Beyond the Palewall (9)

 

 This is another in a series about news items of which you should be aware. For those who prefer a table of contents: 1) The first story is about yet another Canadian apology and we may soon have offered one to every group that has been offended. I don't think the apologies are being done alphabetically, since the last one was to the Italians. For more about that, see my post "Apologizing Again", where you will learn there is even a book about such a subject: A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past. If you feel traumatized by long ago events or feel guilty about something that happened in the last century, you should have a look. 2) This one is about children now allowed outside in Toronto. I have also dealt with this issue in an insightful piece about "Children and Risk." 3) This one will be useful since you probably don't have a local newspaper to read and 4) A very interesting piece about the shootings occurring outside of theatres in Canada where people supposedly don't have guns. Even more interesting are the comments posted by readers of the articles, who apparently are not thrilled with the current government or sold on the virtues or multiculturalism. 

1) Apology Parity

“B.C. To Apologize For Historical Treatment of Doukhobor Sect,” Mike Hager, Globe and Mail, Jan. 31, 2024.

Back in the middle of the last century about 200 children were seized “ from their parents in southeastern British Columbia and sent to the New Denver residential school by the province after their sect, known as the Sons of Freedom, refused to send them to public school. The tiny group had broken away from Canada’s Doukhobor population, a religious group that settled in the region and Saskatchewan after they were banished from Russia in the late 19th century for their pacifist views, rejection of the Orthodox Church and refusal to participate in the military.”

They will now be getting an apology:

“B.C. Attorney-General Niki Sharma’s office confirmed a public apology to the survivors, who may number about 75, and their families will be made Thursday in Castlegar. A corresponding proposal for financial reparations is expected by the descendants of the Sons of Freedom community.”

B.C. Ombudsperson, Jay Chalke, says the  "government’s apology needs to be “unconditional, clear and public.”

He said he has also communicated to the Attorney-General that the wider community needs to be compensated, as well as the individuals who were sent to the New Denver residential school and their progeny.

“Clearly there has been intergenerational trauma from the events that happened in the 1950s and I don’t think government should be seen to have the amount of compensation they pay reduced through their own delay,” he said in a phone interview.”

2) Children Allowed to Play Again: The Return of PLUCK
 [There will be no image of children playing since it might be too disturbing for some.]

                      Playing Even Sanctioned by The Toronto Star

   “'We Aren't Talking About Sending Them Into Busy Streets or Near Rough Water.' Canadian Paediatric Society Recommends Risky Play for Kids, Toronto Star, Jan. 25, 2024

"Unstructured outdoor play, in particular risky play, is essential for the physical, mental and social development of children, according to new recommendations from the Canadian Paediatric Society."

"We have to reframe how we view risk and understand that risk is a part of life and it's a part of our children's lives," said Dr. Suzanne Beno, a paediatric emergency medicine physician at SickKids, chair of the injury prevention committee of the

CPS, and author of the guidance document released Thursday.”

The new recommendations say children should be kept "as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible," and land on the heels of a tussle in Toronto over whether the city should be closing tobogganing hills that have served neighbourhoods for generations....

The city has closed 45 hills this year, due to concerns about hazards including trees, wading pools, stairs and benches. It maintains a list of toboggan runs it considers safe.

Risky play helps build physical and mental health and resilience among children and youth and can help prevent or manage conditions like obesity, anxiety and behavioural issues, according to the CPS."

For the actual CPS report see:  "Healthy Childhood Development Through Outdoor Risky Play: Navigating the Balance with Injury Prevention.”

                   Playing No Longer Condemned by the CBC

   The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation imprimatur guarantees that a reasonable bit of playing should be allowed while wearing helmets.

   "Pop the Bubble Wrap and let Kids Play Outdoors, Pediatricians Say:

Pediatricians Encourage Parents to Allow Children to Take Risks, Even if it Leads to Minor Cuts, Bruises," Amina Zafar · CBC News · Posted: Jan 25, 2024

"The group said opportunities for risky play fell over recent decades as unscheduled free play outside gave way to planned activities. Now, kids spend more time indoors, often on screens.

The 2022 Participaction report card gave Canadian children a grade of D overall for physical activity and a D– for active play.

"It's the move away from helicopter parenting, from over-parenting, over-scheduling and the recognition that it's probably healthy and good for kids to be kids and to be allowed to experience developmentally and age-appropriate challenges."

3) News Deserts - Oases Shrinking

   Weekly a writer for The Atlantic sends out a newsletter, “Up for Debate.” In a recent one he asked his readers to respond to this question: “What is the state of local journalism where you live, and how does it affect your community?” There were many replies, all lamenting the loss of local reporting. Here is one from close-by Pennsylvania and, with a change of newspaper names, it could probably have come from any province in Canada.

