North Vancouver Journal

Rifle hunting season opened on Sept. 10.
I'd been invited to barbecue with Prime Minister Harper in years past when he 's come to British Columbia.  I didn't think anything of turning down the invitation because it was during the hunting season.  Last week though I'd had the rare privilege of dinner with a Supreme Court Judge.  I saw the work she went to and remembered all the dinner parties I'd held for others.  I was going to avoid this dinner and didn't, thanks to David's encouragement.
Knowing someone I know is going to be somewhere makes going a whole lot easier.  As it turned out it was a stirling affair with fascinating conversation and truly accomplished illustrious people with a breadth of knowledge and information. I was truly honoured that Shaila was there.  She's one of my true greats in the field of medicine and research.
So I told Hannah after that I really ought to accept the invitation to the barbecue.  I'd not registered it was in Kelowna this time but figured that was better as it would get me out where more game was.  I could still hunt Saturday and Sunday.
Just like the dinner, meeting Prime Minister Harper, really was a special moment in my life. I liken it to meeting the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu.  He had all the greatness about him that I couldn't help but appreciate when I met Prime Minister Trudeau. I was a youth parliamentarian in Ottawa so met some big hitters long before my time teaching at university and doctoring or solo sailing across oceans.
He was great like that, like Prime Minister Chretien was too. I spent an afternoon with Mr. Chretien when he came to campaign with Dr. Hedy Fry whose campaign I supported in early years.
Later when I had my picture taken with Mr. Harper he was personable like Prime Minister Turner was.  I was fortunate to spend time with Mr. Turner in the Yukon, waiting for a delayed plane after hearing him speaking to an audience about what the south had for the north. I really like Mr. Turner, a real Canadian . We talked of canoeing trips.  I'd been into white water canoeing before sailing.  His wife was especially impressive. The two of them were clearly a couple.
It was clear that Mr. Harper had that hometown quality, care for family and children, and a concern for community.

