Passion Power

Politics matter because the stability of our country depends on it. Canada is changing and in an effort to remake ourselves, we want to make sure our political leaders are fighting for our rights and upholding the values we believe in. We all want a liveable world we can happily give to our children and grandchildren. In Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Haidt writes, we are divided politically because of our innate differences and that we all suffer from confirmation bias. He says that we make moral decisions intuitively then justify them with rational arguments. For example, I can see why I’m a right of center person politically. I come from a blue collar working middle class home. I was educated in the school of hard knocks. There was no coddling in my household and nurturing someone’s self-esteem was considered laughable. There were no freebies. If I wanted something I had to go out and earn it. My upbring...

The greatest charity of all is to give someone a job and there’s a million of them out there. According to Statistics Canada there are 997,000 vacant positions in the second quarter of this year, the highest quarterly number on record. The working class aren’t working but why? The working class perform essential work. They work in restaurants, cook, serve our food, clean, work as cashiers, take care of the sick and the elderly. We devalue the working class yet who will build your house or fix your steps or mow your lawn or deliver your food or look after you when you’re old? Every trade is desperate to hire workers, but nobody seems to want the job. Parents understand that getting into the trades is the way to go but good luck convincing our kids of that. They look down on their hard-working parents. They want the highest pay possible for the least amount of work. Kids listen to social media influencers and are looking for get rich quick schemes. Who hasn’t fallen for that at...

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...