A couple of the techniques I am using as a good mental health practice is every night I take magnesium and remind myself that upon awaking in the morning, I will immediately think two positive thoughts.
This morning I remembered that I had to write my column and that I had spent yesterday baking five types of delicious very healthy breakfast pastries (one with semi-sweet chocolate!) and they were waiting to go with coffee. A happy Wednesday began, regardless of the dreary dismal late April blizzard still blowing outside the windows.
It is a lot of fun to create my own recipes as I go, inspired by stories and old cook books, imagining fancy breads from old fashioned French bakeries and English tea houses. This week, in the back of the pantry I found an old box of Red River whole grain cereal and a cup of it soaked in hot water was a great addition to my bread recipe.
As I kneaded the dough, I thought of the Zen lessons in the old hippy Tassajara Bread Book, and focus on the bubbling and growing living yeast with positive intentions.
This extended winter has the potential to be difficult emotionally. The temperature hovers right at 0 C and the blowing snow is wet on my face. The wind howls in gusts and all the snowmobile trails are drifted in again.
Despite the ice age conditions, spring daylight is resolutely increasing. The grey day begins at 4:30 a.m. and nothing about the light changes much til 8:30 p.m. Just a bit brighter grey, barely sufficient sun breaking through to give us a few hours of solar electricity.
Most people know I am a very liberal conservative. I am pro-responsible resource extraction using best practices and the highest environmental standards with everyone, from the bottom up, benefiting.
Canada could be the wealthiest economy in the world. We are sitting on such vast potential riches that all residents could have basic and accessible health, dental and social care, and college/trades education.
We could afford basic guaranteed income and housing and childcare for all residents who need it. We could have enough money to settle all land claims immediately, giving the First Nations their full rightful share of the wealth so they can repair their broken communities.
Canada has the ability to provide the best conditions for our youth to flourish and be global leaders. We can produce the best and the brightest innovators. We have the collective social conscience to be the most responsible resource extractors on the planet. But extract the resources we must, otherwise we will be an uneducated poor unhappy country, unable to meet our obligations or responsibilities.
My mother was born in Newfoundland before it joined the Confederation of Canada in 1949. My grandmother, Daisy Young Williams, flew the British Union Jack at her cabin at Flat Rock, Newfoundland until the day of her death in the mid-1970’s, deep-down rejecting enforced Canadian citizenship.
Some of the most formative conversations I heard as a child in the 1960’s were heated arguments about Premier Joey Smallwood’s extreme socialist policies. My Grandfather’s always vehement responses were that the elite were forcibly moving thousands of fisher-folk away from historical outport villages into modern towns, destroying our culture.
My grandparents view was that Newfoundland joining Confederation was a great mistake and would ultimately lead to poverty stricken communism.
Despite strong emotions and some failures, becoming one country with a central federal government has been a good decision for most Canadians, especially since equalization payments began. We have diverse cultures and languages and ways of thinking, but this huge business corporation of a country unifies us all as shareholders.
Regardless of our political bent, socially responsible Canadians generally want the same thing. A good job, a clean safe place to live, the ability to follow our dreams and to grow old with respect. We are trusting our federal government to manage Canada’s rich assets in the best interests of all of us.
Part of Confederation’s purpose is to guarantee all of Canada’s resources can actually get to market. If the federal government is not able do that, we need to examine the exact reasons we remain a Confederation.
(I swear I just heard my Grandmother’s ghost shout, “Hear, hear!”)