We Need War:

Concerned people in the social media wring their hands over all those home-grown jihadis scheming and plotting to sneak over to join ISIS or any of those other primitive militant groups currently butchering each other in the Gulf states.

This isn't just testosterone-fuelled young a-holes looking to make some kind of a quick and easy mark on this world. There's also all those young women trying to sneak off to join a society where they might be raped, enslaved and sold like cattle among the weapons-toting jihadis making war on practically everything that moves.

While people all over the civilized world view all this on 50" flat-panel high definition screens in climate-controlled homes or tune in events on the stereo in their high tech cars, their kids scheme to get away from it all and put their lives on the line for someone else's lunatic-fringe cause.

Illogical? Sure, but as usual, there's a reason. It is almost certain they are looking for alternatives to their secure, predictable, unchallenging, parents-sponsored lifestyle which they interpret as dull and uneventful.

Simply put, it's possible these kids don't know that they are secure and comfortable. Comfortable compared to what?

And therein lies the problem.

All of the participants in WWII learned what war was. The ones who did not directly participate in the bombings and killings scanned the casualty lists daily, read the headlines and watched the action on the newsreels at the local theatre. We learned to live with the uncertainty, the food shortages, the rationing, strictly regulated war time economy and the lifestyle changes it necessitated.

When the last battles were fought and peace declared, everybody knew what they had to do to achieve a peaceful, predictable society and went ahead and did it.

My generation is probably the last one that lived in a severe war time economy in North America. We knew what war was, and unless you have this knowledge, you cannot know what peace is. The current generations can bandy about terms like War and Peace without having any practical insight into those conditions.

And that's what's happening in the chaotic end of our social spectrum right now. We have several generations out there whose members cannot know peace simply because they do not know war. It's been too long since the last great global slugfest.

That is why they go looking for it among the rejects in unevolved societies.

It ought to be easy to conclude that the problem with these kids is that our social consciousness needs another solid infusion of perspective.

Evolution:

It's time to take the subject of Evolution to a level that would resonate with the social class who still somewhat derisively refer to it as Darwinism.

Let us leave Darwin's Galapagos and its unique flora and fauna alone for a moment and come closer to home. To my recollection, it was at some time during or immediately after WWII that the subject of penicillin first emerged upon the social consciousness. Hailed as a miracle antibiotic, penicillin was immediately employed, needed or not, to hasten the healing of all kinds of infections.

Following Dr. Alexander Fleming's proven formula for raiding the world of molds for healing potions, other researchers began to produce all kinds of antibiotics to try promote easy and rapid healing of all infections, real or imagined.

It took less than four years for researchers to begin to notice diminishing returns. The microbes were developing strains increasingly resistant to the overused healing potions.
Clearly, these microbes were evolving right before their microscope optics.

That's what microbes do best. Able to generate new offspring within hours, if not minutes, the process of natural selection was able to stay ahead of the game.

This alone should have served to verify Charles Darwin's conclusions on how species develop and survive, but sometimes it is impossible to convince minds set in rock-solid ideology.

If the truth were acknowledged, it's not just living things that evolve. We now know that stars evolve, galaxies evolve, and the whole universe is caught firmly in the grip of evolution. While it is not a contest of survival of the fittest, everything is on an evolutionary track to a foreseeable end.

Trump for Prez:

My choice for prez of the US of A from this side of the border would be Donald Trump. It's an easy way to antagonize all of the left-leaning media who have done their best over the years to make The Donald look inept.

For God's sake, the guy's a multi-billionaire. Unlike the vast majority of his critics, he must have done more than just a few things right in making his life's vital decisions.

Regardless of how one views Trump, one thing is for sure. Trump is not a member of that gang of media-led, politically correct, irrationally inclusive sycophants that have taken it unto themselves to tailor opinions for Americans who have none of their own. Due to advances in media technology put within easy reach of the chaotic end of our social spectrum, they have done that successfully and are in the process of going ahead and doing it some more.

