tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32981432305897574212024-02-07T21:36:03.562-08:00Silver Donald on SundayA view of the world from Nova ScotiaSilver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-80518147038279217112009-03-01T17:02:00.000-08:002009-03-08T12:43:13.743-07:00This blog is historyHi, all:<br /><br />I'm abandoning this blog in favour of a blog embedded in my web site. To continue receiving these posts, click here and sign up for a feed: <a href="http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca/columns">http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca/columns</a><br /><br />See you there!<br /><br />Cheers,<br />DonSilver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-80442028154209190632009-02-22T08:25:00.000-08:002009-02-22T08:28:14.326-08:00Silver Donald's Rustic Restaurants: Eastern and Northern Nova ScotiaFebruary 22, 2009<br /><br />Last week, I shared readers' suggestions about excellent year-round restaurants in small towns on the South Shore and the Valley. Today, guided by readers, we take a gastronomic tour of northern and eastern Nova Scotia.<br /><br />Joan Czapalay reports that Reid's Bakery and Restaurant in Middle Musquodobit “has been run as a family restaurant since the 1880's. There is the Temperance Pledge mounted on the wall (which backs on to the NSLC). The bread is home-made, turkey or chicken for the House Club is freshly roasted, there are pots of homemade jam available, and the molasses jug stays on the table.”<br /><br />My friend Bill Fisher suggests Kennedy's Restaurant in Middle Stewiacke, while Mary Anne White cites Fletcher's in Truro. Also in Truro, Judy and Arnold Forsythe praise Murphy’s Fish and Chips, while Herald gardening guru Jodi DeLong proposes lunch at The Wooden Hog, “where the crab and salmon cakes are regularly sold out. Their homemade soups are fabulous and so are their desserts.”<br /><br />Heading westward, Joan Czapalay notes Diane's Diner in Five Islands for “great clams and chips, very good pan-fried haddock” and free country music. And in Amherst, try Duncan's Pub, suggested by CBC producer Mary Munson for its tasty and affordable lunch specials, and Old Germany, on Church Street, nominated by Madelyn LeMay. When one of her children was studying music at Mount Allison in nearby Sackville, NB, Madelyn writes, she went to Old Germany whenever she could.<br /><br />“One of the owners is the cook, the other serves - and the food is incredibly good,” she writes. “I would highly recommend the spinach appetizer, which I can't reproduce no matter how hard I try, the specially-made sausage, and for dessert - my kid would highly recommend the quark and custard! And if you are looking for the best, and least expensive fresh stollen ever for Christmas, your search is over.”<br /><br />Stollen, aka Weihnachtsstollen, is a German fruitcake, and a quark is a subatomic particle, a piece of software and a central European fresh curd cheese. But you knew that, didn't you?<br /><br />East of Truro, several good restaurants adorn the five towns of Pictou County. Rod Desborough likes The Dock, an Irish pub on George Street in New Glasgow, for fine seafood chowder and soda bread. My fellow scribe Al Farthing singles out Cafe Italia, “owned, staffed and operated by three really hardworking, charming young women, ” and also the Eastside Family Restaurant opposite the hospital. “Been there for ages, never changes,” says Al. “Their specialty is Chocolate Cake with boiled icing. People come from far away for that.”<br /><br />In Pictou, deputy mayor Ken Johnston endorses Sharon's Place Family Restaurant on Front Street for “reasonably priced home cooking in an old fashioned diner setting.” In Stellarton, Gord MacPherson says that whenever he returns from working out west, he heads immediately for The Pantry Kitchen on Foord Street, whose fish and chips are “the best I've ever had.”<br /><br />Mary Munson likes Gabrieau's in Antigonish while Lloyd Daye directs our attention to the Days Gone Bye Bakery and Eatery in Guysborough, owned by Aldona and Fabian Gerrior, where “everything on the menu is homemade and very reasonably priced.” In Canso, in the very far east, Joan Czapalay praises The Last Post for great haddock dinners.<br /><br />In Cape Breton, Nancy MacLean applauds the home-made food at the recently-opened Bayside in Whycocomagh. Taiya Barss, one of my favourite artists, nominates The Cedar House on the main highway across Boularderie Island, for “fish cakes, their own baked beans, and the plate I always get, the hot turkey sandwich. They also sell loaves of their own bread, containers of their baked beans, and a variety of cookies to take home. Mmm,mmmm.”<br /><br />And finally, Eileen Coady points out a “little gem” on the Cabot Trail at North East Margaree called the Dancing Goat Bakery and Cafe. Opened in 2006 by a returning Margaree man named Marvin Tingley, the bakery offers assorted breads, “old-fashioned cookies including Cape Breton 'Fat Archies,' and some delightful dessert cakes and cheesecakes.” The cafe provides delicious soups, hearty sandwiches, decadent desserts, assorted coffees and teas – and glassworks by a local artist adorn the front window.<br /><br />Bon appetit. In Gaelic.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-74154425163994808722009-02-16T09:45:00.003-08:002009-02-16T09:46:31.277-08:00Silver Donald's Rustic Restaurants: South Shore & ValleyFebruary 15, 2009<br /><br />Last month, I asked readers to tell me about good year-round restaurants in small Nova Scotian towns. Here's the first of two reports, covering the Annapolis Valley and the South Shore.<br /><br />In Hantsport, Judy and Arnold Forsythe recommend the R & G Restaurant on Wednesdays for their fishbits, served with fries, garden salad or potato salad. Down the road in Wolfville, Margaret Archibald likes The Front Street Cafe, especially the fresh haddock and the bread pudding.<br /><br /> Also in Wolfville, with a second location in Kentville, is Paddy's Pub and Rosie's Restaurant, recommended by Robert MacNeil and others for “good food, good service and great beer brewed in house.” He and others also admire The Port, a spacious “gastropub” in nearby Port Williams, with a great menu featuring its own beers as well as local foods, notably beef and cheeses. The Port, writes chef Michael Howell, is “a collaborative community investment” with more than 40 community shareholders.<br /><br /> Two readers praise Vicki's in Coldbrook, which Angela Leighton describes as “a little 'hole in the wall' in a small strip mall just past Valley Volkswagen, with haddie bits and home fries to die for.” Belle Darris ranks Vicki's fish and chips “the best in the province. And don't get me started on the pies...” Vicki's recently expanded, and also includes a small fresh fish market.<br /><br />In Berwick, two readers favour the Union Street Cafe -- which is on Commercial Street. My niece Sharon Kendall describes it as “quaint and cozy,” with owners who frequently host east-coast musicians. To satisfy Marjorie's haddock addiction, however, Sharon suggests Kellock's, across the street. Harvey Freeman champions a third restaurant on Commercial Street, the Driftwood Take Out, which, despite its name, actually has tables and booths, and seems to be Berwick's lunch-time hot spot..<br /><br />In Middleton, journalist Scott Milsom dines at The Capitol Lounge and Grill, located in the former theatre. Calum MacKenzie, however, avoids his Friday-night cooking obligations by taking his wife and her 97-year-old Mum to Pasta Jak's on Main St. He particularly approves “the salmon and haddock dishes, pan fried and slightly browned.” Further west, Jack Swan nominates the 35-seat Lawrencetown Restaurant, whose specialties include a Saturday night bean and scalloped-potato supper.<br /><br />Numerous readers passionately endorse Chez Christophe in Grosses Coques, on the French shore, where chef Paul Comeau specializes in traditional Acadian dishes like rappie pie and fricot au poutines. The restaurant was the home of Comeau's grandfather, and patrons may eat in the original kitchen with the old kitchen stove. All the seafood dishes are splendid, says Dr. Gerald Boudreau. Comeau's seafood lasagna is “uniquely delicious,” and his rappie pie with local clams is “simply heavenly.” Claire Boudreau contends that Marjorie “will adore not only the haddock, but everything else on the menu.”<br /><br /> In Yarmouth, Pierre Belliveau suggests Chez Bruno, just up the hill from the ferry wharf, while Margo Riebe-Butt favours Mern's for “really great home cooking” including a notable lobster poutine. Eileen Coady nominates Rudders Seafood Restaurant and Brew Pub, located in an old warehouse on the Yarmouth waterfront, for its fish cakes, pub steak, Acadian rappie pie, hot lobster sandwiches and coconut creme pie. Marjorie and I agree. In 2004, we moored our boat at nearby Killam's Wharf, and walked to a memorable dinner at Rudders.<br /><br /> Scott Milsom thinks that Harris's Quick and Tasty is in “Dayton, on the northern edge of Yarmouth,” while Joan Czapalay places it in Hebron -- but both recommend its seafood and pies. Author Laurent d'Entremont is a regular at the Dennis Point Cafe in Pubnico. He likes their sweet potato fries, and he vigorously applauds the seafood at the nearby Red Cap Restaurant. Marjorie agrees.<br /><br />Further up the shore, Mary Anne White likes The Two Chefs in Bridgewater. In Lunenburg, Joan Czapalay suggests breakfast at Large Marge's Diner, while Madelyn LeMay favours Historic Grounds for lunch. Deborah Gass reports that The Trellis in Hubbards, within walking distance of the wharf, offers art on the walls, music on Thursday and Friday nights, and good haddock too.<br /><br />That's it, gastronomes and travellers -- our readers' recommendations for year-round restaurants on the South Shore and in the Valley. Next week, eastern and northern Nova Scotia, and Cape Breton.<br /><br />Bon appetit!<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-53786913066489370592009-02-11T10:06:00.000-08:002009-02-11T10:14:47.857-08:00Living Under CoverFebruary 8, 2009<br /><br />“The guy never went outside at all,” said my friend. “Not for a month or maybe two months. The story was in one of the papers here. He went to the theatre, shopped for food and clothing, did his banking, ate out, all kinds of stuff. He even went to Toronto and New York – and he never went outdoors.”<br /><br />“He went to New York without going outdoors?”<br /><br />“He went by train. The Gare Central is underground, right under your hotel. ”<br /><br />We were in Montreal, strolling along the underground passageways which are said to constitute the second-largest underground city in the world, after Moscow. I had been working in Montreal for a week. I was staying at Le Reine Elizabeth, on the Boulevard Rene Levesque, and most of my meetings were on Sherbrooke Ouest, 20 minutes' walk away. The streets were choked with snow and lethally slick with ice – but I wore just a sweater as I walked past coffee shops, jewellers and haberdashers in perfect comfort.<br /><br />It occurred to me that the underground network made Montreal a safer city than any other in Canada, particularly for senior citizens. Walking outdoors in the winter is a really hazardous activity for seniors. Every year, hundreds fall and break their arms and legs and hips – a significant factor in the Orange Alert at the Halifax Infirmary ER last month. Old bones don't knit quickly, and many never really recover.<br /><br />The danger was brought home to me a year ago, when I suddenly found myself lying on the ice beside my car. I had taken my key out, and I was about to unlock the door – and then I was on my patootie. I don't remember slipping or falling. It was like a jump-cut in a film. One moment I was up, the next I was down. A few bruises aside, I was none the worse for the experience – but it got my attention.<br /><br />Young seniors – from 60 to 80, say – often sidestep this problem by going south. You find them all over the southern US, Mexico and the islands, robust and happy, sailing and golfing and swimming. But after 80, snowbirding loses its appeal. At 85 or 90, people don't feel much like travelling, and don't travel as comfortably. They'd rather stay home, close to friends and family and doctors. And that puts them most at risk from winter conditions at precisely the point when they're least able to deal with such challenges.<br /><br />In Montreal, they're fine. Their apartment buildings connect to the Métro, and the Métro takes them to the under-cover city downtown. They really don't have to emerge until spring.<br /><br />So at 80, should I live in Montreal?<br /><br />Why not downtown Halifax? The city already has the beginnings of a covered downtown, with pedways and tunnels running from the Prince George Hotel to the waterfront casino, and branching into apartment buildings and office towers. We don't have to burrow underground. We can just extend the pedway system to link the whole downtown, from Cogswell to the Via station. A large part of Calgary's downtown is connected that way.<br /><br />In Montreal, I noticed, some of the covered space was captured simply by putting a roof over the space between existing buildings. What was once a back alley becomes a connecting courtyard with a Starbucks coffee shop. In other places, a short tunnel between buildings converts two musty basements into prime retail space. Halifax probably has a score of locations where connections like that would work.<br /><br />And, although a Métro doesn't seem very practical in rock-ribbed Halifax, we could bring back the downtown streetcars, looping down Barrington and up Water Street, with stations right inside such major buildings as Scotia Square and the Westin. Alternatively, could we use a light elevated rail system like the one that connects the terminals at JFK Airport<br /><br />I'm no planner, and these notions may be unworkable. Fine: let's hear better ones. The point is that we're about to have a tsunami of seniors, and it would be good for them – and for everyone else, too – if we made it possible to live a safe and active life in the middle of the city all year round.