There’s been little to do during this winter’s days of chilly grey overcast. So I’ve taken to thumbing through stacks of photo prints that have been gathering dust over many years, even decades.

I’m staring at a very interesting one: A snap of a curly-haired me in short pants standing in front of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents.

Four generations gathered together was unusual back then. Folks often didn’t live long enough to be pictured with great grandchildren, or even grandchildren. 

Sixty years ago the average Canadian could expect to live into their sixties, often not old enough to see their children’s children, and almost certainly not their grandchildren’s children.

Seeing three and four generations together is more likely nowadays as Canadian life expectancies have climbed into the low eighties. Rising life expectancy combined with falling birth rates have created a steady rise in the ratio of grandparents to grandchildren. 

A Finnish study shows that children born in 1860 shared on average four years of life with a grandmother and one year of life with a grandfather. A child born in 1950 shared an average 24 years of life with a grandmother and 13 years with a grandfather.

The Economist magazine reports that there now are 1.5 billion grandparents in the world compared with only half a billion in 1960. That means grandparents now make up 20 per cent of the world population compared with 17 per cent 60 years ago. It estimates there will be two billion grandparents by 2050, or 22 per cent of the population.

Canada, at the last estimate in 2017, had 7.5 million grandparents – 4.2 million grandmothers and 3.3 million grandfathers. Their average age in 2017 was 68, up from 65 in 1995.

So, we have entered the age of the grandparent. And, the rising ratio of grandparents to grandchildren is changing the way we live. 

More working mothers – more single parents in general – have created gaps in the time parents can spend raising their children. More people living longer, healthier lives has meant more grandparents available to help fill the gaps.  

Studies in the United Kingdom show that grandparents spend an average eight hours a week looking after grandchildren. Also, two-thirds of grandparents make financial contributions to their grandchildren’s upbringing.

Other studies show that the increasing involvement of grandparents in child care is not restricted to the U.K. It is being seen across Europe, Asia and North America.

Babysitting is small part of the contributions that growing numbers of grandparents are bringing to society.

Grandparents are important teachers in today’s complicated societies. They have many stories and experiences to share; stories that provide links to a child’s family and cultural heritage. 

Grandparents’ stories help children understand who they are and where they come from. And, grandparents’ experiences teach the upholding of traditions while passing along moral guidance.

Research at the University of Oxford has shown that children with a high level of grandparental involvement had fewer emotional and behavioural problems. Other studies have concluded that as many as nine out of 10 adult grandchildren feel their grandparents influenced their values and beliefs.

Grandchildren are more likely to listen to their grandparents more than their parents or other adults. That’s probably because parents and other adults such as teachers have to set and enforce rules that children might not like.  

Grandparents, who have little role as enforcers in children’s lives, get to listen, sympathize and comfort. They also try help children understand the adults making and enforcing the rules. 

Traditional grandparent thinking and roles are changing along with social and technological changes. 

The American Association of Retired People (AARP) says its surveys show that one in 20 grandparents now prefer their grandchildren to call them by their first name. Also, today’s grandparents are more accepting of grandchildren of a different race, ethnicity or sexualities.

A majority of grandparents surveyed by AARP said they would support a gay grandchild.

One thing that has not changed about grandparents over the centuries is an old Italian proverb that goes something like this: 

“If nothing is going well, call your grandmother.” 

Canada is winter country and we Canadians are winter people. So, I’m concerned about what is happening to our winters. 

Is the current one of above average temperatures, stretches of grey rain-snow drizzle and freaky storms just a fluke? Or is this a trend that will change our winter lives?

If just a fluke, it’s certainly an extended one. 

December saw only 16 days below freezing in Haliburton County, most only marginally below. The coldest daytime temperature last month was minus seven Celsius and there were 10 days of rain.

This has continued into January. The first half of the month saw mainly above normal temperatures and five days with at least a trace of rain. Forecasts indicate above average temperatures for the rest of the month.

Scientific data show temperatures are rising around the world. More importantly, winter temperatures are warming faster than temperatures in summer, spring or autumn.

The last eight Januarys (2017-2022) rank among the world’s 10 warmest Januarys on record. January 2022 was the 46th consecutive January and the 445th consecutive month with world temperatures above average.

If global warming is in fact making our winters less wintery, why are we still seeing record-breaking heavy snowfalls, plus bone-chilling temperatures in places that never have had them before?

