By Jim Poling Sr.

(This column is a story I have written and told many times. Christmas without it again would not be Christmas.)

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Fresh fallen snow protested beneath the crush of my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk cruelly 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. To each side of the trail, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows, dropped there to rest by an impatient Christmas Eve blizzard. 

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 midnight sky illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars, and the frosty moon. 

I held my breath to hear better and determined that the music was the Christmas carol O Holy Night, and that 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 at gatherings cracked a window to clear the air. 

They sang the first verse, and when they reached the sixth line, the other voices ceased and one voice carried on alone:

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

That’s the part where the notes rise higher and higher until the singer reaches an awesome note.

The solo voice belonged to my grandmother, Louise LaFrance, and she hit that high note while sitting on the edge of the bed that was her prison. 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 into the bathtub.

Each time she hit the high notes at the words ‘O Night Divine’, a shiver danced on my spine.

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 10-foot by 10-foot 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 mother.

The crippling arthritis had attacked my grandmother not long after my birth sixteen years before. It advanced quickly, twisting her fingers like pretzels, then deforming her ankles and knees. 

She took up smoking to ease the pain. Late into the night I would hear her stir, then listen for the scrape of a wooden match against the side of a box of Redbird matches. Then the acrid odour of sulphur drifted into my room, followed by the sweetness of smoke from a Sweet Caporal. 

Sometimes I would get up and go to her door and see the red tip of the cigarette glow brightly as she inhaled and I would go in and we would talk in the smoky darkness. Mostly the talk was about growing up and sorting through the conflicts between a teenager and his parents. 

After the singing ended that night, my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts. 

I have long forgotten what I got that Christmas, and it doesn’t matter. My real gift came many years later, and was an understanding of how that frail and twisted body came to produce such powerful and sweet notes. 

My gift was the realization that those high notes were not solely the products of the lungs. They were driven by something stronger than flesh – an unbreakable spirit. 

They came from strength far beyond anything that a mere body can produce. They came from the will to overcome.

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What the world needs now are more dog walkers like Row Iliescu.

Iliescu is the Toronto woman who spends a lot of her time picking up litter while walking her dog in the city’s parks.

Most of the litter is cigarette butts which she sucks up with a handheld battery-operated vacuum. She estimates that on an average outing she picks up 300 to 400 butts.

She also picks up other litter. If she spots a discarded takeout coffee cup while vacuuming butts, she feels she can’t really not pick it up and toss it in a trash can.

I read about her on a blog post and then watched film clips of her on the television news.

Hearing about her volunteer anti-litter efforts got me thinking that we really need people like her in Haliburton County. Then I realized that we do have them.

Kennisis Lake Cottage Owners’ Association has organized roadside cleanup drives, as have other community groups and individuals. Many Saturdays or Sundays you will see someone with a spiked stick and garbage bag working a ditch or roadside somewhere in the county.

And, thank God they are. The amount of garbage we toss out vehicle windows onto our roads and highways is shocking and sickening. If some of it wasn’t being picked up by volunteers, the ditches would be full.

There are no accurate statistics on how much litter is dropped, or how much is cleaned up, every year in Canada.  Without a doubt hundreds of thousands of pieces of litter are dropped on our roads every year. And, roughly three-quarters of people asked in various surveys have admitted to tossing a cigarette butt, or dropping a gum wrapper or other piece of litter onto a roadside.

It’s a blessing that we have volunteers trying to keep our roadsides clear of litter. But the real answer to having litter-free roads is to find ways of stopping the litterers.

Most litterers don’t think about the serious problems caused by litter. Yes, it is unsightly, but it also is dangerous. A study done back in 2004 found that road debris and litter causes as many as 25,000 vehicle crashes a year on North American roads.

Litter is especially dangerous to cyclists, who are using highways more than in the past. A cyclist moving deeper into a traffic lane to avoid roadside litter risks being struck by a car or truck.

Animals run out onto roads to get discarded food products and end up being run down by a car or truck. Or, they eat discarded food gone bad and become ill.

Cigarette butts, cigarette packages and other items related to smoking are among the most littered roadside items. A discarded cigarette butt takes 12 years to break down and in doing so leaks cadmium, lead and arsenic into the environment.

These chemical components are taken in by plants, insects, animals and marine life.

Beer and pop cans also rate high in litter counts, and aluminium cans take centuries to break down. The U.S. non-profit organization Keep America Beautiful reports that its 2021 study found roadside beer container litter has increased 27 per cent since 2009.

Personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves also are becoming major litter items since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The frustration of litter is that there is no need for it. Laziness and carelessness are two main causes of littering. To get rid of those causes you have to change people’s attitudes.

That’s no small order, especially in Canada where we live surrounded by incredible natural beauty but ignore it, often living like pigs.

The World Bank has estimated that Canadian waste generation is the largest of any country in the world. It has estimated Canada’s annual waste total at 1,3235,480,289 metric tons. That’s roughly 36.1 metric tons per person each year.

The World Bank also estimates that global waste generation will increase by as much as 70 per cent in the next 25 to 30 years.

Canadians should be leaders in eliminating waste, but we’ll never be seen as leaders when we continue to allow our roadsides to become garbage pits.

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From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

The wind off the lake is furiously slapping the flag on the pole anchored in the little flower patch out front my place.

There’s nothing noteworthy about a flag moving in the wind. Except that it seems to be happening more often these days.

My flag is seldom still, even in the evenings when you expect it to be still. It often flaps during the night, waking me on occasion.

There’s no official data on whether we are experiencing more windy days, but we do know that wind speeds have been increasing. Researchers report that the global average wind speed has increased six per cent – from 7.0 to 7.4 miles per hour – since 2010.

Increased wind can be bad news. It can cause visible damage such as fallen trees and damaged buildings. There are other less visible, but serious, implications such as soil erosion and water evaporation.

The good news about more frequent, stronger winds is that we finally realize wind is an important energy alternative to pollution-producing fossil fuels.

It took us a long time. American naturalist Henry David Thoreau realized it almost 200 years ago, writing:

“Here is almost incalculable power at our disposal, yet how trifling the use we make of it! It only serves to turn a few mills, blow a few vessels across the ocean, and a few trivial ends besides. What a poor compliment do we pay to our indefatigable and energetic servant!”