<br /><br />We know it can be done. Vive le Montreal!<br /><br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-86156581182921537042009-02-02T07:15:00.000-08:002009-02-02T07:17:11.475-08:00The Big Lie about DeficitsFebruary 1, 2009<br /><br />The Big Lie theory was enunciated by Adolf Hitler.<br /><br />The masses, said Hitler, in “the primitive simplicity of their minds..more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie.” We all tell small lies, and people easily recognize them. But real whoppers, frequently repeated – the Holocaust never happened, for instance – often succeed, because people cannot believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”<br /><br />Was Hitler right? Consider this whopper: conservatives handle money prudently, while “tax-and-spend liberals” are financially irresponsible. That's the exact opposite of the truth – but this Big Lie has been so often repeated by the right that it's rarely even questioned.<br /><br />Look, for instance, at the recent interview between Maclean's editor-in-chief, Kenneth Whyte, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Talking about upcoming deficits, Whyte asks, “Do you think it's fair to say that the big-spending liberals of Canada and North America are taking advantage of the political situation to drive through more of their ideological agenda?” And Harper's reply concludes, “That is a significant risk, which is why I think it's important to have a Conservative government managing this kind of program.”<br /><br />Whyte purports to be a journalist, but he performs like a Conservative shill. His question is drenched in falsehood.<br /><br />Pierre Trudeau, a big Liberal spender, did leave Canada with a hefty debt. But Mulroney's Conservatives, as Jean Chretien once commented, “took Trudeau's $160 billion federal debt... and 'reduced' it after eight years to $450 billion and climbing.” Mulroney's last annual deficit was $42 billion – higher than even Harper's current proposals. A full 94% of the deficit, Statistics Canada reported, was due to Mulroney's tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals, and to his government's high interest-rate policies.<br /><br />Slashing ferociously, Chretien's Liberals routed the deficit in their first four years, and ran fat surpluses thereafter. In the US, the “tax-and-spend liberal” Bill Clinton inherited a record $290-billion deficit from Ronald Reagan and George the First. He balanced the books in his second term and bequeathed a $236-billion surplus to George Dubya. By 2009, Dubya – a self-described “fiscal conservative” – was projecting a record deficit of $482 billion, largely due to irresponsible tax cuts and reckless military commitments. And that was even before the meltdowns and bailouts.<br /><br />In Nova Scotia, the Hamm government inherited an $11-billion debt, much of which derives from the spendthrift Tory regime of John Buchanan. The Tory story contends that Hamm balanced the budget in 2002, and that all subsequent provincial budgets have been in surplus. In addition, an $830-million offshore windfall was applied to the debt. The bottom line, notes Halifax accountant Ian Crowe, is that the debt magically “shrank” from $11 billion to $12.3 billion. Wha --?<br /><br />I nominate for the Solid Brass Award the newly-minted Tory Senator Stephen Greene, who uses the spectre of deficits to flog Nova Scotia's NDP. At a recent nomination meeting, Green reportedly compared Darryl Dexter to the communist rulers of North Korea and Cuba, and urged Tories to “remember the havoc under NDP Premier Bob Rae in Ontario.”<br /><br />Ah yes, Bob Rae, the Ogre of Ontario. As Rae took office in 1990, Ontario was already heading into recession and projecting a $700 million deficit. Rae tried to blunt the recession's impact using even larger deficits. He failed. But if recession-fighting deficits were bad policy then, why are the federal Tories embracing them now?<br /><br />And what about Manitoba's NDP Premier Gary Doer, running ten budget surpluses in a row while cutting taxes and improving social services? Anybody remember the balanced budgets of Allan Blakeney and Roy Romanow in Saskatchewan? And the looting of the Saskatchewan treasury by the Tories under Grant Devine, which sent the deficit to $1.2 billion and landed a dozen Tories in the slammer for fraud?<br /><br />Canada's greatest socialist, Tommy Douglas, held off implementing medicare for 15 years, until he was sure that Saskatchewan could afford it. Why? You can't build social democracy, Douglas argued, if the bankers can stop you by calling your loans. That's not a problem for right-wing governments – but it gives left-wing governments a lively allergy to deficits.<br /><br />And anyone who tells you otherwise is spreading a Big Lie.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-26904639229858347402009-01-25T10:42:00.000-08:002009-01-28T07:00:04.688-08:00The Cheerful Little Restaurants<span style="color: rgb(1, 1, 1);font-family:Times New Roman,Times;font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-size:85%;">January 25, 2009</span><br /><br />The sauerkraut was bright, crisp and tangy, and the sausages were robust and spicy – just what I wanted. The waiter was an attentive, good-humoured middle-aged man named Burt – the only male server for miles around, he said.<br /><br />“How's your haddock?” I asked. Marjorie has extensive knowledge of pan-fried haddock.<br /><br />“Perfect,” said Marjorie.<br /><br />“This place is a find,” I said. It was noon-hour, and the restaurant was packed.<br /><br />We were in Bridgewater, at Waves Seafood and Grill – an undistinguished-looking store-front in a thoroughly ordinary strip mall. The décor was clean and simple, but far from fancy – booths, tables, vinyl floor with pools of meltwater.<br /><br />But the patrons were voluble and happy, and no wonder. The service was first-rate, the food was excellent, and the menu bespoke the location. You could get any of the staple lunches of small-town restaurants – chops, liver, the always-safe clubhouse sandwich. But we were in Lunenburg County, you, so the menu also offered seafood, sauerkraut, sausage – food that reflected the taste that Lunenburgers brought from Germany 250 years ago.<br /><br />“There are other restaurants like this around the province,” I said. “There's a little place called Crofter's in New Glasgow. It's in a little strip mall on the Stellarton Road. Good solid food, historical photos on the walls, and an unobtrusive Scottish character, as befits New Glasgow. Great staff, great value.”<br /><br />That's not just my opinion. When I later went prowling online, I found Crofter's described as “cozy, interesting and friendly.”<br /><br />“I don't know what we expected,” wrote one happy patron, “but this restaurant exceeded our expectations. Good fresh seafood, good steak, helpful hostess, attractive, pleasant and efficient waitress, good ambiance.”<br /><br />“I remember Crofter's,” Marjorie said. “The pan-fried haddock was really good. And what about the Fleur de Lis in Port Hawkesbury?”<br /><br />Same story – a simple but welcoming little restaurant in a strip mall, with excellent food which reflects the proprietors' Acadian origins. The last time I was there, a happy lunchtime crowd made it hard to get a seat. I had Acadian fish-cakes with homemade baked beans and thick slices of bread – delicious, hearty and affordable. Marjorie was equally pleased with her meal. In a wild spasm of experimentation, she chose the haddock burger.<br /><br />And again, the online comments agree. “Oh, this is such a good little restaurant,” writes one patron of the Fleur-de-Lis. “Easy to miss because it's tucked away in the shopping strip mall---near Sobey's. But oh the food is good especially the apple or blueberry crisp. We always eat there when we are in Cape Breton which is at least twice a year. Don't miss this place!!!”<br /><br />And I was charmed by another Web endorsement from a much younger critic: “i love this restaurant since my mo owns it, (brenda chisholm) i am candice chisholm and I am 13 years old. I guarantee that you will have food at its best from this restaurant so if you go, please enjoy”<br /><br />You bet, Candice.<br /><br />These three restaurants are open all year, as is The Knot Pub in Lunenburg, acclaimed as one of Canada's best pubs – and who am I to argue? Once again, The Knot knows where it is – in a German-rooted seaport – so the interior is all rope and blocks, navigation lamps, flags, casks and nameplates. The sauerkraut and seafood is excellent, and so is the house beer, a “Knots Ale” brewed by Propeller. (And, says Marjorie, so is the haddock.)<br /><br />These cheerful little restaurants are all located in market towns – small communities, but large enough to sustain a year-round business. They're in high-traffic locations with ample parking. They're attuned to their markets, catering to local tastes and budgets. They compete very successfully with fast-food chain restaurants – and they've been around for a while.<br /><br />I'm sure there are similar restaurants in comparable towns that I'm less familiar with – Amherst, Kentville, Yarmouth. (In fact I'd like to hear about such restaurants; if you have one to suggest, drop me a line at <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 204, 255);"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 153);">sdc@silverdonaldcameron.ca</span> </span>). Unpretentious, reliable and welcoming, these little restaurants have all built loyal, local followings, and they lift the heart of a winter traveller who's lucky enough to find one.<br /><br />-- 30 -- </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times;"><br /></span>Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-85410476678172603182009-01-18T15:13:00.000-08:002009-01-18T15:18:38.672-08:00Allan Blakeney: A Genuine Public ServantJanuary 18, 2009<br /><br />“There are disadvantages in being in government in a small province,” writes Allan Blakeney in his recent memoir, <span style="font-style: italic;">An Honourable Calling</span> (University of Toronto Press, 2008). “But there advantages, too. One of them is that the smaller scale allows one to plan and bring about many changes in a short time.” Denizens of Province House, please pay attention.<br /><br />Blakeney hails from Bridgewater, NS, but he made his mark as NDP Premier of Saskatchewan from 1971 to 1982. His adopted province, he comments, has a long history as “a social laboratory for Canada.” In 1944, it gave us North America's first democratic socialist government, headed by the legendary Tommy Douglas, who soon brought in universal hospital insurance, followed in 1962 by Canada's first medicare program. Canadians today regard medicare as a defining feature of our country – but it was fiercely opposed at the outset, and it only came about after a bitter month-long strike by the province's doctors.<br /><br />Blakeney was a minister in Douglas' cabinet, and in Woodrow Lloyd's after Douglas moved on to become the first federal leader of the NDP. He succeeded Lloyd as party leader in 1970, and became Premier after winning the provincial election of 1971.<br /><br />Does it make a difference which party is in power? You bet it does.<br /><br />Ross Thatcher's outgoing Liberal government had instituted user fees in medicare, and barred strikes in essential services. In its first two weeks in office, Blakeney writes, the NDP reversed both decisions – and also “we removed the medicare tax for people over 65; we reduced hours of work before overtime provisions kicked in; we gave extra protection to farmers against the seizure of their land and machinery by creditors; and we removed charges against the estates of patients who had received treatment for mental illness.” <br /><br />That was the first fortnight. Blakeney's NDP later implemented Canada's first 40-hour work week, along with longer annual vacations, equal pay for women, and maternity and bereavement leave. It introduced Canada's highest minimum wage – and although business objected, as it always does, profits went up. “Employees who get good wages spend their money,” says Blakeney, “ and – big surprise – employers do well.”<br /><br />The NDP's vision has always included an enhanced version of universal, comprehensive and accessible medicare that would include drug costs and dentistry, a vision still unfulfilled nationally. More than 30 years ago, however, Blakeney's Saskatchewan had both.<br /><br />In 1971, Saskatchewan had the lowest per-capita ratio of dentists in Canada, and many families lived more than 50 miles from the nearest dentist. The government created a corps of 400 “dental therapists”with two years of training to provide routine dental services and dental hygiene instruction to all school children. The program was both effective and popular.<br /><br />Pharmacare, meanwhile, made prescription drug coverage available to everyone. At its heart were “standing offer contracts” with major drug manufacturers based on public tenders for six-months' supplies of approved drugs. The tenders drove basic drug costs down, but pharmacies received an agreed mark-up and a dispensing fee. Normally, the province paid for the drug, and the patient paid the dispensing fee. The plan covered over 90% of the people using prescription drugs in the province.<br /><br />Blakeney's government was ultimately defeated by Grant Devine's Progressive Conservatives. Blakeney led his party into one more unsuccessful election before retiring. Meanwhile, the Devine government dismantled the dental plan, turning dental care over to private clinics. It also modified the drug plan, says Blakeney, by introducing “financial barriers, with the result that fewer than 20 per cent of the potential beneficiaries received financial support.”<br /><br />The dental program was never reinstated, although the pharmacare program was later revived. Blakeney notes that the same principles could guide a comprehensive national pharmacare scheme which would produce “massive savings for Canadians, either as taxpayers or patients or both.”