What I have been reading lately.

For my last birthday, 6 December 2011, my wife Ann gave me a Kobo e-reader. It has radically changed my reading habits. Previously, I rarely read a book that I did not own—and, when I could not afford to buy new books, I re-read the old ones. However, the Internet, through my Kobo connection, has opened up an entirely new world of reading. Below is a list of the books that I have read in the past 7 months. Only one of them is fiction. Most of them I downloaded for free.  Many of them are outstanding books that I highly recommend; the others are all worth the read.

Some day, when I am brave enough, I will tackle Plato’s “The Republic” and Machiavelli’s “The Prince” (both available for free).

Though there are many such sites, the ones that have the most books that I am interested in available at no charge are the University of Chicago Press and the Gutenberg Project.

Collections of Nothing; William Davis King; University of Chicago Press; 2008.

French Lessons, A Memoir; Alice Kaplan; University of Chicago Press; 1993.

Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela ; Conrad Rudolph; University of Chicago Press;  2004.

A Planet of Viruses; Carl Zimmer; University of Chicago Press; 2011.

The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-Free Framework for Understanding the Universe; Scott M. Tyson; Galaxia Way; 2011.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. James Gleik; Pantheon Books; 2011.

The Worst Journey in the World; Apsley Cherry-Garrad; Duke Classics; Carroll & Graft Publishers; 2003 (originally published by Constable; 1922)

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover The Deepest Places On Earth; James M. Tabor; Random House; 2010.

Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness; Bruce Rosenblum, Fred Kuttner;  Oxford University Press; 2006.

In One Person; John Irving; Alfred A. Knopf Publishing; 2012,

The Grand Design; Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow; Bantam Books; 2010.

God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine ; Victoria Sweet; Riverhead Books; 2012.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern; Stephen Greenblatt; W. W. Norton & Company; 2011.

A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing; Lawrence M. Krauss; Simon & Schuster, Inc.; 2012.

Illegal Harmonies: Music in the Modern Age; Andrew Ford; Black Inc.; 1997.

Life in the Backwoods; Susanna Moodie; Gutenberg Project; 2006 (Orignally published: 1852).

The Mysteries of Montreal: Being Recollections of a Female Physician;  Charlotte Fuhrer; Gutenberg Project;   (Originally published 1881)

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival; John Vaillant; Alfred A. Knopf;  2010.

A History of the World in 100 Objects; Neil MacGregor; Penguin;  2010.

Heart of Darkness; Joseph Conrad; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1902).

Wild: from lost to found on the Pacific Crest trail; Cheryl Strayed; Alfred A. Knopf; 2012.

The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America; Thomas Jefferson; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1776).

The Communist Manifesto; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; Gutenberg Project   (Originally published 1888).

Prufrock and Other Observations; T. S. Eliot; Gutenberg Project; (Originally published 1920).

80 million Americans can't be wrong...or can they?

I read one of those “filler” stories in the paper today (you know: the kind they use when they have an awkward space to fill).  The headline: “80 million Americans believe in UFOs.” Wow! That’s more than twice the population of Canada. The story matched the headline (not always the case.)

That left me scratching my head (metaphorically). What the heck do the words believe in and the abbreviation UFO mean?  The second one is fairly easy: Unidentified Flying Object. That means, if I interpret Modern American correctly: there are things in the sky (deduced from “flying”) that we can’t identify. Fair enough. I can’t always immediately identify everything I see either. And, just because I can’t immediately identify it does not mean it is involved with an alien planet. I mean, that is the last conclusion I would draw if I was baffled by something. Occam's razor aside, we rarely accept the most complicated and convoluted explanation when there is a simpler explanation at hand. Well, I guess, to many people (80 million Americans at least) the easiest solution is to assume an alien presence.

