O holy night!

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr. 

My most cherished Christmas moment comes when I sit quietly and recall the Christmas Eve when I heard an angel sing.

Fresh-fallen snow protested beneath my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane as I walked home that Christmas Eve. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk scrapped against too clean a blackboard. 

Skuur-eek, skuur-eek. 

The boots ignored the sounds. They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops creating a meandering wake in the ankle-deep snow. 

From each side of the lane, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there by an impatient blizzard just passed through. Their crests were indistinguishable against the white stucco walls but nearly reached tufted piles of fluffy snow clinging nervously to windowsills and eavestrough lips. 

The squeaks flew through the still night air, dodging fat snowflakes that fell heavily onto my cap bill, occasionally splashing into my face, flushed warm from the walk. 

Faint strains of music joined the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear the music more clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an open window. 

I shuffled forward and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then mingle with smoke rising from the chimneys. Notes and smoke rose together into an icy sky illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars and a frosted moon. 

The music was the Christmas carol ‘O Holy Night,’ and the notes came from the window in my grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people smoked cigarettes back then and cracked a window at gatherings to thin the smoke. They sang the first verse, and, when they reached the seventh line, the other voices ceased and a single voice carried on alone: 

“Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices! O Niiii ... iiight Diii...vine! ...” 

That’s the part where the voice rises higher and higher until the singer reaches a stratospheric note. 

The solo voice belonged to Louise LaFrance, my grandmother, and I knew she was hitting that high note while sitting on the edge of the bed that had been her prison for sixteen years. She was crippled with limb-twisting rheumatoid arthritis and suffered searing pain and the humiliation of being bedridden, a humiliation that included needing a bedpan to relieve herself and having her son-in-law lift her naked body in and out of the bathtub. 

She had taken up smoking to help ease the pain but had trouble holding a cigarette between her gnarled fingers. 

She never complained or questioned why she had to bear the pain, and despite her frailty, she was a leader in our house. We brought our problems to her. When we hurt, we ran to her and she draped her twisted arms around us and absorbed our pain because she believed it was better that she have it than us. 

The others had stopped singing to listen to her. A shiver danced on my spine the second time she hit the high notes at the words “O Night Divine,”. 

When she finished singing “O Holy Night,” the other voices started up again, this time with “Silent Night” and other favourite carols. 

I went into the house and found Christmas Eve celebrants — my mom, dad, and some neighbours — crowded into the ten-by-ten bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They sang long into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the Gauthiers who seldom spoke English to my grandmother and my mother. 

After the singing ended my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard and devoured as only a teenager can. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts. 

I have long forgotten what I got, and it doesn’t matter, because my real gift was the understanding that those high notes were not solely the products of my grandmother’s lungs. They came from a strength far beyond anything that mere human flesh can produce. They were high notes driven by something far stronger — an unbreakable spirit. 

It was my grandmother’s last Christmas. But the memory of her high notes and unbreakable spirit brings her back every Christmas Eve.

Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

 It’s time to hike out to the shed and fetch the artificial Christmas tree.

It is not a huge task. Wrestle the box off the top shelf, pull out the three tree sections, snap them together, straighten the stand legs and stick the tree in a corner. The lights are built into the tree so you just plug the cord into a wall socket, add some Christmassy decorations, toss on some tinsel, and voila! All done.

But I’ve been thinking that maybe that’s not such a good idea this year. Memories of Christmases past keep whispering in my head.

They remind me of joyous Christmas moments from the past. Those years when we went into the bush with Dad to select and cut the world’s best Christmas tree. The fun of dragging it home, setting it up, then placing every coloured ball, and each piece of tinsel, carefully and affectionately. 

And, in later years, following many of the same family traditions with our own children.

More people are leaving their artificial trees in storage this year. They are opting for real trees, in many cases because they are seeking some normalcy in a year that has been completely abnormal.

The Canadian Christmas Tree Growers Association says it expects this year to set a record for sales. Many Canadian Christmas tree lots have sold out and exports of real trees to the U.S. are soaring.

I decided some years back not to cut any more live Christmas trees because of environmental concerns. I’m wondering now if those concerns are well-founded.