<br /><br /> In office, Blakeney confronted many other major issues of late 20th-century Canada -- the National Energy Policy, the Constitution, uranium, native affairs, NAFTA, potash, rural decline and more. What dominates his book, though, is the deep decency of the man and his political philosophy, his in-the-bones vision of a society at once rational, prudent and caring. Canada owes a great deal to Saskatchewan – and to the Nova Scotian who was once its premier.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-40568675202666647722009-01-18T15:08:00.000-08:002009-01-18T15:10:45.660-08:00Disgracing Our National GameJanuary 11, 2009<br /><br />When I was eleven, all I wanted was to be Max Bentley, “The Dipsy-Doodle Dandy from Delisle.”<br /><br />Bentley belonged to an extraordinary family of five hockey players from Delisle, Saskatchewan. Three Bentleys made the NHL, and two – Max and Doug – made the Hall of Fame. Max was a star centre with the mighty Toronto Maple Leafs, Stanley Cup winners in four years out of five. A magnificent stick-handler and play-maker, Max was NHL scoring champion two years running.<br /><br />But how could I become an ice-hockey star in Vancouver, a city with no ice? Instead, our gang played on the street with roller skates clamped to our shoes. We wore shin-pads, hockey gloves and Maple Leaf sweaters. We were Max Bentley, Syl Apps, Teeder Kennedy, Turk Broda, the greatest team on earth.<br /><br />And if we got hurt, so what? One time I fell and broke a front tooth on the concrete. The dentist treated it the following Saturday. That afternoon, Billy Weeks took a swipe at the puck. His stick glanced off mine, and flew into my face. There went my other front tooth.<br /><br />It was, absolutely, an accident. Billy was aghast. We never, ever fought, for the excellent reason that if we did, the gang would disperse and the game would be over, perhaps permanently. Unthinkable.<br /><br />I no longer follow hockey, but I retain a visceral love for it. But the death of 21-year-old Don Sanderson after an on-ice fight heats up a simmering disgust dating back at least to Todd Bertuzzi's vicious attack on Steve Moore in March, 2004.<br /><br />Enough, already. Enough. If you want to play hockey, emulate masters like Bentley or Gretzky. If you want to fight, become boxers.<br /><br />Yes, I know that hockey players have always fought. Four players apparently died in 1904 alone, and numerous others have been killed, crippled or disabled over the years. In one notorious incident in 1933, Boston's Eddie Shore hit Leafs' star Ace Bailey hard from behind, smacking his head on the ice, fracturing his skull and ending his career. Todd Bertuzzi did the same for Steve Moore five years ago.<br /><br />So hockey violence has a long tradition. So what? Bear-baiting once was groovy. Christians vs Lions was boffo entertainment in imperial Rome. In 1840, the founder of this newspaper, Joseph Howe, settled an argument by duelling. Should that fact help me if I shoot a critic this afternoon?<br /><br />Fighting is not, as some of its defenders claim, just a natural outcome of rough, fast sports. It's not tolerated in college hockey, in European hockey or in other contact sports like football and soccer. After the 1920s, hockey mayhem apparently declined until the league expanded in the 1960s, so we didn't hear much about fighting in Foster Hewitt's wonderful radio broadcasts of the 1940s. The six-team NHL of the 1940s only had room for players who could skate, stick-handle, pass and score. A swollen NHL could accommodate louts who specialized in bruising and bashing.<br /><br />Don Sanderson's death is being blamed on bad luck, and on the fact that his helmet popped off during that fatal fight. Again, so what? If you go to rob a corner store and the proprietor winds up dead, you're guilty of murder even if you didn't really mean to snuff him. Sanderson didn't fall on the ice by accident. He fell in the course of a fistfight. No fight, no death.<br /><br />The NHL could readily put an end to this. In 1927, Boston's Billy Coutu attacked a referee, and the NHL expelled him for life. Bravo. The courts could help, too. Todd Bertuzzi's sentence for assault was a conditional discharge and a year's probation. If he had maimed someone in a tavern, would he have escaped the slammer?<br /><br />And if all else fails, Parliament could pass a simple amendment to the Criminal Code providing that anyone committing a criminal offence during a sports competition would be banned from organized sports in Canada for 10 years. Let Todd Bertuzzi play in Anaheim or Pittsburgh – but not in Calgary or Ottawa. That would quickly reduce his value.<br /><br />This is our elegant national game. The goons dishonour it. We have every right to stop them – and we should.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-50404547424953472082009-01-04T16:56:00.000-08:002009-01-04T16:59:53.203-08:00Stop, Thief! That's My Country!January 4, 2009<br /><br />What I want to know is, by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?<br /><br />The monkeys are the governments of Canada, the USA and Mexico – and what they are doing is, basically, stealing our countries, welding them together, and giving them to global corporations. Their instrument is the Security and Prosperity Partnership – which, astonishingly, continues to fly below the public radar screen, though its nature and purpose are perfectly well-known.<br /><br />The SPP began in 2005, in – appropriately – Waco, Texas, where George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. (Remember him?) The three agreed to “fast-track” the economic integration of the continent. In 2006, meeting in Cancun, the trio – Martin now replaced by Harper – created a North American Competitiveness Council, made up of 10 big-business CEOs from each country, who undertook to meet annually with senior government officials to discuss the corporate sector's erotic fantasies about the new continental economy.<br /><br />Notice that there's no parallel Council of Citizens or Small Businesses. The governments are taking advice only from the CEOs of Ford, Lockheed, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Chevron, General Electric, Wal-Mart, Bell Canada, Scotiabank and the like.<br /><br /> They're movin' right along. An Alberta professor named Dr. Janine Brodie recently presented a paper on “Executive Power and the Privatization of Authority.” Now there's a phrase. Brodie quotes Paul Cellucci, the former US Ambassador who berated Canada for not going to war in Iraq, as saying that “10 years from now, maybe 15 years from now we're gonna look back and we are going to have a union in everything but name.”<br /><br /> Did you vote for that? No? Then by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?<br /><br />Last fall, my friend Wendy Holm, an agrologist and writer in BC, reviewed the report of a Competition Policy Review Panel appointed by the Harper government to identify the changes that Canada needs to make in preparation for full scale North American economic integration.<br /><br />For starters, the Panel thought Canada should smile upon mergers of large Canadian financial institutions. We were being needlessly cautious, since “appropriate regulatory safeguards already exist to protect prudential soundness, competition and the public interest."<br /><br />Ah. Right. Those would be the safeguards which worked so well for Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch, etc., and so efficiently protected the public interest that the US taxpayer is now on the hook for something like a trillion dollars. The Panel also recommended that, when considering big mergers, the "net benefit to Canada" test be dropped.<br /><br />Breathtaking. Canadian householders and taxpayers are already paying for innumerable corporate bungles – and the government of Canada is not even supposed to ask whether such financial engineering is in the public interest? <br /><br />The Panel goes on to suggest that Canada should neuter its Competition Act, welcome increased foreign competition generally, reduce corporate taxes, and open up Canada's airline, uranium and telecommunications sectors to increased foreign investment. These worthies also thought that Canada should harmonize product and professional standards and legal requirements with the US. In other words, if we have tougher health and safety standards than the US, ours should be weakened. <br /><br />Did you vote for that? I thought not. So by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?<br /><br />As an award-winning agrologist, Wendy Holm focuses on food and agriculture. She sees the SPP as a direct threat to Canadian farmers (who would lose the protection of supply-management regimes) and to Canadian consumers.<br /><br />“Canadians have not put a priority on farm and food policy because as a nation we have never gone without,” Holm writes. “Embarrassingly, Canada remains one of the few nations in the world that does NOT have a national food policy. But things are quickly changing, and community discussions around peak oil, peak food, food security, food safety, food miles, food sovereignty and food democracy are moving that change forward.”<br /><br />Under the SPP, such discussions will be pointless. Canada will have lost the right to create or enforce national policies in areas like food, energy, and investment. Removing that right is precisely the objective of the SPP.<br /><br />Did we elect these monkeys to give away the country? No? Then by what authority are they doing this stuff?<br /><br />-30-Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-91076116256096133182008-12-28T04:16:00.000-08:002008-12-28T04:19:45.290-08:00Dr. AtomicDecember 28, 2008<br /><br />On July 15, 1945, as the first atomic bomb in history seared the desert sky, Robert Oppenheimer thought: "I am become Death: the destroyer of worlds."<br /><br /> The line comes from the Bhagavad-Gita, and it's included in the libretto of Dr. Atomic, a phenomenal opera about Oppenheimer and the invention of the bomb. I saw Dr. Atomic in Halifax, at one of several Empire theatres in the province that offer high-definition broadcasts of Metropolitan Opera productions. Next month, Empire and the Met will offer operas by Puccini, Berlioz and Gluck. The schedule is at http://www.empiretheatres.com/empireevents/ Seeing grand opera live, on the big screen, with superb sound, is a glorious experience – and it's the only way most of us can ever really see it.<br /><br />Opera, says John Adams, the composer of Dr. Atomic, has “a curious ability to handle life's biggest themes in a way no other art form can approximate” – and his theme here is the towering story of the twentieth century. Dr. Atomic evokes Faust, or Genesis, or Prometheus – legends of creation and destruction, of pride and aspiration and the mortal perils of the quest for knowledge, stories that question the very essence of human experience.<br /><br />But this story is not ancient myth or drama. This is history. In outline, we all know the story – the brilliant scientists, led by Oppenheimer, sequestered in the deserts of New Mexico, working furiously to build an atomic bomb before the Nazis and the Japanese. In less than a month after their first successful test, atomic blasts vaporized Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<br /><br />Those explosions brought an end to World War II, and a beginning to an era of terror which persists to this day. Before Hiroshima, wars took place on well-defined battlefields, often far across the seas. After the bomb, Armageddon lurked behind every headline, and any city might be the next Hiroshima. As a child in the Cold War, I went to sleep dreading a brilliant white flash in the middle of the night that would be the last thing I would ever see.<br /><br />In Dr. Atomic, Oppenheimer is sung by Gerald Finley. The central figure in the opera, Oppenheimer was a dazzling intellect – a top-rank theoretical physicist, a brilliant administrator, a linguist and a keen lover of poetry who learned Sanskrit in order to read the Bhagavad-Gita in the original. Peter Sellars' libretto for Dr. Atomic is built from government documents, testimony and internal communications within the Manhattan Project – but also from the poets that Oppenheimer loved, notably Baudelaire, Donne and Muriel Ruykeyser.<br /><br />The atomic scientists were well aware that the new weapon would cause almost unimaginable destruction and suffering, and they wrestled with that knowledge even as they pressed onward with the project. Oppenheimer himself was deeply troubled by the moral implications of the work that so consumed him, and the opera's first act concludes with Finley's passionate delivery of an aria based on Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV:<br /> Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you<br /> As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend...<br /><br />The blast in the desert permanently changed the human relationship to the world. For the first time, humans were manipulating the very fabric of reality, transforming matter into energy, releasing powers far beyond their own comprehension. Oppenheimer's scientists worried that an atomic blast might set off a chain reaction that would in a flash consume the planet's atmosphere.<br /><br />I am become Death.<br /><br />Before the Manhattan Project, humans believed the world was beyond our power to harm. The fish and the forests would always regenerate. The atmosphere and the oceans were so vast that our effluents could not really damage them. After the bomb, that illusion was impossible. We went on to find many ways to endanger ourselves and the planet – poisonous chemicals, genetic engineering, greenhouse gases. The bomb opened Pandora's box, and changed the terms of human life forever.