There’s an adage out there that says you can’t pick your neighbours but that you can sure as hell pick your friends.

It’s an adage that can now be applied to the relationship that currently exists between Canada and the United States.

Geography and history gave us the United States.  The Americans and their bizarre choice of a deranged president have given us Europe.

Big Mouth and his Acolytes, duly elected by our friends and family south of the border, have decided to undo maybe 145 years of collaborative history by singling us out for economic punishment and the threat of economic annexation as America’s so-called 51st state.

Good for them.  Whatever makes you feel relevant, if for some reason relevance has been something eluding you.  Maybe push around Greenland, Mexico, and Panama as well.  Completely estrange yourself from Europe and pull the rug out from under Ukraine while you’re at it.  Kiss Vladimir’s Russian ass and try not to ruin your makeup before having to do the same to China’s Xi.  Makes me wonder if you simply forgot about Japan and South Korea or if you just haven’t gotten around to pissing on them yet as well.

When your local coffee shop becomes your office.

Not like anyone working here ever gave me permission to set up shop, it’s more like they’re just prepared to overlook the fact that I tend to occupy that same seat in front of the window most afternoons, pecking away at my keyboard, giving off the impression that I’m doing something really important.  For the record, I’m mostly not.  It’s all a smokescreen.

I’m just here for the window.

There was a time when that was sort of true.  Being a student of people and humanity, sitting in a window along the town’s main drag can bring a lot of those people and a lot of that humanity right to you and right by you as they pass along the sidewalk, busily on their way to wherever it is that they’re busily on their way to.

But, honestly, it’s become much more than that now.

When Renfrew Town Council went to a Committee of the Whole format, standing committees were made a thing of the past, and one of the casualties of that decision was the loss of a designated individual to handle the contract identification and enforcement duties usually undertaken by an HR person.

What this makes necessary is the appointment, or designation of such an individual, someone who can take on the role of Council HR Liaison.  As the name suggests, it’s a position requiring a liaison between council and administrative staff when it comes to the area of workers and the contractual conditions under which they toil for the town.

This designation is especially important as such a person would be involved in the grievance process.  Currently, there are three internal steps to any grievance procedure before the arbitration stage is reached.

In June of 2024, I joined a growing number of Canadians who either don’t, didn’t, or no longer have a doctor.

This is a pretty jarring thing when you consider that this is the first time in my life that I’ve not had a general practitioner, or family doctor, and arguably it may be the most critical time in my life to have one.  But my doctor retired — as they’re allowed to do — and nobody jumped up to buy the business, if that’s what actually happened, or rather, didn’t happen.

I’ve been blessed with good health more or less, once you get past those three heart attacks and life-related stress, but all that considered, I feel like I’m in pretty good shape, so God does have some time to smile down upon me, which is fabulous, and I thank Him for that everyday.  Thanks to the Ottawa Heart Institute, I’m like a brand new guy in the heart department.  And thanks to the kindness and generosity of people generally, the stress department isn’t as over-worked as it once was.

There’s just one thing, though, and it’s kind of a biggy.  God, despite His splendour and magnificence, doesn’t write prescriptions.  As I think about potential flaws God may have, I feel this may be the only one.  But as I said, it’s kind of an important one.