I left the liberal party.  I never met PM Martin who was a truly extraordinary leader far under rated for his major contributions to Canada.  But frankly, I didn't really want to meet Ignatieff. He was too late for me.  He was too shielded in Ivory Tower to be relevant to the world I'd come to know as a Canadian.
The pork barrelling corruption in the Liberal party, especially in their Quebec base, had also become too nauseous for me to stomach in the west. Even today I hate what Quebec and Ontario sometimes do to the rest of Canada in their overwhelming self interest.   The Liberal's lies and multi billion dollar economic rape of the gun laws, political patronage, give a high paying job to a liberal crony to record which citizens hunt in the country, was just all too offensive.
The NDP weren't what they were under the late Jack Layton then. They were a disparate mob of complainers with a heavy communist and union perks sentiments riding on the white coat tails of Tommy Douglas before Jack Layton. Then Thomas Mulcair came along. His greatest achievement to date is to rid the party to some extent of the heavy communist diehards. Unfortunately like the Liberals he's still clinging to the pot heads. At times it still sounds like the NDP want to turn the country into a  hippie winnebego dream. Individual NDP are sometimes amazing but when you get them together as a group it's like a gaggle of geese.
I became what is called a Red Tory.  When the Liberals collapsed as a party, the right wing liberals went to the conservatives and the left wing liberals went to the NDP.  My accountant friend, Lorne, and engineering friend, Tom were the principal influences. I still miss the Liberals at time and wish the NDP could get out of the idea that working people should pay for their experiments.
What people around the world never understand about Canada is that compared to Europe with their Fascists and Commies or US or United States with their Democrats and Republicans, Canada is just too polite to have anything but Centrist Parties.  The conservatives are a little right of centre and the NDP are a little more left of centre with the liberals recently just left of centre.  Compared to Europe or the US we have left wing parties but nothing truly right wing.
My blue tory friend, a minority in the main stream Conservative party laments the loss of the true right Wing Reform Party. He thought they could with sufficient tanks and God's help conquer Quebec and possibly California as well.  Meanwhile I've always admired the Rhinocerous Party given the tendency for politics to take it self so seriously.
As a Conservative I've really admired Stephen Harper.  Everything I know about him is that he's a good man. He's a kind of Ralf Nader of the North.  Ralf Nader I admire because after millions of dollars spent on private investigators his enemies couldn't find any dirt on him personally. He was a bit boring but the "cleanest" man in America.  By American standards he's a saint.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is that kind of good man but very very smart. He reminds me of the president of my high school when I was on the student counsel executive.  I was there to get the Guess Who to play at our high school dance for $500 whereas the President was interested in student education, leadership, finance and all manner of 'important' considerations which really didn't interest me back then.
Mr. Steven Harper's concern for economy and jobs has really impressed me.  Visitting Europe these last few years I've been appalled at the poverty and the lack of jobs for the youth.  I'd been in Europe when it was doing well and the contrast and general depression and sadness was so apparent.  In my work it's been so hard to sit with people who want to work and can't find work. Meanwhile there are those who have jobs and don't want to work and they're painful.  I don't like shirkers and malingerers, thieves or bullies.
Everything Stephen Harper said was down home and reasonable.  I liked especially his making fun of grow ops and the illicit drug industry.  Given that some 10% of people have trouble with any mood altering substance I can't see how our already over burdened health care system with 6 month wait lists to see psychiatrists can afford legalization of marijuana and the big tobacco companies pushing marijuana cigarettes to our teen agers.  After decades of getting these killers with their cigarettes out of the schools they're all for legalization of marijuania so they can push a new product just so long as Canadian health care picks up the tab, just as tax payers paid billions for the profits of the tobacco executives and their sick progeny.
I know how important creating a million jobs in Canada during this economic crisis is from a health care perspective. Meanwhile a whole lot of my friends have spent the last years criticizing the conservatives and especially Mr. Harper but when I ask them what is the alternative they haven't any 'solutions', just criticisms.  And any time they have a 'solution' it involves more and more government, more and more taxes and more committees.  Some of my friends think they should be paid to bitch in the bar or complain over coffee.  We don't usually talk about politics because they're angry most of the times about most things political and I've not seen them much different when the liberals were in charge so have concluded nothing is enough for them.
I had tears in my eyes listening to Prime Minister Harper because I'm a true Canadian, third and fourth generation, and I love Canada.  I've been everywhere in Canada except Newfoundland and I often think of working there one day. The day I was on my way the ferry was cancelled due to weather. I've worked all through the north but not specifically in Nunavut and think of working there too. Maybe I'll visit.  I have a sailboat and love the BC out doors in the interior too. Vancouver is a nutty city with an even nuttier Mayor whereas Victoria is a great city.  I've mixed feelings about Vancouver but none about BC and none about Canada.  I love Canada and singing the national anthem was very moving.  Hundreds of Canadians who cared about Canada had gathered outdoors to support Canada.
I loved that Mr. Steven Harper quoted Leacock and MacDonald. I loved that his family loved summers in the Okanagan. The Okanagan is one of British Columbias bits of heaven even though we only seem to hear about Whistler which is a great ski resort but simply doesn't have all that the Okanagan has to offer year round.
My ex wife wanted us to move and work in Kelowna.  I regret I didn't listen to her. She was brilliant at times. But a blizzard closed the road and  I thought I didn't want to leave the coast to be stranded in the interior.  I'd dug my house out of the snow in Winnipeg one too many times.  Now I think we would have had a great life in Kelowna.  The people there are so friendly and supportive. Vancouver wasn't a good city for us in those days when family was so demanding in the city and the deceit and betrayal was port city normal.  I miss the prairies and the honesty of Manitoba at times but I'm surviving in the downtown east side doing my bit.  The pays not great considering the risk. I don't like the bed bugs and lice but everything else is okay. The scabies got me working with kids in the north. I still itch sometimes psychologically.
Prime Minister Harper has kept this country solvent and economically afloat and together in the worst of times.  I like that.
I liked shaking his hand. I liked when I had my picture taken with him he put his arm around me.
I don't feel safe alot and felt safe in his company.  Indeed I felt like I was in a group of sane people liked I feel sometimes at a meeting or in the church or at the RV park.  It's neighbourly and old fashioned but I liked being around people who don't drug or get drunk or are on the look out to be offended.
That may not seem important to anyone else but I'm like Leonard Cohen. I always want a new face.
Lover, lover, lover lyrics - "I asked my father, I said, "Father, change my name"
                                              The one I'm using now is covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame……let me start again , I cried, Oh please let me start again, I want a face that fair this time and a spirit that is calm"

Lover , lover lover come back to me"

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has a fair face and a calm spirit.

