Passion Power

What walks like a teen fad and talks like a teen fad...is probably a teen fad. Celebrating trans is a growing trend and something I’m not okay with. But then again, I’m not a doctor set out to make millions off confused teenagers and desperate parents. I’m not big pharma that stands to make billions off these kids and the services including endocrinologists, sexual health physicians, speech pathologists, nurses, social workers, child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychologists. I feel sorry for the parents that must navigate this with their teenagers. As if raising kids isn’t hard enough. Am I the only one?  In Abigail Shrier’s book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our daughters she alerts us to the newest trend in internet support groups that indoctrinate young girls into believing gender identity as the root of all their problems.  If Shrier is right, a great many people have been complicit in practices that are proving very harmful to adolescent g...

This month my family and I are heading up north to the South Magnetawan river to spend a week reliving our fondest childhood memories and celebrating the life of our late brother, Paul, who passed away in February, six weeks after we lost our mother. We will rent a boat at the marina once we get there. I always thought my brother would have loved working at the marina. He loved up north. Paul, commonly known as ‘Dib’ lived a simple yet hard life. He chain-smoked cigarettes and drank beer every day of his life. We called him the cat with nine lives. He never answered the door or the phone and rarely called anyone. If he did pick up it was a code call from our mother. He probably sensed our sheer horror at his slow demise and mostly just wanted to be left alone. Alcohol controlled his life for as far back as I can remember. It hurt Mom to say it out loud, so we rarely did but it was always the elephant in the room. That’s the part that hurts the most. That he was broken, and no ...

In Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind, he writes how good intentions and bad ideas are ruining a generation of kids. He said that safetyism, trigger warnings and safe spaces are counter-productive and that stressors are a part of life. We must prepare the child for the road not the road for the child.  Over protection equals bad consequences. We must give kids the freedom to develop their anti-fragility and when we don’t challenge ourselves physically and mentally, we deteriorate.   When children are raised in a culture of safetyism, which teaches them to stay “emotionally safe” while protecting them from every imaginable danger, it may set up a feedback loop: kids become more fragile and less resilient, which signals to adults that they need more protection, which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient. My sister-in-law has parents that come in with their teenager for a job interview. Last week, a school principal sent home a letter wa...

In May of 2012 a man drove out of a campground after spending the weekend with his 17-year-old twin daughters and the family dog.   Instead of turning left to head back into the city, he turned right and drove at high speed straight into a cement truck killing all of them on impact.   I cried every day for a month.   The news of the tragedy went on for weeks.   Who could do this to their own kids and why? It came out that his ex-wife had a restraining order against him.   He also had an alcohol problem. Think of the anger that was festering in him. The wrath he must have felt toward his ex raged in his heart until one day he just snapped. So many lives forever changed.   So many questions as to how this could have been prevented. Didn’t someone see his spiralling downward and try to help? Where was his support?   I have the same questions about the school shooter in Uvalde Texas in the US. Didn’t anyone see the warning signs and try to reach out. The s...

Every year with my Ontario sticker renewa I get an application form to fill out to become a registered organ tissue donor. I’m already a donor but instead of a gold star, a thank you or a box check, I must go online and make sure that I am still registered. Perhaps The Trillium Gift of Life Network might acknowledge those who have already registered. I can think of at least a dozen ways they could do this but apparently 12 board members can’t.      My uncle and father both received covid reliefs cheques last year from the Government of Canada.   Let me just say neither one of them needed covid relief cheques.   A friend rides around on his bicycle in a small town.   He hasn’t owned a vehicle in 5 years and just received a cheque from the Ontario government for his sticker renewal refund. Although these are anecdotal stories that only exacerbate the lack of trust in our establishments, they also point out a growing problem which is government accountabilit...

I have always been interested in social issues.  However, everything is upside down. After enduring a long lasting pandemic, the war in Ukraine is now weighing heavily on people’s hearts.  Addiction and poverty are crippling so many people.  Alcohol deaths and suicide rates are up.   As my interests’ meander in the world I see many markers of a society in peril. We have lost trust in our institutions. I see a lack of appreciation for the progress that’s been made regarding bigotry and racism in Canada. I don’t think an honest person can stand before you today and debate that a gay person or a black or brown person is worse off today than they were three or even four decades ago, yet we have a media culture and government obsessed on it. The virtuous trilogy of diversity, equity and inclusion insist that meritocracy should not and cannot exist because of our racist and discriminating past.   I see a society fixated on gender and race.    May...

Companies are doing a great job rebranding corporate greed as “inflation”.   Take Starbucks for example that says they are forced to raise prices due to inflation and supply chain issues and yet profits went up 31% and they gave their CEO a 39% raise to $20.4 million. A corporation’s sole purpose today is to make money. Never has that fact been more evident than in the grocery business.   I don’t have a problem with the Loblaw executive chairman Galen G. Weston making $4 million dollars a year, but I do have a problem with food going green on my counter and being forced to purchase multiple food items to get a sale price. The same Loblaws that has total assets amounting to $36 Billion and cancelled it’s $2-per-hour pandemic bonuses for frontline staff in stores and warehouses. When I asked the local store owner about these nefarious “multi-sales” he says they are profitable but not popular. He could lose his franchise if he doesn’t follow the rules.   So now we h...