"There are four newspapers covering a county of about 150,000 people. On paper, we’re not a news desert by a long shot. But the reality is we’re a de facto news desert because our newspapers are zombies. Three of the four newspapers are owned by Gannett, which, according to the online staff directories of the Chambersburg Public Opinion, Greencastle Echo Pilot, and Waynesboro Record Herald, employs exactly two journalists across all three newsrooms, which sporadically cover local government. The Echo Pilot lists no staff at all. The fourth newspaper, the Mercersburg Journal, is print-only and owned by a local chain. It covers our borough council and other local events in our tiny town reasonably well, and local officials tend to be extremely aware that what they say and do could end up in the paper the following Wednesday. For me, that’s evidence that traditional dead-tree news remains essential, though I wonder how sustainable it is.”

  This is a very important subject. For more about it see:

In Canada: Local News Research Project.

For the United States:

Northwestern University: The State of Local News Project.

University of North Carolina: Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. 

4) Shoot-Out at the Cineplex Corral

  "Cineplex Pulls South Indian Film Following Drive-by Shootings at GTA Movie Theatres," Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press, Jan.30, 2024
TORONTO - Cineplex has cancelled screenings of a South Indian film following four drive-by shootings at theatres throughout the Greater Toronto Area the day it premiered.
       Coming Soon To A Cinema Near You
   "Cineplex Pulls South Indian film Screenings After Incidents of Threats, Intimidation and Talk of Turf War," Joe Castaldo, Globe and Mail, Jan.31, 2024.
   "Movie exhibitors including Cineplex Inc. CGX-T -1.70% have pulled screenings of a South Indian-language film across Canada after individuals opened fire at four cinemas in the Greater Toronto Area last week, the latest incidents of intimidation related to Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam blockbusters.
   Videos obtained by The Globe and Mail show a person in a hoodie shooting a gun multiple times through the passenger window of a vehicle at the entrances of Cineplex locations in Scarborough and Vaughan. In a separate video, the driver of the vehicle fires at a Cineplex in Brampton. York Cinemas, a theatre in Richmond Hill, Ont., was also hit by gunfire. The shootings shattered glass and left bullet holes in windows. According to York Regional Police, the incidents occurred in the early morning hours, when the theatres were closed….
   Film distributors have contended that a turf war is being waged and that a group of individuals is trying to control the lucrative market for South Indian-language films in Canada, using vandalism and intimidation to pressure theatres and distributors to drop certain titles and ensure the films run in favoured cinemas.
   In recent years, Telugu and Malayalam movies have been affected, too. The Globe has found more than 20 incidents at Cineplex locations, independent theatres and other chains such as Landmark Cinemas across Southern Ontario, Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and Surrey, B.C.
  In December, noxious substances were sprayed inside three GTA Cineplex theatres, forcing audience members to evacuate.
The illustration above is the poster for the currently contentious film, Malaikottai Vaaliban. As far as I can determine, it is not necessarily the film that is problematic, but rather the issue of who gets to decide which South Asian films should be shown. 

Going To Hell In A Handbasket

    While constructing my last post about Trump and the never ending American electioneering, I thought of the figure of speech noted above since, to me, it implies that things are not going well and I think they are not. I didn't use it, however, because I knew that, once again, the post was likely to be too long and it was.
   I looked up the phrase I didn't use and if you do, you will probably be satisfied with the Wikipedia entry, which is a good one. One possible origin has been traced "to the baskets used to catch guillotined heads in the eighteenth century." The Bosch painting above was also found in the Wikipedia essay and it supposedly illustrates a large cart of hay being drawn by "infernal beings that drag everyone to hell."
  I also found a handbasket column by William Safire and you know that has to be worth reading. It was written back in 1990 and apparently things weren't going well back then either. The wife of Harry Reasoner, who you will remember from 60 Minutes, asked Safire about "going to hell in a handbasket" which they had heard "in conversation five times in the past few months."
   The Safire piece is not mentioned among the Wikipedia sources, so I will offer a portion of it here:

   "Lexicographers call this ''old slang'' - a figure of speech used by people who stopped picking up the latest slang about two generations ago. To hell in a handbasket means either ''to one's doom'' or -if used mockingly to describe a small dissipation - merely ''mildly indulgent.''
   The origin is believed to be to heaven in a handbasket, a locution that Dialect Notes spotted in 1913 in Kansas, where it was taken to mean ''to have a sinecure.'' One who was nicely ensconced in an untouchable job was said to be on the way to heaven in a handbasket. When used in Wisconsin a decade later, the term was defined as ''to do something easily.''
   Then the direction changed. The alliteration remained the same, but the first stage of this rocket dropped off and was lost in the sea of archaic phrases; the second stage, with hell substituted for heaven, took us to where we are today: the meaning is ''to degenerate rapidly; to fall apart suddenly.'' The final stage? We cannot tell; down the tubes in a handbasket uses modern surfers' lingo but lacks the alliterative zing.
   What is it about a handbasket - a word rarely used now outside the hellish phrase - that makes it so useful in talk of decadence, degeneration, declension and downfall?
The key quality is portability; the basket is small enough to be carried in one hand, and anything in it is little or light."