Like most artificial trees, ours is mainly plastic. The needles are plastic, as are many of the connecting parts. The electrical wires are plastic as is the star that tops the tree. 

I’ve concluded that by deciding on an artificial tree I traded one set of environmental concerns for another. 

There is too much plastic in our world. It is everywhere, including places it should not be – roadside ditches, city streets, lake shorelines and oceans. Plastics take centuries to deteriorate. Some never do.

Real Christmas trees disappear soon after Christmas. Many municipalities have Christmas tree recycling programs in which the trees are ground into mulch that is added to gardens to lock in moisture, suppress weeds and feed the soil.

Live trees suck up carbon dioxide belched into the atmosphere by human use of fossil fuels. They are pollution filters that researchers say can remove up to 13 tons of airborne pollutants per acre per year. 

And, they release oxygen year round - especially the young hungry and fast-growing evergreens - because they do not shed their needles, which are food-producing factories.

Growing Christmas trees for sale also is a boost for the agriculture industry. Statistics Canada reports that the value of farm cash receipts for Christmas trees in 2017 was $91.2 million.           

Also, when you get a tree from a Christmas tree lot you expect that tree is going to be replaced. Tree farmers must replace trees that are cut and sold if they expect to stay in business in future years.

A tree farm sapling takes eight to 10 years before it is ready for market, so it’s a business in which the operator must think ahead.

Perhaps all of us should adopt such forward thinking. What if those of us who follow the Christmas tree tradition planted one replacement tree every year as a sign of renewed life? 

All trees, but evergreens in particular, are a sign of continuing life. Ancient civilizations hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows during bleak winter times. The ancient Egyptians brought green palm branches into their homes in late December as a sign of life.

Some Christmas tree traditions and customs have been borrowed from different people from different lands. The first Christmas tree in Canada is believed have been introduced by Baron Friederick von Riedesel, a German immigrant to Quebec in the late 1700s.

Originally the Christmas tree was the traditional centrepiece of the season celebrating the birth of Christ. It has expanded to become a symbol of freshness, renewed life, hope and faith. 

That’s a much-needed, much-appreciated gift in 2020, a year of loss and sadness.

 Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

One delight of living in Vancouver many years ago was dinner at the On On restaurant in Chinatown. 

The food was fabulous and plentiful, and sometimes we walked it off with a stroll through the Downtown Eastside, now referred to as the DTES. 

The DTES was scummy back then; strewn with druggies, drunks, the mentally ill and people just down on their luck. Giving our kids a glimpse of the DTES after an On On outing was a lesson in what they did not want to be, and where they did not want to end up, when they grew up. 

To me, the Downtown Eastside was another slum soon to be cleaned up; transfigured by good government and a society that cared about people who needed help. 

What a stupid assumption! Today, so many years later, there has been no cleanup. The place is worse than it ever was. 

DTES now is the poorest, most wretched neighbourhood in Canada. There probably are not many more dreadful places anywhere on the planet, and that’s saying something. 

Here’s one example of the depravity we Canadians allow to exist, and grow, in a section of our own country: 

The example is a video, posted on Facebook and now in the hands of Vancouver police, showing a woman being raped in broad daylight on the sidewalk of a DTES main intersection. It shows the woman with her legs in the air as a bare-chested man (blanket or sleeping bag covering his lower body) rapes her while bystanders watch. 

The story of the video rape was made public by Daphne Bramham, a Vancouver Sun journalist and a former colleague of mine. Her story also tells of reports of women being held hostage, raped, brutalized and even shot in a DTES homeless camp. 

Many other stories have been written about DTES depravities and conditions over the years. They have noted that the median annual income of the DTES population is $13,600, compared with $47,200 for Vancouver as a whole. 

Also, DTES residents living in SROs (Single Occupancy Rooms) are eight times more likely to die than the national average. And, the vast majority of SROs have been found to have bedbugs, cockroaches and fire code violations. 

The sub-human conditions of Vancouver’s DTES have not escaped international attention. 

Back in 2011, the New York Times described the area as: "a shock even to someone familiar with the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s or the Tenderloin in San Francisco." 

