Keats Island anchorage, Boat Engines, Christianity, Personhood and Recovery

A picture is worth a thousand words. The pictures of sailing are always so much more explicit.  I wish the scent of sea air and the cry of gulls was captured too. When I eventually get a new pro Mac computer I’ll probably uplift more video.  Right now the MacAir takes too long to render. Also there’s the difficulty uploading video on slow internet connections.  You simply don’t get high speed cable at sea. What’s missing from pictures is the corkscrewing galloping camel ride experience of a boat in water.  Newbies find it contributes to sea sickness but the older a salt one becomes the more one misses that experience ashore.  Right now a ferry has passed and set me rocking as if I were in a cradle.  When I sleep in the boat at anchor I feel like I'm back in the womb with the anchor the umbilical ford.
I stopped by Stem to Stern Marine on the way to the boat.  I’ve paid all but the last $6000 for the installation of the new Volvo Penta.  The engine alone cost $12000. I won’t even discuss the rest of the installation costs simply because no one could appreciate all the work that Alex and Ben did that warrants what my friends and I know is truly fair and reasonable price for work well done.
(I feel self pity that as a Canadian doctor I’ve been paid a third the real value of my services.  The ‘doctor cost controls’ like rent controls mean I have no competitive income and feel sorely paying the real value of others professional services when mine are so mocked. Yet Canadians happy to pay millions for hockey players never have put much faith in brains.  We’re an ignorant land.  Meanwhile I can’t truly complain because I continue to work in the lowest paid front lines of the public sector when I really could be a fat cat doctor in administration or simply step aside and work for the upper classes in corporate medicine.  Canadians are smug in their universal health care, the charity of doctors whose hourly income for their years of training, call and no overtime and no pensions doesn’t match the much maligned ‘minimum labour’ so sacrosanct to labour.  Such feelings come to mind when I am faced with reasonable bills of the best of the best, such as those at Stem to Stern Marine.  But then also I’ve the Scottish gene that is pained by any penny that passes my hand so at least those of Scottish descendance  could appreciate  my pained expression parting with hard earned money.  I was sorely tempted, when faced with the bill,  to use the brilliant East Indian  Russell Peter’s father’s line, “Yes, but what is my price?"
I’m a very thankful for my life as it is.  My life and Gilbert’s depends on my sailboat, often home and sometimes expeditionary module. Since sailing back from Hawaii  in 2008  with Tom, when we broke the mast, I’ve put approximately $25,000 a year into restoring my sailboat to offshore specs.  That means I've worked longer hours and had less time off than I might well have done if I lived in a rented West End apartment like smart people do.  With the new engine from Stem to Stern, the new new genoa from North Sails, the rigging help from Pro Tech and the advice and help from Eric at Pocomarine, Dr. Phillip Ney's inspiration, Tom's appreciation,  the major heavy lifting work of restoration is complete.
Naturally, as all sailors know we could have bought a new boat with the cost of repairs. However, as sailors, we know that there’s too good a chance if we sold our boats we’d never return to the sea, seeking instead to become fat and arrogant in a condo or apartment which clearly doesn’t try to kill you on a routine basis.  Sailboats are hazards and finicky and commonly named for women. I did indeed comment that my sailboat didn’t cost as much as my divorce and when you compare the proverbial cost of a boat with the cost of girlfriends, the boat is cheap in comparison. This explains why women rarely can bring themselves to own boats never appreciating their relatively low cost despite the high maintenance . (ha! ha! )
I do like taking people out sailing and have enjoyed infecting several people with  boat insanity. Not one individual has been so smitten by the disease that they’ve thanked me for changing their lives for ever. They're young. They folly of the young!
There’s a lovely breeze right now in this bay.  It’s gentle and smells of pine trees and sea air.  Gilbert is panting with the heat. I think he may need to be shorn to enjoy summer more.  These 30 degree temperatures with clear skies are incredible. I just feel a little guilty I don’t make it to church.  I confessed to Farther Mark at St. James Anglican Church that I was a “winter Christian’.  The truth be told I’m a ‘rainy day Christian’.  God is speaking to me now out on the water.  The other smell here is Hawaian coconut oil sunscreen lotion and coffee.
I’ve towed my AB Profile 12 A hard bottom dinghy with centre console and 20 hp honda.  Since I’m breaking in the Volvo Penta D2 -40 Ben at Stem to Stern, as well as Alex before him, said I couldn’t ’troll ‘ with the engine. For the first 50 hours you need to run it with a load, as well as fluctuating the rpms.  So I’ve been running it between 2000 and the 3000 FOT position.
That said I’m like a girl with breast augmentation wanting to wear a push up bra.  I’d love to be fishing. I love trolling for salmon in the sailboat at a thousand rpm running alongside  islands in the 100 to 200 foot depth mark, having the boat on autopilot, watching the rods in the Scotty down rigger holders, reading a book and drinking coffee.  That’s my idea of fishing. I’ve caught a lot of salmon doing just that but this morning I didn’t get up as planned.   I was supposed to be up before dawn fishing with the dinghy.