Source:
   If you look this up, you will also learn about, "long in the tooth" and "dressed to the nines." "On Language: To Wherever in a Handbasket," William Safire, New York Times, April 29, 1990.
   It was also from Safire that I learned and posted about Genug Shoyn, which is a fitting way to end.

TEOTWAWKI Time for Anti-Trumpers

 

End Time Indeed
   I am spending little time reading about the U.S. election and even less of it reading about Mr. Trump. I admit, however, that a couple of articles about him attracted my attention and I will call them to yours.
   A few of us remain perplexed regarding Trump's continuing and even surging popularity and I am especially puzzled by the fact that he has been embraced by evangelicals and many others who are religious. The two articles are about that and explain the illustration above. I am not religious which puts into context the cartoons below. 

Backward Christian Soldiers
   That the righteous are lining up behind Trump is baffling and, as this article indicates, "The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions," Thomas B. Edsall, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2024. (Mr. Edsall's columns are typically very long and he usually asks the opinions of others. Read the entire article since some of the quotes I will use, may not be directly from him.)
  I did not know that "God Made Trump" which is a video on something called "Truth Social."(if you click on that link, it is about three minutes long.) It answers some of the questions, one of them being, "Why Was Trump Chosen?" 

"God had to have someone willing to go into the den of vipers. Call out the fake news for their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s. The poison of vipers is on their lips. So God made Trump....
God said, “I will need someone who will be strong and courageous. Who will not be afraid or terrified of wolves when they attack. A man who cares for the flock. A shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave or forsake them. I need the most diligent worker to follow the path and remain strong in faith. And know the belief in God and country.”

God's choice does make some sense since Eric Trump said that his dad "literally saved Christianity" and there is a "growing chorus of voices saying Trump is the defender of Christians and Christianity." 
   He is now seen by many as a "Jesus-like figure" and "The prosecutions underway against Trump have been easily interpretable as signs of persecution, which can then connect to the suffering Jesus theme in Christianity. Trump has been able to leverage that with lines like, “They’re not persecuting me. They’re persecuting you.” That is, "The multiple criminal charges against Trump serve to strengthen the belief of many evangelicals about his ties to God..." 

  That Mr. Trump is not exactly a fine fellow, doesn't matter much since,  “a savior does not have to be a good person but just needs to fulfill his divinely appointed role.

  Further, in order to rationalize this quasi-deification of Trump — despite “his crassness and vulgarity, divorces, mocking of disabled people, his overt racism and a determination by a court that he sexually abused advice columnist E. Jean Carroll” — white evangelicals refer not to Jesus but the Persian King Cyrus from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible...Cyrus is the model of an ungodly king who nonetheless frees a group of Jews who are held captive in Babylon. It took white evangelicals themselves a while to settle on an explanation for their support, but this characterization of Trump was solidified in a 2018 film that came out just before the 2018 midterms entitled “The Trump Prophecy,” which portrayed Trump as the only leader who could save America from certain cultural collapse."

There is more, but thanks to God, Trump will save the Christians, and America, from the attacks of the deplorable progressives. 

   The second article is this one and it begins when the author, Tim Alberta, tells about his appearance on a television show during which the moderator asks why, 

"Despite being a lecherous, impenitent scoundrel—the 2016 campaign was marked by his mocking of a disabled man, his xenophobic slander of immigrants, his casual calls to violence against political opponents—Trump had won a historic 81 percent of white evangelical voters. Yet that statistic was just a surface-level indicator of the foundational shifts taking place inside the Church. Polling showed that born-again Christian conservatives, once the president’s softest backers, were now his most unflinching advocates."

 The author notes that, As a believer in Jesus Christ—and as the son of an evangelical minister, raised in a conservative church in a conservative community—I had long struggled with how to answer this question.