In his presence, I thought of my divorces ,failures as husband, the still born baby, the patient who killed himself, the back rooms of the asylum and those people I couldn't help, the friend who sat beside me in AA only to show up in the next days paper found in a dumpster.

Just thinking of Colonel Hatfield has me wishing I'd done more.  Meeting Mr. Harper had me thinking of Colonel Hatfield. There's a feeling of excellence that one gets among the truly great, those achievers who care for others so much.

I think always of my failures and how much more I could do. I struggle every day with prayer and imperfection, and fear. I'm so often afraid and I push on and know courage but wonder when will I not make it.
I spoke to one of Prime Minister's Harpers guards saying how glad I was to see her protecting him and she thanked me and smiled and looked at the Prime Minister with respect.
I am always trying to do my best, always struggling with the hardest of challenges, working ever in the area of greatest need. My friend is a cancer doctor and she understands. My friend has stopped taking holidays because there's too much work when he returns. We have so little support and so much is expect and there's endless resources, it seems, for the critics.
I think that it's accepted now, 16 years later, that I've 'recovered' from my alcoholism and marijuana addiction.  Indeed I was never seen as an alcoholic but rather a 'wine connoisseur and compared with the doctors in my cohort I drank the least.  What I did though was smoke cigarettes and marijuana and even though in those days I had doctors selling my marijuana and recommending I smoke marijuana I was seen by the authorities as 'shit'.  Thankfully when they were through with their punishment and humiliation and disgusting abuse, I was given 'treatment' and today consider the12 step program and my return to church the greatest benefits of my third divorce.

My shame is still about my divorce, the first one, and the ones that followed my being blamed by the courts for not 'controlling my wife' who was sleeping around and a drunk.  I never could address their drug addiction because I rather liked them drunk or stoned than when they were bitter and critical.
The memory is selective. I was gifted with marriage to the greatest women in the world, regular Song of Songs goddesses.  But unlikes Prime Minister Harper I didn't have children or maintain my marriages.  I lacked the back bone that Prime Ministers have.  I never respected Trudeau for his marriage.  I respected him for his personality at the time and his intellectualism . His wife 's pot addiction was a red flag like Betty Ford's alcoholism.  I liked that both women addressed their addictions.  Stalin's wife killed herself.  Of all the women on the great stages I've admired most Mrs. Bush and Hillary Clinton.  Now I admire Mrs. Harper.  Mrs. Mulroney was a great lady too like Mrs. Turner. Our first ladies don't get the same respect they do in the US though I think they should.
I think of the Prime Minister as superior.  I'm a conservative, I guess,  because I appreciate hierarchy. I look up to my older brother and  I always respected my father though I certainly didn't always agree with him. Even though Bishop Michael Ingham's marriage failed I admired the man as a leader and godly.  Gilbert loved Bishop Michael Ingham and I think of Gilbert as a kind of 'litmus test' of character.
I gave up leadership years ago.  I think it was around when I left teaching at the university.  I think because the women and the courts always blamed men for anything that went wrong and I felt such onerous responsibility trying to keep novices from killing themselves or others, I just became more of a loner. So many people too want to be part of the rewards but don't want to be part of the building work.  I just got to a point where it was easier to do things alone more often than not and then you didn't let people down or have wives complaining you weren't doing enough for them or making them happy after a day at the office. It killed me to go to work year after year and come home to depression and addiction.  I was glad to leave since things didn't get better when I was there.  I don't think we have the supports today for marriage and we expect too much from each other.  I didn't fulfill their expectations and they didn't fullfill mine. What was the problem wasn't them as much as the expectations and the antimarriage, anti family anti life pro abortion society, pro death society.  We were really going off the rails there and now I feel that as a society we're on track.
I admire my brother for teaching my nephews. It's a heart rending experience.  I felt overwhelming anxiety taking friends out camping and canoeing for their first time, life guarding, taking my wife sailing and taking juniors mountain climbing. I t was stressful teaching medical students surgery.
It was all in the attitude. I climbed mountains with another doctor and she was that rare breed of person who wouldn't blame me if she slipped up.  All the women I know blame men always so being in her company was a joy, like a young female lawyer or my male friends.  They have arrived at where they see themselves as caring for themselves.  I'm still taking people along into wilderness and into therapy sessions.  I'm just not feeling so responsible as I did.