<br /><br />"In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish," Oppenheimer once said, "the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose." Yes, and so have we all. Doctor Atomic delineates nothing less than a second Fall, from a second Eden. It's a mighty achievement, an unforgettable revelation. A grand opera, in every sense of the term.<br /><br />-- 30 --<br /><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times;"></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times;"></span>Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-71209606379878896572008-12-21T08:19:00.000-08:002008-12-21T08:22:11.921-08:00'Tis the Season...December 21, 2008<br /><br />I wish you a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year. I really do.<br /><br />But what would make Chistmas merry, and New Year's happy? Good question. Two-thirds of Americans apparently dread the holiday season, because it will simply add more stuff to their lives. Christmas gifts have become the social equivalent of anti-matter. Far from delighting the recipients, Christmas gifts depress them.<br /><br />I stumbled across this information in Bill McKibben's provocative book <span style="font-style: italic;">Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future</span>. In it, McKibben asks a simple question: “Is more better?” Do objects and possessions really make us happy? If not, then why pursue “economic growth,” which really means the creation of still more objects and possessions?<br /><br />These are heretical questions – particularly to economists, whose odd semi-science rests on the assumption that we can tell what makes you happy (or “maximizes utility,” in econo-speak) by looking at how you spend your money. Economics assumes that people are rational and make rational choices. If you're buying a leaf blower, then, presumably you've judged that of all the things you could possibly be doing at this moment, buying a leaf blower is the most satisfying.<br /><br />Buying stuff makes you happy. The more stuff you can buy, the happier you'll be. That's the fundamental assumption of economics.<br /><br />But it's not so in the real world. In 1991, McKibben reports, “the average American family owned twice as many cars, drove two and a half times as far, used twenty-one times as much plastic, and traveled twenty-five times farther by air than did the average family in 1951.” The economy had tripled since 1950, and the size of new houses had doubled since 1970.<br /><br />So those families were two or three times as happy, right?<br /><br />Wrong. The proportion of Americans who say they are happy has slipped steadily since about 1950. In all the industrialized countries, increasing prosperity has been accompanied by decreasing happiness. Japan and the UK have seen huge increases in per capita incomes, but no increases in happiness. The New York Times reports that people born in the world's wealthiest countries after 1955 are “three times as likely as their grandparents to have had a serious bout of depression.” Between 1955 and 1988, British national income rose sharply – and so did rates of crime and divorce.<br /><br />And we have so much junk that a whole new industry has arisen to take care of it. One of the fastest-growing businesses in North America is self-storage.<br /><br />Another whole series of studies has come at this question backwards, asking people to describe the factors that contribute to a high quality of life. About 70% give great weight to such intangibles as family life, equality, recreational opportunities, job satisfaction. The best predictors of happiness include robust health and a good marriage. Money and possessions rank very low.<br /><br />So how did we get mesmerized by the notion that happiness comes from steadily rising incomes and a steadily expanding economy?<br /><br />Because it's true – but only to a point. Money and possessions do bring happiness – but (says the research) only up to about $10,000 per capita. That's $40,000 a year for a couple with two kids, enough to provide decent shelter, an adequate diet, all the basic amenities of life. Beyond $10,000 per capita there's no reliable correlation between money and happiness.<br /><br />But our perceptions haven't caught up with reality. We've become rich, but we behave as though we were still as poor as the novelist Hugh MacLennan, growing up in Glace Bay during World War I. One of his most beautiful stories, “An Orange from Portugal,” conveys his joy and wonder at the sight of a single fresh orange at Christmas.<br /><br />We need a new way to celebrate Christmas, a fresh tradition that recognizes the deeper needs of affluent people. We don't need more stuff. We need time with beloved people, silence for spiritual reflection, engagement with art, connection with nature.<br /><br />I wish you a Merry Christmas. And a Happy New Year. And the wisdom to seek happiness not in the malls and the big-box stores, but in places where it can actually be found.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-59572146564287130712008-12-15T17:37:00.000-08:002008-12-15T17:40:02.850-08:00Green Wheels: Car-sharing Comes to HalifaxDecember 14, 2008<br /><br />“People ask me if I don't feel worried about starting a business just at the beginning of a recession,” says Pam Cooley. “I tell them No, because I think this business is really going to help people get through the recession, so I think it's going to do very well.”<br /><br />Pam is president and co-owner of CarShareHFX, which opened up in Halifax earlier this month. The other owner is general manager Peter Zimmer. In essence, their service gives you the use of a car whenever you need one – but without the cost and hassle of owning one. More than 40,000 Canadians already belong to car-sharing services, and the number is growing rapidly.<br /><br />Small wonder. On average, North Americans spend 19% of their incomes on their cars. As our belts tighten, more and more people are reducing their use of cars – living near their work, telecommuting, car-pooling, using public transit, cycling and walking. But for toting groceries or visiting the suburbs, cars remain almost indispensable.<br /><br />Enter the car-sharing programs. With CarShareHFX, members pay a flat annual fee – about $250 – and an hourly rental ($10 an hour to use a car in peak periods, $3 in the small hours of the night). That's it. The fees cover everything – gas, insurance, maintenance, even a MacPass for crossing the bridges – and are charged monthly to your credit card.<br /><br />The cars – Hondas, Kias and Toyotas, including the hybrid Prius – all have automatic transmissions, air conditioning, child seat anchors, stereo systems, an emergency kit and 24/7 roadside assistance. As CarShareHFX grows, Pam and Peter hope to add bio-fuelled vehicles, prestige cars and sports cars as well as workhorses cargo vans and pickups.<br /><br />To use the service, the member reserves the car online or by telephone. Cars are located in seven central locations now – six on the peninsula of Halifax, one in downtown Dartmouth, with more to come as membership grows. At the appointed time, the member goes to the shared car and places a little electronic “fob” over a transceiver inside the car window. The door unlocks. The ignition key is inside, tied on a lanyard so it won't be accidentally taken away. Vroom. Go.<br /><br />Most people, says Pam, find that they spend about as much on their car-sharing membership as they used to spend on their car insurance alone. Using a car only when they really need one, they drive far fewer miles in a year – and the one car, with its one parking place, can serve about 20 drivers. The effect on congestion, parking and emissions can be spectacular. CommunAuto, Montreal's car-share service – the first one in North America – reckons that 250 cars in its fleet take 3500 cars off the road..<br /><br />In fact, car-sharing has become so mainstream that green property developers in cities like Ottawa are including car-share memberships in the amenities of their condos, and providing space for car-share vehicles to park right inside the building. Some foresee a day when the developer's obligation to provide parking will be sharply reduced for buildings which incorporate car-sharing in their design.<br /><br />Car-sharing also has significant advantages for businesses of all sizes. For larger companies, it preserves the organization's capital while giving employees guaranteed access to a fleet of vehicles, with every trip logged and tracked in detail. Home businesses can also husband their capital while impressing their clients by arriving at meetings in a sparkling new car.<br /><br />Capital Health and the Nova Scotia Community College are already members of CarShareHFX. The province is also interested, and for the government which passed the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, car-sharing should be a no-brainer. Likewise with the Halifax Regional Municipality. In Philadelphia, says Pam Cooley, 55,000 people car-share – and the biggest member is the city.<br /><br />But the concept will work far beyond the big city – as it does, for instance, in Nelson, BC, pop. 9300.<br /><br />“Eventually, we'd also like to provide the service in smaller Maritime towns, and even in rural areas,” says Peter Zimmer. It's quite feasible, says Pam Cooley. The key factors are simply “enthusiasm and demand.”<br /><br />Nurture the planet and save money, too. Does it get much better than that?<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-45779312327808991522008-12-07T05:56:00.000-08:002008-12-07T06:00:16.414-08:00The Vanishing Prime MinisterDecember 7, 2008<br /><br />I fear it's all my fault. Six weeks ago, on October 18, just two days before the federal election, I made some innocent observations about the probable results.<br /><br />“Consider the results of recent polls,” I wrote, “which show the Harper crowd at about 35%, the Liberals near 25%, the NDP around 20%, the Greens at 12% or so, and the Bloc somewhere under 10%. Do the math. If those percentages were reflected in seats, then any two of the first three would have enough support to challenge the Conservatives, and to ask the Governor-General for an opportunity to form a government.... And the centre-left parties don't have to merge in order to rule. They only need to learn the tricks of coalitions and voting alliances, like politicians in other multi-party legislatures like those of Germany, Ireland, Italy, France and Israel.”<br /><br />I didn't know that the opposition leaders read this column so carefully. And now look what I've done – pulled the rug from under the government, turned up the heat on the Governor-General, and detonated a constitutional crisis.<br /><br />Delightful.<br /><br />What I didn't predict, of course, was that the Prime Minister would precipitate the new era by popping his own head into the mouth of a lion and daring it to chew – an action rooted in his own cold cleverness and his appalling lack of judgment. (If he had had his way, remember, our soldiers would be fighting in Iraq and Maher Arar would still be in a black hole in Damascus.) This self-inflicted crisis could be a career-terminating move. His main appeal to his party was that he could win. Without that aura, he's gone.<br /><br />The government has gained a few weeks of life by persuading the Governor-General to prorogue Parliament – the first-ever use of prorogation as a survival technique. The Prime Minister presumably hopes that the opposition coalition will implode between now and late January – aided, no doubt, by late-night offers of Cabinet posts and Senate seats to any wavering Liberals. Shades of Stronach.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Harperites will try to whip up the Canadian public to smite Stephane Dion for trying to do exactly what Harper tried to do in 2004, and Stockwell Day in 2000 – join with the dreaded socialists and the separatists to take power without an election. And if his government is nevertheless defeated in January, Harper might even try to persuade the Governor-General to call another election.<br /><br />In politics, six weeks is forever, and Harper could yet wriggle through. With a leadership contest underway, the Liberals are ill-positioned to govern, and the cracks in the glue that binds the coalition are easy enough to see.<br /><br />Still, if the coalition parties can stay focussed on what they share, they may well be able to stick-handle their way to power, and they might make a respectable government. They have powerful incentives to make their partnership work, and substantial common interests in areas like the economy and the environment.<br /><br />The arrangement is risky for the NDP, which will have to tolerate policies it fundamentally detests, like corporate tax cuts and the Afghanistan mission. But the NDP may be surrounded by what Pogo the peerless possum once called “insurmountable opportunities.”<br /><br />The NDP's political achievements – which include policies like pension reform, tax reform and medicare – have always come from controlling the oxygen supply of Liberal minority governments. The trap is that if the policies work, the Liberals get the credit and the NDP gets trampled in the subsequent stampede to majority government.<br /><br />But a coalition could be different. The NDP would have its own ministers within the cabinet. If those ministers were deft and nimble, they could make a real difference – and also capture the credit for their achievements.<br /><br />Not the least of their achievements would be ridding us of Stephen Harper.<br /><br />“You know,” said a friend last week, “I'm beginning to loathe this guy almost as much as Mulroney.”<br /><br />Hold on now, buddy. That's a big claim. I admit that Harper has united both the right and the left, strained the fabric of the nation and single-handedly rendered the population bilious and apoplectic. But challenge Mulroney? Buddy, that's a big, big claim.