1.2C higher than in pre-industrial times.

Last year Europe experienced its hottest summer on record, while climate change-fuelled extreme rain caused disastrous flooding in Pakistan, and in February, Antarctic sea ice levels hit a record low.

According to The Farmers’ Almanac, last summer was the third warmest in Canada’s history. The summers of 2021 and 1998 were hotter. And, last year’s heat stayed around longer, giving us an unusually warm autumn and milder than usual winter.

The Farmers’ Almanac is predicting a sizzling summer with daily highs in the 30s Celsius and “feels like” temperatures of 40C when factoring in heavy humidity. It also is predicting bouts of showery weather and thunderstorms with heavy precipitation.

The average July daily high for the Haliburton region is 19.7C or 67.5 Fahrenheit. The most rain comes in June with an average of 105 millimeters, or 4.1 inches, for the month.

For those who might be wondering, there are two farmers’ almanacs. One is The Old Farmer’s Almanac established in 1792 and The Farmers’ Almanac established in 1818. Both make weather predictions a year or more in advance and both claim accuracy rates of 80-plus percent.

We’ll have to wait to see how accurate the NOAA and various almanac predictions are for the summer ahead. Whatever we get will be better than the sunlight deprived days of the last few months. Any significant amount of sun would be much appreciated.

So far, May gives us a glimmer of hope. This past week has been a sunny one with daytime temperatures in the Celsius teens and low 20s. 

The bugs certainly are enjoying it.

 I’m certain that the Covid virus has infected peoples’ brains, pulling them down to new levels of meanness and stupidity.

I don’t have any medical evidence to support that. My certainty is based just on what I have been observing.

Look around. Stabbings on the Toronto transit system, inexplicable shootings in the U.S. Politicians, and the bureaucrats who pull their strings, saying and doing dumb things. Take our Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s silly attempt to relate federal government overspending to her own household budget. She told Canadians she cancelled her kids’ Disney+ channel to save money and the same approach should be taken to federal spending.

Freeland presumably intended to show that managing Ottawa’s $430-billion budget is the same as managing a household budget. Her attempt spurred outrage across the country with one citizen saying it was like telling young couple that if they gave up avocado toast they could afford to buy a house.

Then a while back we had Ontario Premier Doug Ford saying housing developers should be allowed to hire their own building inspectors to ensure that buildings meet government standards. Do we really want building inspectors to be paid and controlled by the builders?

All that might be the strained-brain thinking we have come to expect in politics. The really scary stuff is the violence that has occurred since the Covid outbreak three years ago. 

Polling suggests that a majority of Canadians believe that community violence has increased with Covid. Many say Covid created a deterioration in mental health, which has made people less socially responsible and more violent.

Certainly the recent shootings of Americans who rang a wrong doorbell or pulled into a wrong driveway indicate new levels of insanity not often seen before Covid’s arrival.

The best illustration of a society gone stupid and mean-spirited is the case of a nine-year-old California girl and her goat. 

Last year the girl’s mother bought a young goat for her daughter to participate in a 4-H youth club project. The idea was for the girl to raise the goat and show it at a district fair.

Well, the girl and the goat, named Cedar, became close. The girl took Cedar for walks like a pet dog.  She petted him and he nuzzled her.

Fair time arrived and Cedar was there to be shown as the girl’s 4-H project. However, when the fair ended the girl was told that displayed animals were to be slaughtered for their meat

That news upset the girl, who embraced Cedar and began crying. Her mother was upset as well, so put the goat in her car and drove him to a hiding place a couple of hundred miles away.

The fair considered this theft of a goat, because under the rules of the show it had become their property. They had two sheriff’s officers find the hiding place, drive the hundreds of miles return trip and bring the goat back.

Cedar was slaughtered and his meat sold at auction. The winning bid was $902 ($63 of which went to the fair) from a Republican state senator. 

When the girl heard of Cedar’s demise she reportedly threw herself under her bed covers and sobbed uncontrollably.

Fair executives said the idea of having youth show animals at a fair is to teach them responsibility and learn about the process and effort it takes to raise meat.

That sounds reasonable, but by enforcing the rule they caused the girl and her family a lot of grief, the sheriff’s department wasted time and money at taxpayers’ expense, plus an avalanche of bad publicity for themselves and 4-H clubs.

The fair also reinforced the short-sighted view that the only reason farm animals exist is to make money for the meat industry.

All the heartache and bad publicity could have been avoided by ignoring the slaughter rule and letting the little girl quietly take her pet goat home. Showing a little understanding and sympathy would not have damaged efforts to teach youth about raising farm animals.

All the effort and money spent to bring Cedar to slaughter could have been better used in helping the farmed meat industry to see animals as something more than a steak on a butcher’s block.

 There are times when we must risk the consequences and tell a friend that he or she is doing wrong. Canada has reached one of those times.