Towing the boat I lost a half to a knot of speed but still the bigger engine kept me cruising at 6 knots.  With the old Yanmar 26 hp towing the boat dropped my cursing speed from 5.5 or 5 to 4 to 4.5.  I like the added power of the new engine. It worked well last night.  But today I slept in.  I finally anchored at midnight and didn't get into bed till after 1 in the morning. The light came in at 7 pm when I normally get up for work.  I was in the V Berth and turned my face to the wall. Gilbert jumped up into the bed and began licking my ears at 8 am.  But I only got up at 9 when the cabin was beginning to get warm and close. Coffee was calling. I didn’t meditate as long as I ‘should’.  I pray but then I’m always praying to God. I feel like a toddler pulling on my mother skirts in a shopping mall kind of "prayer warrior". Not particularly Goliath.
I like that my Telus Huaweii USB wifi hot spot allows me to get mail here. I have cell phone coverage so don’t have to be concerned I forgot my Satellite phone. I'm always on call and commonly answering emergencies in the oddest places.  This week it was in my car. Another time I was called up north and had to discuss an emergency from a tree stand.  Commonly I'm interrupted at sea.  So far so good. Just "urgent" emails.  Everything is urgent these days with no resources and the aging population, all the older 'full service' gps and specialists retiring and none of the young doctors being stupid enough to die young.  So many of my favourite colleagues , the best of the best, have had stress related illness, heart attacks, cancer, addictions, suicides, divorces.  I'm so very fortunate to be alive and living the life still.
Just as I was going to cast off last night, Tom came by.  He sailed with me back from Hawaii and the last few years restored the boat's hull and mast integrity either himself or supervising others.  I think he's afraid I'll ask him one day to join me on another ocean expedition and wants the boat to be safe enough he'll survive.  He was in picking up the old Yanmar to fix up and sell with his diesel mechanic buddy. In exchange I’m hoping he’ll do some of the electrical ‘glych’ work that still needs doing on the boat. I had the new radio installed but it wasn’t connected to the GPS. Once this is done I’ll be able to see any other big boats location. That’s a new requirement from Homeland Security. It’s not ‘necessary’ but it’s sexy and I’d like to have it completed some day soon.  I’ve a windspeed indicator too that’s been disconnected.  I worked on the electrical myself yesterday afternoon and found the short that had disconnected the inverter outlets. I found this by getting shocked.  (Do not wash your hands before doing electrical work).  I topped up all my batteries and did further maintenance checking all the other grounds.
Tom arrived with the spare parts and oil for the Volvo.  Naturally that was a great excuse to sit around below decks jawing rather than getting going.  He’d been in Toronto with his family and now was back in Chilliwack.
He wanted to see the new engine, my Volvo Penta D2 -40 . So I got to show off the new baby and listen to the appreciative oohs and ahs.  “He (Alex) really did a good job on the engine mounts.”  “They’ve put all new hoses in here.”  “I guess they don’t want anything to go wrong during the time of warranty.” I had to think that a warranty was a very good thing to motivate Stem to Stern to be as thorough and caring as they are.  As I’ve got older I’ve found that I like having the manufacturers recommended teams do installations because the work is done right from the start if only to avoid warranty costs.  Tom was impressed as I was impressed.
Tom’s an engineer and he’s rarely complimentary.  I ignore his negatives a lot therefore, but appreciate his positives especially when they coincide with my own praise.  Tom had met Ben when he picked up the old engine and liked the work that Stem to Stern did. I pointed out my new sail but confessed I was not sure when I’d get the sail up because this Volvo “iron jenny’ was just giving me too much joy.
We drank bottles of Perrier Sparkling water from my freezer while we talked.  Girls always think guys are drinking beer and they're so out of date with the real world of the working man.
It was 7 pm when I said I finally had to go. Tom helped push the Giri’s bow out. Gilbert, dressed in his Outward Hound form fitting life jacket was sad to see his favourite buddy staying on the dock.
In Coal Harbour ,  I stopped at the fuel barge where the great guys there helped me fill my rear tank with 85 litters more of diesel.  It’s nearly a couple of dollars a litre which made me think I really ought to use my sails more. I filled 10 gals of jerry cans for the 20 hp Honda.  Gilbert ran all over the fuel dock.  I bought some frozen herring strips and ice cream bars.  The herring strips are for the fish and the ice cream bars are for me.
8 pm and we were finally going through First Narrows under Lions Gate Bridge.  The sun sets late in summer so it was out till 9 when a full moon took over. I got some pictures passing Point Atkinson. All the pictures were with my iPhone 5.  I’ve got the Navionics app on the iPhone and use that as my charting gps navigation aid.  When night came on and I was just coming around the Finnestere south east point of Bowen Island  I turned on the radar.  I had my steaming lights, navigational lights, iPhone Navionics gps charter, and my hand held gps, the depth indicator and hand held vhf radio,and Raymarine autopilot.  All these little stars in the boat darkness inside coupled  with a beautiful full moon lighting the calm seas outside.
I slowed down coming into Plumper Cove.  I know Plumper Cove so chose it as a destination over other anchorages. Even then I nearly missed it in the dark.  Thankfully some sailboats had masthead lights on and I was able to be certain with the binoculars showing the boats at the dock that this was Plumper Cove. The anchorage was packed. I tried setting my anchor. It was midnight.  I was in a little hole but there simply wasn’t room and I had to pull up the anchor.
