To thine own self be true

(What a prolific, influential life and career)

The Lady from the Sea at the Timm Centre with a nice Earl’s sup across the street beforehand with my co-author-friend.

Ibsen’s usual themes: “the individual, not the group, is of paramount importance, and that the denial of love is the one unforgivable sin, tantamount to a denial of life.”(The Reader’s Encyclopedia–second ed., 1965) Definitely one of the greatest playwrights and philosophical dramatists of all time. No wonder he influenced so many other fine playwrights including O’Neill and Miller.

After refs calling the most nonexistent, questionable, and extremely minor penalties throughout the season, players and teams are now allowed to club each other to death sans calls. Sort of like Rollerball out there; the team that wins the cup will have the most players left alive and standing. The whacking and hacking has taken out many of the best surviving players at this point. Not fair, methinks, when skill becomes a target and winning means everything, at the exclusion of the usual rules and regulations.

Nashville’s attempt to close the series with the dirty Ducks today at 6 pm MDT will likely leave bodies all over the ice with no players reporting for subsequent discipline of any kind. In the other series played to date, the criminal treatment of Crosby so far epitomizes the sorry state of the NHL’s blind eye to intentional violence, especially on superstars.

(photo of LC signing–Anjani doing the stamping–in my autographed copy and others of The Book of Longing)

“And there are no letters in the mailbox
And there are no grapes upon the vine
And there are no chocolates in your boxes anymore
And there are no diamonds in the mine
(That’s all I gotta say)
And there are no diamonds in the mind.”
–Leonard Cohen, “No Diamonds in the Mind”, 1971

as he has for some years, was Gord Miller, a former Scona grad, whom I remember coming into the school at the end of the day in the ’90s when he was starting up for CBC TV locally. Seemed like a nice guy who was genuinely interested in looking up his old favorite teachers. Not too many kids like him, for sure.

according to Bank of Nova Scotia, enriched thinking is “your thinking, combined with our thinking”. Hmmmm….

Ironies: I guess you can’t have any enriched thinking of your own without them and enriched thinking is solely concerned with accumulating money and business. I’m glad they cleared that up for anyone looking to think more deeply and thoughtfully.

(“Glad Day”–William Blake)

“Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.”

Long gone are the survey courses in both of my youth.
With the usurpation by politically-correct topics, kids no longer know, study, or encounter:

Frederick Banting

Alexander Graham Bell

Billy Bishop

the Bluenose

Robert Borden

Brebeuf

General Brock

the amazing Building of the first transcontinental railway (CPR)

John Cabot

Guy Carleton

Jacques Cartier

Samuel de Champlain

Company of New France

Confederation

Conscription

Constitutional Act

Coureurs de Bois

Depression

Diefenbaker

Adam Dollard at Long Sault

the Donnellys

Tommy Douglas

Durham Report

Lief Ericson

Evacuation of Japanese Canadians

Expo 67

First World War

FLQ Crisis

Fort Louisbourg

Terry Fox

Fur trade

Alexander Galt

Wayne Gretzky

Group of Seven

Chris Hadfield

Halifax Explosion

Gordie Howe

Joseph Howe

Henry Hudson

Hudson’s Bay Company

Imperial Conference

Jesuits

Henry Kelsey

William Lyon Mackenzie King

Klondike Gold Rush

Sir Wilfrid Laurier

La Verendrye

League of Nations

Literature, Canadian

Loyalists

John A. MacDonald

Thomas D’Arcy McGee

Alexander Mackenzie

Jeanne Mance

Metis

Military, Canadian history

Montcalm

French-Canadian Nationalism

New France

Newfoundland

NORAD

North West Company

North-west Passage

North West Rebellion

Painting, Canadian

L.B. Pearson

Plains of Abraham

Port Royal

Quebec Act

Queenston Heights

Radisson

Red River Colony

Red River Rebellion

Regina Tornado

Louis Riel

St. Lawrence Seaway

Second World War

Seigneurial system

Seven Oaks Massacre

Seven Years War

Joey Smallwood

David Suzuki

Ken Taylor

Tecumseh

David Thompson

Treaty of Paris

Pierre Trudeau

Sir Charles Tupper

Union Nationale

George Vancouver

William Van Horne

Voyageurs

War of 1812

Winnipeg Strike

………………….

How well do new Canadians and Canadians under 40 know the history of our country? How well do they know, understand, and appreciate the broader, big-picture sweep of our country’s culture and its most famous and important people and events? Many have little or no sense of pre-2010 Canadian history back to the Viking visits in Newfoundland in 1000 AD.  *That’s 10 centuries of ignorance, basically. A major cultural vacuum.* It’s interesting, with all the new incoming First Nations curriculum, how little attention is now being paid to the rest of Canada’s history as fostered and generated mainly by the English, the French, the Scots, and European immigrants before 1950 in six of those 10 centuries. Canadian history today–who needs it?

Ian Brady has died, the last of the two Monsters of the Moors; Myra Hindley, his accomplice died sometime ago. Brady has had the unmitigated gall to request that his ashes be scattered on the moors where they killed six kids in the early ’60s, but it’s unlikely his officials and his victims’ families will ever allow such a travesty to occur.
A journalist, who kept in touch with Brady, will have a new book coming out this month, which will, no doubt, add more about Brady’s psychology and the murders.
I first came across this horrific story when my wife was taking a course in Criminology at the U of W in ’69-’70 and she read the above 1967 book when it was published in a first Canadian edition. It shook her up and likewise, me. Not for the faint-of-heart, this is in the off-the-map psycho-territory of Bernardo and Homolka, who were Canada’s version of the “Monsters”. Malevolent evil with abuse and violence.

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.”
–John Ruskin

you have committed treason. Common sense. No brainer.

As I ‘ve said ,many times we do it to ourselves as Trump has shamelessly and repeatedly done since being elected. He is an impeachment destined to happen because of his own stupidity and uncontrollable mouth and e-mails.