   Alberta's search to find out "What's wrong with American evangelicals?" yielded answers that were not acceptable to many in his father's congregation and they did not hesitate to let him know at his father's funeral. His criticisms of Trump, were tantamount to treason—against both God and country—and I should be ashamed of myself. By the time of his death, his father probably would have agreed:
Dad had one great weakness. Pastor Alberta’s kryptonite as a Christian—and I think he knew it, though he never admitted it to me—was his intense love of country....
   What I couldn’t understand was how, over the next couple of years, he became an apologist for Trump’s antics, dismissing criticisms of the president’s conduct as little more than an attempt to marginalize his supporters. Dad really did believe this; he believed that the constant attacks on Trump’s character were ipso facto an attack on the character of people like himself, which I think, on some subconscious level, created a permission structure for him to ignore the president’s depravity.

   Things have only gotten worse:

And then George Floyd was murdered. All of this as Donald Trump campaigned for reelection. Trump had run in 2016 on a promise that “Christianity will have power” if he won the White House; now he was warning that his opponent in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, was going to “hurt God” and target Christians for their religious beliefs. Embracing dark rhetoric and violent conspiracy theories, the president enlisted prominent evangelicals to help frame a cosmic spiritual clash between the God-fearing Republicans who supported Trump and the secular leftists who were plotting their conquest of America’s Judeo-Christian ethos.But many of those same people have chosen to idealize a Christian America that puts them at odds with Christianity. They have allowed their national identity to shape their faith identity instead of the other way around.

From: "My Father, My Faith and Donald Trump: Here, In Our House of Worship, People Were Taunting Me About Politics as I Tried to Mourn," Tim Alberta, The Atlantic, Nov. 28, 2023.  The article was adapted from Alberta's new book: The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory: America's Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

Post Script:
   I thought of "Backward Christian Soldiers" for obvious reasons. I then googled the phrase and found examples of it. One of its uses is in this, perhaps prescient, book title from forty years ago: Backward, Christian Soldiers?: An Action Manual for Christian Reconstruction, Gary North. [1984!!]
"But if Christians don't control the territory, they can't occupy it. They get tossed out into cultural "outer darkness," which is just exactly what the secular humanists have done to Christians in the 20th century: in education, in the arts, in entertainment, in politics, and certainly in the mainline churches and seminaries. Today, the humanists are "occupying." But they won't be for long. This book shows why." Perhaps a reprint is in order.

  An old friend from out west sent me an email reminding me of long ago and discussions over CARGO CULTS. The subject of the email - Make Melanesia Great Again. He thought the association of  cargo cults and Trump was worth pursuing in Mulcahy's Miscellany and I agreed. But, I took a quick look and the association has already been made. (e.g. "America's Latest "Cargo Cult?", John Edward Terrell, Psychology Today, Aug. 23, 2020.) Plus, undoubtedly a construct like 'cargo cults' has been examined by the neo-colonial historians and any mention of it likely to be frowned upon.

Advice for Anti-Trumpers:

   This will be a useful article as we reach the end: "50 Must-Haves for TEOTWAWKI: A Survival List for When SHTF (S*it Hits the Fan), Countryside, Aug. 31, 2021. This portion will be of interest to the readers of MM:

Books of all sorts, in print: A good library will be important for reference, but also entertainment. Long, dark winters will be a misery for those who don’t attend to a decent library. Without electricity, solar power is a good way to recharge de­vices for digital books, but once the device breaks (and you know it will) that power is useless.

The Cartoons:

These cover cartoons are all by the Canadian, Barry Blitt and are from the New Yorker. For more about Blitt see: Canadian Cartoonists. 

For another MM piece that indicates why TEOTWAWTI is a term for our times see:
"It Is Even Worse Than It Looks"

 

Maurice Maeterlinck (Factlet 15)

  On relatively sunny days only short posts are produced, generally in the form of "Factlets." The last one related to Honoré Balzac and this one is about Maurice Maeterlinck. That in itself is amazing in that the producer is barely unilingual and has not read, in English, anything written by either man and would not be able to understand them at all in French.

  Maeterlinck is mentioned here, not because he wrote a book about,The Life of the Bee (an insect of current concern), but because he wrote one about termites. The interesting thing about The Life of Termites is that Maeterlinck produced the book although he may never have met one.

    Since I said this would be short, the point is that this post is really about plagiarism, a subject now even more concerning than bees. The Life of Termites has been described as  "a classic example of academic plagiarism". Living during "The Plagiarism Wars" raging on this continent, you have likely read many articles on the subject, but I doubt that any mention Maeterlinck who purloined most of The Soul of the White Ant, which was really written by the Afrikaner, Eugène Marais, and is really about termites. It is because of bespoke information such as this, that you visit Mulcahy's Miscellany. 