It’s time for Justin Trudeau, the prime minister who falls in love with every microphone and camera he meets, to tell U.S. President Joe Biden to get aggressive and take real action to end his country’s gun insanity.

Mind your own business, Biden and other Americans likely will say.

Unfortunately, it has become our business. The U.S. gun obsession is pouring hundreds of illegal guns into our country where they are being used in crimes. Crimes in which Canadians are dying.

Ontario police data shows that 73 per cent of guns used in Ontario crimes come from the United States. 

Toronto, which had more than 300 shootings last year, is a major destination for guns smuggled from the U.S. 

“Our problem in Toronto [is] handguns from the United States,” Toronto Police Service Deputy Chief Myron Demkiw told Canadian parliamentarians during hearings on gun violence in February 2022. Eighty-six per cent of crime handguns that were able to be sourced were from the United States, he said.

Just a week or so ago police busted a gun smuggling ring and seized 173 firearms, many of them handguns. Most were being smuggled from the United States.

Three of the firearms possessed by the man who shot and killed 22 Nova Scotians in 2020 were smuggled from Maine in the back of his pickup truck.

Guns from the U.S. often are smuggled by trucks or boats, but innovative ways of transport also are being used. Last year police in southern Ontario recovered from a tree a drone carrying 11 smuggled handguns.  

Statista Research reports that in 2021 the U.S. gun industry manufactured 13.8 million new firearms. Some were sold to other countries, some were smuggled into countries like Canada and the rest stayed in the U.S. where roughly 40,000 people a year are killed with guns.

Already this year, which is not yet four months old, there have been 13,000 gun deaths in the U.S., almost 10,000 injuries and 162 mass shootings. Those are not up-to-date figures because people are shot and wounded or killed almost every hour in the U.S.

American politicians have been unwilling or unable to legislate strict controls on firearms, including semi-automatic assault style rifles that shoot bullets capable of piercing body armour. They won’t act because too many of them fear losing their seats, although a majority of Americans say they favour stricter gun controls.

Fear is what drives America’s obsession with guns. They feared “Indian attacks” during the almost 400 years it took to colonize a continent owned and occupied by Indigenous peoples. They feared uprisings and attacks between opposing forces during and after the 1860s civil war.

Today Americans fear being victims of street violence, so they arm themselves with more guns. Almost one-half of Americans own at least one firearm, and not because they enjoy hunting or target shooting.

Many Americans own and carry a handgun because they feel they need to protect themselves against fellow Americans. 

Many do not have enough firearms knowledge and training to handle anything more than a cap gun. Several hundred a year accidentally shoot themselves. 

Take the reported case of the Georgia guy who shot himself in the leg while holstering his pistol as he dressed for an outing. The outing? He was going for an hour or two of relaxation at his favourite cigar lounge. 

Why anyone would need a SIG Sauer P320 pistol on his belt to go to a cigar lounge is beyond comprehension.

Suggesting Trudeau complain to Biden about lack of action on American gun insanity is probably not a great idea. Even if followed it would not achieve much.Some Americans are suggesting that one way to get action is to boycott school attendance. Stop sending kids to school until lawmakers pass effective gun control laws.

Boycotts? Now there’s an idea. Maybe boycotting American products, visits and other contact is something for Canadians to consider as a way of protesting how U.S. gun production is killing Canadians.

 My cell phone has one of those cute puzzle apps that help to keep my mind and fingers busy whenever I have a minute or two to spare. It’s a wood block puzzle called Woody Origin and is fun to play while I’m having the car oil changed, or waiting for my wife at the grocery store. 

It is a small joy of life now ruined by an out-of-control advertising industry. I’ve killed it from my phone because its creators have been stuffing it with advertising that is constantly interrupting my play.

More and more people are complaining about a junk-ad epidemic infecting computer apps, social media and television. It’s not just the junk ads. Studies have shown that advertising in general makes people unhappy.

One extensive study of 27 European countries found that the higher advertising spending in a country was in one year, the less satisfied its citizens were a year or two later.

It has been estimated that the average person is exposed to as many as 10,000 ads a day. These are on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, websites, roadside signs – pretty much everywhere you look. Even your Canada Post mailbox.

People are not just fatigued by the volume, they are increasingly annoyed by advertising that is intrusive, offensive and seemingly impossible to avoid.

Surveys show that consumers are turned off by ads that are completely irrelevant to them. But the most common consumer complaint is about ads that interrupt watching or reading a news story, or break concentration while doing an online puzzle. Ads that take you away from doing what you went to a site for in the first place.

A news site example is found on the ABC network news with David Muir at 630 each evening. Once viewers are well into the newscast, they are subjected to an uninterrupted two and one-half minutes of ads, most of them medical ads promoting better skin, better sex, better everything. These are followed by a return to the newscast – a 20-second of news story, barely enough time for a headline before another two and one-half minutes of ads urging you to tell your doctor to prescribe some drug that you really should have.