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-58455685211216762632008-11-30T16:37:00.000-08:002008-11-30T16:40:53.211-08:00How to Save the Auto IndustryNovember 30, 2008<br /><br /><br />Here they come again – corporations chanting their familiar mantra of economic blackmail. After decades of irresponsible, stupid and sometimes criminal behaviour, the North American auto companies are beseeching taxpayers to rescue them. If we don't open the financial faucet, plants will close, jobs will vanish, the sky will fall. Give generously! Give now!<br /><br />Why? This has always been a rogue industry, especially General Motors. In 1949, GM, Standard Oil of California and Firestone were convicted of criminal conspiracy for buying and dismantling numerous inner-city electric rail systems, forcing commuters into automobiles and busses. From 1923 to 1986, a consortium that included GM conspired to market a toxic and unnecessary gasoline additive called tetraethyl lead, on which GM held the patent. By 1986, the US Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 5000 Americans were dying every year of heart disease due to the effects of lead.<br /><br />By then the oil shocks of the 1970s had revealed that the era of cheap oil was ending, and anyone with the intelligence of a squirrel was taking action to hedge against the next oil shock. People insulated their houses, installed alternate sources of heat, took the bus and turned down the lights. Denmark closed its roads on Sundays, and then reinvented itself as the world capital of wind power. The Japanese created magnificent small cars. And the US government instituted a measure called CAFE, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard, designed to cut exhaust emissions while doubling fuel efficiency.<br /><br />Detroit's reaction? GM built a fleet of 1100 fully-functional electric cars in the 1990s – but it then recalled and destroyed them. It abandoned the small-car market to the import brands. Instead, noting the relatively lenient CAFE standards for light trucks, the Big Three concentrated on building poorly-engineered, highly-profitable “sport-utility vehicles,” obese gas-swilling cars that could qualify as trucks.<br /><br />Then the oil price zoomed. The demand for big dumb vehicles crashed. And now these leering boobies want us to save them from the predictable consequences of their own folly.<br /><br />Sure, boys. But on our terms, not yours. In truth, this is a magnificent opportunity.<br /><br />The Canadian and US governments should buy a big slice of these companies – but require that they leap-frog the international competition by radically redesigning the automobile. We can serve the industry, the consumer and the environment at once by transforming the automobile into a totally-recyclable “product-of-service.”<br /><br />Whuzzat?<br /><br />A product-of-service is an alternative to the illusion of “ownership.” We are all transients on the planet; in truth, we own nothing. What we really buy are services, not products – not an automobile, for instance, but the convenient mobility that an automobile provides.<br /><br />But one can use a car without owning it. We can just lease our cars directly from the manufacturers – but with a requirement that they take the car back at the end of its useful life and recycle every part of it. And the lease could include all the costs of the car.<br /><br />Think how different the car would be, if the manufacturer was fully responsible for it, and knew it would eventually be coming back. Cars would be assembled with a view to being disassembled. The manufacturers would strive to make durable vehicles, with components that could easily be recycled or re-used. They would become fanatical about servicing cars and cutting their costs of operation – including the costs of their emissions. Consumers would never be ambushed by unexpected repairs. Insurance coverage could be tied to mileage. It would all be in the lease.<br /><br />With its gluttonous appetite for resources and its toxic wastes, the automobile is the very emblem of our false relationship with the planet – but it could become the first major example of economic sanity and environmental sustainability. This is a unique opportunity. The auto industry is on life support. It's in no position to bargain. Public investment could keep all those employees at work and ensure the survival of the industry – but in return, the industry should be required to devote itself, for once, to the well-being of workers, consumers, and the planet.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-72086251048545904622008-11-27T07:24:00.000-08:002008-11-27T07:29:00.891-08:00The Genuine Progress Index - At Last!November 23, 2008<br /><br />Here's a choice for you.<br /><br />Suppose I offered you an opportunity to double your income, while your expenses went up only by 80%. In your new situation, however, you would have no access to the voluntary services provided by charities and service clubs, or by friends and family. Divorce would be three times more common. The quality of your air and water would be worse. The crime rate and the addiction rate would be far higher, while access to recreational and cultural services would be much lower.<br /><br />Would you be better off?<br /><br />Almost every economist and every government agency on the planet would say Yes -- you're earning more and spending more, and that makes you richer. I would say No -- what you've lost in health, security and informal social support is worth far more than your modest financial gain. And that's the difference between the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the Genuine Progress Index (GPI).<br /><br />As the Faithful Reader knows, the GDP simply measures the dollar value of the goods and services exchanged in an economy. Bad things -- like crime, pollution and divorce -- make it rise, while a clean environment and unpaid services literally don't count.<br /><br />For the last dozen years, a little research organization called GPI Atlantic, based in St. Margaret's Bay, has been developing a Genuine Progress Index for Nova Scotia. (Disclosure: I've occasionally done some writing for GPI.) The GPI assigns positive value to things like “natural capital” -- a healthy environment, for example -- and to unpaid work like housework and volunteer community service. Conversely, the GPI deducts the cost of undesirable things like crime, illness and pollution.<br /><br />Last month, GPI Atlantic released its completed accounts, a summary of key indicators in 20 social, economic, and environmental areas. We are now among the very few jurisdictions in the world which actually know whether or not they're moving in a desirable direction.<br /><br />The good news is that, measured correctly, Nova Scotia is a wealthy province. We have a strong civil society, high rates of volunteerism, robust family relationships, high levels of home ownership, and relatively low levels of household debt, for example. The wealth that is normally uncounted makes Nova Scotia a good place to live. That's why many tradespeople commute to Alberta rather than migrating there.<br /><br /> The bad news is that as our GDP rises, our real wealth often erodes. Over the past decade, for instance, Nova Scotia women have achieved more equitable pay rates, but they're working longer hours and women do most of our volunteer work. The resulting decline in volunteerism between 1998 and 2005 “cost the province $370 million in lost voluntary services in 2005,” says GPI, “and will cost a similar amount every year that the shortfall persists.”<br /><br />The decline particularly affects vulnerable groups like the elderly, the young, the disabled and the homeless. It will also harm arts and culture, after-school activities, environmental groups and churches. The result will be higher rates of crime, drug abuse and the like -- which will be reflected in rising social and economic costs. The problems will be compounded by the incipient recession, since GPI Atlantic's studies have shown that the loss of jobs and income during economic downturns also increases social unrest, illnesses and crime, especially robbery.<br /><br />To avoid those ill-effects, says GPI's Executive Director, Ron Colman, Nova Scotia should “reduce and redistribute working hours rather than laying people off.” It should also upgrade its infrastructure, and “build a more resilient and self-reliant local economy.” Yes, those actions will cost money -- but inaction will cost us even more.<br /><br />The same is true with environmental issues. Nova Scotia's pioneering solid-waste program once seemed unaffordable -- but it actually created jobs and businesses, and now saves Nova Scotia at least$32 million annually. By the same token, meeting the greenhouse gas reduction targets in the province's ambitious Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act will ultimately save us more than $800 million.<br /><br />If you don't know where you're going, said Yogi Berra, you'll probably end up somewhere else. The Genuine Progress Index tells us where we're going -- and how fast we're getting there. It's a compass pointing towards a satisfying and sustainable future. Getting there is up to us.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-83336943472949031222008-11-16T07:30:00.000-08:002008-11-16T07:36:22.733-08:00Memories of War, and the Music of Peace<span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The bullet, said Johnny Mauger, went in one side of his friend's head, but it didn't quite come out the other. Johnny tapped his temple. The bullet made a little bulge, like a pimple, right here. His voice was soft and sad as he remembered his friend, another young kid from Cape Breton, dead in a European trench.<br /><br />Johnny's story is in <i>The Crimson Flower of Battle, </i>a television documentary that my friends Charlie Doucet, Scott Macmillan and I created in 1995, telling the stories of the men and women of Isle Madame during the war which had ended exactly 50 years earlier. The vets will never talk to you, their families said. Johnny absolutely refuses to talk about the war. But when I asked him, Johnny thought for a moment and then he said Yes. He and his comrades were getting old, and they needed to record their stories.<br /><br />What stories they were. Boys of 16 on convoy ships, watching other ships exploding, the water burning, dying men screaming. Ships entering Liverpool after Dieppe with their scuppers running red with blood. Ace pilots telling themselves they were shooting down airplanes, not men. Slave labourers from Petit de Grat building the airport in Hong Kong.<br /><br />Funny stories, too. Being captured by the Germans three times in a single day as the front line surged forward and back. Flying a plane under -- that's right, under -- the Eiffel Tower. Looking beneath your tank after an air raid, and discovering a schoolmate from Arichat hiding there. Love stories, and war brides from England and Holland living quietly in Isle Madame.<br /><br />I loved those people, their quietness, warmth and humility. And Johnny was right. Thirteen years later, very few survive. I remember them every November. Indeed, I remember them all the time.<br /><br />On November 2, we celebrated Muriel Duckworth's 100<sup>th</sup> birthday with a fund-raising concert for Oxfam at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium in Halifax. The concert -- called <i>Stand Up! Speak Out! </i>-- began with a reception featuring 100 birthday cakes. The crowd was a virtual roll call of Nova Scotia's movement for peace and justice.<br /><br />The Women of We'koqma'q opened the show with drumming and singing. They were followed by the Truro Youth Singers, the Aeolian Singers, the Gaia Singers, the Raging Grannies and Four the Moment. The show included Muriel's own words about peace and justice, about opera, about marriage and children. We heard a moving tribute to Muriel's husband, the late Jack Duckworth. The afternoon concluded with a song written for Muriel by Rose Vaughan and Cheryl Gaudet.<br /><br />The concert reflected Muriel's lifelong opposition to every form of injustice -- racism, sexism, poverty, disease, exploitation of all kinds. But no cause is nearer to her heart than peace. She and Jack Duckworth were pacifists during World War II, which demanded great courage, and she has been a passionate, tireless peace activist all her life.<br /><br />As the Faithful Reader knows, every Christmas Marjorie and I give minor gifts to the people we love, and a larger gift to a worthwhile charity. This year, in Muriel's honour, we'll give that contribution to Oxfam's Jack and Muriel Duckworth Fund for Active Global Citizenship.<br /><br />The days after the concert rightly belonged to the veterans. But I kept feeling an imbalance in the remembrances, a ghostly absence in the documentaries and newspaper stories and silences. I wanted people like Muriel Duckworth at the cenotaphs, to remind us that even a just war represents a tragic human failure -- and that in most wars, the nobility of the soldiers greatly outstrips the nobility of the cause. There are soldiers on both sides, after all.<br /><br />I remember December 31, 1999, watching on television as the new millennium arrived in a wave that rolled clear around the globe. From every nation, in every language, in song and speech and poem, when the human race declared its most profound wish for the new millennium, we spoke -- we, the people of the earth -- with a single voice. What we want, we said, is peace.<br /><br />That wish should be part of our remembrances. We best honour the ones we lost to war when we dedicate ourselves to peace. Then, and only then, we can tell our veterans this: You did not suffer in vain.<br /><br />-- 30 --</span><br /><br /></span><span style="color: rgb(1, 1, 1);">Silver Donald Cameron's interview with Stephen Clare is now running on <a href="http://www.haligonia.ca/" eudora="autourl">www.haligonia.ca</a></span>Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-3480717260615715822008-11-09T05:52:00.000-08:002008-11-09T05:54:45.796-08:00President Obama and the Rainbow FamilyNovember 9, 2008<br /><br />Sometimes we're ambushed by our own emotions.