In the closing days of January, five snowmobilers died when an avalanche roared down the slopes of Mt. Renshaw, east of Prince George. Ordinarily, when I hear of these accidents, I tend to rant about human stupidity. About overgrown boys with too much horsepower and too little common sense, testing the limits of their machines’ performance on unstable slopes, failing to take reasonable precautions… Not in this case, apparently. Although some early reports called the avalanche “human caused,” later reports didn’t repeat that allegation. Later reports also described the snowmobilers – 17 people, in four separate groups – as well prepared and experienced back country sledders. Indeed, their safety equipment saved most of them. Two GPS tracking devices indicated their location instantly when the slide hit. Search and Rescue teams already in the area were able to reach the disaster site in minutes. A helicopter was on its way soon after. The survivors were already digging out their buried friends. Even so, they were too late for five people.
Willfully unprepared The story makes me wonder just how prepared one can be. “I know how to control a skid,” someone assured me. But when it happened, she didn’t. Her car spun across two lanes of oncoming traffic. Knowing how is not the same thing as reacting without having to think about how. Few drivers have actually practiced skidding, so that their reflexes can respond instantly. Most of us, I suspect, operate on the blind conviction that “It can’t happen to me.” As a consequence, we do not prepare for emergency situations. The CBC’s Marketplace TV program recently put a group of airline passengers through a simulated crash landing. The passengers got the usual demonstration of safety procedures – the one most of us ignore. We don’t even bother getting the safety card out of the seat pocket to check for the nearest exits. When the emergency commands started coming, several passengers didn’t know they should fasten their seatbelts across their hips, not around their waists. A few knew the crash position. But when oxygen masks suddenly dropped from overhead, most of them wasted precious seconds expressing surprise before putting on their masks. Then they didn’t know they had to tug the tube to start life-saving oxygen flowing. They didn’t know where to find their life jackets. And even after they did find them, one passenger wasted more than a minute figuring out how to put it on. In an emergency, you may not have a minute. Yet every one of these safety procedures had been covered in the flight attendant’s opening monologue.
Intersecting trajectories In an emergency, being prepared could save your life. And yet there are times when no amount of preparedness makes any difference. A small story last weekend told of a man in India being killed by a meteorite. More accurately, being killed by the debris from a meteorite hitting the ground near him. He was doing exactly what he should have been, standing by the door of the bus he drove. Can we claim that he somehow caused the meteorite – if that’s what it was – to land near him? Not likely. Or that some supernatural force was punishing him for some unspecified misdeeds? That theory certainly appeals to some people, who like to believe that every effect must have a cause. Or was it just random chance? In fact, there was nothing random about his location. His position by the bus was entirely predictable. Nor was there anything random about the meteorite’s trajectory. Given its initial path, its trajectory could be precisely plotted. Both “trajectories” affirm the reality of cause and effect. But the two trajectories have nothing to do with each other. Only by pure chance do they intersect at that moment, that place. Just as it was pure chance that the trajectories of the snowmobilers and the avalanche should intersect in that valley.
Products of chance I wonder why we have such a deep-seated aversion to acknowledging the randomness of chance. We don’t want to accept that there may be no reason at all for our misfortunes. We tend to say that someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that’s unfair – it blames the victim. In reality, the victim may have been in the right place at the right time… and still got shot or sick, hit or hurt. It’s simply random chance. And it’s much more common than we like to think. The best we can do is to be as prepared as possible. After that, it’s no one’s fault if things go wrong. ******************************************************** Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved. To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca ********************************************************
YOUR TURN
There are a lot of CBC addicts out there, it seems. Last week’s column generated 25 replies! I can’t print all of them, so here’s a sampling.
Quite a few of you admitted to listening exclusively to the CBC. Tom Watson was one: “The radio in my car is, with few exceptions, tuned to CBC Radio One. The television news we watch at home is primarily on CBC. I still think it the most unbiased of the TV news media sources. Let's hope the wishes you have for the CBC come to pass.”