In fact, say researchers, global warming is causing unusual cold in some places and extreme precipitation events, such as last month’s two- to three-foot snowfall, in others 

They say Arctic warming is creating a less stable jet stream, the strong west-to-east upper atmosphere winds that have been shifting north to south and changing usual weather patterns. Also, water temperatures are warmer and putting more moisture into the air.

Complicating things even more is the fact that snowpacks are getting smaller and melting earlier. Snow is an excellent reflector of sunlight and with fewer days of snow cover more sunlight is absorbed into and heating the ground. 

Some scientists believe that the winter we are experiencing now will be the norm in coming decades. Robert McLeman, professor of Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, wrote in the Globe and Mail recently that unless climate change is seriously addressed there will be no outdoor skating 50 years from now.

Warmer winters with more rain and less snow will have serious impact on winter sports other than outdoor ice skating. Ski resorts here and in Europe have been operating at reduced capacity because of the warmth. Winter is half over and some lakes still are not safely iced over to permit snowmobiling and ice fishing.

Warmer winters also affect our food supplies. Droughts, floods and soil loss make food production more difficult for farmers and ranchers.

Climate changes such as warmer waters can alter the ranges of many fish and shellfish species. Changing climate already has resulted in some marine disease outbreaks and Arctic warming is believed to be reducing salmon stocks in the Bering Sea.

Warmer winters also are affecting fruit and vegetable production, notably in California which has been suffering wild weather extremes. 

Many crops require a certain amount of cold weather, which producers call chill hours. Without that, pollination can be delayed or incomplete and reduce crop yields.

Even honey production is affected by warmer winter temperatures. If it is too warm in January, honeybees will leave their hives and the queens might start laying eggs. When they start burning energy in winter, bees eat too much of the honey stored for winter and face starvation..

Then, of course, there is the big threat to those who spend time in the woods – the bugs. 

Bugs don’t like the cold and longer, colder winters mean fewer of them hatching in spring. Warmer winters allow frozen bug eggs to hatch sooner, producing clouds of new bugs to emerge and begin irritating us earlier in spring.

But bugs can be more than irritating. Some mosquito species carry dangerous diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, Zika and West Nile.

There is concern that a warmer, wetter climate will bring more mosquitoes and the diseases they carry further north.

The federal Public Health Agency has said that mosquito-borne diseases have increased 10 per cent Canada in last 20 years, largely due to climate change.

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When you go to a 10-pin bowling alley you have to put up with a lot of noise.

That’s why Prince Harry’s book Spare, released this week, seems so appropriately titled. Accusations roll thunderously like bowling balls. Family confidences topple like bowling pins.

The book is much noise about things of little concern to most people, and no value in solving real problems. It’s a misery memoir written to rack up attention and make a heap of money.

It’s a book stuffed with little pieces of silliness designed to excite the chattering classes. Like how he lost his virginity to an older woman in a field behind a pub.  

Another flaky excerpt tells of almost freezing his penis on a trip to the North Pole. And, of meeting with a clairvoyant who said she could feel the spirit of his mother, Princess Diana.

He recounts smoking marijuana as a student at Eton College. 

Excerpts from the book have me wondering whether he’s still smoking it, and maybe inhaling too much, too deeply. 

Back in 2016 he consumed magic mushrooms to “redefine” reality and help him see “the truth.” But during one session he went to a washroom where he encountered a talking toilet. 

He also writes that he used cocaine as a teenager, but says he did not like it and any suggestions that he was a drug addict are false.

So perhaps it wasn’t drugs that have made him a bit wacky. Maybe he was just born, like many British royals, a bit dim.

The most dimwitted writing in the book is about his six missions as a British army helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. He writes that he killed 25 Taliban insurgents, saying: “These were chess pieces removed from the board.”

That has stunned and upset military people. Major General Chip Chapman, a senior British military official, called Harry “naively stupid” for breaking military standards and values - stupidity that could threaten the security of the United Kingdom and Harry personally.

Much of the book is about the Royal Family’s treatment of Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle. He has said his older brother William, the heir to the throne, called Meghan difficult, rude and abrasive. 

He also says that an argument about Meghan resulted in a scuffle during which William knocked him to the floor.

He writes that his father, King Charles, was antagonistic towards Meghan and feared being overshadowed by someone charismatic and popular with the people. Charles said he would not support Meghan financially because the royal family was “not made of money.”