I love the Italian Lofranz electric windlass.  I had to try setting the anchor three times in the dark before it took hold. I’d gone out of the Plumper Cove anchorage and around the corner to the east. A Ketch was anchored there so I chose to get in beside him. First the anchor didn’t catch and then the next time it dragged. Another boat put on it’s light and shined a flashlight at me fearing I wasn’t aware of it.  Poor boater. Midnight and this great hulk bearing down on him with engines revving and outgoing anchor chains clanging like a ghost. I’d seen it but I ‘d not expected my anchor to drag.  So I went further out and dropped the anchor in 70 feet with lots of sea room and ran out a whole lot of chain.  I wasn’t so much protected from the wind but I was hooked.  I sat anchor watch for an hour remembering the Mexican anchoring places which were far less protected.
This morning I didn’t get out fishing. I read the mail from Bernice and felt guilty for not going to the Bowen Island writers day.  What a great event that would be.  Another year I think. There are so many great things happening in the summer and all I want to do is be out in my sailboat.  Alkali Lake Round Up is on this weekend. On Wednesday when I was at Whytecliff with Archie  Jamie was heading out to this.  I remembered riding up on the motorcycle one year.  Sweatlodges and dancing in the rodeo grounds.  Great time.  I heard from Archie that George is visiting family in Scotland and Jane may be joining him.  We can expect some poetry competition for Robbie Bruce then.
Of course I’m supposed to be fishing now. Instead I made coffee and also some of the delicious instant Quaker Oats.  Gilberts panting.  I’ve kept his water dish full. I’ve been reading Alexander Kent’s A Tradition of Victory, Read Admeral Bolitho fighting “Bony’s” naval forces of the north of France.
On Thursday I was out for dinner with Dr. John Christensen, Dr. James Houston and Helen.  Helen had been in the Sudan doing missionary work. She had returned and is organizing a fresh water project for the province. She’s been talking to environmental engineers, raising money and spearheading a project  in this huge area where there’s been so much war.  She’d told of her work in the fall when she’d gone there just before the nearby fighting had broken out again.  Christians being killed by machetes and guns.  We’d worried about her and we were all glad when she came home safe.  Now in a few months she’s begun this amazing project to get fresh clean water to the area where she’d taught the children the weeks she’d been there in the fall.
I am so amazed by her industry. God works in amazing ways.  She's a wonderful channel for the Holy Spirit. She's spearheaded this project here in coordination with the Christian leader she’d met in the Sudan. The missionary group she’d gone with was just a little local group who were keen to physically and spiritually help. Now Helen has become a regular locomotive with a cause.  Dr. Houston knew a leading environmental engineer who’d led other successful water projects near there so he gave her this quiet Christian man's name whose already ensured tens of thousands have clean water in Africa.  I love how Christians are moved to do God’s work.  That's the way with the Evangelical Medical Associations work too. There's a need. Then there's prayers. Then there's someone who volunteers to do all this work. And finally there's this amazing success and all these humble people say how it was God's work. t
Asked about the Downtown East Side I caught people up on the corruption of Portland Hotel Society Scandal and how  millions of dollars were diverted to pockets, parties and limousines.   There’s a continued housing crisis because the money didn't go to the poor but rather the rich favourites of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.  It’s so sad because half the money that was spent by Portland Hotel Society on housing for the poor was good .  So much money was squandered on the Safer Injection Site. Dr. John didn’t know about the millions lost.  People are just aghast when I tell them about this. It's like something out of a bizarro comic book. Hundreds of thousands spent on giving alcohol to alcoholics.  Portland Hotel Society staff teaching alcoholics to make their own alcohol and no 'adult over site' for all this costly corruption.  I continued to speak of the harm reduction to abstinence projects with Methadone and how I’d initiated a patient that day on Suboxone, the ethical concerns balancing the palliative care approach of harm reduction with the knowledge that the obvious "cure' for addiction is 'abstinence.
My friends wanted to hear of our Recovery talks and I told them about the Addiction Dialogues with David Berner, Recovery Day with Anna McCullough, and my being on the board of the Canadian Society for Drug Prevention.  Dr. Christiensen was pleased to hear we were supporting the 12 step programs as they worked so well. I told them about the great Christian work, the real heavy lifting  work of Union Gospel, the Salvation Army with Harbour Light Detox, the Catholic and Anglican Churches housing societies, First United Advocacy and Father Mathew from my church, St. James Anglican, working with the isolated men in the DTES.  I celebrated the hope I saw once the Corruption at the core of Portland Hotel Society and Vancouver Coastal Health had been addressed by the Provincial Minister of Health’s call  for accountability.
I told about reading Jackie Pullinger’s work with Heroin addicts in Hong Kong. Dr. Houston knew her and told us of the old Kowloon and the Norwegian missionary society that had started it’s work with heroin addicts there in the slums. Helen had met Jackie Pullinger when she came to speak at Mission Fest.  Helen said she said “she didn’t want people with hard hearts and soft feet who would just walk a little way on the journey but those with soft hearts and hard feet who would go the distance.'
Dr. Christiensen was sad that prime minister wannabe Troudeau had condemned the Catholics of Canada saying  no one who was pro life would be accepted as a Liberal.  I said I was sorry that as a marijuana smoker he was so keen on everyone else smoking marijuana.  It haven't smoked marijuana in 16 years and certainly prefer the natural 'high' and 'spiritual' high to the low of "smoke'. I saw the ravages of the consequences of addiction and simply, the more available a drug is, the more societal problems there are.
