When i first set up this blog, I thought I would be posting every day, downloading what was on my mind so I could make room for fresh thoughts. Instead, no matter where I start, Canadian current affairs, like King Charles Head in Dickens, constantly intrudes. I surrendered and produced the following:

When my parents were in their early sixties, the age I am now, on my visits to them in Ireland I recall them frequently exclaiming over the evening papers, WHAT is the world coming to? My parents were some of the most open-minded people I have ever known; my mother had survived raising five daughters in the 50s and 60s and in Holy Catholic Ireland had weathered sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. After years of scorning and choking on pop music and culture my singer father eventually came around. But in the 1980s, when they were in their 60s, they were flummoxed by the new value system based on every-man-for-himself unmitigated greed. It was a new idea to release greed from its status as one of the 7 Deadly Sins and they were sure no good could come of it. I remember being full of answers then, being young and brash. I am flummoxed in exactly the same way now.
What is happening in the world at large makes no sense if taken from the perspective of mere survival. Our air and our waters are becoming commodities to be traded and played with. Air and water, the basic need of all life forms. The land is being fracked, deforested, mined and dried out of her oils and lubricants in the interests of profit making for the few. The men (mostly) and women who do this to amass their booty are walking around freely among us. Some are even given honours, titles and extra-privileges in society. Many of them regularly attend Church, attesting to a belief in a Divine Creator yet according no respect to the creation and finding no cognitive dissonance there.
The result of their actions is misery in volume and distribution even larger than that of two world wars. These people could END THE WORLD. This is the true world war – a war for the world itself, our garden, our home, and our sustenance. All over this world Indigenous peoples are recording, observing and fighting the despoiling with everything they’ve got, in many cases putting their lives on the line in defense of The Mother, our Mother, Earth. Their actions give me hope, spur me to positive action, and remind me that one person CAN make a difference.
Because I am an Optimist, I believe in the future. I believe, against sometimes-huge odds, that mankind is intrinsically benign. Lately, in Canada, with the re-election of Stephen Harper and the apparent muting of all other political voices, this optimism has been severely tested. Canada means so much to me in so many ways. I can claim neither ownership nor privilege here other than what I have earned. I came here as an adult, buoyed by the intelligence of Pierre Trudeau and Marshall McLuhan and the poetry of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. I stayed because of the rich ancient cultures, still practiced by the First Nations but mostly for the land, the extraordinary scale and beauty of which has never stopped awing and inspiring me with the visual presence of benign evolving creation.
Canada has two histories, which have not yet blended and only one of which I have experienced. Survival issues for the first peoples have been a constant since the ‘white man’ first showed up. And survive they do, as children of the land; they are bonded to this place. They are the keepers.
The modern social order in Canada, in its ideal state, also really appeals to me. I am speaking of post-settler Canadians. They are strong people, civil and civic and unless broadly traveled, rather innocent. No invaders have threatened their shores; no famine or holocaust has decimated their people. Canadians experience mostly robust health and have proven adventurous in intellect, sciences, medicine, music, making significant contributions to the world in many ways. Enough comfortable history to become complacent and a bit entitled – users of the land, not the keepers.
And under the shield of this complacency, the rapacious land-exploiters, once held in reasonable check, have taken over. A confluence of circumstances – the emergence of China as an economic power and the dilution of quality in Canadian politicians – has led us to a precipice. The mandate is nothing less than for us to save Canada, if we care.
And here is where my optimism rises. Could Canada, one of the last remaining wild landmasses on Earth become the tipping point in the global ecological battle? Can we, free and privileged people, draw the line here and stand up to despoilers by all means at our command? If we let the world know, daily and repeatedly what is at stake here, the daily skirmishes between the powers of greed and the common weal, would the world get behind the First Nations (Indians) and save this land water and air for all of us ALL of us.
A few years ago, while living in Downtown Los Angeles the fall of the United States began to become sadly apparent to me. The papers were full of alarming data about the safety, security and economy of the country while the President encouraged people to go shopping as an antidote to all of it. And no one wanted to talk about it. Everything that has happened since was signposted then. American men and women, families and veterans were living on the streets. The spread of disease was a nightmare for civic workers. This was happening side by side with billion-dollar expansion, the rich got richer and the poor died young. Canada seemed like a beacon of sanity in all of this, with controlled bankers, universal health care and overall ‘green’ sensibility. But oh how the mighty have fallen.
I had often noticed that Canada followed the US lead with a 3 to 5 year lag. Kennedy/Trudeau. Reagan/Mulroney. And now, fatally, Bush/Harper. An evangelical rich kid from Texas/Alberta with some huge personal need to prove himself a leader, at all costs. A harmless, folksy family guy in an oil-rich place where Christian fundamentalism ruled. We have watched Harper pull the same ruses, cite the same clichés, jeopardize Canadian rights and freedoms, and instilling fear, take Canada into useless and never-ending Wars. He risks the future of the country through reckless exploitation of natural resources partnering with a culture that has no regard whatsoever for citizens or land.
Along with Christy Clark on the West Coast he bumbles into multi-billion dollar deals based on Western business principles and ethics that have no place or regard in the East. There is ample evidence that China behaves as it wishes, with its own people and with foreigners, regardless of rights or promises. Our politicians are rubes, political naïf’s in comparison to an ancient culture that has survived and out-manipulated all onslaughts.
There are signs of activity all over the world, most unreported in mainstream media. Marches are happening daily, in defense of land, water, air, employment. Cases are grinding through Courts demanding a halt to the destruction of the environment that supports all life on Earth. We all need to be heard from, each and every one of us and the future unborn.