<br /><br />I had no idea how deeply and personally I cared about the election of Barack Obama until I found myself weeping on election night. I don't believe that I allowed myself to hope for so much. But a huge weight lifted off me – a weight I hadn't even known was there. This is a personal moment of liberation, and to understand it, you have to know something about my rainbow family.<br /><br />Every week I write about things I care strongly about – but I never write about my children. For one thing, they didn't choose to have a writer for a father, and they are entitled to privacy. But just once, after Obama's astonishing triumph, I need to talk about them.<br /><br />I have four sons and a daughter, and the five of them have four nationalities. They are all Canadian, but by birth, one son is American, another is Danish, and my daughter is British. They live all over the place – the West Coast, the Prairies, Ontario, the United States.<br /><br />Two of my sons are adopted. The wee Dane was five months old when we met. I was courting his mother, and we used to say that all three got married together. The other adopted son is black, born in Halifax to an inter-racial teenage couple. He was nine months old when he joined my earlier family, more than 40 years ago. His partner is a white woman, but he has two adopted black children.<br /><br />One of my white sons married a proud and lovely Jamaican woman, and their union gave me a delightful grandson, now 19. The colour of Barack Obama's skin reminds me of my grandson's, and my son's. My daughter-in-law is more the colour of Michelle Obama, and her excitement and joy at Obama's candidacy was inspiring.<br /><br />Another white son married an enchanting Peruvian woman of Inca, Spanish and Chinese ancestry. Her parents cherish their “gringo” son-in-law, and consider us “co-parents” through the marriage of our children -- a marvellous Latin American concept. That marriage has given me an adorable olive-skinned grandson.<br /><br />This rainbow family – Danish, French, Irish and Scottish, with a generous component of African and vivid highlights of native, Hispanic and Asian – this Canadian rainbow family did not come about by accident. My first wife and I were not freedom riders and civil disobedients, but we lived in California in the 1960s; we were of that generation and we shared its dreams.<br /><br />Later, as students in England, we became close to an Afro-American couple from Arizona, and talked for long hours with them about the gap between our races, and how our generation might close it. Those talks gave us courage to adopt a heart-melting boy who had been born into that gap – and we did it as much for our own sakes as for his. We wanted another child, but we also wanted our white children innoculated against racism by growing up with a much-loved brother from another place in the human spectrum.<br /><br />But my children and grandchildren cannot be equal while there are still places that some can go and others cannot, ambitions that some can achieve and others cannot, filters that cast aside people of colour just because they are people of colour. The unidentified weight on my shoulders is the weight of racism, and Obama's triumph liberates me, too, by affirming that there is no weight that cannot be lifted, no moat that cannot be crossed, no door so heavy that it cannot be prised open with skill and dedication and love.<br /><br />Our family, like others, has known failure, sadness and loss. But we have loved and honoured the whole spectrum of humanity, and I am helplessly grateful for the experience. Our rainbow family prefigures a brighter, better world, a world we ardently wish to inhabit, a world in which everyone on earth is a part of a single, vast rainbow which is the human family.<br /><br />When a black man can be President, that world I want for my kids seems immeasurably closer. And that's why I wept on election night.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-27495810839527074712008-11-03T09:32:00.000-08:002008-11-03T09:34:51.574-08:00In Herald SquareNovember 2, 2008<br /><br />In Herald Square, the air is thick with sound. Yellow taxis hoot, sirens wail, engines rumble. Thumping music spills from the open windows of passing cars. Street vendors shout: Buy bottled water! Shish kebabs! Silk scarves! Hot dogs! Bus tours, T-shirts, jewellry! A grey-bearded black man plays the trumpet beside an iron fence. Blue smoke from the barbecue carts drifts through the air, challenging the watery sunlight. Rivers of people flow over the crosswalks, shouting, arguing, bellowing into cell phones, gesticulating, laughing, snapping digital photos, eating, smoking, fiddling with the earbuds of their iPods.<br /><br />It's the last Sunday in October, but the leaves are green, the air is warm, and some of the people crowding the sidewalks wear shorts and T-shirts. Pigeons, self-possessed as policemen, peck at food scraps between the metal chairs. Here's a table of young Asians, there's a table of young black tour guides. A ragged old man shuffles along, clutching a greasy backpack of sad small treasures. Here comes a Muslim couple, he in a suit, she in a head scarf. Crossing in front of them are a couple of Orthodox Jews, bearded, black-suited, topped by broad black hats. What languages am I hearing? Yiddish, Farsi, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Urdu?<br /><br />“It's overwhelming,” says Marjorie. She's never really been to Manhattan before, and the sheer energy of the place astounds her. With a few hours to spare before our plane to Halifax, we've taken the train from JFK airport into Penn Station. There's Madison Square Garden. That's the Empire State Building. Images from television, vivified by sounds, smells and sunlight. It's electrifying. I once spent a lot of time here, and I love it. There are lots of other cities, but there's only one New York.<br /><br />We go into a tacky T-shirt shop. The olive-skinned proprietor wears baggy pants, a smock, a full grey beard, a skull-cap. A Turk? A Kurd? An Afghan? I can't guess, and I don't ask. He has six or eight Obama T-shirts, but nothing showing McCain. Why not? He shrugs. Can't get them. If he could, he'd sell them.<br /><br />McCain is missing, but Obama surrounds us. Change we can believe in! Change we need! A black guy with a tiny curbside table is selling Obama publicity materials – bumper stickers, lapel buttons, window signs, ribbons. Amazing. Where I come from, you don't buy that stuff. Politicians give it away.<br /><br />We buy some quesedillas in a Latin-American cafe. After we eat, Marjorie goes into Macy's, the original store, six floors of temptation fronting on the square. I settle down on a chair under the trees with a mocha coffee. At the next table, a young Indian woman taps intently on her laptop. A couple of bald, tattooed young men are playing chess.<br /><br />It occurs to me that this is Barack Obama's America, this humming multicultural bazaar, and it's evidently thrilled at the prospect of an Obama presidency. If Obama walked through Herald Square – brown, hip, lean, cool – he'd fit right in. If John McCain walked through it, he'd look like a time-traveller.<br /><br />If Obama wins – and, given that the last two presidential elections were stolen, I wouldn't be overconfident about that – he'll be the first world leader who truly inhabits the 21st century. He's out-pointing McCain because he's a better thinker, a better speaker, a more stylish media presence – and he's a full generation younger. He's outspending McCain not because he's wealthy – he's not – but because he and his supporters are masters of cyber-organizing and online fundraising. McCain, on the other hand, really is wealthy. He thinks he owns 13 homes – he can't really remember – and he has a net worth of $100 million. But he can't find the “enter” key on a computer. Won't do. Not in 2008.<br /><br />Like Jack Kennedy, Barack Obama represents an intergenerational power shift, and a new suite of values. After facing the race issue head-on with a brilliant speech last March, Obama has campaigned as though race didn't matter. To his generation, it doesn't. They revel in diversity, change, creativity, communication. Here they are in Herald Square, people of the rainbow, cyber-folk in a flickering world, and the future belongs to them.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-25981903224630948462008-10-27T17:24:00.000-07:002008-10-27T17:26:02.726-07:00A World Without PeopleOctober 26, 2008<br /><br />What would happen if human beings suddenly evaporated, vanishing off the face of the earth in the blink of an eye?<br /><br />That's the question posed by a fascinating, disturbing documentary film called Aftermath: Population Zero, created by Cream Productions of Toronto and recently broadcast on Global. The DVD is available from National Geographic, whose channel broadcast the show last March.<br /><br />The show postulates that, on a pleasant June morning, people simply vanish instanteously, like a bubble bursting. Poof! Cars have no drivers, planes have no pilots, ships no crews, power plants no operators. All over the earth, vehicles crash, burn and sink. Coal-fired generating plants run out of coal, and within 85 minutes the only functioning power plants are nuclear.<br /><br />Starving pets soon escape their owners' homes and forage for food. Within a week, big dogs devour all the small ones. Zoo animals pass through useless electric fences. Tigers and elephants roam the streets.<br /><br />Water pumps fail. Sewage floods the streets. Dogs and tigers fan out into the country, dining on un-milked dead dairy cows. Beef cattle survive nicely. Mice invade the supermarkets, and their population explodes until the cats find them. Raccoons, squirrels and skunks move into abandoned houses and nest in the furniture.<br /><br />As winter approaches, the zoo animals move south. Billions of cockroaches die in the unheated buildings. As the years pass, house roofs fall in, and trees root in living rooms. The glass drops off the skyscrapers, and birds breed on the desks. Grass grows over the cracked roads. Repeated hurricanes wipe all the buildings off the east coast. Cars rust and vanish. Concrete fails, and buildings collapse. Ships become reefs.<br /><br />As the centuries pass, fish stocks are replenished in the ocean, forests cover the cities, birds fly freely in the clear skies, wolves return to Europe. Dams fail, and the Colorado River again reaches the ocean, while the fields it once irrigated revert to desert. The Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower fall. After 25,000 years – a geological eye-blink – the glaciers of a new Ice Age rumble down from the Arctic, grinding away all traces of human life, save for a few artifacts on the airless, eternal surface of the moon.<br /><br />This has been a thought experiment, says the narrator, to see how the earth would do without us. Clearly, it would not miss us. But we cannot do without the earth.<br /><br />Of all the startling images in this remarkable film, the ones that haunt me most are the nuclear power plants. Nuclear plants contain whole buildings full of spent fuel rods, which remain highly radioactive for centuries and are stored in swimming pools cooled by running water. This is nuclear garbage, and we have no idea what to do with it. We have dumped some in the oceans, and the nuclear industry has proposed various solutions, like dropping it into deep mines in stable rock formations, or fastening it into rockets and firing it into the sun. But most of it remains on-site.<br /><br />The great irony is that we can't dispose of nuclear debris because nobody wants it nearby – and so millions live with it nearby, at the local power plant. It's safe enough until the water stops, as it does in Aftermath. Then the fuel turns the remaining water to steam. The storage buildings explode, creating a wave of nuclear disasters belching radioactive clouds and deadly rains.<br /><br />The episode neatly shows exactly why nuclear power cannot be economic. Nuclear cost estimates never include the price of cleaning up the garbage, because nobody knows how to do that, or what it would cost. So the lifetime cost of nuclear power can never be known. What we do know is that nuclear power is not cheap because it's not safe – and we have no way to make it so.<br /><br />In Aftermath, plants and animals die of radiation, but ultimately the earth shrugs this off, too. Within a year or two, the radioactivity is dissipated, and life starts to re-colonize the hot zones. Which reminds us – or ought to – that environmentalism is not about saving the planet. The earth doesn't need us. Environmentalism about saving our own habitat. It's about saving ourselves.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-81021338729756512322008-10-27T17:16:00.000-07:002008-10-27T17:23:01.862-07:00Insulating Our Wallets<span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times;font-size:130%;" >October 19, 2008<br /><br />Last summer, as the price of oil zinged up towards $150 a barrel, I was furious. Not with the speculators, who have since (predictably) had their come-uppance. Not with governments, which were no more dozy than usual. Not with the oil companies, which were simply being what they are. You can't blame a jackal for being a jackal.<br /><br />No: I was furious with myself. I knew perfectly well that the price of oil was, sooner or later, going to the moon. (It is, too – don't be fooled by its present plunge to a mere $75 or so.) I remember the twin oil shocks of the 1970s, and – like the Danes, who took the hint and made themselves into world leaders in renewable energy – I had taken steps to ensure that another oil shock couldn't ambush me.<br /><br />Then events had forced a drastic change on me, leaving me right in the bomb-sights of the oil jackals – and I hadn't adapted. Why do I ignore what I know?<br /><br />Here's the story. In 1983, my family and I re-built an 1890s house on the waterfront in our Cape Breton village. We knew then that although oil prices had fallen from their peaks, the supply of oil was (and is) finite. If demand rises sharply and supplies decline, prices will soar. So we meticulously insulated the house, and arranged to heat it with wood.