The success of addiction medicine work is evident in the turn around seen with stopping tobacco smoking. Once everyone did it and it was glamorous, now only the tragic and ill do it and the huge costs are being tabulated while the psychopaths and sociopaths in the Tobacco companies market it to women and children and third world countries. The same folk are now behind the marijuana industry and the get rich quick goes on.
I struggle with the ethics of it all because clearly there is some medicinal benefit but in BC some 99% of so called "medicinal marijuana" was abused and diverted to recreational purposes.  All the while the medicinal benefits of marijuana compound can be met with a new pharmaceutical Sativex spray but my patients find it easier to get funding for the less medicinal ‘medical marijuana’.  I’m struggling with prescribing as are all doctors because the pressure is political and commercial.
It was very apropos then that Dr. Houston talked of business and virtue. His son is a businessman, my age , and he’s begun a project of making work serve people rather than people serve work.  Dr. Houston, long a champion of the human ‘person’ ,is himself now embarking on a grand project of a new book tracing the development of the soul through history asking friends and even former detractors to contribute essays to this project of looking at the what it means to be  human in the highest sense.  He feels society and business especially has seen the failure of using a solely 'social science' model to assess success.  He cited so many great businessmen of Canada and great corporations who didn't want their life's work trivialized as merely for profit. They'd been moved themselves to create theses great organizations by higher values and yet saw these being lost.  They were challenging the simplistic CEO's to make their work 'meaningful and worthy'.  Some of the people Dr. Houston and their son knew were the greatest families in the world and truly didn't want their 'legacy' to be a 'dirty business'.
Dr. Houston has been delighted by how people have responded positively and agreed to contribute in his book in their areas of greatest expertise.  It’s going to be an incredible work and I so look forward to reading it one day. Dr. Houston’s works on spirituality and Christiianity are classics but I’ll always love most his book on prayer.  He speaks so positively of Regent College these days having been the Chancellor and sees it now fulfilling it’s goal to serve Christians. He’d never wanted another education institution for training professionals but rather an ‘institute’. I really must check out the distinction because he said legally there is a vast difference in the meaning of ‘institute’ as it serves the people and ‘institution’ which the people serve. Regent’s College was an ‘institute’ and had run the risk he said of becoming merely another  institution.
All of us there had  found Regent so inspiring when we attended and being again with Dr. Houston was  again be in the presence of genius and humility. We missed his wife Rita who was unable to come.  He brought me a book of Herbert Spencer for me,  feeling that reading this ‘poet’ would enrich my own Christian development and my own writing of poetry.
It was a remarkable night as these always are.  A great meal in John’s house and truly inspiring company. It was hard to leave.
I of course talked about the engine the sailing I’m enjoying. I told how having exhaust no longer leaking into the cabin had stopped the occasional headache I'd noticed in the past while motoring.  Also I told John that I’d got a draw for a moose cow or calf in the area where his son and I had previously hunted so hoped Luke might get off time from work to hunt with us in the late fall.  My new assistant, Mabel, seeing the my success in the lottery, and being from Argentina had asked about moose. I told her to imagine the finest barbecue in the world and consider that for a city person like myself this takes years to obtain and at the end of the day costs as much as caviar an ounce.  A true Canadian delicacy little understood by anyone without royal blood.
Now here I am sitting in the glory of the BC wonderland.  Gilbert has gone off to sleep in the shade. There’s a cool breeze that’s just fine for me here ,in a bathing suit, in the sun. Now that I’ve reflected in this journal on the high points of my life I think I’ll make a cup of coffee and go back to reading  of wooden ships and cannon.  I "should" take the dinghy and  make a visit to the town of  Gibsons if only to give Gilbert some more to sniff. He pees and poops on the front deck so I don’t have to get him ashore for toilet but it’s another thing to do.  There's just so much to do and such heavy pressure upon me do something.  Maybe I'll just lie in the sun on deck till such thoughts pass.



 

Troudeau Dynasty

I know that Justin Troudeau might not even get a seat as a backbencher if his name was Justin Smith.  He’s clearly running on the historic ‘royal blood’ ticket, ironically in a modern day democracy.  We saw this with George Bush, Junior. George Bush, Senior was a prodigious statesman and his son followed daddy in the family business.
I keep thinking of juniors, these days.  Pretty boys pampered by their dolting mothers.  Isaiah's long necked women and their boys. Chamberlains compared to Churchills.  Nice young men.  Well intentioned to a fault sometimes, though entitled and grossly out of touch with reality, in many ways.  I think of Arlo Guthrie and his old man.  Old man Guthrie influenced the whole of the american music scene whereas Arlo his son wrote  some fun music about smuggling dope into LA and getting caught dumping garbage.  I met Arlo with Pete Seegers once and thought he was a very bright, delightful, accomplished young man.  But he didn’t know the suffering that his old man had known. And it was clear that Pete Seegers had taken him under his wing.
The same goes for the burst of ‘promise’ that Bob Dylan’s son had when he put out that first beautiful album then sort of disappeared. Bob Dylan literally changed the lyric style of an era, making intelligent popular music an acceptable avenue of poetic expression at a time when popular music was mostly frills and romance.  We don’t hear much about the Dylan boy even though Bob keeps on shaking up the world with his depth of ideas and willingness to grapple with all the trials of modern living. Blood on the Saddle and Modern Times were making historic waves decades after, his protest era songs.  I don’t know that his son ‘grew up’ but he’s a good boy.  He made sweet music.  I remember all manner of lyrics from old man Bob but just recall the boy's music as 'nice'.
