Passion Power

The labour movement has ignited and for the first time in a long time the balance of power has shifted. It’s the great reset and one that I support. Years ago, companies and workers were cooperative alliances. The almighty dollar wasn’t the most important thing. Now it’s dog-eat-dog and every man for himself.  Most working-class people are just trying to put food on the table for their families and sock some away for the future.  Can I do better is not a bad question to ask and in a tight labour market now is the time.   There is burn-out among healthcare and frontline workers, essential workers, and food services and retail.    The pandemic has created a whole host of issues; supply chain disruptions, backs logs and labour shortages to name a few.    Corporations are demanding extra time and effort, something people aren’t necessarily heartened to give. Companies need to sweeten the pie if they wish to keep their employees. The game is stille...

I’m happy to be vaccinated.   Vaccines are the best approach for preventing the spread of Covid and significantly lower your risk of death, so they say.  Vaccines downgrade the infection to a mild seasonal virus.   96% of the hospitalizations were the unvaccinated population according to the Centre for Disease Control, so they say.  Avoid vaccine but do so at your own risk. There is a certain percentage of people with vaccine hesitancy and the rest of us will just have to deal with that.   Instead, the Covid thought police are out in full force.   Don’t speak out or question anything.   Trust the pharmaceutical industry wholeheartedly.   Block anyone that goes against the current narrative-be afraid.   Nothing has disturbed the order, arrangement, or function of a free society like Covid has. People are suffering from covid derangement syndrome. Wearing a mask to your table but not at your table is comical. Wearing a mask outdoors is dumb too...

  I have always treated new years as a fresh start.   Like God hit the reset button and gave us all a new beginning.   So why is it already mid-January and I haven’t made a single goal for 2021.   There is no plan. I don’t really like it very much.   It seems perfectly reasonable to make new year’s resolutions and if you are all about positive change as I am, you plan out the year.   Without goals we are tossed around like a flag in a windstorm, right?   It seems unfathomable to just see what happens. What kind of crap is that? My husband’s resolution every year is just to be better than he was the year before. I ask him to be more specific, but he says no to me every time.   Last year a global pandemic, completely out of our control thrusted us into this abyss that we are still trying to climb out of.   It taught me that life is unpredictable.   We’ve had to learn how to adapt to new conditions, overcome challenges and improvise...

Let us not open the border just because Canadians decide they do not want to be Canadians this winter. Am I the Only One? Seniors want to leave the country and travel to their summer retreats and no pandemic will get in their way. Oh, I get it, summer activities and outdoor fun have come to an end. Winter can be cold and cruel not to mention the white stuff. It gets dark by 4 o’clock and if the sun just happens to be out it is 20 degrees colder. But wait a minute. The Americans were locked out of Canada all summer. They had places to go and people to see too. Why are people acting so entitled?   As we get older and the world changes around us. We either become more accepting or we get more demanding. Then I remembered Lois. Lois was my 80-year-old neighbour who had a cute little cottage across the street. She offered no commentary on the neighbours, did not say much about current events or grumble about association fees or the price of groceries or the weather. In fact,...

Lessons from Covd-19 For many of us, the pandemic has reduced to tatters the illusion that nothing could catastrophically go wrong in the world. Mainstream media will continue to bombard us with gloom and doom reporting, misinformation, political turmoil, and social unrest. I try and maintain a healthy perspective. Perhaps this cosmic reset button will be good for us and help us align with a higher purpose. I count my blessings so that I focus on what I appreciate and value in my life. There will always be something to grumble about but during the pandemic it is important to cultivate a good mindset. Gratitude is a rediscovery of what we often take for granted and what is important to us. What else can I learn about myself and others through this experience?  My Mom always said that greed is a terrible thing. I think she was right. Maybe it is enough to have a place to call home and people to love. The comfortable homes we live in, the cars we drive, the beds we sleep in, w...

So now what? After this pandemic does what it does how will things change? What is the new economy going to look like? What is our new handshake going to be? Is buy the shoes take the trip and eat the cake still good advice? What felt like a reset button has become a nightmare. All this uncertainty has created a lot of fear and stress which creates panic and chaos. We see this playing out in the news and on social media every day. Although the storm has hit the entire globe, we are all in different boats. I am so happy to be living in Canada right now. Am I the only one? Our new normal has just begun and with our heads-up paying attention to where we are going, we might get it right. Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter donated one billion dollars to pandemic relief. Oh, what a wonderful world it would be if all billionaires shared their wealth or even better, we had a world where accumulating that kind of wealth was not allowed to exist in the first place. What happened to the laws ...