Category Archives: Education

Entries focusing on environmental education

Canada’s Promise?

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The Conservative Reform Alliance Party candidate in my riding, incumbent Kyle Seeback has recently been touting a Party line about “Bringing Home Canada’s Promise” but they never really define what “Canada’s Promise” is. This Common Scents Party claims, and I quote from their online site: “All who work hard get a great life in beautiful home on a safe street protected by strong borders and military under our proud flag.“ Whoa! Did we just suddenly teleport to the land of make believe south of our previously unprotected border?

Fellow Canadians, old and new, you may want to read that “Promise” again. First, I can assure you it was never made to Our First Nations. Secondly,I don’t ever recall that promise being recited in school, or taught in any citizenship class, or sung by Anne Murray or Celine Dion or Bruce Cockburn (still living), or Gord Downie or Leonard Cohen or Gordon Lightfoot (forever would not have been enough) in the verses of any song, I know a lot of people who worked hard their entire lives and ended up with a whole lot less that a “great life in a beautiful home, etc.” and still loved Canada. If Canada ever made a promise to any of us, it was this: “I will bring you long winters cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.”

The promise that all who come to Canada to live and study and work and perhaps raise a family in a welcoming community was a hope really. A hope that we could live in a country where, if we worked hard and contributed our skills, we would be respected and cared for, be protected by the laws of the land applied fairly to everyone, and that our government would endeavour to act in our best interests in times of peace and war. If we studied hard, worked hard, and cared for our communities,we would find adequate shelter, sustenance, safety, and maybe, just maybe, time to express our creativity, and find love and friendship In our community.

Dear Mr. Kyle Seeback, you and your leader claim Canada is broken and needs to be fixed, You claim that you can bring home Canada’s Promise. I think that you need to stop parroting Mr. Poilievre, and that Mr. Poilievre needs to put his glasses back on for a reality check.

You see gentlemen, despite the hype of your “create a crisis” press releases, Canada is not broken. The promise of Canada is alive and well and living in Dufferin-Caledon in the person of Malalai Halimi, the Liberal Party of Canada candidate running to be our next MP. That’s a promise. The way I see it.

WTF Moments in Life

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Prior to the April 21/25 release of my editorial on Pierre Poilievre, I felt compelled to insert a recent experience with a Caledon resident. I had been at a local clinic getting therapy for my knee (the joys of walking a border collie on icy sidewalks) when another client came to the front desk, She had apparently just finished a massage therapy session and was waxing eloquent about the health benefits of massage.

Standing beside her at the counter, I made a friendly observation that, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a government would include a once a month massage as a basic health benefit?”

To which she commented, “Yes, as long as it’s not a Liberal government!”

WTF!

To which I replied, “That’s not an answer. That’s an invitation to debate. I’ve done a fair bit of research on Pierre Poilievre, and do you think that the Party that has promised to kill Pharmacare, Dental Care, and School Lunch Programs is going to give us the benefit of a monthly massage therapy treatment?”

She grew agitated, took her receipt off the counter and left, muttering under her breath that “Carney is shady.”  What that comment had to do with our exchange about the benefits of massage therapy being included in basic health care,  I have no idea. But the facts remain the same. The government most likely to care for Canadian’s health benefits would be either New Democratic, Green, or Liberal. It sure wouldn’t be Conservative no matter how long you’ve voted for them in the past. Thems’s the facts.

The way I see it.

The Woman Who Would Not Give Up

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I had fully intended that my first feature article of 2025 would be a continuing dissection of the Conservative Reform Alliance Party. It will have to wait until Easter Monday. I had an unexpected encounter with a political candidate and her community of supporters that completely changed my priorities list.

They had organized a volunteer celebration in Bolton at the Allan Drive Middle School park. I walk our dog around the perimeter twice a day (on leash and stoop and scoop), so I thought I’d check it out. When our district was Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Simcoe, Liberal Murray Calder was MP from 1993 to 2004.  Then the boundaries were changed to create Dufferin Caledon and since then it has been considered one of the top ten safest CRAP seats in the country. Why would a neophyte candidate with an Afghan name even consider a run for the Liberal Party of Canada in such a difficult riding?

And then I met Malalai Halimi. And I understood why. This is her story.

In 2006, a young Malalai and her husband made the difficult decision to emigrate from Afghanistan. They arrived in Canada in November and were welcomed by winter, Over the next several years she coped with all the pressures of learning English through ESL classes, graduated from high school, found employment as an Office Administrator at an Aerospace company, and raised a growing family.

After her third child was born, Malalai found that her marriage had grown increasingly difficult to manage and was heading for divorce. She packed her three children into an old Honda Civic, loaded up some basic provisions and left her home in Vaughan. She had $95.00 in her pocket and no family support network. For months, they slept in the car, parking in empty lots for the night, moving around constantly. They used local Community Centres for showers, libraries for reading, and food banks for sustenance.

