A matter of spirituality

There is vigorous debate over the effectiveness of the Pope’s recent letter acknowledging the Catholic Church’s failure to prevent priests from sexually abusing children.

The debate is worthwhile and warranted, however is it missing a key point: Should Catholics disgusted by these criminal events consider abandoning their religious institution?

I have some thoughts on that because I was abused by a priest, although not sexually.

It happened many years ago when I was  an altar boy preparing for Mass. I was in the sacristy with another altar boy and a visiting priest, who was late and in a tizzy as he gowned to go onto the altar.

The other kid and I were acting goofy, as young boys often do. I can’t recall what we were doing but it was something innocuous.

The priest grabbed my friend and tossed him toward the doorway leading onto the altar. He then turned on me and hit me hard across the face with his open hand. He tossed me into line and pushed the two of us out to begin Mass.

I was hurt and humiliated, so once on the altar I turned, stormed back into the sacristy, threw my surplus and cassock on the floor and went home.

My father was working in the yard when I arrived. He noticed I was upset and saw the red welt on my face. He soon had the story out of me, ordered me into the car and we drove back to the church.

We waited in the sacristy for Mass to end and when the priest came off the altar my father grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the sacristy wall. I don’t remember my father’s exact words, but they were something very unchristian, like: “If you ever lay a hand on my son again, I will kill you.”

Leaving, I turned and saw the priest, holding his throat, slide down the wall to the floor. That was the end of the incident, except for my father’s lecture on goofing around before Mass.

As I matured I found other problems with the church. Dogmatic thinking regarding birth control, abortion, its treatment of women, and of course its scandalous involvement, with governments and other religious institutions, in the Indigenous residential school system.

I came to understand, however, that the church was yet another human institution, run by imperfect humans trying to do good but at times misdirected to the point of doing evil. The church was a guiding light, but I discovered that my own spirit could be an important and sometimes more reliable guide.

Also, I was never inspired by church trappings. The stained glass windows, the gilded statues, the towering sermons and the sweet scent of burning incense did little to arouse religious fervour.

What did inspire me, and still does, are the people in the pews. Over time these have been family, friends and others who without fuss or pretensions radiate decency and humility. Imperfect people but people you admire and wish to be like.

I did not let a disturbed priest or other mistakes of the institutional church drive me away. I still go and sit in a pew, reflecting and thinking of those people and the people now around me.

They come for different reasons, anchored by various levels of belief and fervour, none of which is my business. My business is to reflect on who I am and how I should be living my life.

I don’t have to go to church to do that, but I do. I can do it where the statues are trees, the stained glass windows are mists rising off a still lake and the hymns are a breeze in the trees and a loon calling in the distance.

As Albert Einstein is reported to have said: "Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better."

As I stare through treetops into a night sky I understand that I have an individual spirit to help guide me through the dark forests of life. I also understand that as powerful and important as I believe my spirit is, somewhere in that starlit sky is a greater spirit, more knowing and more powerful than mine.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Worrisome weather ahead?

Indeed, it has been a hot and dry summer. My records, based on Environment Canada data, show 20 daytime highs of 30 Celsius or higher and an average daytime high of 26 C.

I worry that more lie ahead, and they will be hotter and drier (or wetter depending on where you live).

This year is on course to become the 42^nd consecutive year with global temperatures above the 20^th century average. Sixteen of the warmest years on record for the globe have occurred in the last 17 years.

This is not a simple freak event of nature, a natural climate fluctuation. This a sustained warming. The planet’s average surface air temperature has risen almost two degrees Fahrenheit over the last 115 years.

Scientists say the warming is continuing and that more frequent and more intense extreme high temperatures are a certainty. So are extreme precipitation events that include floods and droughts.

New scientific studies say that the next five years will be abnormally warm, perhaps extremely so, and we should be preparing ourselves for a new normal in terms of chaotic weather.

We already have had a glimpse of what a new normal could bring. This year our newscasts have been filled with shocking video clips of cars floating down city streets, funnel clouds wiping out neighbourhoods and forest fires creating scenes from Hell.

