SOBRIETY

Sobriety is not something you ever take for granted,

I know this because I’m sober, for now anyways, and I hate the influence that alcohol has had on my life. And the pull it maintains upon me today.

Any good time, almost every good time that I’ve had in my life, is associated with drinking. Beer was my glue, my response to everything, the constant, the thing that tied everything else together.

When I drank, I wasn’t a dirty drunk, a falling down drunk, a crash into the Christmas tree kind of drunk. I never drank and then operated a motor vehicle. I didn’t fight or slur my words.

I was happy. I was content. I was funny. I was smart and articulate. I could even work while I was drinking, pounding out policy papers, directing communications for serious enterprises, and playing prominent roles in election campaigns. I taught for over thirty years. My students over that span will attest to my commitment to them.

And I drank through all of it. Maybe not every day, maybe not all day, but often enough. And every time I “quit,” which is the word often employed when we actually mean “stopped,” I came back to it stronger than ever. The cans got bigger and there were more of them.

The way it goes I guess.

Continue reading →

May 14, 2025

THE BED BLOCKERS

By now, pretty-much every one of us has some understanding of the acute shortages that plague our health care system. Doctors, nurses, and medical technicians make the news on a semi-regular basis, so much so that the general public kind of tunes out on the issue, unless they happen to be someone who is either in hospital, awaiting a hospital stay or surgery, or have a loved one in that situation. But the rest of us, somewhat unfortunately, have no idea, or if we do, it gets kicked back into the back seat of our brain.

What I haven’t mentioned is the acute shortage of beds in hospitals. While doctors, nurses, and technicians are absolutely essential, hospitals are usually measured in the currency of beds, as in how many they have. And then after that, how many they have open. Which is generally not many.

In hospital medicine, while not an official philosophy or anything, it’s generally accepted that the rule of thumb is “get them in, get them fixed, then get them out.” What you don’t want if you can avoid it is the prospect of a long-term stay, which removes a bed from the equation. And given the number of people awaiting a hospital bed, it’s a rather crucial workflow concept.

Continue reading →

May 3, 2025

TARIFFS, PENGUINS, AND DOCTORS

By now, everyone knows we’ve taken a 25% tariff hit from our erstwhile friends and compadres the Americans for the sole reason of, well, I don’t know because they make no sense to me. That puts me roughly on par with all the economists and tariff experts out there who are pretty-much all saying the same thing.

There’s no doubt that there’s something afoot about what Trump and his acolytes are up to something nefarious., including the possibility that he and they are all Russian puppets bent on weakening America and its western alliances, which if true, would mean they’re doing nothing less that one hell of a job.

I think that, as Canadians, we’ve also done one hell of a job of absorbing these hits to our economy and our sovereignty. Yes, we’re mad, in fact mad as hell. But I still hold on to the belief that what we’re seeing is another example of that famously stereotypical Canadian restraint. But our restraint is nothing compared to that shown by the inhabitants of Heard and McDonald Islands. Sure, they were only hit with 10% tariffs from the Trumpers, but still they’ve been victimized like seemingly everywhere else, and one would think that they’d show some sort of disinclination, disappointment, or outright rage. But they don’t.

Because they’re penguins.

Continue reading →

April 6, 2025

HEALTH RENFREW

What is Health Renfrew?

Or just as importantly, who is Health Renfrew? Is there even a “who” in Health Renfrew? Instead of bodies sitting around a board room table, is it only a chequing account?

As officially as I can find out at present — and admittedly I haven’t really looked all that hard yet — It’s an adjunct board of the Renfrew Victoria Hospital, or RVH. For the longest of times, it apparently existed as some sort of shadow entity with some sort of financial affiliation with its larger parent, RVH. In recent times, however, the spotlight of accountability has fallen upon it more intensely and it looks like there might be hell to pay.

What kind of hell? And for what sins did we end up here?

Continue reading →

January 24, 2025

WHEN A MAN’S MURDER BECOMES COMEDY

You’d think they arrested Robin Hood.

Luigi Mangione is simply this: A guy in a hood with a 3D-printed weapon with silencer intent on ending the life of an unsuspecting father and husband as the latter walked to work in the early morning hours of New York City last week.

Is it only in America where a guy like this gets to be a folk hero? Probably not, but as in all things, America does it bigger and louder, so here we are, some of us, finding humour at the assassination of a fifty year-old insurance executive, Brian Thompson. And making little Luigi the poster boy for the righteous fight against corporate greed.

I’m not a big fan of corporate greed myself. I’ll be right there at the start of the line when it comes to criticizing the actions of places like banks and insurance companies. If they even knew about me and my commentary, they would consider me to be a hostile. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to kill me. And it doesn’t mean I’m going to kill them.

Continue reading →

December 11, 2024

“THERE’S NOTHING ON MY BELT THAT WILL SOLVE ADDICTION / HOMELESSNESS”

In preparation for a piece I did yesterday on local homelessness, I came across a CBC documentary (PROJECT PURPLE) that outlined the effort being made in the Pembroke area to tackle the homelessness / addiction crisis that has made that Ottawa Valley community a hotspot for drug overdose and all the attending problems associated with dealing with the homeless.

Within that documentary was a clip of Inspector Steph Neufeld, Commander, Ontario Provincial Police Pembroke Detachment. And what he said was like sweet music finally reaching the ears of an audience starved for meaningful and humane action to a crisis that is upon us and may well get worse should we continue to follow the boilerplate responses of the past.

Inspector Neufeld has it completely right on so many points, but what jumped out at me was the profound statement made by a ranking police officer.

“There’s nothing on my belt that will solve addiction. There’s nothing that will solve homelessness. But do we have a part to play to support our members?”

And as he continued, it was clear that the answer was “yes,” and further, that it must be a community effort, involving several agencies working in concert, and in a manner that is novel, innovative, inspired, and effective. In other words, sometimes you have to step beyond the lines, or, if you will, get out of the box. As in, if it ain’t working, fix it.

And by fixing it, we mean taking new approaches that free us from the straight jacket of prior, and often failed models of response.

Continue reading →

October 16, 2024