It is high time to eviscerate this element from the social consciousness on both sides of our border in order to get back into some semblance of reality.

Trump strikes me as exactly the kind of individual who can get in there and stir the witches' brew that the social consciousness of America has become back into something people can once again believe in.

From here, it is easy to see Trump as the guy who can deter the Americans from continuing the painful process of electing people for attributes that have nothing to do with what is actually required for the post. 

In Canada, just to be non-traditional, we've been electing politicians for such qualities as charisma, ethnicity, skin color, sex, sexuality, and physical condition. Track record, street smarts and actual experience are of low priority.

In October, we did it again.

The Americans are currently being media-programmed by the forces of political correctness and all-inclusivity to do the same.

Trump just might be America's last chance to hang on to some semblance of significance on the international scene which is currently in a state of erosion in a rapidly changing world.

He may not have a hairstyle the lefty media can admire, but there's no question he has something most politicians today lack: the backbone to do what's right instead of just how to get elected.

Since, as a multi-billionaire, he's already independently wealthy, we know for sure that he's not after the gilded lifestyle, golden parachutes and pensions the politicians reserve for themselves.

Non-traditional Choices

The Canadian electorate has made non-traditional choices in our leadership since the '60s.

First, 20 years after the successful conclusion of WWII, we elected as prime minister a guy who contrived to avoid military service during that war. That wasn't too shocking at the time since we had on hand an influx of draft dodgers from across the border hiding out in Canada.

And having made that curious decision, we broke with the tradition for the post of Governor General of Canada. Instead of selecting someone with a solid record of service to the British Empire, or of some real significance to Canada, the powers -that-be began to offer us more non-traditional, marginally-significant people with mysterious credentials for such public posts.

Clearly, the appointments had taken on a non-traditional aura. We ordinary working people were mystified by some of the choices, but were actually too busy to ask questions and did nothing as these things were sneaked past us.

And, as a matter of fact, that is still being done. Many of those appointments are still mysterious.

We were first with a prime minister in the form of a female. While easier to look at, she turned out to be clearly a poor choice for the job at hand as events quickly showed.

It might be assumed, with some accuracy, that the Canadian electorate was kept in the dark on the choice of candidates for many of these posts. We also have to assume those choices were made by behind-the-scenes committees comprising manipulative individuals of politically-correct, all-inclusive, non-traditional headspace, making full use of electronic advances to spread their propaganda to condition the electorate.

Unimpeded by a formalized and largely unnecessary Charter of Rights and Privileges, our US neighbors carried on as usual for a while. Eventually, they succumbed to the new social order and elected a not-quite-white president. In the absence of other visible attributes, it is easy to assume that the colour of his epidermis was taken into account.

Now it seems they are polishing up a white female for that role. Hilary Clinton is making strong waves in the left-leaning media. It is possible her proponents see her as potential material largely because she is a female, the wife of a former president.

In our current social consciousness, female is in, white male is out. The white male's historically recorded past achievements are forgotten and all of society's ills are attributed to him.

Years of media sloganeering with such terms as pro-active and affirmative action are bearing results.

In Canada, the liberal party is fielding for the post of prime minister the son of a previous prime minister despite the fact he has zero political experience and shows few qualifications that might be viewed as what's needed. (Oh, yeah. He's a pretty good boxer.)

Obviously, fielding this guy shows that the liberals have enough confidence in the Canadian electorate's collective lack of good judgement to actually elect someone with such qualifications.

Wouldn't our North American voters who have been led to fall for the politically correct, non-traditional, all-inclusive sloganeering be better off if they were offered candidates who are at once (1)sexually indeterminate, (2)with multi-colored skin, (3)judgement-impaired (4)of unevolved ethnicity, and (5)physically handicapped? 

Since our democracies are at stake here, would that not get this painful, drawn-out process of politically correct, none-traditional all-inclusiveness out of the way all at once so that we could return to fielding candidates with actual qualifications for the job at hand?