Today, using wind to make electricity is a growth industry. The wind power market is up an estimated 14 per cent in the past 10 years.

The Global Wind Energy Council has reported record growth in the last two years. But the council says the industry is not growing fast enough to meet climate change goals set by governments.

It is not that there is not enough wind. The challenge is harnessing and distributing it.

The International Energy Agency says there is enough offshore wind to produce all the world’s future electrical power needs 11 times over. However, we don’t yet have ways of harnessing offshore winds and distributing the electricity they produce from miles out in the ocean to land-based power grids.

Wind energy may help reduce fossil fuel use and its environmental impacts. It does have its own environmental problems, however.

Environmentalists are concerned about the noise created by wind turbine blades. They also worry about visual aesthetics – wind farms spoiling views of beautiful landscapes. Large wind turbines are visible for 15 to 20 miles in clear and relatively flat areas.

Birds and bats flying into turbine blades is another problem. Joel Merriman, a wind specialist working with the American Bird Conservancy, says that 1.17 million birds are killed each year by wind turbines in the United States.

The is not much evidence to show harm to other wildlife, or to humans living near wind turbines. Some people believe that low-level turbine noise results in headaches, irritability, fatigue, dizziness, tinnitus and even more serious health problems.

There also is concern that with the growing number of wind turbines some could end up in locations that interfere with radar systems. These systems are widespread across North America and are important tools in air traffic control, weather forecasting and national air defence.

Numerous studies are being conducted to document any serious negative effects of wind energy, and how they might be mitigated. Finding turbine sites where good wind energy can be produced with minimal impacts on wildlife, humans or radar systems is a key part of that research.

It might all come down to having to accept some negative effects in exchange for a less polluted world and the increased destruction expected from continued global warming.

Environmental activist David Suzuki accepts that bird and bat kills are a part of creating necessary alternative energy. 

“Global warming will kill birds and bats, as well as other species, in much greater numbers than wind power,” he has said.

There’s a lot of thinking and work to be done to sort all this out. Thankfully, none of it has to be done by me. 

On nights when the wind blows hard, threatening to keep me awake, I’ll simply lower the flag.

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 Who will stop the Russians?

From Shaman’s Rock

By Jim Poling Sr.

If I throw stones at my neighbours relaxing on their backyard patio, other neighbours witnessing the crime will rush in to stop me.

If I take wire cutters and cut the power lines bringing light, heat and electricity to cook food, police will take away my cutters, put me in handcuffs and drag me off for punishment.

Sad Vlad Putin continues to fire hundreds of missiles into Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians, but Ukraine’s friends and neighbours have done nothing to stop him. 

Some countries have imposed sanctions, but these are aimed at damaging the Russian economy and have not stopped the killing. It’s like taking credit cards away from a mass murderer.

More than 6,500 Ukrainian civilians have been murdered by Russian armed forces and their weapons since Russia invaded the country in February. That figure comes from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Ukraine prosecutor general says that 437 children have been killed and 853 wounded in the Russian onslaught. Another 200 to 300 have gone missing and thousands have been deported to Russia, some of them put up for adoption.

Nicholas Kristof, a respected American journalist, reported last week that some Ukrainian children were enticed by Russian occupiers to attend a free summer camp. They were taken to Russia and not seen since.

This is a war against Ukrainian civilians. Putin wants to eliminate their country, their language and their culture. (Sound familiar?) 

He wants them to be Russians living on land transformed into Russia. 

The Kremlin admits it is making civilians suffer, but only because their government refuses to submit to Moscow’s wishes.

Putin is bombing and shelling Ukrainian apartment buildings so the people have no place to live. He has bombed infrastructure that provides light, heat and water. By depriving them of food shelter and warmth he hopes to terrify them into accepting Russia.

As of the first week of November, 7.8 million Ukrainians have had to flee their county, according to the UN. This has created Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

No country has taken any direct action to stop Putin’s massacre for one reason – fear. Putin has threatened nuclear war if any country tries to stop him from overrunning Ukraine. We are all terrified that he will start setting off the Big Ones.

Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. But we should not let his nuclear bomb threats stop the world from taking whatever action is needed to end Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

If Putin’s nuclear gambit is successful, and he destroys Ukraine without other countries trying to stop him, he will have encouraged other nuclear-armed totalitarian states. 

China continues to threaten Taiwan. North Korea continues to threaten South Korea and others by test firing missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads to North America.

The longer Putin is allowed to get away with his Ukraine savagery, the more these others smile, thinking: “If Putin can get away with it, so can we.”

Yes, stopping Putin could start a nuclear war. 

We’ve been living with nuclear fear since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when the Soviet Union began installing nuclear missiles sites in Cuba. Our nuclear anxiety heightens as more totalitarian regimes, ruled by psychopaths like Putin, develop nuclear capabilities.

The question for the world is clear: Do we continue to tsk, tsk the Russian killing, maiming and overall horrid suffering inflicted on innocent Ukraine civilians and their children? Or, do we step in with military or whatever else it takes to stop Putin’s massacre and risk nuclear war?

It is immoral to stand by watching the horrors of Russia’s war on Ukrainian civilians.

World leaders appear to be hoping that Russians themselves stop the war against Ukrainians.

There is an anti-war movement in Russia, but anyone hoping it will stop Putin is only dreaming. Restrictions on protests, including arrests and jail time have resulted in it being ineffective.

Many Russians who do not support the invasion of Ukraine have moved from their homeland because they cannot speak out against it. Close to one million Russian citizens and residents are said to have emigrated, many fearing criminal prosecution for opposing the invasion or being conscripted to fight in the war.

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Whenever I read about global problems, I note climate change, serious pandemics, wars-military conflicts, poverty and hunger always top the list.

I’d like to add one: social media. Nothing has done more it the last two decades to spread disinformation, misinformation and manipulate the way people think. 

Social media is being used to increase political conflict, promote instability and create atmospheres for violence. Its influence becomes stronger by the day.

An estimated 4.74 billion (billion, not million) people, or almost 60 per cent of the world’s population, are active social media users. Those figures come from DataReportal.com, which collects and distributes data on digital information usage.

Canada has an estimated 35 million social media users, which is roughly 90 per cent of the population.

There are dozens of social media platforms, the most popular being Facebook, YouTube, What’sApp and Instagram, each with more than two billion users. Twitter, which is in a state of chaos, has just under four million users.