I was thinking that I should get everyone to sign a waver to be around me.  That was when people were shooting at me and smashing windows and things.  Now it's complaining and 'guilt by association'.  I was riding my motorcycle in Ride for Dad and hoping my presence wasn't a bad thing. I think it's better if one participates but there's whole lot of people now who just live to criticize, not that they do anything, or have done anything, but they know and they know everything.

I admired Dr. Phillip Ney for taking young people sailing. Whenever I'm leading I'm worrying about every little thing. Life guarding I'd count everyone in the ocean constantly.  I felt for my scuba instructor when my equipment failed and I failed to correctly respond to it and shot to the surface easily at risk for an embolism or stroke. Dr. Ney inspired me.  He's really 'pro life' in all it's aspects. A true living experience of 'L'Chaim!"  Yet he's attacked viciously.
I liked watching the protectors of the president.  They look like I feel when I'm with patients. I struggle to make it look easy, I babble about nothing and everything all the while I'm watching 'reaction'.  Everyone has their 'persona' but it's only in watching the 'reaction' that you see the shadows .
I feel marginal.  I came from a Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transexual meeting and discussed with an aboriginal man his adolescent experiences.  He'd been arrested at 17 for sex with another man.  It changed his life dramatically.  I always want to tick the 'other' box.
I could write a poem 'the other'.  I was cross dressed getting on an international flight and the ticketer said she didn't know whether to tick male or female.  I asked her for 'other' and there was no box.  I used to have to say 'divorced' and though 'widowed' would be better.  Now I'm thankful I've become a 'virgin again' and can be just 'single'.
I told a man today I'd just been hunting and he parroted 'group think'. Group think is vegetarian and yoga.  I spent 10 years doing yoga and being a vegetarian in the 70's and 80's and was ridiculed and lonely and it was very alone.  Now I've moved on and I'm a pariah again.  One step ahead of the crowd and you're a leader, two steps ahead of the crowd and you're a martyr.  I don't want to be a martyr and crowds frighten me.
 I hear 'group think' every where. Global warming is a religion. Pro Abortion is a religion.  Aetheism is the new religion.  I loved reading Mario De Beuregard's Spiritual Brain in which he separated 'Pseudoscience' from "Science". Genetics is a kind of group think too. I tried to discuss 'halo effect', 'selection bias' , 'funding' and placebo and nocebo with another scientist and they shut right up because they were  just a technician and thinking about things like this frightened them. So many people will forsake everything including their minds to 'feel right'. It doesn't matter if they're right. It's that 'secure feeling'.  Dr. Jay Lifton talked about this a lot. I've been reading about Nuremberg and the ideas of the beurocrats back then.  Somedays I feel like I'm in 1984 or a Franz Kafka novel.  I was shot at having long hair in the 70's and three men chased me with base ball bats screaming 'let's kill the hippy'.  I was chased across an Indian village with guys shouting "kill the whitey'.  After that experience I'm a little tired of the idea that 'white people are the only racists'.  I can't wait till other languages are subjected to the same kind of fine teeth criticism of 'sexual political correctness' as English has been.  In some languages there's no such thing as 'consensual sex' in 'marriage' since the term 'marriage' means that everything thereafter is 'consensual' sex. The issue isn't renegotiated on a daily basis.  It's like not being able to 'quit' the army 'honorably' when the bullets start coming your way. Yet we're a society that demands its cake and eat it.
I was mugged in Greece by moslems, my gold cross stolen.  8 guys.   It had nothing to do with class.
It was good to be in church today.
Gilbert and I camped in the wilderness back of Sunday Summit. We'd driven all evening from Kelowna meeting with the Prime Minister. I was wearing a utility kilt, cross dressed a gain, remembering the Chinese lady who asked me why other men were dressing like women, Robbie Burns day.  I had my 30:06, 223 and 20 gauge with me.
It was past midnight when I set up the tent in the dark at the dead end of a logging road.  I prefer my RV or my motorcycle tent to this bigger one which takes that much longer to erect.
Gilbert figured I should be throwing ball in the dark.  Otherwise he was helpful.
It was cold when I got into my sleeping bag. I was concerned for Gilbert and slipped him in with me. He was shivering but later he'd climb out and cuddle beside me.  I checked him through the night and he wasn't shivering.
I'd been drinking coffee on the road to stay alert and couldn't sleep. Dawn came way too soon.
it was cold and I dressed quickly , making sure I had compass, knife, rifle, shells, drink, plastic bags, tissue. I forgot my satellite phone but had some cell coverage high up.  I'd taken to carrying a satellite phone since flipping my ATV and being trapped under it for a bit.  Felt a little anxiety 40 miles from the truck with a broken gun and hurt back and cougars about.
It was a glorious morning though. Great green evergreen forest.  I found a clearing and sat for a bit. Gilbert didn't like that. He prefers walking and sniffing so I figured I needed the exercise and began the hike up the side logging road to the the top of the hill. It was a couple of hours of stalking walking.  No game. Lots of sign but nothing moved. I saw elk track at the top of the hill and checked the regs on the cell phone.  Oops, the mule deer was "only 4 pt" where I was and elk was 6 point.  I hadn't known elk was open here about but I'd thought all bucks were game.  So I was glad I hadn't seen anything. A grouse scared up back in the woods. I heard it but didn't see it.  Gilbert checked it out but it was gone.