This approach was popularized by Erich von Däniken in his 1968 misinterpretation of anthropology called Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past. It really is a fun read if you can stand the supermarket tabloid leaps of logic (it’s a mystery, so it must be the work of alien visitors). (I once saw one of these publications on a newsstand with the headline Scientists Photograph Heaven over a photo of a spiral galaxy seen edge-on.)  von Däniken was especially entranced by halos in medieval art. This standard symbol of sainthood absolutely must be a drawing of a Plexiglas space helmet. He finds unknown shapes around the heads of many Aztec bas relief and there you have it: the final proof that earth has been visited by creatures from another planet. Crop circles just underscore the evidence and are proof that they are still around watching over us.

Okay, enough fun at Herr von Däniken’s expense. He isn’t the only one: just one of the first mass popularizers of the blame it on aliens school of thought. One thing that many members of that school cite as evidence is the pyramids of Egypt. Humans simply could not have built them; heck, we couldn’t even do it now with all our modern technology. The trouble is that those who are inspired by facile drawings of slaves dragging stones while men with whips stand over them, are missing a vital piece of information. Why assume that slaves dragged these monstrous building blocks? Why not assume, if you are going on assumptions, that the Egyptians were smart enough to figure out the (relatively) easy way to move a large block? It’s really very simple—and you may kick yourself if you never thought of it. Lash logs lengthwise to each of the four faces of the stone. Build the logs up until you have about as close to a circular shape (as seen from either end) as you can get. Now push the stone just enough that it passes the point of equilibrium at an edge (remember, that you can now “rock” the stone thanks to the cleverly placed logs)—and the stone will complete the rest of the journey to its next face. Rock and roll, as they say.  (If you are lucky enough to be going down-hill, the stone might just keep on going on its own once you get it started.)

You still need a lot of slaves and a system of pulleys and levers (which were not beyond the capabilities of our ancient ancestors), and lots of time, but there you have it: no alien energy rays or anti-gravity devices required.

Sorry folks, but using aliens to explain away things that you don’t understand just doesn’t wash. I might as well say that my car runs with alien technology because I certainly can’t understand all the technology that goes into making my car move when I want it to.

Now, back to the sky. When I was about 10 years old the kids in the neighbourhood all saw what they called a “flying saucer.” Well, there certainly was an unusual-looking something overhead. An older kid got out his binoculars and informed us solemnly that he could see mice on the saucer. Now this was getting too weird for me, even in my 10-year-old naivety.  Of course it turned out that the strange object was a weather balloon. The “mice” were probably the blurry “circles of confusion” you see when something is not quite in focus.

Well, if you lean to the “conspiracy” side of interpreting events, you could always blame anything you see in the sky that you don’t understand on secret military weapons research. I’m not even going to go near the “testimony” of those who have been abducted and sodomized by aliens. I am fairly certain that rare meteorological events can be readily misunderstood. Imagine what the first persons to see the aurora borealis must have concluded.

However, in the end, I will admit that there are some things that people experience that just can’t be explained away—yet.

Now, in case you forgot, I italicized the words believe in in my second paragraph. I’ve always had trouble understanding questions like: Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe in evolution? Do you believe that God is going to strike dead everyone you disapprove of? Speaking of that last point, I once attended a religious service where the church was between ministers, so a lay person took over the services. Unfortunately, the chosen lay-person in this case was senile; she couldn’t read a passage from the Bible without getting it backwards; and, generally, her “sermons” made no sense and were completely disconnected from the Scripture readings. This particular Sunday she informed us that she had a very sad story to tell.

Apparently, a life-long friend of hers was dying. The friend confessed that she could never quite “believe” no matter how hard she tried. Our pseudo-minister then clucked her tongue and told us it was unfortunate that her friend had to go to Hell because she hadn’t tried hard enough to “believe.”

Seemed to me that the friend was putting a lot more effort into it than the preacher who, apparently, never had experienced a moment’s doubt—ever.

So, anyhow, was does this believe in actually mean?

Do I believe in love at first sight? Well, I know that sometimes a couple will experience a strong attraction to each other on first meeting. But, I ask, how many of those “instant-infatuations” evolve into a deeper and more committed relationship? I mean, I think that love means a deep commitment that survives more than one evening.