“Just be careful not to stray too far south of Gastown into the city’s notoriously squalid and poverty-stricken notorious Downtown Eastside, where drugs and prostitution are rampant,” the Daily News of Egypt wrote back in 2010 as Vancouver invited the world to the Winter Olympics. 

Last August the Vancouver Courier wrote about tourists from cruise ships being afraid to visit the Downtown Eastside. A German couple hurrying out of the area said their son saw discarded needles on the sidewalk and was afraid of stepping on one. 

Even celebrities have commented with disgust on the DTES. 

Rapper Snoop Dog went on Instagram back in 2016 to call the DTES ‘Terrible.” 

“You need to clean this up,” he said. 

A few months back, former Toronto Raptor Danny Green called East Hastings Street in the DTES the “worst street in North America, in terms of druggies.”  That was after two of his bags were robbed during a charity fund-raising trip to the city. 

Some travel websites, including smartertravel.com, have warned travellers to avoid parts of the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. 

Why do we allow this situation to exist? Vancouver is a wonderful city, a terrific place to live and a place for all Canadians to take pride in. Yet a good chunk of its core is a human hellhole many of us choose to ignore. 

Its underlying problems are complex. Possible solutions are complicated and controversial, but governments, politicians and social agencies have had decades to find them and clear up what amounts to a national scandal. 

Writer Daphne Bramham sums it up in her recent column on the DTES: 

“On Vancouver’s drug-addled Downtown Eastside, chaos and depravity have become so normalized that there is no humanity left.” 

No humanity left. How can Canadians let this continue? 

 Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

Size doesn't matter

The next time someone calls you a bird brain, take it as a compliment. That’s become a cliché as scientists discover more evidence that birds are smarter than we believe.

Birds do have small brains, larger ones the size of a walnut, the smaller ones perhaps smaller than an unshelled peanut. In comparison, the brains of some monkeys are the size of a lemon.

Scientists have discovered, however, that size really doesn’t matter.

Bird brains are wired differently than those of other creatures. They have more cells packed into a smaller space and higher brain neuron counts than mammals or primates.

Neurons transmit information between different parts of the brain and between the brain and the nervous system.

One 2019 study showed that ravens process visual information faster than humans. In the study, ravens took only half as long as humans to glance at a collection of objects and pick one that they wanted.

I didn’t need an elaborate scientific study to tell me that. A few years back I left the contents of my pants pockets, including my car keys, on a table on the cottage deck. When I returned to the deck, I saw a raven flying off with something in its beak.

I haven’t seen those keys since.

The information about the 2019 study, plus much other research, is contained in a new book by nature author Jennifer Ackerman. It is titled The Bird Way and is a follow-up to The Genius of Birds, her 2016 book highlighting new discoveries about bird intelligence.

Ackerman writes that scientific studies, and her own observations of birds around the world, have provided a better understanding of birds and their behaviours – an understanding that is pushing aside our mistaken biases and assumptions.

For instance, many of us see some birds as aggressive creatures, fighting each other for territory and for food. In fact, birds can be extremely co-operative, raising the young of other birds, and working together in hunting insects and other small prey.

Ackerman writes that birds use their voices to resolve disputes, negotiate boundaries and spread word about sources of food and danger.

The Bird Way is packed with much interesting information about the ways and intelligence of birds. Some of it makes the reader smile.

Smiles fade, however, when Ackerman notes the ominous declines in bird populations.

One 2019 study found that over the past 25 years bird populations that depend on insects for food declined 13 percent in Europe and almost 30 percent in Denmark.

Scientists also reported last year that one in four birds in Canada and the U.S. have disappeared since 1970. That’s nearly three billion birds.

Back in 2014 the Audubon Society predicted that one-half of North American birds likely will go extinct within the next 50 years. Audubon said that, despite their intelligence, birds cannot adapt to the rapid pace of environmental change created by humans.

Audubon published updated research in 2019 showing that 389 North American bird species are vulnerable to extinction because of climate change. It lists increasing climate-related hazards as debilitating heat waves, increased wildfires, heavy rains and rising sea levels.