<br /><br />We stuffed fiberglass batts in the walls, then added a vapour barrier and rigid foam insulation behind the gyproc. We lowered the 9-foot upstairs ceilings enough to allow R40 insulation in the roof. We replaced all 27 windows with new double-glazed ones. I built thick, heavily-insulated front and rear doors. We installed a heat-circulating fireplace and a combination wood/oil furnace, and a huge wood-storage area in the basement. When we were done, the house needed far less heat than it once did – and, if necessary, we could provide that heat by burning wood. (There's a link to a video tour of the house on my web site, www.silverdonaldcameron.ca.)<br /><br />I lived 22 years in that house before health concerns and other issues induced me to move. And now that well-insulated, beautifully-upgraded house is for sale, while Marjorie and I find ourselves in a leaky 1937 house with 13 single-glazed windows, spotty insulation and a complete reliance on oil heat. When I got the oil company's $5500 estimate for the cost of next winter's fuel, I nearly fainted. I have actually bought houses for less money than than that.<br /><br />Happily, the federal and provincial governments have an EcoEnergy grant program which provides up to $6500 in assistance for appropriate upgrades. We called up Clean Nova Scotia and got an energy-efficiency evaluation.<br />Our greatest heat loss was through the uninsulated walls. Next was air leakage, and third was the old windows. The wall insulation is eligible for a substantial grant and the air-sealing for a modest one, but the grant for window replacement – which is really expensive – is insignificant. The government program also provides a modest incentive for efficient wood-burning appliances.<br /><br />So we won't do windows – but the wall insulation should cut the cost of heating by nearly half, and that saving combined with the grant will cover much of the cost. That's a no-brainer.<br /><br />Air-sealing will include blocking off and insulating our “raccoon hotel,” a crawl-space gap big enough to admit the local wildlife as well as the bone-chilling winds. Another no-brainer, with or without grant support. Finally, an air-tight fireplace insert blocks the heat loss through the chimney, attracts a small grant, and gives us an alternative source of heat. Count me in.<br /><br />OPEC, Alberta, eat your hearts out. Since we made these decisions, mind you, the oil price has halved – which means the payback time for these improvements will be twice as long. You know what? I don't care. The improvements are good for the planet – and when oil prices next take flight, I'll sleep comfortably.<br /><br />Almost as comfortably as the new owner of our old house, whoever that lucky dog turns out to be.<br /><br />-- 30 --<br /><br /></span>Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-65329320304330922982008-10-16T06:45:00.000-07:002008-10-16T06:49:42.799-07:00Canada's Political KaleidoscopeOctober 12, 2008<br /><br /><br />It's Saturday, and Election Day is Tuesday. The markets are making like ski jumpers, taking oil prices and the loonie down with stocks, and roiling the electorate as well. The election results are anyone's guess.<br /><br />But beneath today's campaign, some long-term changes are afoot. For example, an insistent theme among the pundits has been the fragmentation of the left, and the advantage it gives to the united right led by Stephen Harper. The left, we're told, will inevitably unite, as the right did, undergoing the political equivalent of a corporate merger aimed at regaining market share.<br /><br />I'm not so sure.<br /><br />Three of the four parties to the left of the Harperites are built around a strong set of principles. New Democrats are dedicated social democrats, the Greens are channelling the planet, and the Bloc Quebecois wants a sovereign Quebec. Furthermore, the NDP and the Greens have gained significantly in this campaign, and the Bloc's support, though fluctuating, has remained substantial. Why would any of these parties throw in the towel?<br /><br />That leaves the Liberals, innocent of principles, tacking to port or starboard in response to the shifting winds. In fairness, many Liberals would argue that a stable government for a country as large, fractious and varied as Canada must be a pragmatic coalition that eschews rigid principles. For the past century, that devout opportunism has been a winning strategy – but its day may be over.<br /><br />The Liberals today find themselves led by an admirable Green-hearted man whose signature policy is a complicated tax measure that demands explication in a language still foreign to him, as the famous ATV interview clearly showed. Indeed, whenever he speaks, Dion infuriates the grumbling minority in English Canada who consider that the Quebec tail has been wagging the Canadian dog for decades. And the author of the Clarity Act is not even very popular in Quebec.<br /><br />So, despite a brief blip of recent enthusiasm, the Liberals never gained much traction. The party has also been badly weakened by the Martin-Chretien wars, and by the out-migration of all its heavy hitters – Manley, Rock, Tobin, Copps, Graham, McKenna. Its surviving MPs are likely to be in a mutinous mood after the election. Without the discipline of power or the prospect of power, this is not a party with any great internal cohesion.<br /><br />Now consider the results of recent polls, which show the Harper crowd at about 35%, the Liberals near 25%, the NDP around 20%, the Greens at 12% or so, and the Bloc somewhere under 10%. Do the math. If those percentages were reflected in seats, then any two of the first three would have enough support to challenge the Conservatives, and to ask the Governor-General for an opportunity to form a government. They could then do what Harper has done, namely to attract just enough support from a third party to survive the inevitable votes of confidence.<br /><br />That won't happen soon. But the numbers underline the point that Canada is a centre-left country which is now being steered by a right-wing minority. That's an unstable situation. And the centre-left parties don't have to merge in order to rule. They only need to learn the tricks of coalitions and voting alliances, like politicians in other multi-party legislatures like those of Germany, Ireland, Italy, France and Israel.<br /><br />The party which seems at risk is the Liberal Party. Its only real raison d'etre was to put a roof over an improbable alliance of interest groups, and that alliance has fallen apart. Its once-solid base in Quebec has vanished, as has its once-reliable strength among women and immigrants. Its weakness could easily accelerate into collapse.<br /><br />For that matter, the Harper Conservatives remain an uneasy marriage of former Progressive Conservatives and Western true-believers held together largely by the unfamiliar experience of power. When the party loses power and Harper moves on – which will eventually happen – will the Conservative Party also unravel, as it did after Brian<br />Mulroney?<br /><br />In terms of seats, the next Parliament may well resemble the last one. Beneath the surface, though, strong currents are running. Politically, this election looks like a watershed – the true end of the last century, and the real beginning of the new one.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-97088954477423642008-10-16T06:42:00.000-07:002008-10-16T06:44:26.895-07:00Two WomenOctober 5, 2008<br /><br />“When you're going door to door, it's amazing what people will tell you,” says Megan Leslie. “I was at this house the other day, and when the man recognized me, he said, 'I lost my job, I'm losing my house, I have to declare bankruptcy, and I don't know what to do.' And it really shook me how much trust this person had in me, to tell me that. <br /><br />“You know, this is the privilege of being a candidate. People look to you to change things and make things better for them – even as a candidate.”<br /><br />The man chose the right candidate to talk to. Personable and astute, Megan Leslie is a tireless anti-poverty advocate, deeply concerned with affordable housing and fair energy pricing. A dedicated environmentalist, she has a law degree and works with Dalhousie Legal Aid. Campaigning for the NDP nomination in Halifax against two strong and articulate competitors, she won by delivering a passionate speech to more than 600 party members.<br /><br />Her opponents can only envy that enthusiasm. The Liberals quickly acclaimed a candidate just before the nomination deadline, while the Tories were forced to appoint a candidate not once, but twice. Meanwhile, Megan Leslie's campaign workers include both of her competitors, five MLAs whose ridings fall within the Halifax federal constituency, and her revered predecessor, Alexa McDonough.<br /><br />That kind of firepower ought to carry Alexa's former seat decisively. Still, as Alexa firmly declares, the riding belongs not to the NDP, but to to the people of Halifax, and their support has to be earned anew every time. <br /><br />I believe that good citizens should not only vote, but should actively support the candidates of their their choice. Since I'm voting in Halifax this time, I'll contribute both cash and effort to Megan's campaign, and hope to attend her victory party.<br /><br />And though I can't vote in Central Nova, I'm also contributing to Elizabeth May's campaign. <br /><br />A new web site, www.VoteEnvironment.ca, contends that environmentalists should vote strategically, supporting the environmentally-responsible candidate most likely to defeat the local Tory. In Halifax: Megan Leslie, NDP. In West Nova: Robert Thibault, Liberal. In Central Nova: Elizabeth May, the Green leader.<br /><br />It's an appealing idea, but that's not what I'm up to. I just think that Elizabeth May is an extraordinary woman, one of the most powerful voices for environmental sanity that we've ever had, and I think that Canada would benefit from having her in Parliament.<br /><br />I met Elizabeth in the 1970s, when we were both in the coalition of determined Cape Bretoners who successfully opposed the insecticide spraying in the island's forests. She was a shy young woman of 21 when the battle began. She emerged as an indefatigable, politicized environmentalist. In a later attempt to prevent Scott Paper from herbicide spraying, she and her family lost their home and 70 acres of land in a lawsuit – but the suit delayed the spraying long enough to prevent the use of 2,4,5-T. That's commitment.<br /><br /> After law school, Elizabeth served as an adviser to former Environment Minister Tom Macmillan. She was instrumental in creating several new national parks and was in negotiating the Montreal Protocol on the ozone layer. She later worked for the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and spent 17 years as Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada. She's written five books, and she has a basket of awards and honorary degrees.<br /><br />In Canada, unlike Europe, the Greens have never been part of the political mainstream. Sweeping cultural currents are rapidly changing that - as is Elizabeth May's performance as leader. Since she took over, her party has steadily risen in the polls. In a 2006 Ontario by-election, Elizabeth captured second place, with 26% of the vote.<br /><br />The strongest evidence of her stature is the uproar that arose when she was barred from the leadership debates. Agreed, the Greens have never elected a member – but by any other standard they are now a significant national party. The public roared, the establishment caved, and Elizabeth entered the debates.<br /><br />These two women are like a waft of springtime. They're a powerful antidote to cynicism. A province which can generate such candidates should feel proud of itself – and prouder still if it sends them on to Ottawa.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-36205744424432417452008-10-02T16:43:00.000-07:002008-10-02T16:44:22.489-07:00Facebook and Other Mysteries<span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times;font-size:130%;color:#010101;"><b></b></span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman, Times;font-size:130%;">September 28, 2008<br /><br />Tommy is bored. Cindy updated her profile. John “thinks this week rocks already.” Thelma went from “being single” to “in a relationship.” Edith bought Oscar for $486 on “Hotties for Sale.” Heinrich “bought a leather whip in Blood Lust.”<br /><br />If this stream of odd snippets sounds familiar to you, you're probably one of the 100 million-plus people with accounts on Facebook. Such social-networking sites are the hottest thing on the Web right now. I'm on Facebook along with everyone else. But I really don't understand the phenomenon.<br /><br />The social-networking sites out there include MySpace, of course, and Tumblr and sites like deli.cio.us, where you can share bookmarks, and Digg, which allows you to share and rank web content. LinkedIn is a networking site for professionals, and I'm there too, sharing my credentials, ready to network with peers and engage with potential clients.<br /><br />I'm not on Yammer, though, or on its non-commercial ancestor Twitter, a site that allows its users to send and read little tiny messages called “tweets” no more than 140 characters all day long. Tweets are constant answers to the question, “What are you doing now?”<br /><br />Well, um, I'm on the bus. I'm scratching myself privately. I'm going for coffee. I flatulated rowdily.<br /><br />Twitter has more than 100 clones, all of them gushing constant twaddle. Come on, guys, who cares? Yeah, I may want to know what you're doing if we're both supposed to be at a meeting, and you're running late. But isn't that what the phone is for? What is the point of this torrent of narcissistic nonsense?