Few will deny that social media platforms spread tons of information that is twisted or simply not true. There is talk of better policing, or even of banning social media platforms.

That’s just talk. It will never happen because the most outrageous pieces of bad information get the most attention. Misinformation sells and keeps social media platforms in business. Clicks mean money and money talks.

It’s impossible to police social media posting because there is so much of it. There are said to be hundreds of thousands of comments posted on Facebook worldwide every minute and 300 million new photos every day. Six thousand Tweets are sent every second.

Social media platforms lack professional fact checking. There are no editors ensuring that posts are fair, balanced and done with context that provides meaning and clarity to the message.

Despite that lack, many people are turning to social media for their news, and away from traditional professional news outlets like newspapers, which are suffering big readership and revenue declines.

So a lot of the “news” that social media users are absorbing is misinformation or outright disinformation.

Some of the inaccurate information is unintentional but some is intentional; deliberately put out there to influence thinking, or an event such as an election

Sadly, even some of the people who are supposed to be providing us with good leadership are distributing bad information

Two recent examples: Twitter owner Elon Musk recently posted for his 112 million Twitter followers an unfounded conspiracy theory about the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Musk deleted the Tweet later, but not before it received tens of thousands of retweets and likes.

Then earlier this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau distributed on Twitter false information about mass death sentences in Iran. His Tweet referred to false reports that the Iranian government had sentenced nearly 15,000 people to death.

Trudeau tweeted that Canada “denounces the Iranian regime’s barbaric decision.”

The Tweet was deleted later, with Trudeau’s office explaining that it was based on initial reporting that was incomplete and lacking context. No one explained why the initial reporting was not checked for accuracy before the prime minister made a fool of himself.

Social media can be positive. It allows us to build friendships, keep in touch with family and friends and share helpful information. It also can be an important business tool.

However, bad information distributed on social media creates confusion. When people find a situation confusing they often simply ignore it, leaving it to get worse. For instance, when health authorities say vaccines are important and social media says virus threats are a hoax, people become confused and tend to simply ignore an important health issue.

Without question social media is shaping our world in many different ways, too many of them brutal and vulgar. We need to start recognizing this as a major problem.

Once we recognize it as a serious problem, we can start finding ways of fixing it. We need to lift social media to a higher level – a level in which information posted is important, accurate and capable of building a better world. 

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I’m not one for rewatching a movie, no matter how good it might have been. Especially if it is a remake.

I made an exception recently and ordered up the 2021 remake of West Side Story, the classic tale of gang rivalry and young love in 1957 New York City. I did it because most remakes are bad, and I wanted to see just how bad this one was.

What a surprise! This remake is every bit as good as the original, which starred Natalie Wood, Richard Breymer, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris and Russ Tamblyn. In some ways, it is even better, which is not a surprise because it was directed by Steven Spielberg, who gave us blockbuster successes such as E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Jaws and Schindler’s List. Spielberg’s version is more inclusive and more representative of today’s world.

The original West Side Story had a core message: in a world torn by poverty, cultural differences and outright racism there is hope that love can overcome all.

The West Side Story 2021 remake continues that message, adding a couple of its own while putting the classic Romeo and Juliet story into today’s American social context.

One is that today’s road to achieving the American dream is more strewn than ever with hardship and tragedy. Gun violence, racial hatred and decaying urban structure stand in the way of building better lives, especially for immigrants.

However, hope for a better America comes from the performances of two young newcomer actors – Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgort who were 18 and 25 when the movie was filmed. 

Interestingly, both young people, who star as Maria and Tony, do their own singing. In the original 1961 film, ghost voices sang for stars Natalie Wood and Richard Breymer.

Probably the biggest change in the 2021 movie version is the reappearance of Rita Moreno, who played the vivacious Anita in the original. She returns as the elderly Valentina, widow of Doc, owner of the drugstore where members of the Jets youth gang hang out.

At 90, Moreno sings the powerful Somewhere!, which dreams of a time and place in which people with differences live and love together in peace.

Moreno’s reappearance 60 years after the first movie was filmed is a lesson for all: Don’t toss anything aside just because it is old. Old things and old people still have much to offer.

Valentina’s Somewhere! offers hope for change, while knowing she will not live to see it. She is near the end of her life but sings of hope for the young people who are struggling to make good lives for themselves.

Someone has been singing Somewhere! on stage, in film or in a recording studio for 60-plus years. The lyrics of the tune are haunting, but hopeful:

“There’s a place for us
Somewhere a place for us
Peace and quiet and open air
Wait for us somewhere

“Someday
Somewhere
We’ll find a new way of living
We’ll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere!”

Sadly, despite all the passing years and all the singing, we still haven’t found that “somewhere.” Hatred, racism and violence remain a big part of our lives. North American gun violence is totally out of control. There have been roughly 500 mass shootings in the United States so far this year.

We Canadians consider ourselves much purer than the Americans. However, Statistics Canada has reported that police-reported crimes motivated by race or ethnic hatred increased 80 per cent between 2019 and 2020. Black, Asian and Indigenous people were the main targets of the 1,594 Canadian hate crimes during that period. 

Instead of finding a new way of living, we are well into a new time in which sane centre-based politics is being taken over by insane extremism, on both the right and the left. Fact-based information and intelligent discussion are being replaced by misinformation and disinformation. 

West Side Story is a sad story that ends tragically without the “somewhere” being found.

However, like the two young lovers and the elderly widow Valentina, we can’t stop hoping that it’s out there and one day our crippled societies will find it.

 I have confirmed that COVID-19 is not a respiratory disease. It is a mental disease that makes some people more stupid than they already are.

I confirmed this during yet another call to our federal government, which increasingly is badly operated by empty pumpkin heads.

I called Canada Post because when I went to gather my daily mail, I found our two neighbourhood mail boxes replaced with two newer looking ones. The old ones looked and worked fine, but the feds always are looking for ways to waste our money, so I just shrugged.

I shrugged until I went to use the new mail box. The mail space assigned to me was so small that there was barely enough room to get my hand in to retrieve my mail.

Well, we all are being asked to live with less these days so I closed the slot and proceeded to mail four letters. I scoured the new mail boxes but could not find an outgoing mail slot. That’s when I called Canada Post. 

To be accurate, I asked my wife to make the call. I hadn’t taken my morning blood pressure medication, and having The Big One during a conversation with a federal bureaucrat would be the ultimate indignity. 