Audubon is not alone in its dire predictions. BirdLife International reported in its State of the World’s Birds 2018 that 40 per cent of the planet’s 11,000 bird species are in decline. It said one in eight is threatened with global extinction.

Audubon has said that holding global warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels would mean about 150 bird species would no longer be vulnerable to extinction. And, 76 of all vulnerable species would be better off than they are today.

It is easy to believe that the world’s human population never will make the sacrifices needed to reduce global warming. Easy when after nine months and 1.47 million deaths we can’t accept and make the sacrifices required to stop the spread of the new coronavirus.

But there is hope. Back in the 1960s, one woman and her book led to the banning of DDT, the most powerful and most damaging pesticide ever produced. Rachel Carson was considered a radical and her book, Silent Spring, was called inflammatory but her meticulous research and powerful writing convinced people and governments that DDT was a danger that must be eliminated.

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Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

America and The Old Man and the Sea

My fingers caress a well-aged copy of the novel The Old Man and the Sea. I thumb to the first page. 

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf of Mexico and he had gone eighty-four days without taking a fish,” read the first words of Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 masterpiece. 

Those first words are so simple and honest, as are the 26.967 words that follow to describe an old fisherman’s battle with a huge fish, and with life. 

Millions of other words have been written about the novel’s meaning and its messages. 

But today the novel has, for me, new meaning and a new message.

A quick recall of the novel’s story line: Santiago, the old fisherman, has gone to sea 84 days without catching a fish. On the 85^th, he catches his dream – an 18-foot-long marlin. Food for an entire village. 

Santiago plays the fish with his hands, gripping the fishing line and tightening and slackening the tension as needed. If he ties the line to the boat the fish will snap it and escape. Holding the line leaves his hands bloody and his body exhausted. 

He fights the fish for hours, then wins the battle. He ties the fish body against the side of his skiff and sets course for home. 

Then the sharks come. By the time he reaches the beach, the sharks have reduced the fish to a skeleton. Santiago fought to secure his dream, but lost it to the sharks. 

As I reread this remarkable story, I see it much differently than I did many years ago. I now see Santiago as the American people; the great fish is the American dream rooted in a Declaration of Independence proclaiming everyone is created equal with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Many fought to secure that dream, but it is being lost. Sharks are consuming it. 

Once the world’s most powerful and most promising nation, the United States has become yet another country of confused people unable to overcome increasingly difficult problems. 

Racism, supposedly banished by civil war 160 years ago, remains a significant feature of U.S. life. White supremacy and other far right-wing philosophies gain prominence instead of being buried once and for all. 

The U.S. has become a country of anger, loud shouting and self pity.  A country of fortified zones sealed off by armed forces and fences. The White House, a symbol of government for the people, by the people, is cordoned off by two miles of fencing. 

More serious is a loss of morality. That is evidenced in the Covid pandemic, which Americans have allowed to run rampant, infecting more than 12 million people and killing more than 250,000 people in less than nine months. 

A stunning example of vanishing morality is seen in a lightly-reported study of what is happening in U.S. jails and prisons during the pandemic. 

By last week almost 200,000 jailed Americans had tested positive for Covid. Last week alone almost 14,000 new cases were reported in U.S. prisons and jails, an eight-per-cent increase over the previous week. 

The statistics were gathered by The Marshall Project, a non-profit news organization covering criminal justice, and the Associated Press. 

The Covid-19 case rate for U.S. prisoners is believed to be five to six times higher than the overall U.S. population case rate. That is because of jail crowding, less access to medical attention and disinterest. 

It is also a manifestation of a trend to jail more blacks and more poor people and to care less for them because they are considered criminals deserving less than society’s ‘decent’ folks. 

This is not the America my grandfather and his family left when the Great Cloquet, Minnesota fire burned them out many decades ago. It is not the America that his ancestors helped to build when they arrived from England in the early 1600s. 

Can that America be restored? 

The Old Man and the Sea offers some hope. 

“Man is not meant for defeat," Santiago tells himself after the sharks attack his marlin. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." 

The America my family knew is being destroyed, but will the spirit of the American people be defeated? 