Back at the camp around noon I used my new Mountain Coop "bio lite stove" ($130) to make a cup of expresso.  The bio lite was everything it said.  Had a usb port and I plugged in my phone while I was burning up twigs and enjoying the high heat this efficient little machine creates. Expresso in no time.
I lay reading in the sun.  I'd taken my reclining beach chair but spilt diesel fuel on it.  Stinky shirt.
I didn't want to hunt for '4 point' only.

So I collected my stuff , took the tent down, loaded up and hit the road again.
I'd been listening to the audio book, Fifth Assasin by Meltzer.  I'd started it on the way up the Coquahalla and now was getting close to the end.  Great thriller,  Well read audio book. I'd actually finish it when I was over driving the back logging roads of the 'bucks' area of the lower mainland near the coquahalla, having come full circle through Princeton.
No bucks but I did shoot a really big ruffed grouse. This was the first time with 20 gauge.  The bird was winged as it lit off from the ground.  Gilbert was on it like a shot. It flew up with a broken wing and Gilbert leaped into the air catching it by the bum.  I arrived while he was holding it down with both paws trying to get his teeth on it. I took it by the neck and wrung it like the chickens on the farm.
What a good dog, Gilbert.  I cleaned the bird right there, gutting it and bagging it for home.  Gilbert thinks we should just tear it apart and eat it fresh and has little appreciation for the 'saving' it for later idea.
I think all city people, especially young women, should be required to do a 4H course like farm kids.  I'm tired of getting abused for 'killing' fish and 'killing animals' and being called a 'murderer' by women wearing leather fashions and using parking lots that ruin soil and hinterland.  Get a life and stop with the group think.  Wake up, the food industry doesn't want you hunting or fishing or growing your own garden.  Group think serves some industry, in this case, restaurants and supermarkets.  Leave me alone. Gilbert and I like home cooked wild game prepared by my hand like my mother and father did as children. I miss raising chickens and I miss having a garden.  I love restaurants and supermarkets and don't raise my eyebrows at your ignorance, incompetence and "dependence' on the city.  I don't judge you for your lack of training your children in 'self sufficiency' like my dad and mom did. I don't say anything when you tell me you don't know how to cook.  But you think it's okay to 'comment' on my life or throw off some innuendo like "i hope you don't trophy hunt' or I' hope you eat it or some such judgemental ignorant group think that CBC seems to enjoy 'creating' in happy cabbages.