<br /><br />I don't know that there is any point, in the ordinary sense. I got onto Facebook because I asked a beloved teenage niece why people were urging me to join Facebook, and she went over to the computer and led me through the process. Because of that, I was able to follow her progress as she toured Europe with a friend, and she was able to broadcast her experiences, regularly, to friends all over the world.<br /><br />Pretty cool. And that's a great benefit of Facebook. It gives me a peek into the world of my children and grandchildren and my 27 nieces and nephews, who are doing all kinds of interesting things all over the country. It provides a link to my friends and neighbours in Isle Madame when I'm not there.<br /><br />Nevertheless, I'm wary. If knowledge is power, privacy is freedom. And so when I recently found myself in a breakout group at a conference of undergraduates led by a stubble-bearded social-networking oracle named Eli Singer, I had a few questions. Like, why do people want to tell the world that they were blind drunk or hopelessly stoned last night? Why would you post your photo albums, your videos, your opinions about art and politics and religion, your cell phone number, and even provide directions for guests to get to your house party?<br /><br />An astute McGill undergraduate named Johnson Fung had some interesting observations. In earlier periods, he said, people found their identities in the relationships with family, community, church, profession and other social groups. In a fluid postmodern world, the importance of those groupings has faded, and the roots of identity have become mysterious. Facebook and its ilk allow people to forge and shape their identities as an act of will, with reference to a community of electronic peers.<br /><br />Fascinating. But do people realize that they really can't remove themselves from Facebook or withdraw information they've posted on it? Once it's posted, Facebook owns it.<br /><br />Eli Singer, a hoary old relic of 31, had some horror stories of his own. He reminded the group that most recruiters and employers today will routinely check out a potential employee's Facebook page, and silently reject stoners and party animals. A student remarked that elite graduate schools do the same thing. Eli recounted the tale of the Saugeen Stripper who, in a moment of lighthearted lunacy, peeled for the boys in a University of Western Ontario residence while the cameras were rolling. The footage became one of the most-watched videos in cyberspace, and though the girl had done nothing illegal, the publicity forced her to leave school.<br /><br />“Control your information,” Eli counselled. “You have to manage the screens of your life, the way you present yourself online.” Remember, he said, Facebook forgets nothing. Google forgets nothing it keeps copies of every single email. Own your own domain. Blog on your own site. Turn your Facebook privacy settings up to the max. If you don't want something known, don't release it.<br /><br />But in the cyberworld, there's really no escape. There's even a social networking site for the dead. Truly. Where did you think your Facebook information would go when you die? You're not going to heaven, you're going to Footnote.com. Electronic immortality. Who knew?<br /><br />-- 30 --<br /><br /></span>Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-50889562435773995562008-10-02T16:32:00.001-07:002008-10-02T16:42:40.431-07:00The Politics of Culture CutsSeptember 21, 2008<br /><br />“To be quite candid,” said the Danish professor, “we in the Scandinavian countries always considered your country as an uninteresting shadow of the United States. But now recently everyone wants to know about Canada, because we all want to know, where is this extraordinary writing coming from??<br /><br />In 1988, I was speaking at schools and universities in Denmark and Sweden, sponsored by the Nordic Association for Canadian Studies. Canadian writers were suddenly emerging on the world stage -- Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, Robertson Davies, Alice Munro and many others. Everywhere I went, people wanted to know about Canada -- its cities, its ethnic complexity, its geography, all the realities that are reflected in its literature.<br /><br />Culture is the face that Canada presents to the world. It is also an extraordinarily attractive industry. With a ball-point pen and a notebook, Alistair MacLeod composes stories that echo around the world. Celine Dion takes over Las Vegas, while Diana Krall conquers Paris. Alex Colville paints an image onto a scrap of canvas, and sells it to a German collector for hundreds of thousands of dollars.<br /><br />That's “value-added” and “export-oriented” beyond the dreams of Bombardier. In the information age, culture is the very content of the economy. In 2002, culture was a $40 billion industry in Canada. It was bigger than Mining and Oil and Gas ($35.4 billion) and nearly double the size of Agriculture and Forestry ($21 billion). Culture is huge. That's why American governments relentlessly promote their own cultural industries, running interference world-wide on behalf of American publishing, recording, film and broadcasting.<br /><br />Culture is design, music, architecture, images, film, story. It is also quilting, folk sculpture, video games and festivals. It is what Cape Bretoners do in their kitchens. It's jazz on the waterfront, buskers on the Grand Parade, Shaun Majumder and Cathy Jones “goofin' around” on TV. Culture tells us what it means to be Nova Scotians, and Canadians, and sentient human beings. It creates no pollution, uses few materials, employs hordes of people, and travels almost free.<br /><br />And the Harper government hates it.<br /><br />Every 20 years or so, a new Conservative government guts Canada's cultural programs. The Harper crowd has chopped about $60 million since 2006, axing everything from the $2.5 million National Training Program in the Film and Video Sector to the tiny $300,000 Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada, which supported the archiving of important film, television and musical recordings.<br /><br />Why? Gary Schellenberger, the Tory MP who chaired the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, brays that arts support programs are fundamentally insulting to Canadian artists, indicating “that Canadian artists cannot compete globally” and that “Canadian talent is not as viable as American or European talent and that without government assistance, arts and culture in Canada could not survive.”<br /><br />Horse pucky. Insert the words “aircraft” or “nuclear reactors” or “softwood lumber” in this passage, and see how it plays. Consider, for instance, Prom-Art, the $4.7-million program of the Department of Foreign Affairs which supported the foreign travel of artists promoting Canadian culture abroad. Yes, the Canadian cultural industry does need such programs -- just as the forest industry, the aerospace industry and the power industry need government support in selling their products abroad. Hello? Hello? Isn't that what government trade and industry departments were created for?<br /><br />The programs under attack are largely industrial support programs -- training programs for cultural workers, research and development programs, seed money and venture capital programs. Stephen Harper says that the cuts are not anti-culture, but simply represent prudent financial management and then says that there's no point in “funding things that people actually don't want.”<br /><br />Really? Who, exactly, was objecting to the industrial support programs he's been cutting? Some voters dislike the Canada Council, admittedly, but who dislikes Prom-Art? Who even knows about it? And if we're killing loser programs, when will Harper garrot Atomic Energy of Canada, which has sopped up $20 billion in public money building reactors that nobody will buy? Talk about “funding things that people actually don't want.”<br /><br />The truth about the arts cuts is buried in a recent Globe and Mail story on the Conservatives' unprecedented use of data mining and micro-targetted marketing. One key to victory, the party believes, is appealing to “battlers,” blue-collar workers and low-paid white-collar workers who feel ignored by the country's elites, including government. The battlers really like tax reductions and cuts to government-supported programs -- particularly in the arts.<br /><br />And that's why the latest cuts were made just as the government ramped up for an election. These cuts were designed to cause controversy, and to send a message to the “battlers.” They damage a major industry, and they shrink Canada's presence in the world. But they may give the Conservatives an electoral edge in a few ridings -- and that's the only thing that matters.<br /><br />-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298143230589757421.post-62021557528309078472008-10-02T16:28:00.000-07:002008-10-02T16:29:55.300-07:00Missing Ernestina<span style="color:#010101;"><b> September 14, 2008 </b></span><div align="center"><b><br /></b></div> The motorsailer Queen Charlotte was forced into New Bedford, Massachusetts by engine problems, but truly, the crew could hardly be sorry. New Bedford is a splendidly salty town -- the headquarters of the New England whaling fleet, the town where Herman Melville shipped out on the voyage that inspired his masterpiece Moby Dick, the place where a jocular whaling captain gave an abandoned oyster smack to Joshua Slocum, who rebuilt it here and then sailed it alone around the world.<br /><br />New Bedford is also home to C.E. Beckman Co., the oldest family-owned business and the oldest chandler in America, now being managed by the seventh generation of Beckmans in the ultra-historic building it has occupied since 1790. Needing a new starter for Queen Charlotte's Perkins diesel, the crew repaired to Beckman's, where a droll marine-electric parts manager supplied a perfectly satisfactory General Motors starter for about 10% of what the Perkins distributor was quoting.<br /><br />While the skipper installed the starter, the others explored New Bedford, starting with the city block occupied by Beckman's, a ramshackle treasure-house of antique and modern nautical gear. We passed the Seaman's Bethel, where Melville's whalers attended services, and then crossed the street to the Whaling Museum.<br /><br />The museum includes the entire skeleton of a 45-ton sperm whale, and a full-sized replica of a whaling ship's fo'c'sl. Here are the ship models, and there are all the tools of the trade -- harpoons, flensing knives, tryworks. The Museum boasts a fabulous collection of scrimshaw -- intricate works of art created by sailors on bone, baleen and ivory, including knife and razor handles, picture frames, jewel boxes, spools and much more.<br /><br /> The most stunning exhibit is the largest ship model in the world -- a complete half-sized replica of a real whaling bark named the Lagoda, 89 feet long, built in 1915-16 for the owner's daughter, Emily Bourne, in memory of her father. The vessel is housed in a lofty exhibit hall also built by Ms. Bourne, and it is complete in every detail -- the catted anchors, the light whaleboats hanging in davits, the clouds of sail, the rope-driven steering gear and much else.<br /><br />Whaling is New Bedford's heroic myth -- puny men pitting themselves against the monsters of the deep -- and its images and assumptions ring somewhat strangely in a world in which whales cling to survival, while human enterprise has become the most powerful force in the world. It seems odd, too, that so many of the leading figures in this furious world of blood, death and blubber should have been Quakers, who are identified in our day with peace and non-violence and who even then made New Bedford a haven for escaped slaves, a terminus of the Underground Railway.<br /><br />The ship I really wanted to see in New Bedford had nothing to do with whaling -- and it wasn't in port, either. Built in 1894, the schooner Effie M. Morrissey was named for the sister of her skipper, Clayton Morrissey. Although the Morrisseys lived in Gloucester, they came from Lower East Pubnico, where Cap'n Clayt was born. He became famous as skipper of the Gloucester schooner Henry Ford, which in 1922 unsuccessfully challenged the Bluenose for the International Fishermen's Cup.<br /><br />In 1926, after 32 years of fishing and freighting, the Effie M. Morrissey was sold to Captain Bob Bartlett, the Newfoundland master who had carried Admiral Robert E. Peary to the North Pole in 1909. Barlett refitted the ship for the Arctic ice, and skippered her on 20 voyages of northern exploration sponsored by organizations like the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution. She once reached within 600 miles of the Pole, and newsreels made the ship and her skipper world-famous.<br /><br />During World War II, the Morrissey served as a supply vessel for US Arctic bases and for the Soviet port of Murmansk. After Bartlett's death in 1946, she was sold to the Cape Verde Islands, and re-named Ernestina. For the next 30 years, she sailed as a packet boat between Cape Verde and New England, maintaining a link originally established by the whalers, who frequently picked up crew in the Cape Verdes. She was the last sailing ship in regular service to carry immigrants to the United States.<br /><br />In 1975, she was presented to the United States as a gift by the new Republic of Cape Verde. She now belongs to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts -- and when I was in New Bedford, she was in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, receiving a $4 million refit. I was sorry to miss her, but I was delighted to know that she'll be strong and hardy again, at the age of 114.<br /><br /><span style="color:#010101;">She is an international treasure, this stout-hearted wooden ship, born in the nineteenth century and still serving in the twenty-first. Going aboard her remains one of the greatest pleasures I've never had.<br /><br /><br /></span>-- 30 --Silver Donald Cameronhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06134892980604792561noreply@blogger.com0