The Canada Post help guy told my wife there is no outgoing mail slot because they no longer are picking up outgoing mail in our area.

“No one advised us that,” said my wife.

“They don’t have to tell you, ma’am,” he replied.

Why are you stopping outgoing mail pickup, she asked. The reply: The trucks are not large enough to handle both delivery and pickup.

When she asked where we are supposed to mail our letters, he said he would happily look up the addresses of nearby outgoing mail boxes. Most of those he supplied were in far-off places, an hour or more drive away.

My wife’s cell phone was on speaker so I shouted: “What about Dorset? It’s six miles down the highway and has an actual post office.” 

He said he had no record of that place and added that he was stationed in southern Ontario, and didn’t know much about the north. Although, he had attended a Boy Scout camp in the Haliburton area.

He asked for our actual address, then said Canada Post had no record that the address existed. That despite the fact that it has been delivering our mail here for the last three years. 

At that point I had to race home to take a double dose of blood pressure pills. This was my second encounter this year with a numbingly dense federal bureaucracy.

Late last year I filed my writing business HST report to Revenue Canada. In March, I received a reply that they had mailed me a refund of $450, but to my old address in Barrie. We had moved a few months earlier to our cottage near Dorset. 

That would not be a problem, however, because I had paid Canada Post $108 to forward my Barrie address mail to my new address.

It was a problem. The cheque, like a bunch of other expected mail, did not arrive. 

I called Revenue Canada where I learned the cheque appeared to be lost and they would send me a pile of paperwork to fill out for a new cheque to be issued, if the old one was not found within six months. 

The Revenue Canada help guy asked for the new address. I gave it to him, noting he already had it because I had sent a change of address form to Revenue Canada months earlier.

He said he could not find the address, and in fact the road on which I live did not exist. I protested and he said he would check Canada Post. When he came back on the line, he said Canada Post informed him that there is not such address anywhere in Canada. 

“But Canada Post delivers mail, including mail from Revenue Canada, to this address,” I said.

“Well, Canada Post has no record of that address,” he replied.

I slammed down the phone and went looking for my blood pressure medication. 

Maybe it’s Covid. Maybe not. But we live in a world gone mad 

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The lights dim. The audience turns to other spectacles.

Nature’s annual autumn show is over. It was a spectacular one. Certainly one of the most vibrant in years. Crimson and golden hillsides seemingly competing to take our breath away.
There are many theories on why the autumn leaves were so dazzling this year. People cite drought, followed by ample early autumn rain. Others say low night temperatures, but without frost, are responsible.

Weather factors such as temperature and moisture do influence leaf change, but research tells us the most important influence by far is the calendar. Shorter hours of daylight and longer dark and cool nights set off biochemical processes that cause leaves to change.
No one really knows everything about why trees act the way they do each autumn. Not even the scientists who study these things.

We do know what causes trees to abandon their healthy green foliage. In spring and summer trees produce green chlorophyll to help them convert light into chemical energy that results in sugars and starches. This is all part of a food production process known as photosynthesis.
In the fall, green chlorophyll production slows, allowing reddish-orange carotenoid pigments and red to purplish anthocyanin tints to appear

The reds and maroons displayed by sugar maples, sumac and some other tree species are derived from anthocyanin pigments formed from sugar stored in the leaves. The yellow to golden orange hues of birches, aspen and hickory come from carotene chemicals that give colour to corn, carrots, pumpkins and egg yolks.
But we know nothing about the reason why trees change their colour. What are they trying to achieve?

“This is both surprising and puzzling, since Nature seldom wastes energy to no purpose,” writes James Poling (no relation), author of Leaves: Their Amazing Lives and Strange Behavior. “Yet as far as botanists can determine, the chemical energy that goes into the painting of a leaf is of no benefit at all to the plant. The colors seem merely to herald the end of a leaf’s life cycle.”

There are some theories about why trees change their leaves, but none scientifically proven.
One is that the change in leaf colour is a warning to insects such as aphids who want to burrow in trees for winter. If leaf colours indicate chemical defences are present, then insects will avoid the tree.

Then there is the theory of photoprotection in which anthocyanins protect the leaf against the harmful effects of light at low temperatures. Supposedly this allows the leaf to live a bit longer.
Then of course there is a longstanding belief that trying to maintain photosynthesis during the low light, cold, high winds and snow of winter is just not worth the effort for trees. So they decide to take a winter break and drop their leaves.

Or, crazy as it sounds, are the trees doing it for us?

Studies show that fall colours can lift our moods. Some psychiatrists advise patients that a walk or drive through the autumn woods is therapeutic.

The contrasting colours of autumn leaves stimulate the mind. They are an exciting transformation after months of seeing just the bright greens of spring and summer trees.

Autumn colours signal the brain that change is happening. And, change can be exciting, even inspiring us to do different things – like taking up a new hobby or setting goals.
They are a reminder that change must happen before new things can begin. And, of course, a reminder that nothing lasts forever.

All said, I suppose it doesn’t matter that we know what purpose a tree has in changing the colour of its leaves. Time spent trying to figure that out probably is better spent just relaxing by taking in the fall spectacle.

Watching the leaves turn is a great reminder of how lucky we are to have four seasons and the beauty and differences that each brings.
Autumn, despite its signals of harder times ahead, is for many folks the absolute best of the seasons.

I like the way autumn is described by Winnie the Pooh, author A. A. Milne’s fictional teddy bear.
Autumn, says Winnie, is “a time of hot chocolatey mornings, and toasty marshmallow evenings, and, best of all, leaping into leaves!”

 I’ve been wondering a lot recently about Bell. You know, the telephone company now into mobile phones, internet service, digital television, radio and television news, sports and entertainment programming, plus TV and film productions.

Bell no longer is just Bell Telephone or Ma Bell. It is Canada’s largest telecommunications company with 52,000 employees

Despite that, it seems to have problems providing consistent quality services to folks in Haliburton County. Not many people in the Highlands have words of high praise for the company

That’s not unusual: people tend to knock big companies that provide them services and charge them significant dollars for doing so. However, there have been some recent events that have me wondering about Bell service in the Highlands.

Early last summer people using Bell landlines or cell phones reported problems trying to reach municipal and health care offices. Minden Hills township reported Bell customers calling its offices were unable to connect.