It was dark when I got off the logging trail and headed back to town. I'm thinking of a curry sauce for the grouse.

I could have stayed over night but wanted to get to church and a meeting.  I was feeling sort of lonely and appreciating people after seeing and being with all the good people at the Conservative dinner.
I'm too much with unpredictable people, too much being threatened and shouted at and having guns and knives thrust at me.  I've got to get out more. Being with the Conservatives I was happy. Two sikh guys were great jokesters and an Indo Canadian woman was including me in her conversation with a farmer from up north.  Great big man, all power, no fat.
Just when I had cleared my name again thanks to the hard work of friends who protect me from the violent and aggressive with major vested interests I found out I have a new attacker.  I'm afraid to leave the house. I 'm taking a 'stand against legalization of marijuana' and it brings back the pot smokers who killed my dog because  I refused to lie for them. They had dirty urines and to get a government job you had to pee clean so they didn't want to but instead threatened us doctors and the lab folk and eventually killed my dog and the other guys dog.  It was a warning. I left that job.  It was years of abuse I took when I reported the pedophile ring.  The one that got away was the worst. The ones who went to jail couldn't hurt me.  I feel so vulnerable.  Doctors have no protection day to day but in the long run it's okay.  I feel for our staff. They get threatened on the phone.  These days people 'threaten me' to see me because of the waitlists.
I had a chance to say hello to MP John Weston again.  He's so into health and exercise and just a great younger man.  I admire him his vision and concerns. Maybe I was like that before my second divorce.  I pray that people have their visions and that they follow them. 50% divorce rate in Canada and no one is addressing the 'epidemic'.  Marriage as usual.  Everyone into the money.  Saw a lovely wedding dress and thought maybe it's like the university. Used to be you got a degree but now they're only good for 3 or 5 years. Cost a lot more but it's 'planned obsolescence' in education and maybe that's the idea of wedding failure.  I've just got the wrong attitude.  The more weddings the more money, like the 'fixed'  GDP today where the poverty in countries didn't show because divorces meant 2 toasters were bought rather than one used by a family of 6.
I'm my own path.  Mostly we talk of acceptance now.
I was upset with a psychologist who said my patient who'd been diagnosed with 'borderline traits' or 'cluster b' traits was unchangeable.   Most alcoholics and addicts get a diagnosis of bipolar II or personality disorder or 'borderline' or 'cluster b traits' but this psychologist didn't believe stopping cocaine could change a person. He didn't accept her views, her family views or the views of the community or the 5 psychiatrist who saw her after she'd stopped cocaine. Instead he went to a repot written 5 years before she quit cocaine and started AA and NA and insisted she wasn't a person with an addiction but that she was 'bad' and 'unfit' and 'lifelong' personality disordered .  And I kept insisting that all the scientific data and all us psychiatrists, my closest female colleague, had died so couldn't support me, all disagreed with this egotistical and ignorant little self righteous psychologist who wrote the worst most damaging report I've ever seen in 40 years and has got away with it.
I've been blamed for criticizing it and him but in the end the courts and college said I was an advocate for my patient.  I have been an advocate for hundreds if not thousands of patients.  But like a speeding ticket.  I figure it's not for that one case but the general attiude.  I've skated on a lot of thin ice, even did that as a kid.
I was closest to the iciest water as an advocate when I used to go to the homes where parents beat their kids and broke their bones and left cigarette burns. I'd wake them after the police claimed they could do nothing and the courts did nothing and I arrived at 3 in the morning and woke the parents up and told them that if I heard or saw any more scars on their children I'd be back and they would have to try and do whatever they'd done to their children to me an adult. It stopped abuse.  I've stood toe to toe nose to nose with some big mothers, bikers, loggers, and heard them say 'are you threatening me' and I've said nope, no more than you're hurting your children, and they've said 'are you going to fight me,' and I've said 'if you hurt your children again we'll see won't we.' Alot of people in the 'system' just want to 'be seen' to do right. They live for 'deniability' and other terms.  I worked with a guy who didn't arrived at the hospital for  an emergency when there was truly a cluster fuck. He was horrible as a clinician but went on in business and got rich in medicine not seeing patients.  I'm trained in 'outcome assessment." 2 years of Community Medicine and research training made me aware of the 'bunk'.  I'm turned on by the good stuff and the good people but there's a lot of dross in the system.  Alot of mediocrity too.