Just asking.

Farming fun:

About the time when old Clifford Sifton was lighting a fire under Ottawa’s politicians to settle the west before the Americans did it for them, the advertising agencies of the day hyped it up to make migration into western Canada very attractive. 

They painted western Canada as a land of milk and honey and abundant wheat crops with all kinds of space for mega-ranching and cattle herding. Ads and posters showed spectacular four-colour scenes from prairie skies to majestic Rockies, all aimed at firing up the imaginations of land-hungry immigrants.

As we westerners already know, we’re here because our grandparents were among all those who took the bait. It worked not only on East European would-be land barons and cattle kings, but also on many members of the West European gentry, some of them with the means to properly finance such dreams.

Manor houses and country clubs ready to service upscale communities were initiated in a few choice locations. This was not exactly par for the course with the average homesteaders who arrived with nothing more than big dreams and hand tools to dig, clear bush and build very basic sod shelters for the family. 

Since railway tracks were necessary to access produce everywhere the homesteads went, many looked for work laying track to earn money to buy oxen and horses.

The British gentry who thought they could carry on their upscale lifestyle with saddle horses, fox hounds, rare vintages and polo ponies in the vast expanses of the new land did not anticipate what they would encounter by way of climatic conditions. 

They failed to consider that there was no warm Gulf Stream current moderating temperatures on the bald Prairie. It took only one or two winter seasons to inspire many of them to gather up whatever belongings were portable and scurry back to the familiar neighbourhoods of the old country.

Most of them did not hang around long enough to realize the full potential of the new lands overseas. In order to do that, it was necessary for the newcomers to have a fertile imagination and enough motivation to stay put and tough it out.

Those who stayed were generally too busy to do all of the things they wanted to do. Priorities included the need to establish schools, churches, Postal service, organize municipal government and do everything necessary to build functional communities. That was what my grandpa Casimir Bielecki had to do, and he did all those things successfully. 

His sons, Carl, Steve, John and Joe had more time at their discretion to do the things Casimir had little time for, but the onset of the Great Depression brought their rapidly evolving lifestyle to an untimely recess as credit dried up and prices for farm produce hit rock bottom. 

My father, Steve, sold a cow for $5–-that’s one whole cow, not a cheap cut of meat. He shipped a train carload of barley to the Lakehead terminals, took a $100 deposit and was informed a week later that he owed for the delivery.

That's how Generations 1 and 2 fared. We are members of Generation 3, our children Generation 4, and so on. As the years drift by, memories of our friends and relations tend to become more refined as the experience of years snaps past events into clearer focus.

Memories have a way to become more enhanced and some of my favorites are those of my father’s youngest brother, my uncle Joe. That is because Joe Bielecki is the uncle I interacted with more than with the others over the years. 

Uncle Joe liked to read and he recognized my own need to read and my interest in things technological. He passed on his mechanical magazines to me after he had read his fill. These included Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Science and Mechanics and Mechanix Illustrated. He picked these up at one of the stores in Tiny, SK, a nearby CN whistle stop with about three grain elevator companies doing business with the local farmers. 

Stores in Tiny at that time were operated by Gushulak and Cymbalisty. They were there to serve the farmers who hauled their grain to the elevators and picked up their groceries and dry goods on the way home. 

While all stores were general in nature, these small country shops were the convenience stores of their day. The real stores, both department and otherwise, were in Canora, the nearby rail centre.

When the railways were built, these little whistle stops with grain elevators sprang up about every ten miles, just far enough apart to accommodate farmers hauling a double or triple box wagon load of grain pulled by a pair of draft horses. The one at Tiny was within comfortable distance by bicycle for uncle Joe to do his magazine and book shopping.

This was the late ‘30s and early ‘40s when people were still coping with the results of the Great Depression which cut off credit and wiped out a significant portion of the gains the early pioneer farmers had made. It became necessary for them to give up their tractors and Model Ts to fall back into survival mode with horses and buggies. 

