Nobody is surprised, except me I guess (what kind of a Governor General would give assent? That’s what I want to know), but yes, we’re having an election here in Canada.

The timing is disturbing. After all, we’ve got a Prime Minister no one can relate to: he’s no orator, he won’t– and can’t, I suspect–negotiate, and he’s coming under quite a lot of scrutiny for yet another misappropriation of public funds scandal. When he speaks English, he doesn’t make eye contact, when he speaks French he speaks the Franglaise of a million testy, mushmouthed schoolchildren, huddling and giggling with puerile contempt over the bilingual labels of their breakfast cereals. When it comes to women, he’s cut funding nationwide for daycare, women’s shelters, and even the Status of Women offices. When it comes to growing poverty, he simply doesn’t see it; when it comes to everyone’s concerns about jobs disappearing from the Canadian economy in the millions since he took office, he squeaks out an annoyed “let them eat cake” and makes a big show of handing out long-ago earmarked auto industry bail-out money, months after it was alloted, yet seconds before calling the election, to a Ford plant that will build cars with wasteful, unwanted V-8 engines. When it comes to the environment, it’s an enforced “business as usual, and climate change be damned, no one can prove Sour Gas is deadly, Green Ideas cost Jobs” nonsense. Those tar sands are the reason he’s in office, after all.

Mr. Harper is no Kennedy.

He’s certainly no Obama, and just to drive the point of inadequacy home, God love ‘em (as the Maritimers say when they despise you beyond civility), he’s not even a Bush, in terms of might and connections. He falls short but manages to scrape up to the status of a Palin: shifty eyes, an offputting demeanor, and a questionable red hand in the middle of a conveniently overshadowed spending scandal. Maybe he didn’t get around to banning books from local libraries, one of Palin’s biggest political thrusts–but I think in enough time, he’d have banned reading all together.

I suppose I’ll have to admit that I watched the candidates give their platform speeches once the election was confirmed, so I’ll admit it. I watched Stephan Dion, I watched Jack Layton, I watched Elizabeth May and our country’s right wing version of the Green Party demand a place in the official debate, and I watched Gilles Duceppe. Here is what everyone knows: Gilles isn’t leaving us anytime soon, Lizzie hasn’t got a hope, Jack is certainly being portrayed as the Rock Star (complete with claque–but you can see they’re paid to support him) and Dion is getting the same kind of bad press we’re seeing against Obama and Biden in the US (so you know he’s the real thing, the bona fide threat). In the States, all the journalists have been given the same script, and variations (or deviations, your choice) are simply never heard. On speaking of Palin, they snort and announce, “This woman shoots Moose!” as though that were impressive and politically vital; or they talk (even the women do this, including the women on Public Television) about “that cute ‘Bewitched’ thing she does with her nose”, then yell out, “Adorable!!” How anyone can watch these performances on television and take them as “real” commentary puzzles me, they’re sexist beyond the pale of anything that’s even been acceptable for decades. The stakes here in Canada, for a journalist, simply can’t compare to the salaries and celebrity available in the States, but I have to wonder what it is that would drive all the broadcasters and commentators to recite the same lines even in Canada, despite what we can see with our own eyes. I don’t know how many more times I’ll be told, in the precise array of words, that Dion “is no communicator, not even in his own language”, while Harper mumbles and works hard to answer a limited and approved set of questions he can address quickly and without much ado.

Last year around this time (well, actually, a little later into the autumn) there was talk of an election too, and for me, that meant offers of work with the NDP party. Oooh, that was seductive, but ultimately the offer was impossible to fit into my life, with its 24/7 demands and its distance. Still, I was screened, and interviewed, and head hunted, and called, and not called, and kept “on file”, and now that the election’s on, a position has come up for me as Olivia Chow’s assistant. For five weeks. The timing is just wrong for me, and the group of interviewers who want me know damn well I’m miles away from her riding, and just minutes away from one of the most steadfast NDP strongholds in the country, I could work here just as well, with Peter Kormos, if the job were created. In my opinion, Layton is their big hope but he’s not a natural, he’s not really comfortable around people and he never seems quick on his feet or lacerating in his critique in parliament (remember parliament?). Olivia, on the other hand, could do it. I wish her the best but they’re certainly blowing an opportunity in my area by having Layton front instead of Kormos. They could make a lot of friends out of voters who are watching their livelihoods disappear out here, who’d only need a little bit of support to start things moving in a far more advanced and profitable direction–but I guess they’re not the kind of people you want to know in politics. Besides, how many votes could you win if you created jobs in the country’s currently most economically depressed region?