Do I believe in evolution? How can one mix “belief” and “knowledge?” I know that many think that the phrase “scientific theory” means that it is just a casual opinion that some scientists hold, making any  “theory,” no matter how far removed from reality, equally valid and worthy of consideration.  However, the word “theory” in this context has a very specific meaning that has nothing to do with opinions; its meaning in science is that it is a hypothesis that has been tested many times in many different situations and is yet to be proven incorrect. It verges on being a “scientific law,” but still leaves an opening for an exceptional case.  It’s a long ways from that to “I believe the universe was created in six days.” (And, by the way, speaking of universal scientific laws, Newton’s “laws of motion” have turned out to not be so universal after all.) As for evolution, there are millions, if not hundreds of millions, of pieces of evidence that all support this “theory” that has yet to be proven to be incorrect in any meaningful way. (Other than by misunderstanding and misapplying some random quotations from ancient books.)

 Do I believe that God is going to strike dead everyone you disapprove of? This one simply doesn’t make any sense to me. If God went about killing everyone anyone who was not approved of by someone who professed to be a “believer,” there wouldn’t be anyone left. Not only, if you do believe in a loving personal God who taught that we should forgive each other our grievances, then how can you reconcile that with God stepping in to kill those very people that he said you are supposed to forgive? Ah, the mysteries of fundamentalist theology!  What is a poor simple member of the “Holiest Church of the Only True Redeeming Saviour” to do when he encounters a practicing Hindu? Is he supposed to welcome him, feed him, make him feel at home, as the Bible that I read instructs? Or is he to kill him on the spot because he is a “sinner,” a “heathen,” and an “unbeliever?” Tough one, but fortunately the “believers” do not feel compelled to answer questions posed by “unbelievers,” so it is very unlikely that we will ever get a complete answer to that one. (Other than being quoted misunderstood and misapplied random phrases from some very old books.)

So, there you have it: yes, I believe that there are many things—even some things in the sky—that have yet to be explained in any sort of reasonable way. I guess we could call those events “Unidentified Flying Objects” for lack of a better name. But aliens?—whether obsessed with sodomy or with “universal peace” (some both at the same time)—no, not in my universe. Maybe in yours, but, that’s another story altogether. 

Time Travel on a Beautiful June Afternoon

It is late June—an absolutely glorious day. Low 20’s, a gentle breeze, a few fluffy clouds. I can hear only the wind in the trees, a bit of traffic noise, and the birds as I quietly paint the back deck. It reminds me of childhood days when no friends were around. I’d play with a toy truck or some such, all the while wondering about the big questions of life. What is “forever?” What is the “I” that observes everything? “How old and how big is the universe?” Those kinds of questions.

So, today, on a day very similar to such days when I was a child, I ruminate as I paint. Today my question to myself is “Is time travel possible?” I hate to break it to you…. After all, we have much enjoyed stories where time travel is a feature for a long time—both in literature and in movies.  But, the sad news is: time travel within the context of our universe is impossible. Doesn’t matter whether you are going forwards in time, or back—it just can’t be done.

There is one “sort-of” exception. According to relativity, the faster an object moves the slower time passes for that object. Actually, that is verifiable; apparently the satellites that control GPS have to be constantly adjusted to make up for the fact that time is slower on them than it is for a stationary object on earth. It is enough of a difference that unless these adjustments were made, positions would drift by about 10 km a day.  Look it up if you don’t believe me. So, if one travelled in a spaceship at very fast speeds for a few months (spaceship time), on the return to earth a hundred or so years might have passed. In a sense, forward time travel is possible—but there is absolutely no way back.

Oh, I know the old arguments: men have said we could never fly…travel to the moon…explore the deepest oceans…climb Everest…build machines that can perform billions of calculations in a second and potentially connect everyone in the world. All we need is the right technology.