Oli Cosgrove: “I’m one of those Canadians who listen to nothing but the CBC. I agree that CBC should be free of commercials, as it once was. Federal government slashing forced CBC into commercials. Justin Trudeau promised to increase funding which seems a simple enough promise to enact; it’s not as complicated as deciding what to do about ISIL. So why hasn’t he done it?”
Sheila Carey confessed, “I too am a CBC addict – and no, I don’t want to recover from my addiction. I think I answered that survey – I would have been one who listened only to the CBC, for about ten hours a day! “I also grew up with the CBC, and rediscovered it in my mid-thirties when I moved to Prince George where there were just three stations -- CBC, Country, and Rock. “As I read your column I kept saying ‘Yup! I agree.’ I have learned about BC and about all of Canada through the CBC. I like the fact that I can travel anywhere across the country and still listen to the same shows.”
Caroline Davidson: “I have listened to CBC radio since I came to Canada in 1958 and want to continue forever. I listen in the car on the way to church, helping at the food bank, visiting friends and shopping.”
However, Garry McDonald expressed some contrary emotions: “I am a news addict and former radio reporter and news director. I quit watching the CBC National when Peter Mansbridge started abusing his new position as Minister of Public Affairs and deputy PM for Justin. I was amazed at how blatantly giddy Peter was around the election, then almost orgasmic when he had the little secret ride in the limo at cabinet swearing in. “I don't know how Peter keeps a straight face and how the Mother Corp keeps him on. It belies your words of "accuracy and neutrality" . Peter reminds me of Duffy, who lost all integrity in his grasping for a seat in the senate.”
The column prompted quite a few of you to share your recollections of the CBC in earlier times.
 “Your description of your relationship with CBC radio resonates with me,” wrote Florence Driedger. “I grew up on CBC and all the programs you site. I also appreciated the Opera on Saturday afternoon, Bert Pearl and the Happy Gang, Alan Maitland readings, Farm Radio Forum… All of these helped me with the daily chores in our home, making them less onerous and hoping someday to see people I had heard on radio in person. “But it also helped me to have a greater attachment to and appreciation of people in other parts of Canada and the world. My uncles and aunts and my parents' cousins lived in various communities in Canada, United States and across the world in exotic places such as China, India and later Japan. We seldom met them, so the radio and its stories, music, devotions and interests helped me connect not only to general world issues, but they also enhanced these personal relationships. CBC helped me feel part of God's kingdom, a citizen of Canada and of the world.”
Dave Ligertwood: “CBC Radio, including Peter Gzowski, was my post-secondary education. I learned about Canada and the importance of learning itself. CBC Radio helped mold me into a concerned citizen.”
Lewis Coffman: “The CBC has been part of my life for at least 75 years (I’m 80!). My father bought a radio during WWII so that my grandparents, who were both immigrants from England, could listen to the news… My siblings and I grew up with the CBC playing a significant role in our everyday lives. Musical Marchpast, Music in the Morning, Just Mary, The Happy Gang, Mr. Bing… so many happy memories along with news from around the world. Your piece has brought back a flood of good times glued to the CBC. Hockey Night in Canada and Foster Hewitt, eating puffed wheat dipped in butter as Turk Broda defended the net and Teeter Kennedy scored goals for the Leafs. Ah for the good old days when the Leafs were a prized team! “Yes the CBC is and should continue to be a national treasure unencumbered in its news reporting by government or commercial interference. Canadians deserve the best in radio programming!”
Diane Jackson offered a CBC memory with a difference:  “We are farmers in Southern Ontario. In the late 1960s my husband had his supper and declared ‘I just want to hear Knowlton Nash with The world at 6 before I go to the barn.’ Yep – he heard ‘This is Knowlton Nash with the World at Six’… and the hydro went off and stayed off for two days. We were in the midst of an ice storm...”