If the scientists are correct, and they often are, our future daily news diets will contain even more dramatic reports.

You don’t have to believe or not believe in global warming. Just observe what is happening and think about what more weather turmoil will mean to our lives. Encourage politicians to prepare to deal with more weather disasters.

Our economy, our agriculture, our drinking water, and our health already are being affected. Studies have shown a worldwide increase in respiratory problems and deaths during abnormal heat events. (Roughly 100 Quebeckers died during heat waves in that province this summer).

The socioeconomic effects of changing climate are not hard to imagine, and like with everything else, the poor and underprivileged will suffer first and most.

There is plenty of evidence of the Arctic melting and the oceans rising. The global average sea level is seven to eight inches higher than it was in 1900. Almost one-half of that rise has occurred since 2000 and some scientists do not rule out a further rise of up to eight feet over the next 80 years.

Such a catastrophic rise would wipe out some major coastal communities. Kiss those Florida beach vacations goodbye Snowbirds?

This long-term global warming, how it might affect our lives and how we need to prepare deserves some deep thinking.

In the meantime, the immediate concern of many of us is what the coming fall and winter will be like.

Climate models show there is a 60 per cent chance of us getting an El Niño effect this fall. El Niño years see a warming of the Pacific Ocean, which often leads to warm wet conditions across North America. La Niña years see a cooling of the Pacific and generally a worldwide cooling.

The World Meteorological Association (WMO) says the La Niña now fading was the warmest in history. That should have meant a cooler summer but this one is likely to be one of the warmest.

WMO also says there is a 70 per cent chance that we will have a 2018-2019 El Niño winter. That could mean milder temperatures winter with periods of rainfalls, instead of snow.

All the scientific stuff indicates that while the planet is getting warmer we still will have cold winters with colder-than-normal spells. The heat will return, however, with summers getting progressively hotter.

Last winter showed some of that pattern. Some bitterly cold days, especially in December, followed by milder temperatures.

There also were what appeared to be more days of rain last winter. Environment Canada readings for the Minden-Haliburton region show it rained at least a bit on 29 days last winter. It snowed on 55 days.

It is too early for any reasonably accurate predictions for the coming winter. Meanwhile there is plenty of heat and humidity to enjoy, or not, before then.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Our electricity mess

The Hydro One leadership mess remains just that - a mess.

The power supplier to 1.3-plus million Ontarians, most rural and suburban, still doesn’t have a board of directors or a Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The 14-person board resigned en masse when the new Ontario government forced CEO Myron Schmidt to retire in July.

The expectation was to have a new board and a new CEO sometime this month but it doesn’t appear that will happen soon.

Hydro One has been a mess for some time thanks to the bone-headed policies of a succession of Ontario governments, both Liberal and Conservative.

Doug Ford, the new Conservative government premier, made the latest contribution to the mess after railing about the company’s rich executive compensation. He kept a promise to get rid of Schmidt, forcing him to retire with a $400,000 lump sum payment and without losing about $9 million in equity compensation.

Schmidt had been earning $6.2 million a year as the Hydro One chief, which Ford found outrageous. Schmidt’s salary increased $1.7 million last year.

Adding to the outrage was the Hydro One board, which decided its members should receive a $25,000-a-year raise. Their pay soared to $185,000 from $160,000, for part-time work.

Ford presumably will demand salaries for a new CEO and new directors be less. Critics say that paying less will result in getting second-rate people who will drive Hydro One down to a second-rate utility.

I beg to differ. You don’t need a $6 million-dollar CEO, or board members paid $185,000, to run Hydro One effectively. There are experienced and skilled people who can do the job just as well for less.

This pay-big-to-get-the-best attitude spun out of the new global plutocracy that began rising three decades or so ago. The super rich began to take control of politics, business, sport and entertainment, creating stars and paying them obscene compensation for their fame and financial performance.

During the 1990s we saw CEOs and other senior executives retire or otherwise leave their positions and be replaced by people paid two and three times the salaries received by their predecessors.