Misunderstanding of the meaning of the space-time continuum that physicists and cosmologists describe leads to some false assumptions. It stand to reason that if we can freely travel in any of the other three dimensions—even all of them at the same time—we ought to be able to travel through the fourth dimension at will. We get confused because if we travel in any—or all—of the three basic directions, we will arrive at a location different than our present position; in other words: some place other than “here.” What we are doing is moving our three-dimensional selves from one coordinate to another. Some would say that if it takes us ten minutes to accomplish that readjustment of our coordinates then we have travelled through ten minutes of time as well.

No, we haven’t.

Whether we move our bodies from one location to another during that ten minute interval or we remain at rest makes no difference as far as the time dimension is concerned. Time marches on, as they say. Some scientists describe time as an arrow pointing in one direction. They complicate it by adding concepts like entropy (a word taken from thermodynamics), but, however they muddle the concept it still boils down to one directional travel—or something. Though many equations work just as well backwards as they do forwards, in our universe an egg dropped on the floor does not reassemble itself and hop back into our hand complete. We simply cannot treat time as if it were a film strip that we can play in reverse for our amusement.

Paradoxes exist only in our minds; they do not occur in nature. If we observe that a photon seems to be in two different places simultaneously that indicates that we haven’t quite grasped the concepts of space and coordinates yet. Then there’s the old chestnut of going back in time and murdering your grandfather before your father was conceived. If you do so, then you don’t exist; and, if you don’t exist, then you cannot go back in time and murder your grandfather….and around and around we go looking for clever ways to get out of our dilemma.

The fatal flaw in our thinking, when it comes to time travel, is in thinking that the past exists somewhere and the future exists somewhere else—and so what we are doing by passing time is moving from a “past place” towards a “future place.”  Okay, I ask, where are these “past places” and “future places”? If they have a concrete existence then, yes, it may be possible to move from one to the other and visa versa. But, do they? What, exactly, is the “past?” Or, better yet, where is it? I’ve read scientific descriptions of it as if time were a loaf of bread that contains all events—and that we can experience past and future events by cutting the slice of bread-time at an angle. I think it is a bit difficult to physically affect a metaphor by using another metaphor, but, that’s just in the world that I inhabit. I know there are many out these who treat metaphors, such as “the creator,” as if they were physical entities. Does thinking make it so?

Well, if you go along with respected philosophers like Emmanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason), and physicists like Werner Heisenberg (observation causes the collapse of probability) then you must realize that nothing has an existence independent of our experience of it—at least in any form that we can recognize.  “Reality” is the construct that our brain uses to reference and catalogue the bombardment of sensory signals that it is constantly receiving. Our brains frame our experience of time within the context of movement. But, does it really have an existence independent of our experience of it? If it does, then is the future thus preordained? Everything that can happen has happened? I sincerely have a lot of trouble with that concept. Where did free-will go then? Are we just automata following pathways that have been prepared ahead of time?

Some talk of alternate universes, where every possibility has fruition. That means that even the smallest action that I take creates a complete universe where I did not take that action. I have a bit of a problem accepting that. It seems to me that it is just another clever way of getting out of the paradox of murdering one’s grandfather before one’s father has been conceived. To suggest that both events happened—the murder and the later conception—even if in different universes (or space-time continuums to get fancy) is evading the question of what is time, really?

Do all “pasts” exist somewhere? Is there a definitive past? I’m sure that each of us likes to believe that our memories of past events represent a physical reality. But, where is this “past” located? Photos, journals, videos, artefacts, etc. do not prove that a past “exists” now. What we are looking at, when we look at such things, is in the present.

So, stripping away all wishful thinking, we are left with the proposition that neither the future nor the past has a “real” existence that we could, possibly, travel to. I think that the “past” goes “poof!” as soon as it stops being the “present.” It hasn’t “gone” anywhere—it just ceases being. Yes, we have recordings of things that happened in the past, but, when the recordings were made the “past” was really a “present.”   If I write a word “now,” that “now” cannot possibly be the same “now” when you read it. The “now” when I wrote the word is long gone. So, we can have records of “past” events, but, they were really “present” events when they happened.