None of us were prepared for the break up of the Beatles.  Wasn’t everyone just supposed to ‘give peace a chance’. Yet they themselves couldn’t. Then the bubble was really busted with the assassinations of Lennon, King and finally the self inflicted death of Belushi.  Life was real.
The liberals, despite Pierre’s quickly running to the military to bring tanks into the city, never seemed to come to terms with law and order. They seemed to think that they could just talk, get paid for talking, and play the media game, not unlike Hitler who still remains the greatest political media star of all time.  Thankfully the liberals had inherited ’traditions’ of goodness very different of Germany. Their talk was aimed at acquisition of money and they tore down the military with neglect, all the while increasing police and court powers thereby destroying the protections and freedoms of individuals within the country.  We got ‘rights’ on paper, which we’d previously had in fact and lost dignity in the process.   The lawyers benefited and special interest groups but I'm not sure we, the people, did.
The attraction of old man Troudeau for me was his intellectualism.  As a young man I liked new ideas and didn’t understand the value of traditions or that most of what was sold as ‘new’ was just ‘recycled old’ and somewhere sometime these ‘new’ ideas had been proven wrong. New ideas do percolate out of the old but they’re never obvious, not like the dope smoke platitudes  the Troudeau era promised.
The baby boom was on and the fact that so many young people were at college and our parents and country had just gone through the most prosperous era of the 50’s and 60’s , we had the disposable wealth to go on collective walk a bouts, have sit ins and marches, not worrying about crops or careers. Some might say we squandered the hard gains of our parents who’d worked forever through depressions and fought for the country through wars only to have their children turn to smoke, sex and flowers.
We’d all come through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Liberals were promising peace on earth.  We had this idea of jobs for youth and money for creativity. There was ‘change’ but in retrospect it was the kind of change that we’ve seen with Obama.  Lots of drama.  Lots of excitement.  Red carnations.  And serious, very serious, patronage at the price of all.
I don’t like that the price Canada paid was the sell out of the country to Quebec and language laws that have punished every English speaking Canadian and every immigrant ever since.  Those who benefitted most from Troudeau have been Quebec born French Canadians and we learn today that Quebec is more and more infiltrated by the MOB than ever before known. Thanks to Troudeau all of Canada  has been saddled with a very expensive  relationship with a French low born woman who denies she is married, spends and behaves like a courtesan and always extorts all manner of money from Canada with a 30 year threat of ‘separation’.  Even Quebecers themselves grew tired of this hissy fit formula.  Troudeau despite his red carnation and divorce left Canada with a major debt and a very cold marriage bed.
Further the other group that benefitted from Troudeau’s era most were the political lawyers.  Canada was once known for it’s health care system but the profession of medicine has been ravaged by Troudeau’s lawyers along with the once famed engineers who literally built the country.  Lawyers themselves have suffered at the hand of the Troueau ‘political lawyers’ with their quick draw lawsuits ad infinitum and rights for the liberal special interest groups.  Collectively the gap between rich and poor can be dated from the era of Pierre and his love of intellectual communism and unwillingness to face the millions of murders by all the communist leaders of the last hundred years.
Ironically Layton and the NDP who really did represent the poor people of Canada were most aware of how Troudeau’s group had paved the way for the wealthy to be protected by shell companies and corporations and always lawyers making millions and millions to protect the status quo.  So there was Jack Layton fighting the detritus of Troudeau era liberals who promised ‘change’ and ended up protecting the status quo at all costs.  Today Mulcair and the NDP would demolish the senate, the Conservatives would at least require it be elected, but Troudeau wants the patronage status quo to remain, though he offers to change the names,(remember ADSCAM)  liberal party members in senate in future being called ‘independent’ despite being liberals.  Smoke and mirrors.
But at least Pierre had an ideology.  His son is just a babe surrounded by the corrupt Liberals who gave Canada, AdScam.  That was the multi million dollar ’sponsorship’ scandal in which advertisers and marketing men sold the Canadian people a ’new suit of clothes’, only to have a little boy say that the king was naked.  We got ‘advertisements’ for millions with nothing more than pretty pictures and words. Again we got smoke, more smoke and mirrors, all lacking any substance.That was when I stopped standing by the the Liberal Party and began to rethink my 25 year partisan relationship.  I wasn't alone, as the Liberal Party not long after almost slid off the political map, literally 'fired' by the collective Canadian people, baby boomers a whole lot older and more mature and no longer easily duped.  The flower children had long gone to seed.
Even though I admired Paul Marten’s business acumen I couldn’t accept that he wouldn’t have any of his ships registered in Canada because Canada under the liberals was essentially anti business, anti entrepreneurial and taxes were on everything for the sake of the privileged few.  To be rich Paul Marten’s fleet and it’s workers were kept offshore.