CEO earnings increased 937 per cent between 1978 and 2016, the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit American think tank, has reported. During the same time the compensation of American workers increased 11.2 per cent.

It was the growth of the plutocracy and its elitist attitudes that landed Myron Schmidt in Canada as Hydro One CEO back in 2015.

Schmidt was no corporate genius who appeared as a dream come true. He was born and raised in Kansas, a football player with an average education (business degree from Kansas State).

He held various positions with General Foods then joined ConAgra Inc. and ran its Canadian operations. In 2000 he joined Saskatchewan Wheat Pool           helping to transform it into Viterra Inc., Canada’s largest grain handler and a major agri-business.

News reports say he did a good job growing that business and doing good for investors.

At Hydro One, before being pushed out, he said the latest quarterly earnings were up 33 per cent and the utility had added 400 jobs while delivering $114 million in savings, all of which he called “remarkable statistics for a company that’s in transition.”

That’s all nice but I’d like to know what the $6.2-million CEO and Hydro One did for me, a mere customer.

The utility’s Internet outage alert system, which should be a huge benefit to folks who are away from their cottages or homes for extended periods, does not work the way it should work. Its brushing and tree removal program along power lines is a disaster, which has led to unreliable electricity delivery.

Hydro says its line brushing cycle used to take nine years to complete but has been reduced to three years. Really? The Hydro One line behind my lake place has been brushed once in the last 32 years.

Hydro One can do much better, but it doesn’t need a multi-million dollar CEO and overpaid board to do the job. It needs to do better for its customers, not just its executives and shareholders.

The Hydro One ranks are comprised of dedicated, hard-working folks not being paid millions. Their leaders should be much the same.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca
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Insult and Injury

Enough is enough. I’m fed up to the teeth with the dishonest war against the news media and the ill-informed fools who goosestep their belief in and support for it.

We cannot let the dimwits who repeatedly smear important journalism with that fecal label ‘Fake News’ continue to get away with it. It is insulting to the thousands of women and men who work long hours, many for small pay and thin benefits, to observe and report on our lives and times.

It is an insult to me personally, one of a group of family members who have spent their lives helping to provide our fellow citizens with accurate and fair news. Also, it is becoming dangerous.

A free press, or more accurately these days, professional and independent news distribution, is the foundation of any democracy. Without it the cancers of manipulation and misinformation hollow and weaken our social structures like termites tunnelling through support walls.

Enemy of the people, eh? Was Sy Hersh, the reporter who uncovered the U.S. Army’s 1968 slaughter of innocent women and children at Mai Lai, Vietnam, the enemy? His reporting turned U.S. public opinion against the Vietnam War, now seen as one of America’s most disastrous mistakes.

Was reporting the mercury contamination of the English-Wabigoon River system in northwestern Ontario fake news? Visit the gravesites of Indigenous people who died of Minamata, the neurological syndrome caused by mercury poisoning, and ask them.

Every day there are professional pieces of accurate news reporting that inform and enlighten citizens to help them understand and therefore improve our society. Yet every day media outlets reporting the news take more abuses that weaken them and eventually will sink them.

The abuse comes from several directions. Many politicians downgrade professional journalism because it often reveals their follies and mistakes. The best example today is the vainglorious U.S. president with his agenda to denigrate and destroy legacy media outlets because they report the truth of who he really is.

One of the most severe hits on traditional news media has come from the popularity explosion of social media sites. News can be reported now by anyone with a keyboard connected to the Internet but it lacks the veracity provided by professional journalism training and editors who demand fact checks, honesty, balance and fairness.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are filled with false news. And because it is sensational, it moves faster and through more people, than real news.

Another hit comes from the general population, which never has made the effort to develop a full understanding of journalism, its importance and its workings.

These hits are killing legitimate, serious news organizations, and therefore our democracy. Reporting and editing staffs are being reduced and the number of working journalists is falling year by year.

Newspapers are closing. Guelph, Barrie, Orillia, Moose Jaw, and Peterborough no longer have daily newspapers. Other dailies in other cities will be shuttered within the next year or two.