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When Trust is Lost

From Shaman’s Rock
By Jim Poling Sr.

It seems that you can’t trust anyone or anything these days. And, that has become a serious, but much overlooked problem for our so-called civilized society.

A recent Pew Research Centre survey showed that only 20 per cent of adults in the United States trust the federal government to do the right thing. The survey shows Americans also have a declining trust in each other.

Some people blame declining trust on the Trump presidency, but it predates all the lies, misinformation, disinformation and deceptions of that administration.

In Canada, trust in government actually has risen dramatically this year. One survey, from the Edelman public relations firm, showed that 70 per cent of Canadians surveyed trust government during the pandemic.

The survey showed that 73 per cent of respondents agreed with government decisions to restrict people’s movements during the pandemic.

Polls often show that only 50 per cent of Canadians trust the institution of government and its decisions.

As recently as last year an Edelman survey showed government ranked last among four institutional categories – the others being business, media, and non-government organizations. The pandemic put government firmly in first place.

“. . . Clearly, our political leaders are doing something right in fighting this pandemic,” said Lisa Kimmel, head of Edelman’s Canadian operations.

No matter what the polls show about trust and the pandemic, I believe most of us would say we Canadians have seen a general decline in trust, much like the Americans have.

Declining trust actually could, and probably is already, allowing the pandemic to spread more.

“Citizens expect democratic governments to be responsive to their health concerns,” says Orkun Saja, co-author of a European bank study that says young adults who endure a pandemic tend to be more distrustful of governments for the rest of their lives.

“And where the public sector response is not sufficient to head off the epidemic, they revise their views in unfavourable ways.”

The really bad news is that the pandemic likely will leave us with many psychological scars, including the declining lack of trust, for a long time to come.

The pandemic and the ensuing recession likely will see us all unwilling to resume previous spending and savings patterns. Experience with one recession makes people very sensitive to the possibility of another.

An overall decline in trust is becoming a serious concern for some people.
One of those is Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and unsuccessful candidate to become the Democratic presidential hopeful.

Buttigieg has just released a new book titled Trust. America’s Best Chance. Buttigieg is not only a good speaker, he’s a pretty good writer.

He writes that a General Social Survey has revealed that between 1972 and 2012 the percentage of people who say that most people can be trusted fell from 46 per cent to 32 per cent.

That, of course, was even before the Trump era.

He says that this decline in trust is not part of some natural ebb and flow, but a dramatic change over a specific period.

“It amounts to a genuine and historic emergency . . . . And the better we can understand the toxic roots of this crisis, the better chance we have if addressing it.”

I agree with Buttigieg on this because the opposite of trust is distrust, which really is a club we use in self-defence.

We must have high levels of trust to have healthy, functioning societies.

One of the recent studies on the decline of trust has an interesting quote from Mark Schmitt, director of New America’s Political Reform Program: “Poor performance leads to deeper distrust, in turn leaving government in the hands of those with the least respect for it.”

But the best quote on trust comes from Ernest Hemingway: “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”

Anyone who has been burned in the past is not likely to put full stock in that quote.

As Ronald Reagan, U.S. president and movie star, once said: “Trust but verify.”

And, from Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator: “I trust no one, not even myself.”

Well he didn’t exactly run a healthy, functioning society. And trust is indispensable for that. 

Read From Shaman’s Rock: www.mindentimes.ca/columns

Trees that say when autumn is done

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

Still six weeks to go before the calendar says that autumn is over. But the calendar doesn’t have to click over to Dec. 21 to tell me that. 

Tamaracks, non-conformists in our northern forests, tell me when fall is done. When their soft green needles turn golden yellow, then light brown, I know that the last, tough resistors to winter have accepted that change is here.

Also known as larch, the tamarack is the toughest tree in the forest, in my humble opinion. Some might vote for the oak, but oaks grow tall and heavy and often lean toward the sun, leaving them susceptible to wind damage.

The tamarack is a trim, small to medium tree growing to a height of 10 to 20 metres, smaller the farther north they appear. It has a slim, conical figure with a narrow trunk. 