Similar problems were reported by Haliburton Highlands Health Services and the Haliburton County Public Library.

The problems apparently were caused by an issue between Bell and a company it uses to service internet-based telephone connection software. Those problems have been resolved.

Also, the Times recently carried a story quoting Duck Lake Road area resident Paul Petric, who said that power outages kill his Bell landline telephone service, making it impossible to call 911 in an emergency. Cell service in his area is spotty, he said, so during power outages he has no reliable way of making an emergency call.

This is not supposed to happen because there apparently is a battery backup system to ensure landline telephone service during power outages, which are not a rarity in the Highlands.

Now there are rumours that Bell has stopped maintaining the battery backup system, leaving some areas without telephone service during planned or unexpected power outages. These are rumours which are neither denied nor confirmed by Bell.

Petric said he talked with a Bell representative in July and was told he would receive a callback within a week with answers to his questions. He still has not heard back.

One month ago I emailed Bell media relations and asked about the battery backup system and whether it is being maintained. I got a quick reply from Jacqueline Michelis who wrote:

“We have received your inquiry. We are looking into this and will get back to you.”

I have not heard from her or anyone else at Bell since.
So here I am wondering about Bell’s landline system and whether it is reliable when needed in times of emergency.

I’m also wondering why Canada’s largest telecommunications company cannot quickly and simply tell people what is happening. Is there a battery backup system and is it being maintained? If not, what is being done to assure full time, reliable landline telephone service for emergencies?
It’s not good enough to say use your cell phone. Not everyone has one. And, cell service in parts of the Highlands is totally unreliable. But that’s a story for another day.

This is probably a small issue considering all the other things Bell has to deal with across its vast, Canada-wide network. Small or not, I would have thought this is something any company would want to get ahead of quickly.
The failure to do so raises questions about how serious Bell is about serving low population, high maintenance areas like the Highlands.

Its competitors already are eating into its customer base in some areas. Many people I have talked to are dropping Bell internet and television service and signing with Elon Musk’s fledgling Starlink service. They say Starlink offers them much more for less monthly cost.

Perhaps Bell doesn’t care and would be happy not providing services to the Highlands. If so, that’s fine. Just communicate with people. Tell them what’s happening so they can decide what alternatives they have.

I also would have thought that a company that makes billions of dollars a year in the communication business would be very aware of the dangers of poor communication. Poor communication causes misunderstandings, confusion and conflicts.

Most importantly, bad communication, or simply lack of communication, creates mistrust. And, mistrust certainly is not good for business.

Probably the best thing anyone can do after listening to a morning newscast is to go outside and listen to the birds. Studies show that birds are beneficial to our mental health, and our mental health can use all the benefits it can get in these troubled times.

A study in the United Kingdom reported an abundance of birds is positively associated with lower prevalence of depression, anxiety and stress in people. And, during the coronavirus pandemic a poll of 2,000 UK adults found that two-thirds had improved enjoyment because of hearing and watching birds.

Another study, spanning 26 countries in Europe, directly associated life satisfaction with seeing and hearing birds, or experiencing landscapes that promote bird richness.

Few will argue that having birds around makes us feel better. Sadly, however, the world’s bird populations continue to decline.

BirdLife International reported recently that 49 per cent of the earth’s birds are in decline. Its 2018 report said 40 per cent are in decline, so the number of birds at risk has increased by a whopping nine per cent in only four years.

BirdLife also said that one in eight bird species are threatened with extinction.

This bad news follows a 2019 Science journal report that there are 2.9 billion fewer individual birds in Canada and the United States than there were 50 years earlier. That’s a 29-per-cent decline.

Climate change is an emerging driver for bird declines, according to a new study released earlier this week by Cornell University in New York State. Climate changes are affecting migration patterns with some birds flying north earlier in the spring and delaying autumn migration.

There is some evidence that some birds are skipping fall migration altogether. 

Birds take their cues from the environment, so if climate changes alter migration times and routes, feeding patterns and breeding times also are affected.

Climate change may becoming an important factor, but habitat loss has been the main reason for bird declines over many decades. Residential and commercial development, agriculture and logging all have been taking away habitat birds need for life.

Hunting and trapping, wildfires and the introduction of invasive alien species also have been a factor.

Reports documenting the disappearance of birds is no surprise to many of us. Every year there seem to be fewer common birds at our feeders and less birdsong in the trees around us.

Declining bird numbers are not a tragedy because there are fewer to provide us joy. Birds are essential service workers who pollinate our plants, disperse seeds over large areas, and control insects.

Most importantly they are nature’s sentries, warning us of dangers to the health of our environment.

Bird extinctions can lead to extinctions of essential plants, which can lead to extinctions of insects and other flora and fauna. One extinction leads to a chain reaction, which eventually leads to human beings. 

Fortunately there is a growing awareness of the fact that everything in nature is connected.  That awareness is helping to promote individual actions that help to reduce bird losses.

Here are a few suggestions that bird protection groups say can help:

• Think about having less lawn and more native plants around your home.

• Use film or other items that stop reflections and prevent birds from flying into windows.

• Keep cats indoors or controlled when outside.

• Avoid pesticides.

• Buy shade-grown coffee. Farmers cut down forests to grow coffee in the sun.

Shade-grown coffee protects forests.

• Reduce use of plastics which can be particularly harmful to seabirds.

• Get involved with citizen projects such as the Christmas Bird Count and Project FeederWatch.

We humans need birds for our mental well-being. With killer viruses on the rise, Putin threatening to unleash nuclear weapons and the U.S. on the verge of another civil war, it’s a relief just to step outside and hear a sparrow singing to its mate.

 As Sam Knight, a program manager at the Nature Conservancy of Canada, told the CBC recently:

"It's such a great mental health benefit to have these birds and species around; you don't even have to be a bird watcher, I don't think, to really appreciate what birds add to our lives."

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We Canadians love our bureaucracy as much as we love our maple syrup. If we didn’t why would we swallow so much of it?

I’ve been asking myself that after a recent experience with Transport Canada’s office of boating safety. It’s a bit of a long story, beginning with an encounter with the Ontario Provincial Police on our lake.

I was breaking in a new 20-horsepower outboard motor when the police approached and asked if I was carrying all the safety gear one is supposed to carry. They noted my boat, a 14-foot open aluminium job did not have registration numbers, required for boats with motors 10 horsepower or more.