Being forced to abandon his Titan tractor, uncle Carl, the eldest brother in the family, took to raising beautiful Clydesdale draft horses with reddish fur, blonde manes and feathery pasterns on their oversize hooves that made them look as though they were forever wearing their heavy winter boots.

Uncle Joe took another route. He started raising Hackneys. That’s the fancy high-stepping horses the queen uses to tow her ornate, gold-trimmed carriage on state occasions. While he had no gold-trimmed carriage, Uncle Joe was nevertheless going to travel in style.

He acquired a pure-bred champion stud, Black Diamond, to sire his herd. Beautiful horse. His services were in much demand among local farmers. When Uncle Joe rented out the stud’s services, somehow the word got around and the local farmers gathered to watch the nuptials. 

Why, is anybody’s guess, but a good theory is that the horses’ reproductive equipment, both male and female, resembles closely the human equivalent, only larger, and the farmers at that time had no high-definition big screen TV nor portable telephones to inject a little diversion into their spare moments.

Uncle Joe took his status as a gentleman farmer seriously. Besides raising Hackneys, he also had a wide variety of pigeons, including rollers, tumblers, homers, fantails, and probably spinners, or whirlers, etc. His only problem with these was the Peregrine falcons, whose favorite prey is doves, close relatives of the pigeons. 

In time, the pigeons learned that a good way to avoid the falcons’ attacks was to dive for the earth and start walking. The falcons evolved to attack in the air and didn’t know what to do with a bird that chose to walk, so they landed and walked along behind, in the hope that their intended dinner would decide to take off.

On more than one occasion on the way to or from school, we kids amused ourselves watching pigeons walking across the black summer fallow fields with a hungry peregrine marching along behind in lockstep.

On winter weekends, when the snow in nearby fields was just right, Uncle Joe would come and pick me up driving a fast team of Hackneys hitched to an articulated sleigh with a two-level box. Concealed within the box, crouched on a layer of straw, were three dogs: Smokey, a tall greyhound, and two smaller, not so swift, but much more deadly pit bulls.

If the snow layer was no deeper than a foot or so, and temperature not too low, we would head out across the fields until we spotted a coyote. That seldom took longer than a few minutes and at that point, Uncle Joe would prompt Smokey to have a peek. 

The huge hound would raise his head over the level of the box and scan the indicated scene. When he spotted the coyote–-usually a black dot on the snowy horizon–-he would bound out of the sleigh box and take off in a straight line for the coyote.

With Smokey well on his way, uncle Joe turned the two killers loose and they scrambled out of the box and immediately fanned out, one to either side of the hound’s trajectory. This worked well when the coyote decided to turn either one way or the other, in which case one of the pit bulls would be upon him in short order.

Hiyaah! The Hackneys would accelerate into a galloping mode and take off in the same general direction. We’d grab onto some solid part of the sleigh box and hang on. The chase was on!

Smokey’s bounds were a measured 22 ft between touchdowns, so he covered a lot of distance and closed on the unfortunate coyote in short order. The big hound was not a killer. He would simply overtake the coyote and knock him off his stride. As the coyote turned to defend himself, the killers would be upon him. The end was quick and merciless. One less coyote for the farmers to worry about.

This is not exactly the type of fox hunting the Brits expected to be engaged in, with a couple of dozen baying Beagles harassing a fox, but it was damned efficient and useful to the farmers who tried to raise livestock and poultry without having to share with the local predators.

And it was fun. Bloody, but fun. Something to do which I appreciated during my high school years. I spent parts of the occasional weekend with Uncle Joe and the memories that were generated survive to this day.

Smokey provided plenty of action. Uncle Joe told me about one occasion when the hound took off on his own and tackled a wolf and came back needing some patching up. Another time, the adventurous hound took off all by himself to tackle a coyote which turned out to be an amorous female and wound up coming home much later with a smile on his face, but looking quite apologetic for his impulsive behavior.

