What if no one voted?

I’m trying to figure out whether it was a wishful dream, or a nasty nightmare. Whichever it was, I know what prompted it.

Before bedtime I had been reading opinion columns on what might happen in the June 7 Ontario provincial election. One piece, by Margaret Wente of the Toronto Globe and Mail, noted the indigestibility of the choices.

,Although I don’t always agree with her opinions, I respect Ms. Wente’s work. So I was interested to read her view that Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals have zero chance of being re-elected and her labelling Doug Ford as a “blustering ignoramus” who has no grasp of policy, platform or budget.

The other choice was New Democrat Andrea Horwath, who Ms. Wente wrote “plans to run gigantic deficits for years and years, until Tinker Bell arrives with magic bags of money.”

All that reading heightened my anxiety over this election, and no doubt the anxieties of voters who can’t see a palatable choice among the three major parties.

Ontario is in trouble, and has been for some time. Its manufacturing sector is evaporating, its health care system is a mess, its hydro policy is sinful and its debt load is shocking.

It is doubtful that any party will make the hard choices needed to pull the province out of its nosedive and onto the straight and level. A Sir or Lady Galahad is needed to take charge but there are no such persons on the political horizon. They exist, but they are unwilling to enter the fanatically partisan circus that politics has become.

All that was floating in my mind when I went to bed.

 When sleep took me I found myself back as a junior reporter assigned to gathering lesser aspects of the election, what is known in the news business as getting colour. I decided to visit polling stations just before closing to interview last-minute voters.

I walked into one polling station and found the place as silent and still as a cemetery. The returning officer, various polling clerks and scrutineers all sat staring at the ceiling and looking bored. There wasn’t a voter in sight.

“Pretty quiet here. The rush must be over,” I said to no one in particular.

Several officials stared at their hands, Others began to look busy.

 I walked over to the table where you check in to vote. On the table was a sheet listing the names of eligible voters in that polling district.

When a voter approaches the table to get his or her ballot, one clerk checks the person’s eligibility and hands out a ballot. The other clerk, usually holding a pen and ruler, puts a line through the voter’s name to show he or she has voted.

The sheet in front of the poll clerk had no lines drawn through any names. No one had voted all day at that polling station.

I checked other polling stations. Same result. No lines through any names. No one had voted!

I went to the polling stations of the three major party leaders. No one, including the leaders themselves, had voted.

I ran down the street, searching building after building for a telephone. This was the biggest story any reporter could hope for and I needed to call it in.

Wherever I went there were no telephones. The more I searched, the more panicked I became. It was terrifying having a massive scoop and not being able to file it to your editor!

I ran until my lungs ached. I was sweating and screaming when a ringing telephone woke me. I never thought a marketing call could make me so happy.

It took me a few minutes to return to the real world, and I began thinking about the June 7 election. What if it really happened? What if no one turned out to vote?

That seems impossible, of course, yet just the thought is scary. We already are partly there. In the last two provincial elections combined, fewer than one-half of eligible voters turned out.

Troubling as it was, my dream gave me an important realization: There are times when we dislike our voting choices, but at least we have some.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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What’s killing our grouse?

At first it sounds like the muffled booming of a distant jet. Or perhaps a moose thumping through the open forest over the next hill.

It starts slowly, a muted thump, thump, thump then increases to something similar to a far off sonic boom.

I don’t hear that sound often these days so I can be forgiven for not identifying it instantly. It is, of course, a ruffed grouse pumping its cupped wings against the air and creating a drumming sound.

Male ruffed grouse, or partridge, stand on a log or rock in the spring and drum to attract females. As he drums, a ruff of dark feathers expands around his neck and he arches his tail feathers into a broad fan.

Witnessing drumming and strutting is a joy of the spring forest. It is one that I experience less and less with each passing year.

Ruffed grouse populations are down throughout much of North America. Many upland game hunters have stopped hunting them.

I am reluctant to shoot  a grouse in the fall, despite the fact they are one of the finest game birds around; fun to hunt and the best eating bird in the woods. I’ll take grouse over domestic chicken or turkey any day.

I can’t bring myself to shoot one because they have become so scarce in areas where I go. I figure every one I leave alive might help grouse populations get back to where they once were.

I saw a decline in my hunting area in the early 2000s. The small flocks I used to encounter were rarely seen. Then sightings of pairs and singles became less frequent.

Any wildlife decline in one area can be the result of localized conditions, so I assumed it was me just having poor luck. About the same time, however, hunters in Pennsylvania, where the ruffed grouse is the state bird, began noticing population declines. Then other northeastern U.S. states reported falling numbers.

Wildlife biologists always talked about eight- to 10-year cycles in which grouse populations waxed and waned. Population declines were attributed to periods of heavy predation, parasitic infestations or severe weather. As these periods passed, populations bounced back.

