Category Archives: Education

Entries focusing on environmental education

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

Success and Failure at COP 27

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Car fumes are killing us. So why isn't anyone telling us not to drive? | Susanna Rustin | The Guardian

 

The 27th meeting of the Council of Parties, or COP 27 as it is commonly known, was grinding down to a slow stop on Friday, November 18, 2022.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres told the delegates, “Ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions are supercharging extreme weather events across the planet. These increasing calamities cost lives and hundreds of billions of dollars in loss and damage. Three times more people are displaced by climate disasters than war. Half of humanity is already in the danger zone. We must invest equally in adaptation and resilience. That includes the information that allows us to anticipate storms, heatwaves, floods and droughts. To that end, I have called for every person on Earth to be protected by early warning systems within five years, with the priority to support the most vulnerable first.”

Success came when the wealthiest nations on Earth, capable of hosting distractions like World Cup sporting events, finally declared financial support for the severe weather event damages affecting some of the poorest countries on Earth. The establishment of an international Loss and Damage Fund was seen as a major breakthrough, although who would pay and how much each nation would pay was left to future negotiations.

Failure came when the delegations could not reach agreement on emissions reduction targets. Mark Campanale, Director of Carbon Tracker, issued the following statement at the conclusion of COP 27: “While critical that the goal of 1.5C survives, as reaffirmed by G20 leaders, we cannot ignore the challenges it faced in Egypt from the fossil fuel lobby which turned out in force, viewing COP 27 as an opportunity to dress up “natural gas” as a climate solution.”

It is easy to blame the international fossil fool lobby for their economic insensitivity. “Greed is good” right? “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” We’ve heard the same arguments since 1988 when the accelerating climate change crisis was first announced to the world. However, it struck closer to home as I was walking my dog in the pre-dawn hours last Friday morning. We live in a typical residential neighbourhood, and on this typical cold, snowy November morning almost every vehicle in every driveway that we passed was idling, spewing out petrochemical emissions into the air. The stench was so intense from some of the bigger trucks that we had to circle upwind around them.

Some driveways of small semi–detached homes had up to four vehicles parked. Some had super-sized pick up trucks jammed in the driveway and onto the lawn. Many were sitting idling with no one in them – the curse of the remote electric starter. Start up the truck from bed, make a coffee, have breakfast, idle the engine for half an hour, and our air quality be damned.

This is Canada. We should simply put on some warm clothes and a parka, get out our snowbrush/scraper, and clean off our vehicles! We don’t lounge around inside for half an hour waiting for our idling truck to reach an internal temperature of 22C as all the exterior frost, ice and snow melts off. It’s time to Canuck up!

Almost every community in Ontario has idling by laws. Here are some examples:

The Town of Caledon‘s idling bylaw states: No person shall cause or permit a vehicle to idle for more than two (2) minutes total in a sixty (60) minute period in an outdoor environment.

Vaughan: No person shall cause or permit a Motor Vehicle to idle for more than five (5) consecutive minutes.

Toronto: The idling Control By-law limits idling to no more than one (1) minute in a sixty (60) minute period

There you have it. Any mechanic will tell us that a two minute idle is all we need to get the engine warmed up. Anything beyond that is wasteful and can damage our engine components. We can just go out to start up the car, brush and scrape off the snow and ice, and head off on our daily rounds. We don’t need an international agreement. We just need to think globally and act locally.

We may not be able to shake some sense into the profit filled skulls of corporate fossil fuel executives, but at least we can follow our own community’s guidelines for being part of the solution to a global climate crisis. If we truly want to cut global emissions, it might be good to remember that charity begins at home. The way I see it.
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Skid Crease, Caledon