Same as the future. It does not exist. Except, in the sense of potential. There is a good possibility that at some point in the future I will stop writing this paragraph. A pretty good possibility that I will eat a meal later in the day—and that I will go to sleep sometime during the night and that the sun will rise tomorrow. But, none of those things has an existence “now.” They might happen; they might not.  A chunk of ice could fall from an overhead airplane and knock my brains out so that I will not experience any of those events. But, in no case is there a physical place where a chunk of ice is falling towards my head or where I will wrap this up, eat a meal, go to sleep later, and then awake to a new day all having happened “already” just waiting for me to experience them.

The only “real” thing we can count on is the ever-present present and even that will no longer exist when we die.

Here’s the algorithm:

Future –>	Now –>	Past
Possible events –>	Occurrence of specific event –>	Done
Non-existent probabilities. (Potential)	Experience; expression. Potential collapses into existence.	Nothing. It’s all gone.

Meditation on a Summer Afternoon

It’s a beautiful day. Low 20’s and a stiff breeze. The maples, aspen, and elm that line the back of our property are swaying and swooshing in the wind. It’s a comforting sound—one that reminds me of the waves of Lake Huron against the shore, all night—all day—long.  Which reminds me of the fog horns of the lakers as they passed Sarnia in the night. My childhood memories do not go back to the time when my parents and I actually lived in Sarnia, though I must have spent at least the first six months of my life there. But, visiting a favourite aunt and uncle in the house that my grandfather built on Cromwell Street, always brought that mournful sound in the night, triggering some ancient primitive memories. It makes me want to cry, though I have no idea why.

My office window is next to a maple that is probably about forty feet tall—and I’m about twenty-five feet up so that I am looking directly into the middling branches. Have you realized that there is a mathematical pattern in the branches of a tree? In my maple, wherever a branch begins, another begins at roughly the same place on the other side of the limb. In other words, as it grows, each branch splits into three parts with the central part continuing on and the pair of side branches going off in new directions. Sometimes they split into three, and so on and on. Such self-replicating patterns are called fractals. If you search hard enough and with an open imagination you can find fractal relationships in all living things, from the shape of a snail’s shell to the pattern of seeds in a sunflower, to the pattern found in the branchings of your blood vessels.

I don’t find it amazing that nature mimics mathematics. What else should it be based on? I know many dismiss or belittle evolution as “random” events; in fact, they often say the same thing about our universe. But, nothing could be further from the truth. If our universe was the result of purely random events then we would be living in a state of chaos. Actually, we wouldn’t be living at all because chaos and life cannot exist together. On the other hand, when confronted with the overwhelming beauty and complexity of life, the universe, and everything some insist that there must be an intelligent creative force behind it all. Why? That raises more questions than it answers. Where, for example, can this intelligent force reside if it is outside of our universe (which it must be, if it created it)? And, of course, what came before this “force” or being?

There are many, many things that you and I do not understand when we look around us. How, for example, did my maple “know” that splitting branch growth into three parts would give its leaves the maximum amount of surface area for collecting sunlight? It didn’t “know”—and that’s the beauty of it. Over millions of years trees that depend on manufacturing chlorophyll from sunlight have always “maximized” the surface area of their leaves (some, like cacti, minimize their surface area in other to preserve water.) One way works; others don’t work so well and so such trees do not flourish.  In plants that must preserve water, a tubular shape gives the least amount of surface area. Look at a cactus; look at a tree; different mathematics for difference purposes.

There are valid reasons found in chemistry and physics for the patterns that living things follow. The Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.) when followed by a plant—for example in the organization of leaves in a single cabbage plant—expend the least amount of energy for the layers of growth (cut a cabbage in half along its “equator” to check it out).  Or is it the other way around? A plant “prefers” the least expenditure of energy as it grows and so “created” the first Fibonacci sequence. Life is not modeled on math, but mathematics is derived from observing life.