Harry accuses his father, his stepmother Camilla, now the Queen Consort, and his brother and sister-in-law of feeding the press negative stories about he and Meghan.

Harry and Meghan ceased Royal Family duties three years ago and moved to the United States. 

Since then Harry has spent much of his time airing grievances against the Royal Family. These have hit a crescendo in the last couple weeks in an organized leadup to the release of Spare.

Harry has given a basketful of interviews to handpicked media, has had a documentary on Netflix and Meghan has been doing podcasts. All of which is contradictory considering Harry’s hatred of the media, notably the British tabloids.

He blames the paparazzi for his mother’s death in a 1997 car crash. The paparazzi were following a car carrying her and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed through a traffic tunnel in Paris. Their chauffeur was speeding, drunk and on prescription drugs when he lost control and crashed. Diana was not wearing a seatbelt.

Harry’s publicity campaign is paying off substantially, in financial terms. Sales of Spare are expected to be in the millions.

It hasn’t helped his image, however. Polling shows 64 per cent of Brits now have a negative view of the prince. Only 26 per cent see him in a positive light.

Meanwhile, as he counts his book royalties, Harry might want to consider one of life’s most important rules: Whining about how others treat you never makes life any better. Suck it up and move on with building a better life for yourself and anyone you can help.

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 The celebratory shouts of Happy New Year! are but faint echoes now, pushed into the past by the realities of today.

Today’s realities unfortunately remain the realities of 2022, which was the saddest and most worrisome year of recent times. 

Worries over viral diseases, climate change, rising prices, and Russian, Chinese and North Korean aggression have left us a society very unhappy with itself. 

Gallup, the global analytics organization, reports that its surveys show global unhappiness at a record high. People feel more anger, sadness, pain, worry and stress than ever before, Gallup says in a new book titled: Blind Spot. The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It. 

Leger, the Canadian research and analytics company, reports that 40 per cent of people it surveyed feel things will not change in 2023. And 22 per cent said things will get worse.

All this unhappiness appears to be behind a noticeable rise in bad behaviour. Community violence has risen in many cities, as have reckless driving, alcohol and drug consumption and unruly passengers and customers.

Some blame the rise in bad behaviour on the COVID-19 pandemic. However, various studies indicate an unhappiness-incivility trend was developing long before Covid arrived.

The new year brings hope for less misery, more happiness and better behaviour. But hope is simply hope. Action, not hope, will bring it to us.

The most needed action is demand and pressure for more effective leadership in various aspects of our lives. Gallup has noted how world leaders missed rising global unhappiness, which leads me to believe they have missed other things.

Gallup and others contend that leaders are missing things because they rely too much on objective indicators. 

Business leaders make decisions based on share prices and stock growth. Government leaders rely heavily on economic indicators such Gross Domestic Product and unemployment to figure out how they should be looking after their citizens.

They should be paying more attention to human development indicators and the feelings of people. How are their lives going? How do they feel about their wellbeing? 

They would learn much from measuring the state of people’s happiness or unhappiness and the reasons for it.

Objective indicators are important. However, they might show a country’s economic situation is rosy while its citizens are down in the dumps, unhappy with how their lives are progressing.

Too much of today’s leadership is outdated. They hold onto old-fashioned thinking not effective in today’s changing world. 

Part of the problem is that leadership training is outdated. Various studies over the years have shown that the billions of dollars spent by corporations and government on leadership training have done little to produce more effective leadership. One study showed that billions spent on leadership training improved productivity by only two per cent.

We need visionary leaders who are years ahead of us in their thinking and human enough to understand that firmness and flexibility are equal partners in directing people. Leaders unafraid to step back and make corrections when their questionable decisions are challenged by others.

Where do we find these leaders? They are out there and it is up to we citizens to identify them, and encourage them to step forward. A good New Year’s resolution for all of us is to devote more time and energy in promoting new leadership.

This is not to say that we have been living with totally inept leadership. The world, despite all its problems, has made advances in becoming a better place. 

There have been remarkable advances in producing solar energy to help reduce burning of polluting fossil fuels. Huge successes in recycling have been a part of what has become a green revolution. 

But the leadership needed to achieve even greater successes needs to be better. The only way for that to happen is for all of us to become less focussed on our individual lives and more involved in helping to produce new, more effective leadership.

As the author Vernon McLellen has written: “What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”