On the other hand, I take a little bit of heart from the scattered (but officially “unreported”) evidence of voter awareness, it helps me to know that, contrary to what the media and several Americans I know believe, voters really aren’t stupid. This is an ongoing argument I have with my American friends, who shake their heads in disbelief because they fear that the doddering and proudly ignorant McCain will win this election, they fear Americans are easily fooled and will ignore the cynicism of the Republican party to retain the status quo. I’m not so sure, I think Bush won two times in a row despite being the worst leader in the history of humanity (that we know of) because he had his people rig the elections, we’ve already read about how this was done, who did it, and how much it cost to do…but Americans prefer to believe in that “democracy” nonsense, and they actually think people really want to see the Republicans in office again.

The world’s largest financial institutions are bankrupt, people are losing their homes in the millions, and even real estate is losing its value (when does that happen?). Unless you’re part of that elite group of oil merchants and bankers and warmongers and pharmaceutical corporation owners and media moguls who make up the “Us” in the Bush administration, no one in the US has seen any benefit from the past 8 years of business. That group is far too small to keep “winning” elections, but they’re obviously wealthy enough to buy them despite what anyone wants.

Sarah Palin for Vice President

And cynical enough to present us with this as a candidate for high office.

Do I use this blog as a place to rant? No? Maybe I should.

I have had a hell of an August, after one mind numbingly frustrating July. It’s not the weather (maybe it’s the stars, though) but I’m definitely confronting my share of obstacles these days. I’ve not yet figured out if I’m supposed to clear them, like hurdles; or if I’m supposed to turn back, rearrange my plans, and take an alternate route that doesn’t involve collisions at every turn. All the sensible thoughts lead to “abandon plans, abandon plans”, but I just press ahead, punch drunk. I certainly am stubborn (mostly because it will probably make me crazy to figure out what else to do, should I abandon the plans for real).

I’ve been trying to set up a practice office nearby in St. Catharines. The location’s ideal, it’s in the charming old section of town, and the older business offices around me have become re-inhabited with the city’s business stalwarts, right in the midst of the city’s gorgeous old homes, the old Carmelite abbey, and right across the street from the Olmstead-designed Montebello Park. I’m surrounded by old trees and roses, an architectural legacy that covers the last 150 years of building design, a quaint little fountain corner where you can sit and play chess on the stone tables, and doctors, alternative health care practitioners, lawyers, and accountants of every stripe. Right next door there’s the old Used Books store. I plan to spend some time distracting myself in there.

That is, if I ever get myself in there. Technically, I’ve been “open” since August 1. In actuality, I’m struggling to get my phone line in, digging myself out of the mass of unnecessary stuff I’ve moved over just because it was all part of my business office at home, trying to locate items I desperately need there (but didn’t realize I’d need till I got there) and I’ve been hit with a variety of “setbacks”. Let’s just call them that. They include a cell phone Telus email software has destroyed (which held all my contacts and all their information) plus appointments I’d set up until the end of the year. The cell phone has also been my lone source of business contact, since the land line will still be weeks in coming (oh my, yes, phone companies in Canada are lousy), and the pda features on the phone were supposed to substitute for an actual computer I’ve yet to move into the office (since there is no phone). I’ve been driving to and fro, moving things in, throwing things out, coordinating printing and marketing supplies, and generally running my practice via mobile, in exactly the same way I was before I got the office, just because it’s not ready yet.

So I’ve been driving extra long kilometers these days, the one thing I decided I no longer wished to do. And that has resulted in a car accident, to top everything off. A four car one, commuted to three cars, because the last one in the line up said “no damage here!” and pulled away, quite happy to be free of the waiting-for-the-cops nonsense I had to endure for three hours. One overly helpful participant, however, volunteered the information on that fourth car’s spectral presence to the police officer when he finally arrived–something I stressed was Absolutely Not Necessary, goddamn it–and she even passed the PC the fourth car’s license plate number and car model information. So because he opted to help me out, that man will probably be charged with something asinine too–such as “Leaving the Scene of an Accident”, even if he swears the accident did not happen for him.