The most unusual thing about tamaracks is that they are what you might call biracial. They are both deciduous - broad-leaf trees that shed their leaves annually - and coniferous, commonly called evergreens.

The tamarack is an evergreen, except when it’s not. It is not late in the fall when its needles turn color and fall, leaving the tree dark gray and barren, in sharp contrast to its neighbouring evergreens. 

Some other evergreens do drop their needles, but gradually and not so noticeably. White pine, for instance, shed some needles every two or three years, while spruce do it every three to five years,

Although it is different - an oddball among evergreens - the tamarack lives free of the harassment humans often suffer if they tend to be different. It is not mocked or called ugly names. It is not prohibited from occupying spaces or doing things that other evergreens do.

Tamarack is classified as a softwood, as other evergreens are, but it is probably the hardest, and most useful, of the softwoods. It is strong and long-lasting, yet flexible in thin strips.

The indigenous people were quick to figure that out, using flexible but durable tamarack strips for snowshoe frames. They also used tamarack wood, roots and twigs in building canoes and toboggans.

The Cree used tamarack twigs in making goose decoys, a practice that has become an art form. 

The tree also was an important source of medicine for indigenous people. They used its inner and outer bark to treat everything from wounds, frostbite and hemorrhoids to colds, arthritis and various aches and pains.

They passed all that knowledge along to European settlers who made significant use of the rot-resistant wood. The newcomers used tamarack poles as fence posts, railroad ties and to build corduroy roads.

It also was used tamarack wood in horse stables because it resisted abrasion and kicking damage.

It never was, and still isn’t, a major commercial timber species. It is harvested mainly as pulpwood, which is used to make paper, cardboard and various types of fibreboard. It also is used for poles, posts and general rough lumber.

Tamaracks also are well used by wildlife. Birds love the small seeds found inside the tree’s cones. So do squirrels and mice. Porcupines love the bark.

Tamaracks are not easily distinguishable during the summer. They hang out with black spruce and other evergreens and you have to get close enough to see their narrow trunks and the slender and short needles that grow in soft clusters of 15 to 20.

They are more identifiable, if you look closely, in early spring. Bright new needles appear in blue-green clusters that deepen in colour as summer progresses. The tamaracks also provide other spring beauty when their tiny, egg-shaped cones, retained throughout the winter, appear yellow and reddish or maroon.

But the tamaracks really come into their own in autumn, offering late season elegance when other leaves have fallen or have turned a wrinkled brown. They provide us a last touch of nature’s beauty in a bleakness about to be overcome by winter’s whiteness.

That golden elegance has been fading fast in the last few days. But it’s been wonderful to have as a finale to what has been a pretty fine year for fall colours.

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New Effort to Sell Frost Centre Lands

It’s official. The For Sale sign is up at the Frost Centre on Highway 35 just south of Dorset.

Workers were out early last Saturday morning assembling a huge sign offering the 40-acre historic site as available to buy. The property is listed by the CRBE (Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis) Group, a worldwide commercial real estate company.

A check of various CBRE websites did not reveal any listing details, like price and conditions, but perhaps they are still being drawn up.

The Frost Centre lands, and presumably its dozen or more empty and rotting buildings, apparently have been for sale for the last decade. But this is the first time, apparently, that the property has been listed with a real estate company that will work actively to find a buyer.

I say apparently because the Ontario government never has told taxpayers, who have paid hundreds of thousands of hard-earned tax dollars to keep the empty places heated and lighted while its exterior rots, much about what is happening.

For example, as a working journalist I asked Laurie Scott’s office twice over the last two months for information on what is happening with the Frost Centre lands. I have never had the courtesy of a reply. 

Also, a friend who is a taxpayer on St. Nora Lake where the Centre is located, has asked Scott’s office for information. No reply.

Scott is MPP for the area, as well as the cabinet minister responsible for dealing with the Frost Centre.

A major worry of many people is what a new owner will do with the Frost Centre. They worry that it might become another party palace resort (hello Trump International!) destroying yet another natural and heritage resource.

There is no need for weeping and gnashing of teeth over what might happen to the hiking and canoe/kayak trails on the Frost lands. Carol Moffatt, mayor of Algonquin Highlands Township, tells me the township has a long-term agreement with the province that allows it to operate its trails system.