Turner was my kind of Canadian, a lovely man with a wonderful family.  Turner really loved this country and it’s wilderness and all the riches of it’s legacy and multiculturalism but he couldn’t compete with the entrenched Quebec Liberals.  He was from the west and the Liberals have never loved the west.  The gun laws were an attack on rural,northern and western Canada, taking 2 billion dollars mostly from Conservatives and NDP because that’s who the west, north and rural folk tend to vote for.  They need long rifles in their homes but the Liberals realized that they could get the eastern city ‘girl’ vote by more smoke and mirrors about outlawing guns so that 2 billion dollars in liberal patronage money could be doled out with slick advertising and massive lies only silly urban girls would buy. Thankfully those young women had grown up by the time Ignatieff tried the same old same old and they no longer bought the lies, if only because Canadian women were winning awards the world over for their extraordinary skills with long rifles. Who would have guessed?
The intellectuals of the Troudeau era were sweet boys promising to protect the girls from the rough bullies but in fact they had to call in the military when the intellectuals turned out to be the source of world terrorism.  Today the women of Canada having grown up could protect themselves so moved laterally into either the Conservatives or NDP party seeing that this was really where facts were greater than fiction.
My concern is that Justin Troudeau is today selling himself to the dope smoking teen agers.  Canada has the highest incidence of teenage dope smokers in the world. He’s spouting platitudes and playing as the pretty boy to the pretty girl groups.  The hard nosed old liberal ADSCAM and corrupt, possibly even MOB affiliated money men, are all betting on the ‘boy king’ especially with the help of the media and the promise that gave us Obama but no real substance.
I didn’t like the Dynasty television show.  it was the Kardasian girls of my day.  I’m afraid that other Canadians will be steam rolled by the Quebec based Liberal party and the rest of Canada will continue to pay for the red carnation that became the red maple leaf. I miss the blue in our flag. I would have had some yellow or brown even, rather than having our once trilateral flag which indeed represented the three parties, including ‘middle class’, being reduced now to the dichotomy of rich and poor, a two tone state.  I’d prefer even a flag debate than see Justin Troudeau get in with more smoke and mirrors.  I”m worried about dynasty just as men of old were when families consolidated power and we had tyrannies through history until finally democracy came and we embraced the idea that ‘real change’ was necessary for progress not just the change of media marketing scams and slick ad campaigns.
I’m fond of meritocracy.  Meritocracy serves the poor because it ensures that one ‘earns’ leadership rather than getting it gifted to them by their daddy and daddy’s friends.  There’s always a mix of this but Justin Troudeau is blatantly running on his father’s ticket just the same way George Bush, junior did and I really do have mixed feelings about George, junior, no matter how much I admire his mother.  Maggie, sweet as she is, isn’t at all the woman Mrs. Bush is.  I can't imagine how bad George Junior would have been without adult supervision.
I fear that's just what we have with Justin. He's desperately wanting to be like his daddy. He's a child of divorce and whereas Pierre wanted us to keep Quebec maybe Justin will cut Quebec lose. Stalin's wife killed herself and Maggie smoked dope to oblivion. There's a lot of family issues wanting a world stage to work themselves out on with a kid like Justin.  That was always the problem with 'royal blood'.  Even with dogs we know the 'pure breed's' carry a lot of disease, perform magnificently occasionally but are never collectively as hardy and robust as the mongrels.  Intelligence often skips a generation too.  Not that I'm thinking of George, Junior by any means.  I'm just wondering about Justin Troudeau and his puppet purpose for the Quebec money men.
So I’m concerned with all this dynasty business since I think Troudeau really only represents Quebec and the old Liberal money men while the Liberal tradition I loved , passed down from Pearson and such, has to date gone to the Red Tories or the Blue NDP.  If we accept Justin Troudeau’s capriciousness with naming things and believing in the deconstructionist , the name is everything,  the NDP are the Liberals today especially under Mulcair.  The Conservatives under Harper are the same conservatives that go all the way back to John A. MacDonald.
I don’t know who Justin is.  And frankly I don’t think he does either. His father, with his red carnation, was the premier flower child of Canada of the sixties but so far all Justin Troudeau is, is a Marijuana bud.  There's something seedy about all this.

American-Canadian Relations

I am Canadian and I'm a big fan of the United States. I've known and admired many Americans as friends, lovers and colleagues.  I know individual Americans as I know individual Canadians.  We are a great people.
I appreciate that both Canada and the United States are wrought with partisan politics and special interest groups.  Regardless of the internal divisions in my country I believe fully that it is in the best interest of Canada to work together with America.  I know we are their Allies today but to be an ally is like being being anything from a fellow journeyman on a glorious quest to being a pouting adolescent being dragged along by an obvious parent.  Even Troudeau knew America as an Elephant to us as a mouse.  While we know that Quebec has held Canada hostage for many years internally this is not a strategy that works well internationally. Canada can not ignore Quebec but much to the chagrin of boastful Mackenzie King, the world could ignore Canada.
So our strength is in cooperation.
Next the question is with which 'party' in the US do we cooperate best..  We do not want to as a country support their "opposition'.  With cooperation we would do best to cooperate with stength not weakness.
To this end we really need to review the last 20 years of US/Canadian politics and ask simply under which American government, Republican or Democrat, did we as Canadians most prosper.  If Canada made more money and had greater concessions under the Republicans then we can only hope for a Republican America. If on the other hand we did best under the American Democratic position then that's who we should favour.