I could call the cops," they've said, "and I'd just be back ' I've said. When I was a whole lot younger I believed in Clint Eastwood and vigillantism and such but today I'm more likely to appreciate the mainstream approach. I don't think I care less, but I 'm a lot more cautious. Mostly I trust in God.

I also remember reporting the nurse for 'murder' and dealing with the horrendous backlash and being told that the correct term was 'unnecessary death'.  She caused 6 more unnecessary deaths and the enquiry into her conduct occurred after the last three babies died and she left the province to work elsewhere.  I was thankful for the senior doctor on the enquiry who took the time to find me and let me know that her dozen or so deaths in total could have been stopped if someone had acknowledged my concerns five years before.  I 've been told that I would do better with using more commas and better punctuation and more respect for 'technicalities'.  I still have no respect for six health care professionals who stood by and let a patient die and helped in the 'cover up'. I'm paying close attention today to the administrative 'cover up' of the man who was dead in the hospital emergency waiting room for 34 hours.  I don't believe in conspiracies but I'm a great student of the 'cover up' because the bigger the cover up the greater and likelier the conspiracy especially when there are sacrificial lambs and killing of messengers. It's usually a certainty that the mess was far worse that anyone figured. That's going on with the Japanese nuclear plant today.

I'm not allowed to advocate for children any more.  It's good.  I told people I didn't want that any more.  I think the courts will be doing a 'reconciliation' time and paying back fortunes for the damages they' be done in their child custody and divorce hearings.  Just the cost to parents is obscene and despite what is 'politically correct' I watched the abomination where the rich parent or the connected parent got custody from the loving caring parent who simply didn't lacked blood lust.  I don't have any children and I don't want to work with children in this society. I'm amazed they survive 'political correctness' .  They're amazingly resilient..  I don't know anything about kids anymore.  The judges do.  I know Prime Minister Harper does and the Supreme Court Judge I saw, she cares for children a whole lot.  My brother cares for children.
I think God didn't give me any because I become homicidal if some one threatens my dog so I'd probably have spent my life in jail if I'd had kids and folk did bad things to them. I'm working on being spiritual .  I'm surprised by myself. A guy with a pit bull came up to me with Gilbert,my cockapoo on a leash, and the pit bull went after Gilbert.  I surprised myself by grabbing the pitbull by the throat and holding it up in the air and handing it back to the guy whose dogs madly clawing feet have scratched up their owners face a little before they've taken hold of their dog. I've done that twice come to think of it.  I don't like pit bulls and I don't like their owners as a result.  This is 'stereotyping" and 'generalization' and I know I should 'understand' that it would be just a bad 'mistake' if the guys pitbull killed my dog. That's clearly what was going to happen and the idiot was kind of enjoying his dog's 'dominance'.  I don't like growing old though because I can't pick up pitbulls with one hand like I used to and a times coming when I won't be able to.
I get angry enough when people hurt my patients. I don't like bullies either. Not since I was in grade school and time and time again I was fighting off guys picking on little kids.
In therapy the insight was I was the baby in my family and identified with little ones elsewhere. I guess so.  Today I don't care hot like I did younger. Now I care cold.
On a bad day I'm luke warm.
Getting older is good.
Everyone tells me I'm not supposed to talk to people or share my thoughts and feelings.  I think it would be a whole lot better if people in power shared their thoughts and feelings. I've had enough as patients to know they're no different than anyone else.  They care for their children, they have problems in their marriages, they even break the law like Justin Troudeau or sometimes smoke crack like the Mayor of Toronto is supposed to have done.  On a bad day, a really bad day, when everything else doesn't work, they gas their people or they build a nuclear bomb site and shut their borders.
The Greeks used to see that the Gods were no different from them. The world today sees that the leaders are no different from the.