However, grouse populations have not bounced back in many areas. What is happening to ruffed grouse is more than regular up and down cycles.

Last year a U.S. game bird report said grouse populations in the northeastern states have declined at least 30 per cent in the last 30 years. It predicted continuing declines unless the causes are clearly identified and addressed.

The causes are the subject of much study and debate in the U.S. One of the main theories of cause has been habitat loss.

These birds survive mainly on buds, berries, catkins, soft leaves and seeds. They love clover when they can get it.

These succulent foods are abundant in new growth forests. Mature forests with large canopied trees have less ground cover growth and therefore fewer food choices for grouse.   

Logging and forest fires allow for new forest growth in many areas, so habitat loss as a main factor in general population declines is questionable.

A recent theory is that ruffed grouse are being hit hard by mosquito-borne West Nile disease. Some research has shown that 80 per cent of grouse exposed to West Nile die or are left sick enough to be unable to survive harsh weather and predators.

There has been little to no research to determine if West Nile is a major factor in Ontario’s ruffed grouse decline.

No one is able to say definitively what is killing Ontario’s grouse. It might be habitat loss, West Nile, parasites, or unusually heavy predation or combination of all these factors.

We need a definite answer to be able to do whatever is necessary to stop the decline and help grouse populations get back to previous levels.

The ruffed grouse is more than just a game bird. It is an important link in forest biodiversity.

As Aldo Leopold, the American environmentalist, wrote in his A Sand County Almanac:

“ . . . the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.”

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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‘We are the change’

Most visitors to the San Francisco Bay area take in the usual popular sights: Fisherman’s Wharf, Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz.

Not me. I am in Moraga, a small town of about 16,000 nestled in the eastern hills overlooking the Bay area. It is the home of Saint Mary’s College of California, a small liberal arts college established roughly 150 years ago.

Saint Mary’s is the venue for a one-day college fair, one of hundreds taking place across North America at this time of year.

Spring is when universities and colleges send out their admissions representatives looking for the right future students for their institutions. For students, the fairs are a chance to gather information about course offerings, admissions policies, financial aid and college life in general.

In short, they are an opportunity for students to kick the tires of their post-high school education choices.

Post-secondary schools from more than half the U.S. states, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland are represented here. So are the Canadian institutions of Queen’s, Ryerson, McGill, Waterloo and the University of British Columbia.

Why I am here and what I am doing is not important. What I am seeing here is.

The young women and men talking with the college reps are much different from those of my blackboard jungle high school days.

These are not goofy teens going through the motions of being here because someone told them to be. They are interested and focussed, asking probing questions and taking close note of the answers.

You can’t identify them by uniform dress or look-alike hairstyles. They are more diverse – more individualistic – despite all being closely connected through online culture.

Many people say today’s kids are growing up more slowly than other generations. They often are viewed as social media addicts disconnected from the real world.

I disagree completely.

So does Dr. Lisa Damour, a psychologist, author and New York Times Well Family columnist.

“Those of us who live with teenagers and are around them can see something that is different about this generation,” she said recently.

These kids have been slapped hard and toughened – and enlightened – by significant changes in our society. They know about gunfire in schools, have seen the middle class evaporating and the gap between the haves and have nots expand into a chasm.

They have watched politics in their country, and other countries around the world, turn into clown shows in which unsuitable people work for themselves and their parties instead of the common good. They are growing up in a time of massive change that has brought economic upheavals, climate change and serious environment worries, plus catastrophic human displacements.

These are kids who appear ready to work hard and create a society that is more diverse, more cooperative and less partisan. They are concerned about equality and social justice and what is happening to the global environment.

We have seen a glimpse of this new and different generation through the ‘Never Again MSD’ teen movement formed from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen students and staff died and 14 others were wounded when a former student stalked the school halls with a semi-automatic assault rifle.

Students from the school created the Never Again movement to demand tighter, common sense gun control laws. They succeeded in getting the Florida legislature to pass laws raising to 21 the age limit for buying guns, and establishing waiting periods and background checks.

They also exposed the dark side of the National Rifle Association, which funnels money to politicians who support its interests.

Tens of thousands of teens across North America joined the movement to stop gun violence and to influence the U.S. mid-term elections this fall.

“I am fascinated by the phenomenon we are seeing in front of us, and I don’t think it’s unique to these six or seven kids who have been the face of the Parkland adolescent cohort,” says Dr. Damour. 

Even more fascinating is a comment from one of the Stoneman Douglas survivors:

“We are no longer just high school students, that much is true,”  Delaney Tarr wrote in Teen Vogue magazine. “We are now the future, we are a movement, we are the change."

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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