My trees are still bending and bowing in the wind. It looks like chaos from my perspective, but that is perspective only. If I look down on the forest as the wind blows through it, I would see patterns in the way the trees bend—the same kind of patterns in the waves on the sea. If I looked from even further away I would see the immense patterns of weather across the planet with all its local subsets. And, of course, as we retreat further and further into space we see the patterns in the orbits of the planets; and, further yet, in the orbits of the stars around the centre of our galaxy. And, even further, the beautiful and mysterious patterns (that look amazingly like fractals) in the long filament-like arrangements of the galaxies themselves. If you want to see what it looks like here is a piece of it: http://www.windows2universe.org/the_universe/Cosmology.html.

The Latest Cosmological-Physics Theory of Everything

One of the most amazing insights I’ve read about lately was made by the early Greek “atomists,” Leucippus and his student Democritus. Observing a fish moving through water, Leucippus asked himself how is this possible? After all, both fish and water are “things,” both apparently having mass and occupying space. The only way, he reasoned, that this could happen is that if the water is actually composed of tiny particles separated by a void. The fish, therefore, in moving into the void between the particles of water, is able to push particles out of its way. It was a short step to realizing that everything is made up of tiny particles (that he called atoms) and the characteristics of things were defined by those atoms and their relationships to each other.  He pictured atoms as having hooks that linked them together. Solids had more hooks and so were bound more tightly together than the somewhat “slippery” atoms of liquids. Brilliant! And done without any “scientific” experiments or direct observations.

But, did you notice that these atoms, in Leucippus’ view, are separated by a “void?” What on earth is that?  It’s simply nothing, you might answer. But what is that? Parmenides, for one, rejected the idea of the existence of a nothing. Everywhere, he argued, that there appears to be nothing there is actually something, like air. Though the Greeks couldn’t reach the altitudes where air does not exist, you might still argue that outer space itself is not nothing; the average density of the universe (including all dark matter and dark energy) being approximately 6 protons per cubic meter, and the density counting just the observable matter and energy is closer to 1 proton per 4 cubic meters. Protons are rather small, so what is—and there is a lot of whatever it is—between them?  Even more so, the distance between an electron and the core of neutrons and protons that it orbits, is comparable to the distance from our sun to Pluto. Even on the subatomic level, that is still a lot of something?

So, what is this nothing of which I speak? Parmenides argued: "You say there 'is' a void; therefore the void is not nothing; therefore there is not the void." That seems a rather circular argument that relies more on grammatical relationships than on observation, because if it were true that there is no “void,” then all motion would be impossible. Contemporary physics usually describes the void as the “quantum foam” out of which pairs of negatively and positively charged bits of energy are continuously coming into being and annihilating each other. If I understand this correctly, then that means that what we call nothing is actually something akin to a randomly-arranged chaotic and continually changing backdrop on which everything depends.

In The Unobservable Universe: A Paradox-free Framework for Understanding the Universe, (Albuquerque, NM: Galaxia Way; 2011) Scott Tyson argues that the “nothing” from which particles of opposite-charged energy emerge is the part of our universe that we can never observe (he calls it the voidverse). Characteristics of the voidverse are that it is dimensionless and timeless. In other words, when matter emerges from the voidverse into our observable universe (he calls it the observerse) it comes from anyplace, anytime in our perspective. The universe will eventually reach a state where the energy in one “verse” so greatly exceeds that in the other that the flow will reverse itself.

He uses this argument to explain how it is that photons can take several different paths simultaneously and can be “entangled” at any distance from each other. He throws out the string theory (or M-theory) argument explaining that 10 or 11 extra dimensions are not necessary in describing the universe and its behaviour at subatomic levels. Gravity, which has always been a difficult subject for the sciences, is not, he claims, one of the four basic forces of the universe (the weak force, the strong force, and the electromagnetic force being the others), but is, rather a characteristic of space, rather than of mass. String theorists in particular have had to resort to elaborate constructs of parallel universes in order to explain why gravity is so weak compared to the other three fundamental forces. In their view, the strings that represent gravity (gravitons) are attached to a parallel universe (called a brane in string theory) which bleeds off a lot of their energy.