We speculated that it is entirely possible that somewhere in that part of the prairies is a sub species of extremely tall coyotes that can outrun a dirt bike.

It ought to be quite obvious that Joe Bielecki was a man with a lively imagination who did what he could to realize the full potential of what life had to offer in Canada’s early west. He was a fun guy and I was lucky enough to share some of his activities with him.

His mechanical magazines had a hand in shaping my future, as well. When, years later, I joined the business press division at MacLean Hunter in Toronto, I found immediate success as editor of Canadian Automotive Trade Magazine, Automotive Service Data Book and the Car Life section in Maclean’s Magazine.

I wound up my writing career doing technology articles, some international award winners among them.

 

Global Warming:

The first cold snap of the season followed by double-digit warm front is as good a time as any to talk about global warming.

Is our planet undergoing a warming trend? Didn't feel like it a couple of days ago, with the wind chill reaching minus 17 here in the middle of November in normally balmy southern Ontario.

But that’s just the ups and downs of local weather and has nothing to do with climatic shifts. Geologists tell us that at one time there was a sheet of ice a couple of miles thick where Toronto now sits. One theory says that its sheer weight crunched the earth’s crust down to the depth of Niagara Falls to create the Niagara Escarpment. 

Then it began to thaw. The gradual melt, according to the geological sleuths, has been happening over a variously-estimated 10,000 years. Over at least 9,900 of those years, the thaw happened without automobiles, coal-fired hydro generating plants and all the poisonous industrial emissions modern society is accused of generating. The people making these accusations are the global warming cheerleaders.

Researchers in the terrestrial sciences tell us that the Ice Age we are now emerging from is only the most recent of several they could trace back through millions of years. There were no reckless human industrial conspiracies then. There was no American economy with its seething industrial might and power generation, no China introducing new coal-fired hydro plants almost on a monthly basis, nor India with its rapidly accelerating industrial growth. If Canada’s notorious Tar Sands were exposed at all, they were an important destination for aborigines seeking pitch to patch the seams of their birch bark canoes.

But none of this seems to deter the hyperventilating zealots who have turned global warming into a religious cult almost as virulent as lunatic-fringe Islam. The planet is warming up and it’s all due to the generation of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases is their mantra. 

The greenhouse gas they are referring to is carbon dioxide, which happens to be the vital ingredient plants use to convert sunlight energy into sugars: i.e. food. Without carbon dioxide, life could not have evolved at all on this planet. 

If this gang's negative view of carbon dioxide makes no sense to you, don’t worry. Logic is not a vital part of their head space. These youngsters from the chaotic end of our social spectrum will not be deterred from belief in their own negative sloganeering.

I can even recall when this global warming propaganda was launched. It was initiated by Soviet planetary probe Venera back in ‘83. After many tries, Venera finally succeeded in descending all the way down to the surface of Venus and sending back colour photos and pressure and temperature data of the hell-like surface conditions in the brief time before it melted.

The event disappointed all the science fiction fans who were used to reading fanciful stories about Venusian adventures with fictional heroes like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. These tales were almost always enhanced by comic art showing beautiful, scantily-clad humanoid female inhabitants. 

Before Venera, cloud-shrouded Venus, second brightest object after the moon in the night sky, was regarded, somewhat hopefully, as a habitable terrestrial twin, inhabited by friendly humanoids. All this made sense at a time before we learned Venus was orbiting short of our star’s Goldilocks zone.

Naturally, this new information was a huge disappointment to scientists and science fiction fans. Totally ignoring the fact that planet Venus was about one-third the distance closer to the Sun than Terra, various scientific types began to speculate that the heat that fried Venera must have been generated by the Greenhouse Effect.

They speculated that this was caused by a set of conditions where the thick cloud cover blocks the radiation of surface temperatures back out into space, thus making the planet hotter and hotter......and it could happen right here on Terra, they said. The Greenhouse Effect theory was born.