Post Script (often the useful part)
   This is the section that allows me to go on. You will know about the dismissal of an ivy league university president and the charges of plagiarism, and that combatants on either side in the other war (the culture one), are combing through the works of the enemies, who now may be nervous, even if they only copied something written in Afrikaans.
   If you are now thinking about subjecting the writing of your opponent or ex-spouse to the scrutiny of a commercial service like Turnitin, read first, this article: "The Plagiarism War Has Begun: Claudine Gay Was Taken Down by a Politically Motivated Investigation. Would the Same Approach Work for Any Academic?" The Atlantic, Jan. 4, 2024. 
  The author, Ian Bogost, attempting to answer the question raised in that title, ran his own dissertation through the plagiarism wringer, which seemed to show that he had copied most of it. That was not at all the case, so you need to be careful before you lay your own charges.
   The linguist, John McWhorter thinks, "We Need a New Word for 'Plagiarism'," (NYT, Jan. 23, 2024.) He argues that perhaps a distinction needs to be made between stealing ideas, or sentences from a fictional work, both of which are more problematic than cutting and pasting the basic boilerplate statements borrowed from non-fiction academic works. He concludes:
  "Cutting and pasting is not the same as stealing ideas. “Plagiarism,” as a term, should be restricted to the latter. That means we need a new term for the former. There is no reason the new term has to be a formal one derived from Latin like “plagiarism” — or “duplicative language” for that matter. And in fact perhaps it should not be. Latinate words tend to look and feel more intimidating, handy for things you get in trouble for. Our new term could be less menacing, in line with referring to something that should be sanctioned less, if at all. Perhaps we already have the term: “cutting and pasting” — as distinct from, rather than a form of, plagiarism."

Sources:
 For Maeterlinck, Wikipedia will do. For another example from the Factlet genre,  "Match Making" will do.

A Fact: Maeterlinck won The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911.

See this for information about the winners of the Ig Nobel Prize.

Beyond the Palewall (8)

 

Coming Soon Next to the Shawarma Shop Near You: A Private Clinic

   If you need a knee or hip replaced, you may be able to soon hobble down the street and get one, or two, or even four. Our government announced that more private options were being made available and that news was nicely conveyed by the Canadian correspondent for the New York Times: The Growing Private-Sector Involvement in Canadian Public Health Care Systems," Canada Letter, Ian Austen,

January 20, 2024.

This week, the provincial government in Ontario announced that it was expanding the number of private clinics providing medical services.

Right now, Ontario has about 900 such clinics, and they mostly offer medical imaging and cataract surgeries. Sylvia Jones, the province’s health minister, said this week that the government was expanding its program to include hip and knee replacements.

The province is being careful not to violate the Canada Health Act by requiring people to pay for medically necessary procedures. That would jeopardize the 20 billion Canadian dollars the province will receive this year from the federal government for health care. While the clinics will be privately operated, their procedures will be covered under the provincial health care plan as if they had been performed in public hospitals.

Ms. Jones said that the expansion would allow more such procedures to be performed and that doing so would cut wait times for patients. Her critics say it will further undermine the public system, that it may actually increase wait times and that it is a step toward full privatization of health care.

   You may not be able to read the NYT article, but you can read this 36 page report which has just been released: "The Scope and Nature of Private Healthcare in Canada," by Katherine Fierlbeck. It is published by the C.D. Howe Institute.
 A serious subject which I should not treat so lightly.

Boil Water Advisory in the Nation's Capital

   Not in Ottawa, but Washington. I mentioned in "Water Woes" that, soon we are all likely to  be very thirsty.  A recent headline indicated that it is true, even in D.C., where a great deal of water is needed for the scotches. In this article, one learns that even the citizens in the ritzy areas (Chevy Chase, Bethesda) were likely to experience problems. Apparently these city dwellers need advice that is much clearer than the water: “Do not drink the water without boiling it first,” the D.C. Water said in an alert issued Friday evening. (The water should be allowed to cool before drinking it.) ("Many Residents of Northern D.C. Are Asked to Boil Water," Martin Weil, Washington Post, Jan. 19, 2024.)

  Some related CANCON: A Canadian Press headline: "Long-Term Prairie Drought Raises Concerns Over Groundwater Levels," Bob Weber, Jan.20, 2024.

“The lowest water levels are all in the last seven years and the levels are much lower now than they were in the ’70s and ’80s,” Pomeroy said. “It'll be a climate signal that we’re seeing....” “It’s something we need to keep an eye on.”

Don't Bet On It

   At the end of last year, I suggested in "On Betting" that perhaps we should be as worried about the gambling situation as we are tired over watching all the ads promoting it. I did offer one source suggesting that money was being made and people are getting jobs in the gambling sector. If you think you can find better statistics related to Ontario, Don't bet on it.  
   Read, if you can, this good article: “Got Questions About Ontario’s Online Gambling Industry” Don’t Bet on Getting the Answers,” Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail, Jan. 19, 2024. He begins by noting that this gambling thing is supposed to be great and he attempts to find out how great from iGaming Ontario. He wasn't able to get much information from them, but it was easy to find out from the folks in New York and Massachusetts.