Tyson doesn’t rely on infinity (which, in some theorist’s minds means that there are an infinite number of universes, logic dictating that somewhere, at some time, there is a duplicate of you doing what you are doing now). He postulates that infinity exists only in our minds and that the universe as he describes it has bounds. His theory is elegantly simple: the universe has two parts, one we can never observe (i.e. “nothing”) and one that we can observe (i.e. “something”), and that these two parts are forever swapping energy maintaining a perfect equilibrium such that (Kenetic Energy action in the observerse) X (Potential Energy reaction in the voidverse) = 1. This expansion of Newton’s Third Law embraces both the quantum world and the large scale world. The preservation of energy has been a problem at the quantum level because energy has been observed to pop into and out of existence. However, taking the “non-existent” aspect of the universe into account, unity is re-established.

Pretty neat, eh? 

A Modern Story

A man, bleeding heavily, lay on the downtown sidewalk of a busy city.  To any casual observer he appeared to be the victim of a mugging. People hurried by him, careful to avoid the spreading blood, on their way to their businesses.

The first to pause was a self-made millionaire who addressed the man as follows: I am sorry for your plight and am in personal pain to see you suffer. However, I am a self-made man who, by hard work and determination, has made my way through life so that I wouldn’t end up where you are. It is unfortunate that you made some bad decisions along the way, but, you have no one to blame for your plight but yourself.

The next to pause was a middle-aged well-dressed woman who said: Poor man! I wish I could help you, but, I have heard about the dangers of blood-born disease and so cannot touch you for fear of catching a deadly disease myself. You will have to help yourself.

A parson happened by who immediately knelt on the ground next to the man and said quietly: Such are the wages of sin. However, our God is a loving God who, if you sincerely repent, will forgive you and welcome you into his heavenly kingdom. I will pray for you.

A conservative politician was next to address the man: I am so, so sorry to see you in such a state. We must all work together to make our streets safer so that this type of thing doesn’t happen to others. I will build more prisons and dictate harsher sentences so that others will not become victims like yourself.

A liberal politician said: We must launch a Royal Commission to examine the root causes of what has happened to you. The Commission will hear from witnesses and experts who will explain why you and others like you are on our streets bleeding. They will make recommendations so that we can better understand what has led to your fate.

  

A holy man, freshly returned from years of meditation, said to him: Do not focus on your pain. It is a transitory illusion. Look only to the present and seek inner peace.

Finally, a police officer saw the man and approached him. He examined the man’s wounds and then used his cell phone to call for an ambulance.  However, due to cutbacks needed to finance additional prisons and Royal Commissions, emergency services had been reduced to one ambulance for the entire city and it was busy attending to others in need of urgent help.

After the man died, the city coroner held an inquest and recommended that emergency services should, in future, guarantee a response time of ten minutes and that police officers be given more training in first aid.

Maniwaki and me....

Yesterday I noticed a small story in the Ottawa Citizen about an apparent murder that occurred in Maniwaki. For those who don't know, Maniwaki is a town in Quebec about a two hour drive north of Ottawa. It is situated on land that legally belongs to the Algonquins of the Kitigan Zibi Reserve, one of the largest Algonquin settlements in existence. I taught at the secondary school in Maniwaki from 1975 to 1982. About half of my students were from Kitigan Zibi and the rest a mixture of French Canadian and Irish. The secondary school was built in the late 1960's when the Quebec government invested heavily in education, believing that all students living anywhere in the province should have access to the same opportunities. Large "polyvalent" ("many streams") secondary schools were built across the province, complemented by CEGEPs (collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel ) at the post-secondary level.