The overall Frost Centre area is huge, covering roughly 26,000 hectares stretching far east and northeast toward Algonquin Park. The 40 acres up for sale were severed from the larger package some years back and cover the area surrounding the buildings on Highway 35. 

The province apparently is trying to do something to protect heritage and natural resource aspects of the Frost Centre. Again, ‘apparently’ because the government has not told us what those protections might be and how it intends to see that they are accepted and observed by any buyer.

Exchanges of property can include heritage and conservation easements, which legally bind a new owner to maintain and protect the heritage and conservation aspects of the property.

Mayor Moffatt said she believes there are heritage easements on parts of some of the buildings, but does not have the details.

That is interesting because it could mean that the easements would prevent a buyer from bulldozing all the buildings to put up a sky-piercing resort and marina.

However, there are ways around easements. For instance, a building with a heritage-protected fireplace used to warm Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, could be demolished if the fireplace was left standing and incorporated into the new building. It could be incorporated into a barroom or a pantry and still satisfy the easement.  

So, the 40-acre Frost Centre site on St. Nora Lake might undergo dramatic change, but at least Algonquin Highland’s terrific trail and camping system will continue. It has been increasingly popular this year as more people seek distance from the Covid pandemic. 

The tragedy of the Frost Centre is that it likely never again will be what it once was for the people of Ontario – a natural resources centre offering education and experience in understanding nature and how we should live as a part of it. 

Leslie Frost, the Ontario premier for whom the Frost Centre was named, felt strongly about the importance of education in understanding and protecting our natural environment.

“The government believes that the best approach to the conservation and administration of our natural resources is to be found in education,” he once said.

 Good words, unfortunately not taken to heart by his successors.

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When the red, red . . .

 Now you see them, now you don’t. 

The robins were everywhere until recently. Listening and pecking for worms beside the house. Flitting branch to branch back in the woods as they searched for any remaining mountain ash or other berries. 

Hardly a day would pass without seeing several or more. Now there is none to be found.

 Some say the disappearance of the robins foretells an early winter. When they sense snow and cold moving in, they move out.  I’m not sure that is totally accurate. 

Although robins are considered migratory birds I think of them as nomads. They don’t follow the consistent north-in-spring, south-in-autumn paths of most birds. They wander off track stopping wherever they find food. 

That’s why I was seeing so many of them earlier this month. Rains and morning dew brought out the worms, and there were still some berries left on bushes. Colder temperatures and some frost have changed that, so the robins have moved on to find more profitable locations. 

Many people see robins as delicate, pretty little birds that travel south early to avoid dying in the cold. However, they are tough birds who are being seen more often in northern regions during winter. 

Their outer feathers block wind and snow, while softer downy inside feathers provide insulation that helps them maintain their body temperature, which is 104 Fahrenheit. 

Project FeederWatch, a research project gathering data on winter bird populations, has reported that more robins are hanging around later in northern regions.   

It said that during the 2015-16 winter robins visited 11 per cent of winter backyard feeders in northern parts of Canada and in Alaska. That compared with only six per cent of winter visitations in 1989-90. 

One of the reasons could be climate change, and the fact that Canadian winter temperatures have been getting milder over recent decades. Urban landscaping might be another reason why more robins are being seen later in the year. 

Fruit trees and berry-producing shrubs and bushes have become popular with people  landscaping their town and city homes. Robins are mainly fruit eaters in winter, so if there is more of it to be found in built-up areas, they will be there. 

Robins originally were a forest species but they have adapted well to a changing landscape, which has seen forests shrinking and urban areas expanding. 

Many of us see robins as fairly solitary birds, hopping about alone, or sometimes with a mate. But serious bird watchers say that they tend to flock during the fall months. In southern areas they have been seen in flocks of hundreds. 

Flocking gives robins more eyes and ears to find food and some extra warmth if they crowd together in trees. 

Being in a crowd also offers some protection from predators. Although it is hard to imagine anything wanted to hurt these friendly songbirds, they have enemies, including crows, jays, hawks and a variety of other aggressive birds. 