When their family home in Vaughan became vacant, Malalai and the children were finally able to return. Slowly her life began to come back into balance. She continued to work hard to protect her family. Her life became an endless cycle: get up at 5:00 am, drive the kids to daycare and school, drive to work, pick the kids up from daycare and school, and study. Repeat, every day. This takes a special kind of courage. Her only goals were to study and to care for her family.

She never stopped fighting to achieve those goals,

At Aerospace she continued to evolve, moving from Office Administrator to Production Coordinator, Production Manager, and now Business Manager. Her work ethic and abilities paid off, and her financial discipline finally enabled her to find a home in Orangeville She moved her family there in June 2022. She continues to work for the Aerospace company, and in 2024 started her own media network that now has 50,000,000 viewers  globally across all media platforms.

Now the unstoppable Malalai Halimi is running to become the Member of Parliament for Dufferin-Caledon. When we finished our interview, I asked Malalai one last question: “After everything you have been through, finally just having settled peacefully in beautiful Orangeville, what made you decide to run against an incumbent Conservative in this very conservative riding?”

She answered instantly and passionately. “Because a Conservative government would cancel all the programs that saved my life and the lives of my children. They would cancel School Food Programs, Pharmacare, and Dental Care. The Conservatives voted against the Bill that will provide food programs to every school by 2025. I want to make sure that no vulnerable families will be hurt. We need action from our side of the table. At present, there is no strong voice in Dufferin-Caledon.”

I came home after that interview and put up my Malalai Halimi lawn signs. If we have to go into battle with the MAGA’s to the South, I don’t want a maple syrup MAGA in charge of the country. And right here in Dufferin-Caledon, we will have a very real choice between a woman who knows how to fight with all her heart for the protection of our community and our children, or the same old lawyer politician.

The woman who would not give up looks like a very good choice. The way I see it.

(Note: Malalai is pronounced mah lah ligh) Her mother told her she was named after Malalai of Mariwand, one of the greatest folk heroes in Afghan history. She fought alongside Ayub Khan and rallied the Pashtun fighters to victory in The Battle of Mariwand July 27, 1880.)

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome Back

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Dear Readers,

After taking a break for two years to focus on health and family, I have decided to come out of hibernation. From the annexation of Crimea to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, from the attacks of Hamas to the extermination of Palestine by Israel, from the humanitarian crises from Sudan to Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan,  and Chad, we are witnessing koyaanisqatsi – a Hopi term signifying life out of balance.

Now we have the chaos south of our previously comfortable borders seeping into our mythologically polite Canadian lives. Truskland, as I have renamed the political real estate to our south (Google has not agreed, yet) is now a perfect example of what happens when you let the idiotes (check the original Greek) take over mission control. This new gargantuan political pandemic may turn out to be more dangerous than our recent battle with a tiny virus.

Canada faces a critical decision in the coming weeks. We can either elect the person who would be the next Prime Minister of Canada, or we can elect the person who would be the Governor of the 51st State.

My first official return blog will be published on April 13, two weeks before the election. It is titled: Beware the Pierre, the Man Who Would be Governor. And I quote: “Trump’s invitation to become the 51st State is like a blow to the head from a metal pipe is an invitation to nap.”  Thank you, CBC Debaters.

Elbows up. Canada Strong. The way I see it.

The Full Moon in March

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Image result for The Wind Moon

The last few nights and early mornings have been illuminated by a brilliant full moon in the March sky. The media world has alerted us to watch for the “Worm Moon” as it is known in the Farmer’s Almanac. However, few among us in southern Ontario would expect any self-respecting robin to be out looking for worms in the frozen snow and ice covered ground that now blankets most of our landscape.

This March moon got it’s current name from the colonists who had imported both the robin and the earthworm from Europe. But before the arrival of these invasive species, the First Peoples on this northern portion of the continent had named this moon the Snowcrest Moon, or the Wind Moon depending on the geography of the local community. It marked the slow end of winter and the gusty entry of spring when the bark beetles began to emerge from their winter tree trunk shelters.

Our indigenous Turtle Island explained it all, with 13 large scutes surrounded by 28 smaller scutes on the turtle’s shell. Thirteen moons with 28 days each equals … are you ready for it … 364 days! Each full moon was named by the local community according to the geography of their habitat and marked a seasonal  shift based on the local climate.

Unfortunately, that intimate knowledge of the land did not match with the puritanical Christian colonists worldview that 13 was an unlucky, even evil number. This primarily western concept led to the development of the Julian calendar which took their “perfect number” 12 and tried to divide it into 364.25 natural days of the year. And so we now have 12 months divided into 28/29/30/31 days depending on the month and year.

That’s what happens when you try to impose an artificial patriarchal world order over the natural cycles of life. Thirteen moons, twenty-eight day cycles. Fittingly, this exquisite full March moon coincided with International Women’s Day. The grandmothers knew what they were talking about. The way I see it.

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kid Crease, Caledon