Secondary school ran from grades 7 to 11, followed by two years in an academic program at the CEGEP level to prepare for university entrance, making pre-university education about the same number of years as in other provinces. (Ontario high schools at the time ran from grades 9 to 13.) At the ends of both grades 10 and 11 were provincial examinations in each subject. Generally the exams were set at two levels: the higher one for CEGEP-bound students, and the lower for those who simply wanted a secondary school leaving certificate. As there was no such thing as a province-wide curriculum teachers at individual school geared their own curriculums towards the expected examinations. As the senior English teacher, I set the curriculum for all English courses from grades 7 to 11. 


As in many smaller Quebec communities, the predominant language of instruction was in French, though, if numbers warranted a secteur anglais could be set up. Education, at the time, was divided along religious lines. The predominate religion being Roman Catholic, though the Quebec government, under the terms of the British North America Act of 1867, offered education programs for Protestants, along the lines of Ontario's commitments to its Roman Catholic minority. By the time I started teaching in Maniwaki, the religious lines were blurring because the language issue was taking on much more significance. Public education was formally "deconfessionalized" in 2000. When I was teaching in the 1970's and 80's the eventuality of realigning school boards along language rather than religious lines was becoming apparent. Though most of my students were nominally Protestant, a large number were Roman Catholic. Without the English-speaking Catholics there would not have been enough English-speaking students to justify the existence of the secteur anglais. Students requiring an English secondary school education would have had to travel an hour by bus to the small English secondary school in Low, or, two hours to a secondary school in Hull.


The big change in Maniwaki since I was there was the creation of a native-run secondary school, situated on the reserve. I knew many of the people involved in the planning for this school. In fact, I knew many of the people of Maniwaki and Kitigan Zibi whose names I saw in news stories over the years since I left. One has become a police chief. Another, head of surgery at a large hospital. And yet another was a Member of Parliament for a session. Many entered the teaching profession, some returning to Kitigan Zibi to work in the school there. A few, perhaps a half dozen in all, have died violently, either in auto accidents, or, in one case, murder.


That is the background to the story I read in yesterday's Citizen.  No names were given in the initial story, though the street were it happened was named. I knew that street well. Today's Citizen named both the victim and the suspect. The victim, an 85 year old man, taught auto shop in the polyvalent for the first two years I was there. He nursed my wreaks of cars through crisis after crisis, accepting only a bottle of Scotch at Christmas as payment. The suspect, the man's 50-year-old son, was in my classes for the first two years I taught. I remember him particularly well because he was a bully with a sullen and hostile attitude. On one occasion when I had dragged him to the principal's office by the ear because he had torn up a note book belonging to another student, the principal literally kicked him in the ass. It did no good. Even his father appeared to have no influence on him. Eventually, he disappeared from the school's life before completing grade 8. I've known students like him all my life; they were in my elementary school classes, and I've run into their adult counterparts in my professional careers since. 


I don't know where they come from or why they adopt the attitude that the world is their enemy when they are about 12 years old. But, once set into a pattern of defiance, they seem to get stuck there. Of course, the more they act out, the harder the adults around them are on them. It's likely a self-perpetuating cycle. What I know for certain is that with 35 students in my classes there was no way that I could adopt a plan of action for reaching this kid. He was disruptive, so I had to get him out of the way so I could teach the other 34 students. Life does not resemble a Hollywood movie at all. It might have been nice if some deeply compassionate and understanding teacher took this kid under their wing and set him on the road to redemption, but, this doesn't happen in real life. We try to deal with the problems quickly and get on with the rest of the job.


When I reflect back on my time in Maniwaki, I feel both pride and sadness.  There were some successes, but there were also failures. I don't know how this balances out. But, once when I was in a conflict with the Algonquin counsellor in the school, many of my students approached him to support me (and he eventually apologized), and, at one graduation party a small group of Algonquin students told me that I was the only white teacher they had ever encountered who did not have a trace of prejudice in his body. They laughed and said they knew that all I cared about was getting them through those god-damned provincial exams.