The cops were pleasant and reasonable. So much so that I went ashore immediately, sat down at a computer and started to apply for a registration number.

That’s when the bureaucratic nightmare began.

One of the first things the online application demanded was a signed and dated bill of sale to prove I owned the boat. It said that if I couldn’t produce a bill of sale I would need to go to a lawyer or notary and get a signed and witnessed statutory declaration. 

I bought the boat seven years earlier so finding a bill of sale was going to be next to impossible. Who keeps receipts for simple things for seven years?

I bought the boat from a dealer but soon after the sale, the owner died suddenly and the business closed. No chance of getting a receipt from a business that no longer exists.

In a stroke of luck I found a receipt after two or three days of rummaging through boxes of junk.

I was exuberant. I photographed it, attached it to the digital application, and pressed the send button. It refused to be sent, telling me I had not filled out who was the secondary owner.

I was confused. I am the sole owner of the boat and motor but the application demanded a secondary owner. It is pointless trying to argue with a computer so I listed my wife as secondary owner, providing a photo of her driver’s licence and anything else they wanted.

The digital gods accepted the application this time. But the bureaucrats didn’t. A couple of days later I received an email saying the application was rejected because the bill of sale lacked a signature.

The bill of sale was printed on the boat dealer’s letterhead and described the boat size and the price paid.

I found a Transport Canada telephone number and called it to explain I could not provide the signature of a dead person. The bureaucrat on the other end of the line said they must have all pertinent information before approving the application.

I tried calling later and got the same answer from a different person. I decided the best course was to abandon the process, run the boat without numbers and take my chances with the OPP water patrols.

However, the more I thought about the senseless bureaucracy of getting a number for a tin boat, the angrier I became and I called back to Transport Canada. I was ready to launch into a major rant but the voice on the other end was sympathetic.

“Just take a pen and write on the bill of sale the make and model of the boat, and the serial number, if you can find it, and resend the application,” he advised.

I did that and within a couple minutes of pushing the send button an email arrived approving the application and issuing me a legal boat number.

In 2021, Canada’s federal public service totalled 319,601 people. That’s an increase of 62,567 bureaucrats since 2015 – six years ago.

During the last fiscal year thousands of those federal bureaucrats took home $190 million in work performance bonuses. That’s an 11 per cent increase in bonuses from the previous fiscal year when $171 million were doled out.

Public service executives, people who oversee ridiculously complicated federal applications like the boating licence one, did especially well on the bonuses. Just shy of 90 per cent of them received bonuses in the last fiscal year.

I hope the bureaucrat who cut through all the nonsense and issued me my boat numbers received one.

Thunder Bay, Ontario – I’m sitting on the Hillcrest Park stone wall overlooking the city where I was born and raised. The view of Lake Superior and the Sleeping Giant is magnificent, as always.

So are the memories. Except for one.

I can see into downtown and the side street that once housed my favourite pool room. That brings a painful memory.

I was leaving the pool hall one day in the early 1960s when the air raid siren began blaring. Canada’s national defence department had installed air raid sirens in strategic cities across the country to alert citizens of a nuclear attack. Those were Cuban missile crisis-Cold War times.

We had been told that when we heard the air raid siren we should take cover wherever we could find it. I dived under a bus stop bench down the street from the pool room.

The siren was just a test, but finding cover was considered good practice for the real event.

The air raid sirens were dismantled in the 1970s because missile technology was so advanced that a strike could occur 15 minutes after launch, instead of four hours in the 1960s.

So here we are 50 or 60 years later, once again hearing nuclear strike threats.

Earlier this month the New York emergency management office released a short online video showing New Yorkers the steps they should take if “the big one has hit.”

Emergency officials said the likelihood of a nuclear attack is “very low,” but if so, why release a video telling people what to do when a mushroom cloud obliterates the city?

The fact is that chances of a nuclear attack are increasing rapidly.

Sad Vlad Putin, the lunatic with his finger on the nuclear buttons, said the other day that he will “make use of all weapon systems available” if need be. “This is not a bluff,” he added.

“The horsemen of the apocalypse” are on their way, the equally crazy Dmitry Medvedev, said recently. Medvedev is a former Russian prime minister, now a security council chief.

He also says Russia’s nuclear doctrine does not require it to be struck first before launching its own nuclear warheads.

Russia is said to have 6,000 nuclear warheads, the world’s largest nuclear bomb stockpile. Threats of using them have increased as Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine has heightened his humiliation over how badly it has gone for him.

Putin is a kleptocrat and trained killer who has a reputation for becoming more vicious the tighter he is pushed into a corner. The fear is that if he is pushed much farther, he will make good on the threats.

“I fear that they will strike back now in really unpredictable ways,” Rose Gottemoeller, a former deputy secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),” told the BBC recently. “And ways that may even involve weapons of mass destruction.” Some commentators say nuclear strikes would be only with dialed down tactical nuclear weapons. The experts call these non-strategic weapons because they don’t take out large cities and kill millions in surrounding areas.

As I sit staring out over the city and the 30 kilometres of water separating the downtown and the rocky Sleeping Giant peninsula, I recall the legend of Nanabijou.

The local Indigenous people referred to the Sleeping Giant as Nanabijou. They said Nanabijou guarded a silver-rich little island known as Silver Islet.

If any intruders tried to reach the island to dig its valued silver, Nanabijou would awaken and roar with thunder, toss lightning bolts and blow destructive winds.

These were warnings that invading Nanabijou’s territory to steal the silver would mean certain death.

Stealing the valuable silver from the little island the Giant protects, is an issue no longer. But I like to think that when the Giant throws a summer tantrum across Thunder Bay, it is warning of something bad to happen.

Nanabijou’s roar is still loud and shrill, its lightning bolts still sharp and the winds still powerful enough to whip Lake Superior into giant waves.

When the nukes start flying – non-strategic or not – Nanabijou will still be around to roar. The trouble is, no one will be left to listen.

And so begins the annual invasion of the mice.

They are on the move, searching for cracks and gaps in homes, cottages, garages, sheds and other buildings where they can find rent-free room and board for the coming winter. 

Early reports indicate an invasion of epic proportions.

Most years, people will have one or two mice show up as the weather cools in September and October. At my place, we have evicted 15 of the sneaky little critters in the past 10 days.