  

When Ontario announced a few years ago that it was giving the green light to online gambling, politicians made familiar promises about the scheme. It would be great for consumers. Great for the province’s tax revenue. Great for jobs, great for the local innovation economy. (They didn’t say anything about how great it might be for our blood pressure to be subjected to the ensuing flood of sportsbook ads.)

Since then, most of the talk about online gambling has focused on its downsides: the volume of ads; the disappointment in seeing heroes such as Wayne Gretzky or Auston Matthews encouraging fans to get into the betting game; the cautionary tales about addicts losing their homes, their jobs, their families, their lives.

Would the conversation be different if the government actually trusted the public enough to give them real information about the state of the industry?

For almost two years, iGaming Ontario (or iGO), which oversees online gambling in the province on behalf of the Alcohol Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), has followed a policy of saying as little as possible. It releases quarterly snapshots that contain a handful of data to show things are going swimmingly.

Which they might be. Who knows.

For the first year of those quarterly reports, iGO revealed almost nothing. It published the total amount of money that had been wagered, but refused to outline how much came from the different types of betting: casino, sports, or online poker. It was hardly a vote of confidence in a promising industry.

It’s finally begun breaking out those figures. Still, it evidently believes most information is like thrash metal or direct democracy: potentially dangerous if released onto an unsuspecting public. And so it withholds data that might help Ontarians grapple with the emerging place of online betting in the province.

He then made a few phone calls and it seems our southern neighbours were rather chatty.

Other jurisdictions seem to recognize the benefits in giving the public access to timely, comprehensive information....

A quick scan of the information published by Massachusetts and New York may give you some idea of the warts that Ontario might be trying to hide.

Last month, mobile sportsbooks in New York State took in US$2.04-billion in total wagers. Of that amount, the market goliath FanDuel handled US$835-million, or about 41 per cent of all wagers. DraftKings handled US$773-million (about 38 per cent), and Caesars handled US$202-million (or almost 10 per cent)....

The Massachusetts numbers for December echo the winners-take-all landscape in New York. Of US$643-million wagered on online sportsbooks, DraftKings handled US$316-million, or 49 per cent. FanDuel handled US$187-million (29 per cent). ESPN Bet, newly rebranded from Penn Sports Interactive, handled US$50-million and saw its market share jump to almost 8 per cent from 6 per cent. The other five licenced operators handled the remaining 14 per cent of the action.

All of which is to say the industry looks a little like America itself: a few fat cats at the top, with everyone else scrambling to survive.

And what does the landscape look like in Ontario, where there were an astonishing 49 licensees operating 72 gambling websites – including, by my count, 30 sports-betting operations – as of Dec. 31, 2023? Are two or three foreign juggernauts dominating an industry the government had hoped would become a central player in the province’s innovation economy, as people suspect? Are Canadian-based companies, which have much smaller marketing budgets than the global behemoths, connecting with consumers? Are they barely keeping their heads above water? Are they targets for the industry consolidation that so many observers believe is inevitable? Will the jobs that the province trumpeted as a major reason to greenlight gambling never materialize, or evaporate? Will online gambling be yet another branch-plant economy of foreign giants?

The questions were not answered.

Dementia RISING

Think About It While You Can

   The MAID acronym is a simple one which Canadians will understand, but it is a label for a very complex subject. A large number of ethical issues arise when one discusses medical assistance in dying and the legislation addressing them is constantly changing. A “Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying” is looking into the matter (again) as I type. 
  The broad and basic argument over MAID puts in one corner those who think it should be a personal choice, while the combatants in the other bring up all kinds of philosophical and religious objections suggesting the state must be involved. The former say that those suffering horribly should be allowed the right to exit, while the latter feel that the granting of such a right will put us all on a slippery slope, along which legislative guardrails must be put. I am not an ethicist, but will admit that I am liberal about MAID and take a libertarian stance on this issue. If I was an ethicist, here is the narrower question I would address: “Should those fearing dementia be allowed to make an Advance Request for MAID before they become demented?” Given my stance, the answer is an easy one: “Sure.”  I think many, even those in the other corner who have seen someone with dementia, have said, “Please don’t let that happen to me.”
   One of the many problems related to "Advance Requests" is that having arrived at decision time the requestor may have changed his mind (or, lost it.) Fearing such an outcome, does one have to make such a decision early, while one can? Or do you figure that those who knew of your advance wish, will fulfil it for you even if you seem to be happy wandering about talking to people who aren’t there? Who pulls the plug if you can’t? Will the potential plug-pullers be in agreement about what is to be done?
   Before I provide you with sound advice, I will say that I am in favour of MAID and "Advance Requests." Having said clearly in advance that I want to go, you should not listen to me later. Just pull the plug. Christopher Hitchens expressed such a sentiment to those who suggested that even though he was an atheist, he would likely make a death-bed conversion. I was able to find a couple of his rebuttals:
And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)
And:
"Down the road, if you ever hear me say there is a God, it won’t be me talking, but some hollowed out, terrified shell of who I used to be.”