(Thanks, but my doctor spent a lot of years in medical school and I trust him to figure out what I need without me telling him to prescribe something a television ad says will do wonders for me).

Advertisers took a pause during Covid but used that pause to rethink and reformat ads. The result has been a deluge of irritating post-pandemic advertising.

Without question ads are important to us all. They support newspapers, magazines, television and radio. Without advertising revenue many forms of important mass communication media could not exist.

Advertising is important, but more and more people are so annoyed by it that they are willing to spend money to avoid it. Personal Video Recorders (PVR) are one way viewers avoid TV advertising. They can fast forward the ads and carry on with watching their record program without annoyance.

Apparently PVRs are being made that automatically bypass ads, saving the viewer from having to push the fast forward button.

The advertising industry needs rethink once again and eliminate advertising that treats people like fools. Ditch the poor quality ads and those that are too frequent, too long, boring and of little relevance. 

Most importantly the industry needs to stop the insert and popup ads that interrupt the content people have signed on to see.

And, get rid of the ads that track and target, collecting information on us to be used for retargeting. That’s invasion of privacy and if the industry won’t stop it, government should.

The industry could do itself, and all of us, a big favour by producing ads that give us information that is intelligent and useful.

An example are those Newfoundland and Labrador tourism ads that calmly and quietly show scenes of serenity and beauty. Quiet coves with fishing boats resting before their next outing; villages with brightly painted houses and children laughing as they run beside a shoreline.

Every time I see one of those ads I turn to my wife and say: “We should think about going there.”

 I’m starting to see why Canada is a racist country, and why it will continue to be. It’s us, the people. We do little to stand up and denounce racism when we see it.

And, we see it a lot. Here’s a recent example from The National Post, a Conservative Toronto newspaper seemingly unaware that socially traditional ideas supported by true Conservatives do not include saying whatever you want about anyone.

The Post, in a comment section on Gov.-Gen. Mary Simon’s travel spending, allowed one commenter to call her a cigar store statue – a clear reference to ‘cigar store Indian.’ Gov.-Gen. Simon is an Inuk from Nunavik with an impressive career as a broadcaster and advocate for Inuit rights, youth, education and culture.

The fact that someone would make such a racial comment about her is shocking. Doubly shocking is the fact that the newspaper allowed it to be published. Triply shocking is the fact that no one seems to have stood up publicly to condemn it.

The commentator also had racially-related words for former governors general. He said Michaëlle Jean, Canada’s first black governor general, was a woke Haitian diversity hire and Adrienne Clarkson, a Chinese-Canadian, was a hypocritical scammer.

The Post invites “lively but civil” comment on its articles. Its owners and its publisher should be asking their editor why he wasn’t doing his job in upholding the newspaper’s guidelines on comments. Readers should be demanding that the comments be removed.

It’s important that the media reveal spending by the governor general and that commentators criticize it when it is shockingly high. Like the $1.1 million spent on Gov.-Gen. Simon’s trip to the Middle East last year. But including her ethnicity in the criticism is straight out racism.

Racism is more frequent in Canada that most of us like to think. A few years back an Ontario Human Rights Commission survey found that 40 per cent of racialized people in Ontario said they experienced discrimination because of their race or colour.

Racialized young people in the 15 to 24 age bracket have an unemployment rate of 23 per cent, compared with 16 per cent for non-racialized youth. Also, racialized people tend to hold the lower paying jobs,

Governments and various anti-racism organizations talk about the efforts they are making to stop racism. For instance, the federal government is spending $45 million to fight racism and discrimination. The money has established an Anti-Racism Secretariat and is funding community-based initiatives such as seminars.

Presumably that is tax money well spent and will help educate many people about racism.  But truckloads of government money will not eliminate racism. More individual effort is needed by each one of us.

Most of us stay quiet when we witness racism. Someone casually makes a racial-tinged comment or a racist joke. We let it pass, afraid to be seen as condescending, or of embarrassing or shaming the speaker, who might have made the comment without fully thinking about its impact.

It might be more comfortable for everyone to simply let the comment pass, but as Dr. Martin Luther King once said “the appalling silence of the good people” is as damaging as the vitriolic words and actions of the bad.

We as individuals need to think about ways to confront racist talk without creating resentment that might make a person less likely to be more thoughtful about what they say.

Comebacks such as “that’s not been my experience” or “that’s a comment that makes me uncomfortable” tend to get a message across without creating embarrassment or causing an argument. Soft comebacks might even create an opening for a thoughtful conversation about racist talk.

Differences in people, such as skin colour and language, create opportunities for racism. They shouldn’t. People are simply people. 

In the end we are all basically the same. If we look back thousands of years we all had the same ancestors.

And, if we look ahead hundreds of years, migration and population mixing likely will have us all looking and talking much the same. 

Assuming the world lasts that long.