As a liberal I might well support liberalism in my country but liberalism may serve caring first for my own people whereas supporting liberalism in a trading partner would be harmful for my own cause. If I support conservatism in my own country this may not make Republican in the US better unless the US under republicans have increased the well being of Canada as a whole.  In Canada the NDP and Liberals are one in the same, akin to Democrats in the US whereas the Conservative Party is like the right slice of the Democrats and the left slice of the Republicans.  We have no real Right Wing Republicans in Canada to speak of. Canada on the world stage has always been centrist or left of centre.  You really need a monarchy or an empire to make for true Right wing representation. Despite the Quebec Separatist movement now relatively defunk Canadians have lacked that tendency to saber rattling and strutting that characterized Europe before WWI.
It's real politic also to realize that America is our principal trade partner. It's fine to look for alternative sources of income and expand our resources but not by biting the hand that feeds.  It's a dream to have Chinese and European wealth flowing into Canada in competition with American but the fact is that's only a possible and imagined future.  Today America remains our best bet.
How can we get Obama to improve trade with Canada?  That's the only real 'use' we can have for Obama?  Self interest is the cornerstone of internationalism.  Idealism must first be proven on the home front before it's a very profitable export.  Canadian's haven't done well on idealism in the last couple of decades.  Where once we were the country providing the booze to the US, we're now a principal source of illicit drugs.  At home we can be 'morally superior' but to the average American we offer little more morally than any of the European or Caribean countries.  Americans have their Bob Dylans and James Taylors, peace marches, art and idealism.  Canada to the average American unfortunately is not Joni Mitchell or William Shatner but raw resources. And as to that they might simply prefer our clean water to our dirty oil but they don't particularly respect our politics or even our health care.  If anything Americans are more likely to look at Canada to see what not to do rather than look at Canada to see what to do.
Canadians need to be realistic in regards to dealing with Americans. The diversity and choices available to Americans are far ranging given the independence of the States as opposed to their federation. Canadians are fairly homogenous provincially and federally. We compare to an American less as country than as another state.  An American might well consider, do you think we should do this the Canadian way or the Wyoming way.  We are 25 million to their 100's of millions.
It's something the CBC forgets in it's propaganda to the Canadian people.  Yes I am proud to be a Canadian and small is beautiful and I am superior as a highland Canadian to a lowland American.  That doesn't change that to the American elephant I'm still just a cute mouse, albeit with incredible sharp teeth and the capacity to scurry up an elephants legs and bite his balls hard.  I might even induce gangrene and destroy the elephants capacity for future generation but realistically I'd be crushed in the end and likely well before the elephant died of my no doubt glorious and deviously inflicted wounds.
Admiring the Americans as much as I do I'd like Canadians to maximize the relationship and to this end our think tanks seriously have to ask with which party has Canada gained most. The next question then is with which candidate for a political party will Canada benefit. I hear the republican leadership hopefuls every day talking or being talked about on CBC but frankly I've not heard one of them say anything about Canada.  It's why I find the CBC news at times farsical. I know that CBC is the news agency of Toronto and Montreal but laugh when it purports to represent the country.  To the best of my knowledge CBC has not reported what Romney for instance will do for Canada.  It's the only question I want to know about that leadership race.  What is Gingrich going to do for Canada?
Now that Obama is in power if I had the time I'd like to look back and see what Obama said would benefit Canada.  Surely there's the 'trickle down' effect that Americans both Democrat and Republican like towards the rest of the world as compared to their Mount Olympus.  That said what more can we expect?  And I don't want Platitudes either. There are very specific treaties regarding trade and the NATO and various things of this nature that would make the Republican leadership race very interesting for me.
When Obama interfered with Canada's pipe line I wasn't interested in the spotted owls I was however interested in how much the Democratic decision would lose Canada economically and in terms of jobs.  I appreciate the concerns of a northern BC pipeline as to our land but frankly I was not as understanding of Obama putting some state's concern for it's greenery over the billions to be made by Albertans if a pipeline went through to America. It's that way of looking at things rather than the vague and touchy feeling kind of politically correct thinking that somehow, for me, misses the point.
First and foremost I'm a Canadian.  Next I'm a global citizen.  As such I'm most appreciative of the American's overall management of a whole lot of things that Canadians don't generally like to have to deal with.  Just to note a couple of these, I'd say the Chinese Military and radical muslim suicide bombers.  I strongly believe that without the US Canada would be the slave state of another power. I certainly prefer Obama more than any of the North Korean family leadership.  To date America has been the best ally Canada has had and is today our very best ally and neighbour.  So how can we make the most of this relationship?

Global Police State

A friend said that there is no longer any reason to run away.  "There's no place left to go."  Corruption and police abuse occur locally but are also global.  Whether it's overt or covert isn't as important as the fact that 'geographical solutions' no longer seem likely to be any more than lateral displacements.
The true nature of the police is to 'serve and protect'. Their success stems from their close relationship with the community they serve in. Further they are most successful when they represent the community ideals.  The fact remains that a fraction of all individuals are simply ferral and lack darwinian advancement to be able to consceputalize society at all. These are the psychopaths.  Psychopaths object most to being put in jail with other psychopaths.  They thrive on victims. A good police service is like the sheep dogs that serve the shepherd.
What is problematic is when the police serve tyranny or are politically at variance with the majority aims of the people.  Further, police are distinctly different from the military. The military's function is to find the enemy and extingquish the threat.  The paramitarization of the police is a concern because of the paranoid devision which results.  Military need an group enemy whereas police theoretically don't.