Although I am not an ethicist, I do recognize that the answer is not that simple and that I cannot offer one to you. As a former librarian, however, I can help you look for it. Sources are provided below.

 A Conundrum

   This chart appeared in the Globe and Mail on Jan. 12, 2024."Decision Time"

Frances Woolley, Professor of Economics, Carleton University

"About one-third of women over age 90, and a quarter of men, are living with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. These diseases create immense suffering for people who gradually lose their minds, and for caregivers who gradually lose their loved ones. The diseases are expensive, too, costing billions in long-term care."

"There is no cure for dementia, but there is an escape route: medical assistance in dying. Yet just 1 per cent of people who chose MAID in 2022 had some form of dementia. Although many of us would, given the choice, prefer a painless and dignified early exit, we often do not have the choice: The dementia diagnosis comes after we have lost our ability to make informed decisions.

For this reason, every province needs to implement regular dementia screening immediately. We might not be able to cure Alzheimer’s any time soon. But with early diagnosis, we do have a way of ending suffering."

Pay Attention While You Can

Sources:

   "Medical Assistance in Dying," Alzheimer Society.
"Medical assistance in dying (MAID) is a complex and very personal issue. The information presented here is intended to assist and support people living with dementia – together with their families and caregivers – in making informed decisions about their care.

Is the Alzheimer Society supporting advance requests for MAID?

The Alzheimer Society of Canada supports the right of people living with dementia to make an advance request for a medically assisted death.

The Alzheimer Society recognizes that people living with dementia are individuals – first and foremost. They have the same rights as everyone else, including the right to participate in decisions about their life and care. We respect the rights of all people with dementia to advocate for their individual best interests, including advocating for access to MAID through advance requests."

   “Most Canadians Want the Right to Plan Ahead for an Assisted Death if they get Dementia. So Why is it so Complicated?”, Erin Anderssen, Globe & Mail, Feb. 18, 2023. This is a very useful article, which may not be behind a paywall.

   "In a late January survey, conducted for The Globe and Mail by Nanos Research, 80 per cent of respondents agreed, or somewhat agreed, that Canadians should be able to make advance requests outlining their conditions for assisted death, for when they can no longer legally give consent....

   Canada’s current legislation requires people to clearly consent to medical assistance in dying, known as MAID, on the day it is provided – with a limited exception. A patient whose natural death is deemed to be “reasonably foreseeable,” and who is suffering intolerably and has been approved for MAID, may waive final consent if they are at risk of losing capacity before their scheduled date. That could be up to six months away, in certain cases, if the MAID provider agrees....

   Canada’s MAID laws give priority to the patient’s voice. Patients say when their suffering has grown intolerable, and when their treatment is at an end. But at the later stage of dementia, a patient’s voice is silent. If advance requests are allowed, a doctor or nurse practitioner, ideally working with a trusted caregiver, would have to assess suffering and decide death’s timing by interpreting instructions from the past.

   The Dutch experience highlights the difficulty of following advance directives that are vaguely worded, or may not fully reflect the future their authors imagined. And it also makes clear the importance of informed third parties who can advocate for patients. A person might say they want euthanasia when they can no longer recognize their family. But which family members, and what level of recognition? (What if, for instance, they are still delighted to see the friendly strangers who keep visiting?)...

   "Why shouldn’t the values of a person’s capable self trump the version that can’t communicate or care for themselves? Ms. Demontigny said she suffers now, not knowing how long her healthy body might last while her mind crumbles and what that will mean for her children.

  An advance directive, she said, would allow her to live today, free from worry about what happens at the end. If that is not allowed, she will have to ask for MAID before she is truly ready, just to guarantee her wishes are respected. “I will lose time,” she said, “but I don’t want to take the risk.”

Geriatric Gems (a useful 2pp. pdf.)
 "Medical Assistance in Dying and Older Adults," Casey, et al

Canadian Family Physician, Vol.68, July, 2022.

Clinical question

"How do changes in legislation pertaining to medical assistance in dying (MAID) affect my patients with frailty or dementia? Are advance requests allowed?

Bottom line:
Given their long-term, trusting relationships with patients and their families, 

family physicians can play a critical role in discussions about MAID.The eligibility for MAID has expanded, albeit with qualifiers to protect vulnerable individuals. This article highlights these changes, which are reviewed in greater depth in an article published in the Canadian Geriatrics Society Journal of CME in 2022."