There is such a thing as being too perky, and too helpful.

Anyway, I got the charge on that one, so I’m going to fight it because who could pay that fine anyway? It’s added another “to do” to my list of growing errands in futility. I’m feeling quite a lot like that hamster on the Habitrail these days. More so than ever before, and I felt like that much of the time, before.

The cell phone is my latest peeve. I was supposed to have it replaced, finally, by a new unit last night, and after spending three days of forcing the phone to try and stop freezing while “booting up” so that I could successfully get to my contact information and my appointment schedule (there is no way to reset the phone without losing this information for good) the sales staff at the Telus store immediately did the absolute wrong thing, and while I was explaining that they should not take the battery out of the phone as it would force the phone to shut down again, they took the battery out of my unit to put it into the new one (instead of just getting the new phone’s battery out and using that instead). They were feeling a little lazy about not having a battery pack for the new unit, something they’d need so that they could transfer my contact information from my broken phone to its replacement, so they ignored me and ruined my last chance of saving my business vitals. That immediately shut it down, which meant they would now have to reboot it to start it up so that it went to the screen where I could get the data. When I explained that it took me many days of doing that repeatedly to get the phone to stop freezing, they went ahead and rebooted it anyway, smiling at me like I was just so silly. When the phone froze as I’d predicted, they looked at me like I didn’t know, and said, “It freezes at the Sync page–did you try and sync it with your computer?”

My heart sank, probably because it was so full of a raging desire to start slapping people until they started to cry. I desperately kept that phone under watch when I got the phone to finally open up to me, and I’d have fully written out the contact information if I’d known these people would have destroyed it for me….but they weren’t interested in actually listening to me about saving it. They had me sign up a bunch of papers for the new unit and they were ready to push me out the door but I finally said, “Look, reverse all of this paper work right now. I have to take that phone home and just keep trying to reboot it over and over again until I can get to that screen again. It literally took me two days of solid shutting down and booting up over and over again, and playing with buttons that might force the phone to stop freezing instead of starting up, and you just ignored me when I asked you not to take the battery out”. She looked at me like the inconvenience I’d become, and said, “Well, get it back to me in two days, or we can’t replace your phone.”

What? Those are fighting words.

So now I’ve been wrestling with the phone again, trying to get that screen to come back up again, and that’s been very difficult and frustrating. I want to be convinced to stay on as a customer, and they’d better convince hard. I’m not leaving that store without a much better phone that can sync to my computer with no effort, immediately. Why? Because this phone was destroyed by Telus’ software–and this phone can crash because it runs on a Windows system. This phone doesn’t sync to a Mac unless you download some specific Mac patches for it–but they cost extra money, and they don’t always work, as I’m finding out. But the reason I’m getting a new phone (on top of the $300 credit I received as a consolation, which now has not become quite enough consolation for last night’s stupidity) is because now the battery on this phone won’t hold a charge, so even if I do manage to get to the contact screen, I’ll have to hand write every one of those names and addresses out by hand before it runs down again. And that doesn’t leave me much time to save my ass. This cell phone company’s cost me some time, and some money.

And that’s just not damned acceptable.

Nor is the time I’ll have to spend emailing the company’s president and marketing director, their customer placation people, who’ll put up a fight I know, and the weasels at the Telus store who’ll shoot evil eyes at me when I go and get the replacement set up. Once again, instead of getting on with things, I’m working like a bastard at trying to save my livelihood because Telus and their people don’t think it’s a good idea to just pay attention to me when I’m there to do business.

I’m arguing and pressing the point and gathering my evidence for my arguments all the bloody time these days. In a past life, I was a lawyer, I know it: one of the many condemned to a specific Hell in the Inferno, the one which mimics being on earth yet again and doing the thing you “do best” against your will and only in unpleasant circumstances from which you can glean no benefit, eternally, no matter what else you think you’re meant to accomplish in the world. Funny, the only other place in my life where I can “build a case” is in my practice, treating patients–and that’s exactly what I’m not able to do right now.