Right away, the media jumped on it and speculated that indeed, it might be happening even as we speak. They ran in every direction with this speculative analysis, hyping it up to sell shampoos, sanitary napkins, toilet paper and hair club products for men. Mesmerized viewers bought the media hype wholesale. 

CBC’s The Nature of Things added Global Warming to its growing list of dire events we should lose sleep over. As usual, David Suzuki upgraded the stress level by adding stern warnings that it may already be too late to do anything about it. CBC set out to beat Nova, Nature and similar documentaries trying to out-hype each other for the viewers’ undivided attention and an increased share of the advertising revenue.

Al Gore wrote a compelling book about it which is about as factual as you’d expect from a US politician with an agenda and waited for the profits to roll in while flying all over to preach the message personally to the converted. All this was eagerly covered in breathless detail by the sensation-mongering media. They just couldn't get enough of it.

Many of these documentaries include extensive quotes by various scientific types claiming that there might indeed be some merit to the argument. This includes the group from Australia who were going to celebrate last Christmas among suitably snowy scenery by hiring a charter to take them to Antarctica. 

They set out to confirm global warming by measuring the loss of ice over the last 100 years. The measurements had initially been taken and recorded by an Antarctic explorer a hundred years earlier, so, given that time span, the task to confirm global warming should have been a slam dunk, right? A lot of ice ought to have melted in 100 years if the planet was indeed warming.

Well, it didn't quite work out like that. To begin with, their ship got stuck in the ice about 70 km farther out than the explorer was able to achieve 100 years earlier. Ice-breakers they called up to break them loose got stuck a significant distance even further out. Finally, in desperation, they were lifted out by helicopters from China. Exactly how long their charter boat and ice breakers stayed stuck went unreported.

What did they blame this fiasco on? Well, Global warming, of course. Believe it or not, they attempt to save face and justify this string of blunders by blaming it all on global warming.

Nobody appears to be asking when the alleged warming trend is expected to stop and turn around, heading back up to another terrestrial snowball, or if it has already made that U-turn. That would be too logical a question.

As a matter of fact, the question of whether our planet was headed back toward another ice age was posed by one of Toronto's newspapers during a mid-'70s ice-pellet blizzard. But that was before the media feeding frenzy that turned the Greenhouse Effect theory into a doomsday cult.

These new cultists are willing to completely ignore the effects of barely understood sun cycles and the planet's estimated 500 active volcanoes pumping countless cubic miles of emissions into the planetary biosphere, while blaming automotive exhausts and hydro smokestacks. As we already know, logic is not their strong suit.  

Meanwhile, the clever Chinese must be chuckling up their sleeves after having signed an agreement with the Americans to cut down on their emissions by the year 2030--guaranteed.

It is easy to speculate at this point that the Chinese see our global warming enthusiasts and our social consciousness that accepts such wild theorizing as a not particularly bright bunch that might be kidded along, but should be approached only with great caution.

Note: Another figure on the number of active volcanoes on this planet offered lately is 1,500. No doubt there will be other stats from time to time. Take your pick.

Cowboys and Indians:

Canada’s aboriginal problems aren’t new. I was personally made aware of them one moonless night away back in the middle of the last century while stuck in the mud on the old #5 highway in Saskatchewan.

Following a rainy weekend, I was trying to get back to my rural school site on a Sunday night in May. The spring of ‘53 was particularly wet in our area, the gravel roads soggy and only marginally passable to wheeled traffic. 

The old highway, following the 90-degree survey lines of 1905, was yet to be grasped at both ends and snapped straight, parallel to the CN Railway running cross-country in a straight line from Winnipeg to Saskatoon and points west. It was still waiting to be paved in the years that followed.

At one particularly sloppy stretch between Canora and Mikado, the Pontiac slid into a set of deep ruts and bottomed out. About 100 yds ahead was another vehicle stuck on the other shoulder at the edge of the watery ditch.