Robins don’t seem to fear humans, although they are cautious and will attack if someone approaches their nest, especially if it contains babies. They have been known to come close to humans exposing worms when the dig in a garden or water a lawn. 

They do pose an indirect threat to humans because they are carriers of West Nile virus. 

Other West Nile carriers such as crows and jays die quickly from the virus, but robins survive it longer, therefore passing it along to more mosquitoes, which can infect humans. 

The robin also is an impostor, although not through its own fault. It is named the American Robin, but in fact is not a robin at all. It is a thrush and has no relation to the European Robin. 

Early American settlers who first encountered the bird called it a robin because of its reddish breast, which was similar to the European Robin commonly called Robin Red Breast in England. Other than that, there is little resemblance to the European bird, which is a member of the flycatcher family. 

If climate change does bring more milder winters we may see more robins during the winter months. That’s a good thing because there are few birds that provide as much pleasure with their vast repertoires of song.  

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Stand tall. Stand firm

 Young people are getting much of the blame for the soaring number of infections in what is being called the second wave of Covid-19.

You know, the private house parties, those crazy car rally gatherings, the eating out and flocking to the bars. Ignoring all the advice about avoiding large gatherings, social distancing and wearing masks.

I wonder if the young would act more responsibly if the rest of us older, so-called full-blown adults were setting a better example for them.

More than 31,000 young Canadians age 20 to 29 had contracted Covid-19 as of the end of last week, according to federal government figures. That’s 18 per cent of the total 178,000 cases reported across the country.

However, the statistics show that despite a high number of infections, few people 20 to 29 get seriously ill from the virus. Since last February only 309 people in that age category have been hospitalized across the country. Only 149 have ended up in Intensive Care Units, and 11 have died. Total Canadian deaths now are approaching 10,000.

So, no great danger, no great fear. Many older folks say the young are being irresponsible because, although their risk of getting very sick is small, they can infect others who can become deadly ill.

If we are going to criticize the young, we need to think about what kind of example we have been setting for them.

Consider the case of Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the prestigious Notre Dame University in Indiana.

Jenkins, a well-educated Catholic priest, ignored his university’s Covid protocols when he attended a White House gathering announcing the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Barrett is a Notre Dame graduate and a member of its faculty.

Notre Dame requires all its students and staff to wear masks and observe physical distancing.

Jenkins attended the White House event without wearing a mask and did not observe physical distancing. In fact, he shook hands with several people. He was one of at least a dozen people who tested positive for Covid after attending that event.

It didn’t take long for Notre Dame students to pick up on Jenkin’s irresponsibility. There were calls for his resignation and discussion of a ‘no confidence’ motion among faculty.

Jenkins has been highly embarrassed and apologetic.

“I failed to lead by example, at a time when I’ve asked everyone else in the Notre Dame community to do so,” he wrote in a letter to university students and staff. “I especially regret my mistake in light of the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many, particularly our students, in adjusting their lives to observe our health protocols.”

The tragedy of Jenkins is that he allowed himself to be sucked into the weak-willed crowd around him. Many of the people at the event were allies of a U.S. president who has mocked the wearing of masks.

Wearing a mask at that event would make anyone stand out as someone opposed to the group think; someone open to mockery.

Real leadership is about standing tall and firm in your beliefs, no matter how large or powerful the opposing group surrounding you. Jenkins obviously failed to do that.

He is not alone. Many of us will back off from Covid protocols because we don’t want to appear rigid or fanatical.

It’s not easy to tell someone NO! when they start to enter your elevator without a mask. Or, when someone decides to speak to you from a distance of two or three feet.

But all of us need to be firm if we are ever to get out from under this terrible virus. You have to be brain dead not to see and understand that relaxing Covid protocols has resulted in an explosion of second wave infections throughout the world.

If all of us stood firm in observing Covid protocols we would set an example that the young, and others, would find hard to ignore.

Humans don’t learn from being blamed and yelled at. We learn from example.

We don’t have a vaccine, or proven, readily available drugs to prevent or knock down the virus. But we should have the intelligence to be setting a good example.