Some New England states are reporting increased sightings following large mouse outbreaks in the last two years. A University of Rhode Island mammalogy class reported trapping and releasing 24 mice in one night. Their capturing for study purposes typically gets only six mice a night.

On the other side of the world, Australians are concerned that an invasion that started in 2020 is continuing. By late last year, they were calling it a mice plague that had grown into the “many millions.”

Researchers say warming temperatures and milder winters have allowed mice populations to increase. They say our Great Lakes region has warmed almost two degrees Celsius since 1970.

Last winter was relatively mild, allowing more mice to survive and to keep reproducing. Experts say that female mice can begin having babies just 30 days after their own birth, and can produce three or four broods of four to eight babies every year.

Another factor is a banner year for acorns, a favourite food of mice. The warm summer with little rain has had acorns falling earlier than usual.

All this has created a well-fed and healthy mouse population that has become a robust baby-making factory.

And now, they are all looking for comfortable winter lodgings inside our buildings. Why the early start when the weather is unusually fine and outside food plentiful, no one seems to know.

There is the usual weather folklore that says an early autumn mice invasion means an early and harsh winter. The Farmers’ Almanac is forecasting a record cold winter with record snowfalls in Ontario and Quebec.

Keeping the mice out of your home or cottage is a near impossible chore. They squeeze through the smallest cracks that are difficult to find and seal.

Some people try chasing them out with electric plug-in units that emit high-pitched signals. An old-fashioned deterrent is to leave cotton swabs soaked in peppermint in areas where mice or mice droppings have been seen.

You also can hire one of the professional rodent control companies, whose numbers have grown significantly in the last few years. The North American rodent control market was valued at $1,596.2 million in 2020 and is expected to grow even more in coming years.

There are good reasons to keep the little critters out of your buildings. Health and safety are two good ones.

Mice transmit dangerous diseases such as Lyme disease and Hantavirus. They do not have to bite you to infect you.

Mice are natural reservoirs for Lyme disease bacteria. Black-legged ticks that feed on mice can become infected, then pass it on to humans when they bite and burrow to get a blood meal.

Hantaviruses occupy mice urine, droppings and saliva and can be spread through the air.  They are easily breathed in during vacuuming or sweeping, especially in confined areas.

There is no known cure for Hantavirus and the death rate for persons infected is about 40 per cent. 

However, Hantavirus cases are rare. Canadian health agencies report only three or four cases a year.

Still, it is a deadly virus that must be taken seriously. Health officials advise wearing rubber or plastic gloves and using a disinfectant when cleaning areas occupied by mice.

Aside from posing health risks, mice also are a cause of house fires. They gnaw almost everything and electrical wires seem to be a favourite. When they chew through cable protective covering, they expose bare wires and cause sparking which can start a fire.

If you find a crack or hole where mice might get in, fill it with steel wool, then caulk it to ensure it stays in place.

Mice are good for the environment – out in the wild, not in any of our buildings.

 This week marks a special anniversary. It’s of little interest to anyone but me, but I’m writing about it anyway.

Sixty years ago this week I walked into the second-floor newsroom of The Sault Ste. Marie Daily Star and was assigned a desk as its newest journalist.

I got there through a skillful piece of deception. 

I was passing through Sault Ste. Marie, where my mother lived, enroute to visit an uncle, who was a reporter at The Sudbury Star. The hope was that he would get me a reporting job in Sudbury.

“Why drive to Sudbury?” my mother asked. “The Sault Star is looking for a young reporter. It was in yesterday’s paper.”

Off to the newspaper I went and was greeted in the newsroom by a woman who turned out to be the Women’s Editor and a member of the Curran family who owned the paper.

“Someone gave you bad information,” she said. “We specifically advertised for a young woman to work in our women’s section.”

I was mortified. I flushed red and stammered. She turned away me from but instead of returning to her desk, she went to talk to a stern-looking gentleman at the main news desk.

“I don’t need anyone who looks like a scared little rabbit,” he replied when, pointing at me, she asked if he needed a new reporter.

She said she had a good feeling about me, and so it was that a couple days later I took my place in that newsroom.

No sooner did I get seated than everyone in the newsroom got up and left. Did I smell? Or, was this to protest my hiring? I learned later that the first edition deadline had just passed and everyone went to the coffee room for morning break.

I was left alone in the newsroom except for a sleepy looking guy bent over the wire desk, where national and international news chattered incessantly on The Canadian Press (CP) and United Press International (UPI) teletype printers.

I walked over, introduced myself and asked how he liked working there.

“Beh, beh, beh ter ter tha. . . an . . . ,“ he stuttered. I can’t tell you the rest because it was pornographic, obscene and simply not very nice.

He was drinking from a coffee cup, which I noticed was half filled with a clear white liquid, which was not water.

There have been many changes in the news industry in the 60 years since. Some good. Some bad.

Hundreds of newspapers have closed in the past 10 years and thousands of journalists have lost their jobs. Many news operations now are controlled by companies more interested in revenue and balance sheets than good journalism. 

More people now get their news and information from non-reliable sources such as social media platforms. We live in a broken media environment polluted by toxic talk, rumours, misinformation and disinformation.

Hopefully, this is just a phase and changes are coming that will fix the fractured media environment. There are signs already that news consumers are becoming more aware of, and concerned about, the dangers presented by the decline in fact-based news and information.

It’s not likely that we will see the return of the days of families sitting and reading in-depth newspaper stories. But, maybe growing concern about fractured media will result in positive changes.

One thing that should never change is the lesson learned in my early Sault Star days: The role of the reporter is to observe and report. Accurately, honestly and fairly. To produce news stories that are balanced and put into context.

Good journalism is not about awards, citations or wearing an Order of Canada pin on your lapel. Good reporters leave their egos at the newsroom door. 

The only thing that matters is the story and getting it right. 

Helen Thomas, a UPI reporter for 57 years, said many years ago:

“We don’t go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers.”

That was a good day 60 years ago this week. The payroll clerk who came to my desk to enrol me as an employee later became my wife.

The world is on the move again after 2 1/2 years of Covid. I'm itching to do some travelling but can't decide where to go.

I’ve considered Tasmania to see the ancient Huon Pine trees, some of which were growing at the time of Julius Caesar. 

I’ve also considered visiting Newfoundland’s quaint coastal towns to see the icebergs moving down the coast. The province’s television ads are spectacular.