My only choice was to walk to a nearby farm yard belonging to an acquaintance and ask for a tow out of the muddy patch, but it was past 10 pm and the lights in the farm house were out, a sure sign that the family was asleep. That would have to wait until morning.

A farm truck hummed into view, veered over to a different set of ruts and roared on by without easing up on the gas pedal. The driver was not about to reduce momentum to help anyone, which was probably a smart, if not exactly friendly, move on his part. 

The driver of the stuck vehicle up ahead got out and walked back. It was Ray, a family acquaintance from my childhood in the Elbow of the Assiniboine. 

Ray was an Indian from the Key reserve. He was a graduate of the Mission school at the northern edge of Kamsack and, contrary to popular mythology, was not known to voice any complaints about it. 

He joined the Canadian army at the onset of the war and participated in the liberation of Holland, helping to wipe the stubborn Nazis off the muddy Scheldt Estuary. In the process, he earned himself a chest full of citations for bravery above and beyond the call of duty. 

He was fortunate enough to return alive with all of his body parts intact and with the dream of investing his military credits in a modern dairy farm on the reserve. That much I knew of the man. 

After a short pow-wow we both agreed it would not be good ethics to awaken a sleeping farm family. It would be best to wait until morning and I offered him the use of the back seat in my car because he said he had five other men from the reserve in his car with him. They got as far as this mud hole on a return trip to Yorkton.

He walked back to the car and yanked a couple of fur robes out from under his passengers. He offered me one, climbed into the back seat and made himself comfortable in the other. 

We got to talking before sleep overtook us and he told me the sad tale of what happened to his dairy farm dream. 

“I got some pure bred Holstein breeding stock and set up the proper pasture and shelters for the cattle,” he said. “But it wasn’t long before those *&^%$# Indians began cutting the barbed wire and pulling up the fence posts. They turned the cattle loose to wander out all over the reserve. In less than a couple of years it got to the point where it became unprofitable for me to carry on.”

It was a sad tale and I asked Ray why any sane person would do such malicious damage.

“Sane person? Hey, we’re talking about those @*&^%$# Indians here,” he said. “They didn’t want to see me succeed in the white man’s world.”

Being unfamiliar with aboriginal politics, I could not understand how such an attitude might develop on a reserve and said so.

“I guess these guys were happy with their Indian status and were not about to risk making any changes to their way of life,” Ray continued. 

“So they did what they could to keep me from spoiling things for them. These guys are happy with their regular pogey which they get for doing nothing at all and that suits them fine. As they see it, last thing they need is an Indian neighbour showing some signs of initiative.”

It was about midnight when, warm in those comfortable fur robes, we were lulled to dreamland to the soothing chorus of frogs in nearby ponds and puddles. Secure in the knowledge that only a madman, a country school teacher or a carful of Indians would be crazy enough to use that muddy highway at night, we drifted off to sleep there in the middle of the road.

When we awakened in bright sunlight, farmer Phil was up and about and we got him to start up the old McCormick-Deering farm tractor and haul us out onto firmer gravel. The mud had chilled and stiffened enough during the night to provide reasonable traction. I paid for the tow and we were soon on our way. 

I got to my farm school cottage on time and was able to start the day in presentable shape after firing up the wood stove and heating a kettle of warm water to wash and shave. 

My lesson plans with 42 students in 10 grades would keep me busy until 4:00 pm. After that, I was free to think about what Ray had said and try to find some logic in it.

It was obvious that Ray’s attempt to establish a nutritional food source for the families in the Key reserve away back in the 1940s was killed by mindless home-grown activists of the day. It’s a 70-year-old story and, if you follow the news, paying particular attention to present day Indian activism, nothing has changed much. 

Today, in the white man’s world, that kind of behaviour is described as being pro active. Years of mindless sloganeering is selectively referred to by the hooded activists and amateur anarchists as affirmative action. 

Back in my youth, we had few delusions regarding such activity. We knew them as simple-minded s--t disturbers.