I think Prime Minister Harper knows a lot of Canadians are afraid of the lawless, the psychopaths, repeat offenders, and as so many of us are aging, we look to the authorities to protect us.  I love all the laws that now make people pay back to the injured for their crimes.  I keep hoping that the thieves will one day pay me back for all they've stolen. Mostly I long for a day when I don't have to lock everything all the time knowing in the down town east side my cars been broken into several times.  I pray for protection.
I think Mr. Steven Harper and the Supreme Court Judge I had dinner with were better humans than me. I don't have any problems with that. I used to think I was an okay hockey player as a kid but then I went to an NHL game and it was like think I'm an okay driver and meeting Colonel Hatfield.  There's a whole lot of difference with a whole lot more that can go wrong driving a space shuttle or running a country.
I'm doing okay. Gilbert and I had a great time grouse hunting.  It was good to see North and Gerard today.
I don't feel alone today.
I was going to go fishing but it was raining and though the fish are biting when it 's raining it's not as comfortable.
I look back and I've done hundreds of thousands of dollars of pro bono work. It's not respected.  It was like when I bought all the rounds. People just thought of me as a 'mark'.  Those that care care.  it's appreciated but not really.  We really appreciate things that cost money that we've earned. I appreciate my 'stuff' because it's cost so much, this sailboat especially.  Just learning everything about it took years and it's been hundreds of thousands of dollars maintenance and that's never done.
Greg was telling me he liked to eat out and go on cruises.  I told him I'm getting that way.  I remember my mom and dad loved their cruise ship vacations the best.  I can't afford it, yet because I pay so much to keep my sailboat afloat. So I wonder about having the sailboat because without the maintenance costs  I could take cruises every year.  Not a really serious complaint, as complaints go.  What I call a 'cadillac problem'.  Cadillac problems are problems a whole lot above the 'how am I going to pay this weeks month' or 'how am I going to pay for chemotherapy for my child's cancer treatment' or 'what should I do about this guy pointing a gun in my face'. None of those are 'cadillac problems.'  A cadillac problem is whether to own a sailboat or go on a cruise?  Alot of people don't know the difference.
I'm pretty happy and very grateful for all the blessings I have.  I'm learning acceptance.  The more  I trust God the less I have to fear.
Thank you God for Gilbert. Thank you for my life, my family, my work, my learning, my teachers, for Canada, for the people who work and make sure that the electricity is there, that there's food in the market, that there are roads, that there's medicine, the television crews and the writers and book stores, and the heater, and the fresh clean water, the trucks and cars and motorcycles and boats. Thanks for the diversity and the church and religion and spirituality and science. Thanks for my friends, and sobriety and not smoking dope and being stupid, and thanks for not having any horrible things like bed bugs or lice right now, thanks for being relatively healthy, thanks for friends, thanks for the food in the cupboards and the work ethic and learning to help others, and caring, thanks for heart and soul and mind. Thank you God for all your blessings.  Thanks for meditation and prayer and congregation and praise worship and hymns and the bible and holy books and saints and leaders of church, society, government, police, military, schools.  Thanks for all the diplomats. Help me to be more diplomatic and discrete and say things in such a way as to make my point without offending others. Thank you for bravery lord and help me to be less of a coward. Thank you for my family and friends and for bankers and lawyers and money and accountants and all the modes of exchanges and all the dreams and stories and trade and building and communication. Thank you for one day at a time for helping me remember that you are in the now and that's if I'm in the now then I've won just like live spelt backwards is evil and when I'm living I'm going in the right directions and that's forward so stop resentments and self pity and get on with living and building and being and thank you lord for doctors and nurses and administrators and orderlies and cleaning staff and the auxiliaries and autoclaves and X-ray and mdi and laboratory and assistants. Thank you for my assistants and thank you for buildings and toilets and clothing and plumbing.
Thank you Lord Thank you