Organized crime today is becoming for some a 'blue collar' police force acting where the 'white collar' police force has failed.  Russia is described as in bed with the mafia and Japan has long cohabited with the Yakuza.  Gangs provide an order out of disorder. There's a history of gangs and unions that speak to the service this misled groups have in adressing chaos.  'Steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king, ' was a saying of Dr. Johnson, the english political critic.
Meanwhile bullying was a means of gaining power whereas killing might cost one the power that threat and extortion gained.  Southern writer Carl Hiaasen has quipped that the only things a southern politician can't do, all else being acceptable, is "being caught with a dead girl or a live boy "in their bed. There's a blurring of the boundaries which has given rise to various privatized 'security' forces and increased powers for 'private police'. Meanwhile in the school teachers are all on about 'anti bullying' which was once the 'private boys school learning grounds' for next generation leaders with hazing as central.
During the 30's in Germany and Europe as a whole there was a time of great spirituality and a time of eco awarenss.The great nudist and nature movements thrived between wars and prior to the development of the great police states of Communism and Nazism.  It is both exciting and concerning that we are faced again with a time of great spirituality and eco awareness.
Today we have a soldier on trial for releasing secrets that Wikileaks passed on to the people. The 'secrets' showed the corruption in the high places of governemnt.  Naturally this corruption undermined the 'police' themselves in North America.  9-11, the OJ trial, and countless other events have eroded our faith in the 'purity' and 'honesty' of leadership.  At the height of the Goldman Sachs,  Franny Mae and Freddy Mae debacle there were cocaine drugged executives whoring with high class prostitutes.
Locally a new 'watchdog' has been brought in to 'police' the 'police' yet hundreds break all manner of law defiantly squatting ('occupying '- note the military language) in public parks and 'disrupting traffic' because they like to.  The normal police are damned if they do and damned if they don't.  Increasing all over the world police are faced with containing 'protestors' in increasing 'civil war' like scenarios.  Yet if they 'act' in day to day scenarios they will be scrutinized and if they avoid acting to catch criminals they will be playing it 'safe'.  It's a confusing time to be a police man or woman.
The 'police' state depends on the judiciary.  Increasingly there's 'centralization' of control and judges demanding that there be no criticizm of them while increasingly there's a demand, much like with 'wiki leaks' to film proceedings. The Vancouver Riots court cases are due to be televized.  Not "Judge Judy' by any means, thank God, but a return to Solomon without the exclusivity and dark corridors.  Meanwhile Philip Slayton's book, Mighty Judgement , How the Supreme Court Runs Your Life has been published to show Canadians just how free Americans are compared to Canadians who behaviour politically fluctuates from silliness and irrelevance to abject vassal stateship.
Meanwhile as Christians we believe that God is in control of all aspects of life including politics and law though Jesus did say that a different ruler ruled the world before his death by the judges and police of his day was supposed to change things. Hitchens died recently and was famous for saying if the religious felt their homes were in the afterlife and heaven why were the religious organizations, be they Christian, Catholic, Moslem or Jewish so intent on acquiring land and power in this world.
The paradox has always been that we are 'gods that shit'.  We have minds capable of imagining peace on earth especially at Christmas but our bodies war with the very idea.  Freud was afraid of the "id' and the unconscious, according to Jung and Milton Erickson who felt the unconscious was to be embraced.
The police state is all about the rational limitting the unrational to all extents and purposes.  Historical 'rationality was the domain of man and irrationality the  domain of women."  This resulted in the quip that the heart has reason that the minds does not know of.    Yet in British Columbia, though half of the lawyers graduating are female, two thirds leave law rapidly because they apparently are so excluded that the law society is now finally attempting to make more room in it's irrationally rational corridors for the rationally irrational sex.  World War I was the war to end all wars and confirmed that the 'age of reason' had culminated in the most unreasonable of behaviour.
I for one am a healer. I'm on the side of motherhood and children. I think Dad's a bit over the top at times still I love him dearly.  It's  balance I love best. I'm a student of Freud but love Jung and Milton Erickson.  I believe that all the gold and bullion put into the hands of the controllers with first the failed war on Drugs and now the war on Terror would best be divided with those in education and medicine.  I think theres a place for prevention and enforcement but I think that we're way over the top with tanks in police forces.
I think it's time to win  hearts and minds and if we did that we'd have a global police state that 'served and protected' rather than tended more and more to the para military.
In Canada we all have to re think Troudeau despite my personal love for his red carnation. His calling tanks into the streets of Montreal may well have been the greatest failure in our history.   Perhaps the resurrection of the Canadian Liberal Party could phoenix from a re think of that sad moment in Canadian history.
I want to believe and see God in charge and know that I am safe in the hands of the Lord. I want to know too that my leadership isn't lying and stealing while smiling like Robert Hare's  'Snakes in Suits'.  I would have more faith in the future if countries like Canada lobbied on behalf of Julian Assange of Wikileaks.  We need to support authority but we can't stand for tyrrany.
Of course if Obama declares a state of war with China then we will have to accept 'loose lips sink ships' but until then we need to here and now to accept a Global Police State but work together to ensure that it's role remains 'to serve and protect'. My friends says, "there's no place left to run to."  Of course, I'm following the latest Mars expedition with keen interest.