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12
Jul
2017
When summer comes, we throw open our doors and windows. Flies love us. Especially when I neglect to close a screen door behind me.
The other day, I spotted a house fly feasting on crumbs of breakfast cereal left on a kitchen counter. He seemed pre-occupied with his meal. I found the flyswatter, sneaked up on him, and whap! One flat housefly!
Then immediately I felt guilty. I remembered – or vaguely thought I remembered – that 50 years ago Mao Tse Tung had decreed that the Chinese people should kill flies. And they did. So effectively that they almost caused the extinction of tree swallows.
I wondered if I might be similarly harming some Canadian species when I swatted that housefly.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Mao Tze Tung, houseflies, sparrows, Four Pests campaign
10
My lawn is going brown.
Just a short while ago, I was having trouble keeping up with its growth. Abundant rain so nourished the grass that my 17 horsepower ride-on mower bogged down in places. I was glad I wasn’t depending on human muscle power.
Of course, that same rain had other consequences. Between rain and snow melt, Okanagan Lake rose to flood levels, and beyond.
At its highest, Okanagan Lake rose to 343.25 metres above sea level. The lake’s normal high level, called “full pool,” is considered to be 342.5 metres above sea level. The highest previous level was 343 metres, back in 1948, a year that saw most of the Fraser Valley underwater because of flooding.
It would seem to me that I would be helping to alleviate the flooding crisis by irrigating my parched lawn 24 hours a day. I’d be taking water out of the lake, wouldn’t I? I’d be putting that water to good use, wouldn’t I?
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Okanagan Lake, flooding, paradox
5
Three days before Canada celebrated its 150th birthday, a group of indigenous protesters erected a large teepee on the lawn in front of Canada's parliament buildings, as a symbol of the mistreatment their ancestors had received from the colonizers of this country.
They had tried to set the teepee up the previous evening, but had been forced off the parliamentary lawn by the police. Which also seems symbolic. It re-played the experience of Canada’s original inhabitants ever since Jacques Cartier landed on the Gaspe Peninsula in 1534 and claimed Canada for France.
By some coincidence, during the week before Canada Day, a small group at my church had discussed ways of repairing the harm done by the colonial mindsets of past generations.
Not until later did I realize they that our thoughts perpetuated that colonial mindset. With the best of intentions, we ask ourselves what we can do to improve their situation.
But – and here’s the point -- we never ask them how they might like us to change.
Tags: colonial mindset, teepee, parliament
Canada’s 150th birthday party is over. It didn’t feel to me like the 100th birthday. That’s a subjective reaction, I must admit.
In 1967, we genuinely seemed to be in a celebrative mood. Gatherings spontaneously broke into Bobby Gimbey’s anthem Ca-na-da… Expo 67 in Montreal had made the world aware of us. Neighbours held beard-growing parties.
Like the musical Dolly, we were crowin’, growin’, goin’ strong.
By contrast, Canada’s 150th – handicapped, perhaps, by its polysyllabic “Sesquicentennnial” title – felt manufactured. No catchy song kept us dancing in the streets. McDonald’s commercials had staff and customers singing Happy Birthday to each other. (I wonder if they paid royalties to the copyright holders each time?) Furniture chains offered bright-red 150th Birthday Sales, with all prices ending in 99. Parties had to be organized by civic authorities.
It felt like drinking champagne at the bedside of a dying patient.
Or am I just growing old and jaded?
Tags: Peter Mansbridge, Canada, identity, Sesquicentennial, 150th birthday