And, it would fun to visit Italy’s Tuscany region to take in the beautiful scenery and sample the great Italian foods.

There are many choices, but I think I’ll go to Missouri. 

Missouri?

Missouri indeed. There’s a neat little town in Missouri called Marshall, roughly 300 kilometres (180 miles) west of St. Louis. It is an unimportant place with a population of only 13,000, but it does have two things of special interest for me.

First, one of my grandsons is going to school there. He is in his first year of college, playing baseball for the Missouri Valley College Vikings. (Vikings? In Missouri, the absolute heartland of the US?)

Secondly, Marshall is the home of Jim the Wonder Dog, whose bronze statue stands in the memorial park named after him a short walk from the college.

Jim the Wonder Dog was an English setter said to possess remarkable powers of prediction. He reportedly could predict the sex of unborn children and picked the winners of the Kentucky Derby seven years in a row. He also predicted the New York Yankee victory in the 1936 World Series.

In 1930, Van Arsdale wrote on pieces of paper the names horses expected to run in the Kentucky Derby. He spread the papers in front of Jim, who sniffed them, then placed a paw on one. The piece Jim selected was sealed in an envelope and opened after the race was run.

Seven years in a row, the papers Jim selected bore the name of the winning horse.

Jim was born in 1925 of pureblood champion stock and was given as a gift to hunter Sam Van Arsdale. Jim was the runt of the litter and Van Arsdale’s hunting friends bought him for less than one-half the price of his litter mates and gave Sam the dog as a joke.

Van Arsdale and Jim did a lot of hunting, with the hunter boasting he shot 5,000 birds over Jim, then stopped counting.

On one hunt, Van Arsdale said to Jim: “Let’s go over and rest under that hickory tree.” Jim immediately went to a hickory tree and sat.

Surprised, Van Arsdale then told Jim to go to a walnut tree, then a cedar, then a tin can lying on the ground. Jim went to each quickly and accurately.

Van Arsdale discovered that Jim could locate a car by colour, or licence number. He also could select people from a crowd after being told to find the man who sells hardware, or find the one who takes care of sick people.

Jim even followed commands given to him in foreign languages, Morse Code or shorthand.

News of Jim’s unique talents spread and he was invited to demonstrate them in other towns and other states. Magazines, including Outdoor Life, wrote articles about him.

Some folks suspected Jim was a scam so Van Arsdale brought him to Dr. A. J. Durant, a well-known veterinarian and head of the University of Missouri veterinary school.

Jim was examined and other vets, two psychiatrists and vet students watched as the dog was given commands to locate or identify things. He passed the tests with flying colours.

Dr. Durant, who expected to uncover a scam, concluded that Jim “possessed an occult power that might never come again to a dog in many generations.”

One day in the spring of 1937 when Jim was 12, Van Arsdale took the dog out in a wooded area near a lake. Jim jumped out of the car, ran a short distance, then collapsed. Van Arsdale rushed him to an animal hospital where he died.

Jim’s headstone is the most visited site in Marshall’s Ridge Park Cemetery. 

I think I’ll pass on Tasmania’s tall trees, and Tuscany’s delicious foods, and head on down to Missouri.

#

 

 That voice is in my head again. It sneaks in every August; a throbbing, melancholy voice sighing sad words about loss and change.

“All the rainbows in the sky

Start to weep and say goodbye

You won’t be seeing rainbows anymore.

“Setting suns before they fall, echo to you that’s all, that’s all

“It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.”

It’s the voice of the legendary Roy Orbison coming through the car radio. He’s singing goodbye to a girlfriend who has broken his heart by being untrue.

To Roy it’s about being jilted. To me, his 1964 operatic rock ballad is about the loss of summer. Alas, another summer is ending.

There’s still a month to go before summer officially gives way to autumn. Leaves on the trees are fading but seem in no hurry to turn to their golds, crimsons and yellows. Temperatures are above normal, even at night. The lake is still warm enough for swimming.

The calendar, however, cannot be denied. Some students are back in school already and the remainder return to classes in less than two weeks. Birds and insects are saying their goodbyes to August blooms. They know that global warming or not, temperatures will start to fall any day now …

Sorry, but summer is over.

I’m not unhappy about that. I’ve never been a summer fan. Maybe that’s because of a fair chunk of life spent in Northwestern Ontario and Northern Alberta, places where summers can be fair but often short.

That’s not to say I dislike summer or begrudge those who love it. Most people relish the sun and heat and the swimming, golfing and other outdoor pursuits.

Some are seriously affected when summer ends. They suffer Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which most often strikes people during the winter. When it occurs in summer it’s called Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Studies show that roughly 15 per cent of Canadians will experience some SAD depression in their lifetimes, most because of winter, but many because of summer’s end.

U.S.-based National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAM) regards the late summer blues as serious enough to declare September Suicide Prevention Month.

For me, there is something special about the end of summer. It is a time of beauty and plenty.

Late summer blooms, domestic and wild, put on a glorious show before wilting and waiting for the early frosts to end their year.

Fresh vegetables become abundant. Corn and tomatoes, available only in cans or shipped in from far-off places at other times of the year, are close at hand to be picked fresh.

Whether you are outside admiring the flowers, or picking corn, you can do so without the painful bother or mosquitoes and other bugs. They are not all gone yet, but they certainly are a lot less numerous than they were a month or so ago.

Summer’s end also is a time for reflection, and for planning. While thinking back on the joys of a terrific summer, it’s time to start planning for winter and it’s special joys. There is curling and hockey and skiing and skating to look forward to.

And, for many there is planning for that winter vacation that probably has been postponed for the last couple of years because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There also are holidays and festivities to look forward to: Rosh Hashanah, Thanksgiving, Hallowe’en, then Christmas and New Year’s.

Sunbathing days certainly are gone, or going, but the change from summer to fall does not mean an end to comfort and warmth.

I’m looking forward to wearing my bomber jacket and feeling a fluffy wool blanket on the bed. Then there’s the comfort foods. A bowl of hot soup or warm chili.

The change of season brings change to many parts of our lives, and that’s a good thing. What we eat and what we wear changes with the season and so does how we think.

Human beings need change. Change refreshes our attitudes and allows us to replace old, worn-out thinking.

We are lucky to live in a place where Nature provides change four times a year.