Ted Wilson: “We needed the CBC, back in the day, to hear those Saturday night broadcasts beginning with “Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland.” I cannot count the number  of WW II Vets who told me that they considered their visit to ‘The Gardens’ to watch a Leafs game and see Foster climb up into his gondola to be one of the most significant events of their time in The Service. Our current saturation of communication technology has blinded those who never experienced it to what the CBC has meant to the formation of this country’s self-image.”
And several more expressed hopes for an ad-free, pressure-free national broadcasting system. Isabel Gibson: “I'd vote for an ad-free independent CBC Radio and TV -- but funded by the public individually, not through taxes. I'd even contribute to the radio version.”
Janey Murray: “I would be quite happy to pay a monthly fee in order to keep the CBC independent. We had a radio station here in Summerland for a while; it was affiliated with a Penticton station. One morning the Summerland station was waiting for a story from the Penticton station. “Come in Steve” the Summerland announcer begged. After a few of these requests he lost it, and shouted, “Where the fuck are you Steve?” We still laugh about it. Ah, live radio -- there’s nothing like it, is there? Pardon the language, but I’m an old broad of 83 and feel I can use that word now although don’t use it normally.”
Karen Krout: “Thank you for your wonderful article about CBC radio. You said what I've been thinking since I moved to Canada from the U.S. in 1985. I love CBC radio. CBC radio is the sound of Canada, right to the time in Newfoundland, a half hour later. I listen to Radio 2 more, but also Radio 1, and I was horrified when the commercials appeared some time ago. I've seen the dumbing down of Radio 2 since 1985, presumably to attract the masses. I agree we need a broadcaster that is free of political and commercial pressures. CBC TV is indistinguishable from American TV, for the most part, so who needs it? Just give me the radio, commercial free.”
Hanny Kooyman: “Thank you for expressing so clearly why I too want 'good old CBC' back. I miss my trusted radio station, without advertisements and without all the things that I never liked about commercial stations. That's why I was a faithful listener of CBC. Yet, I don't know what can be done to reverse the damage that has been done to CBC.”
Ted Spencer: “We can only hope that the eviscerated entrails of the CBC can be gathered together and replaced at some point in the not-too-distant future. This is clearly a matter of federal will, and nothing else. “Ireland is not the size of Canada by any measure. But it does have a recognition that a thriving public broadcaster is one mark of a civilized society. May we soon be re-civilized.”
About my writing, Janie Downs Wallbrown “loved ‘a multitude of puddles do not a mighty ocean make.’ Just loved it.” Janie now lives in India, and is learning to sort out the reliable media there from the scandal sheets.
Charles Hill wrote from Texas, where I don’t think CBC is available: “I never considered the influence of business interests on the content and format of radio and TV news. All major news sources are driven by business commercials. I wonder if the same was or is true of newspapers. I think that I am the only person on our street to have a newspaper delivered every morning.”
Finally, several readers challenged Steve Roney’s debunking of evolutionary evidence. Dave Buckna said, “Steve Roney is misinformed. Fossils of rabbits have never been found in the same strata as trilobites… The 2007 report, including photograph, of a rabbit fossil found with a trilobite fossil was a hoax.” Similarly, Hugh Pett suggested that Steve should check, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precambrian_rabbit#The_hoax  
Hugh added, “Evolution is the most thoroughly tested and verified theory in the history of the application of the scientific method.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
This column comes to you using the electronic facilities of Woodlakebooks.com.        If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.        To subscribe or unsubscribe, send me an e-mail message at the address above. Or subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message) to sharpedges-subscribe@quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at sharpedgesunsubscribe@quixotic.ca.        You can access several years of archived columns at http://edges.Canadahomepage.net.        I write a second column each Wednesday, called Soft Edges, which deals somewhat more gently with issues of life and faith. To sign up for Soft Edges, write to me directly, at the address above, or send a blank e-mail to softedgessubscribe@quixotic.ca
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