   “Dementia and Assistance in Dying: A Catch 22,” George Szaz, British Columbia Medical Journal, Vol.65, No.7, Sept. 2023. A very sad case.

"Persons suffering from dementia are not eligible for medical assistance in dying, and this is inhumane."

   "For People with Dementia, Changes in MAiD Law Offer New Hope: For People with Dementia, Changes in MAiD Law Offer New Hope, Jocelyn Downie, Policy Options, April 21, 2021.

"People with dementia have been caught in a cruel trap under Canada’s medical assistance in dying law (MAiD) – until now. As their suffering advanced, their decision-making capacity receded, but the capacity to make their own health-care decisions was required at the moment of MAiD itself. Access to MAiD balanced on the knife-edge of reaching an intolerable state of suffering prior to completely losing capacity. People were forced to choose to end their lives earlier than they wanted. With the passage of legislation amending Canada’s MAiD law (Bill C-7), this dilemma will be over for many."

A Headline Today - Jan. 22, 2024:

Health System Urged to Brace For Major Shift in Dementia Demographics," Kelly Grant, Globe & Mail.

"In a study released Monday, the Alzheimer Society of Canada predicts there will be more than 1.7 million people in Canada living with dementia in 2050, nearly three times the estimated 650,000 today. One in four will be Asian, a broad category that includes people with roots in China, Vietnam, Korea, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other countries."

McIntosh Gallery in the Winter

   A couple of days ago, I did a post about "Stratford in the Winter" and I am lazingly using the title again for this one. It is still winter after all and I am again recommending something local which you should have a look at and, in this case, also listen to. McIntosh is closer than Stratford since it is on the campus up at Western and it too welcomes the general public and is open all year.

The Sound of Music in the Mountains
  The exhibition, "Glacial Resonance" opened on Friday, Jan. 19, with an "artist-led exhibition tour," which we missed, but the exhibition will be around until March 16.
I learned of it, too late, from Western News and it is to that publication you should turn since Ms. Ferguson's description in it is a good one and I would start with it, rather than the formal exhibition notice that follows. Be sure to listen to the audio.

“Melting Glaciers Main Muse for McIntosh Installation by Paul Walde: Works by Former London Artist and Western Grad Explore Impact of Global Warming," Keri Ferguson, Western News, Jan. 16, 2024.

   The description of the exhibition offered by McIntosh is here: "Paul Walde: Glacial Resonance." Mr. Walde is a northern Ontario boy who went to Western and is now at the University of Victoria. Here is part of the description:

Raising environmental awareness through art

"Glacial Resonance" brings together Paul Walde’s iconic 2013 project Requiem for a Glacier with his newest video and sound installation Glacial. Both address concerns about land use and the impacts of the climate crisis, 10 years apart, with glaciers as the primary focus and an urgent sign of the Earth’s tipping point to an irrevocably changed climate....

Glacial is a meditative durational experience, sharing distant vistas and extreme details of the Coleman Glacier at Mount Baker (Kulshan), in Washington State, along with the sounds of the glacier melting, modified through musical instruments used as speakers. Over the course of five hours violin, viola, cello, double bass, bass drum, and a cymbal fitted with sonic transducers transform field recordings into tones which form the basis of the composition and act as conduits for the glacier to communicate resonant frequencies."

A New Director at the McIntosh Gallery

  I also learned from Ms. Ferguson, who seems to write a lot for Western News, that Lisa Daniels becomes the new director on March 4th. 

   I was talking with another Western retiree the other day and he mentioned missing the old printed Western News, where such items are found. The link to the current issues is provided and if you click on "All News" you will find over 860 of them dating back to 2008. Additional backfiles of the publication and the University of Western Ontario News and the Western Times are found on The Western News Archive.  (While I am at it, here is The Gazette.)

Post Script:

   On the website of the McIntosh Gallery you will also find a list of the publications produced and of the past exhibitions. A couple of years ago, I commented about one of them - "Lepidoptera in London." As a ""Bonus" I offered for us oldsters a guide related to gender terminology and lavatories. 

   Back in 2018 I wrote about a controversy involving The McIntosh in the early 1980s. See this post: Jasper Cropsey. Skip the long part about "The Chagall Conundrum" and go directly to "The Cropsey Controversy" where you will learn that the sale of this painting caused quite a ruckus. Let us hope that Western doesn't have to sell Brescia.

If you want to see the "Backwoods of America,"  you now have to go all the way to the backwoods of America in Arkansas and visit Crystal Bridges. I did, a few years back, see: "Amazing Accomplishments."