Canadian daily newspaper revenues from classified advertising fell from $875 million in 2005 to $119 million in 2015, according to The Shattered Mirror, a 2017 report by the Public Policy Forum.

The same report noted that in 1950 there were 102 newspapers sold for every 100 Canadian households. That figure dropped to 18 for every 100 households in 2015 and is projected to fall to two per 100 households within the next few years.

In short, in Canada, the U.S. and many other places around the world there are fewer professional news businesses making enough revenue to pay and support professional journalists to observe and report the critical stories of our times.

Part of the blame for all this rests with news organizations themselves, which have been too caught up in the past to create innovate approaches required by the huge changes of the last three or four decades.

Traditional news businesses stagnate while innovators create powerful and profitable companies like U Tube, Twitter and Facebook.

Even news gathering thinking is living in the past. Too many newsrooms continue to worship the scoop – getting the news before anybody else. That’s an ego thing that should have died with the screwball comedy stage play and film The Front Page.

Guns and Change

Here we go again. It is likely that the worry over rising gun violence in Toronto will bring new restrictions down on responsible gun owners who keep firearms for hunting and shooting sports.

Parliament this fall likely will pass Bill C-71 that will expand background checks for firearms purchases, which is not a bad thing in itself. However, Toronto’s Summer of the Gun mayhem is producing calls for that bill to be toughened to make it harder for anyone to own a gun.

Some people are calling for a total ban on all firearms in Toronto. Toronto police have added support for that by saying that many (not a couple or a few or some) Canadians are getting gun licences just to sell their legally-purchased firearms to criminals. No one should fall for that pile of hyperbole without the police producing rock solid evidence that it is really happening.

All this talk is being laid on legislators and my fear is that it will result in unfair restrictions on responsible gun owners. 

Gun controls are needed in today’s societies, but they need to be developed with balanced and fair thinking based on evidence and not driven by pure emotions. Guns are important criminal trade products smuggled  mainly from the U.S.

Aside from gun controls what is needed is a penetrating look at what is making our society so violent. Why do people shoot other people, or mow them down with cars? Why is there so much domestic violence? Why has bullying become so prominent, particularly among children?

That penetrating look should include what is on our screens; our TVs, desk computers, tablets and smart phones. North American screen entertainment is shockingly violent and commonplace. You cannot turn on a TV without characters firing an automatic weapon, blowing something up or shouting at each other.

People I know are turning to British film drama, in which characters use cerebral weapons more often than guns.

We also need to start looking at violence – gun violence in particular – as a public health issue. Looking at gun violence the same way we look at a disease would promote much more and better research into the problem. Good research leads to understanding and understanding helps us to learn how to solve problems.

The rise of “strongman governments” also is helping to turn our societies more violent. These are the leaders who talk tough, lie and manipulate and who would rather throw a punch than negotiate.

We see them throughout the world now: Viktor Orban in Hungary, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Donald Trump in the United States. These and others are changing the way we think and act, turning our societies more aggressive, and abusive.

The world’s voters, worried by terrorism, urban crime, uncertain economic times and cultural changes are turning more to tough guys who promise to kick butt and protect us from all the forces against us.

So it is “we the voters” who have brought ourselves to this point, and it is “we the voters” who can turn it around, Two suggestions on how we can create change:

One, mentioned in this space before, is elect more women leaders. I have concluded, somewhat late in life, that many women are smarter and more reliable than men. Women leaders generally are more compassionate, inclusive, and negotiate deals that are fair to all parties.

Second, start local, individual revolutions. Many of us view our provincial and federal power centres as dysfunctional, or least not functioning as well as they might. We should concentrate our power to effect change right here at home – at the local level.

David Brooks, a New York writer and TV commentator, recently wrote a paragraph brilliantly describing the power of localism.

He wrote that the federal policymaker asks, “What can we do about homelessness?” The local person asks Fred or Mary what they need to have a home. The difference is a personal, rather than abstract, approach.

Local approaches to power can bring change. But individual efforts are required. Simply put, we all need to become participants in creating change instead of simply being observers.

Email: shaman@vianet.ca

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