For over ten years now I’ve made my living in alternative medicine. It doesn’t really matter what kind of experience you collect, what kind of working relationship you build with your patients, what kind of hit-or-miss scenario you encounter along your particular journey, nor does it matter who “teaches” you anything, no one wants to tell you about or discuss one constant in our work: every couple of years, like clockwork, we alt-med practitioners find ourselves scrambling to mobilize against some well organized, well funded threat to our livelihood–a threat that can be local or national, and is now often international in scope. And every time it happens, people in our professional communities think that somehow “things will work out for the best” if we just go along with what’s happening, consider the attack to be some kind of “constructive criticism” we could use to our advantage (and then try to change what we’re doing because we think we can become “more acceptable”). Sometimes, we take the government and conventional medicine at their word for what they’re trying to do with us, if the “attack” ends up leading (coincidentally!) to some time consuming, money sucking “process” initiative.

That’s the best case scenario, one that, in my experience, has yet to end well. The worst case, the most evident reaction, includes an automatic factioning process. Various alternative medical system “regulating bodies” (societies, associations, colleges, and boards) all claim to be working “right alongside the government in a “process”–the only valid process–that will make us all “legal” (or acceptable, or legitimate…whatever it is we’re told we’re not, by everyone except our patients). “Everyone else” not in the “chosen” and involved body is just “doing the wrong thing”. Somehow, we always fail to see how it is we’re all lured off to take part in these ongoing projects that lead nowhere but effectively tear us apart. I wonder how we keep missing this, every time it happens.

It’s difficult to think we’re ever going to be united on anything any time soon when so much paper and ink are wasted in international and local one-upmanship endeavors, which quite literally show us up to be politically retarded. Easy to manipulate, we still think it’s all about what we’re supposedly doing wrong, and who we have to blame and ostracize in our communities for creating the “bad name” with which we’re all labeled. It’s like we assume the position of the powerless, every time. We are quite literally the unwitting instigators of our ongoing demise. This is never more evident than when we’re confronted with the kind of challenges we never seem prepared to face, whether they come at us from a local source, or from some huge force far outside of the confines of our own state laws.

This year’s big challenge in Canada is Bill C51–it’s full of massive restrictions regarding access to all natural substances–herbs, vitamins, medicines, and just good old real food–to which we’ve idiotically allowed Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Medicine to control access. It will also dictate choice and behaviour, with severe repercussions to individual citizens who opt to use alternative medicines, and to practitioners alike. It opens us all up not just to these transgressive laws, but also laws made in other countries which previously did not affect our own behaviour–such as the Codex Alimentarius, which many natural health physicians believed would never apply here in Canada. Under C51, they’ll become law in Canada and we’ll be subject to those laws, without their having to undergo the parliamentary process in to become law in this country. There won’t be any recourse then, in terms of protest–elected officials will have no say in the matter, and they’re our one tiny link to power in this country.

It will mean the end of alternative medicine as we know it here–that is, it won’t be available to the public through well trained, educated, and skilled practitioners, only through conventional medical doctors (who are not required to undergo this education process in order to prescribe). To add insult, the bill is intended to be the “thin edge of the wedge”. It will be one of the first which will override any legislative sovereignty we have as a country. And that will open the door to plenty of other such bills, not necessarily ones which affect alternative medicine alone. It’s meant to be a real Trojan horse of a law, the potential for abuse is staggering.

And yes, the repercussions include seizure of property–homes, practices, files, medicines. They include incarceration, asset seizure (so it will be impossible to defend yourself, should the law be used against you), and the imposition of very heavy fines (these will be applied to manufacturers of natural products primarily–the idea is to shut them down, eliminate their access to plants, seeds, genetic materials for the manufacture of natural products; but the fines will also be levied against individual practitioners, consumers, people like parents who choose to treat their children with real food or herbs, too).

Two years ago, when Homeopaths were being suckered into yet another “self-regulation” scheme that we were never allowed to devise ourselves, I remember having one hell of an ongoing argument about the process with my own doctor, a Naturopath who trained me quite well in my own studies in classical Hahnemannian Homeopathy. But he’s an exception as a Naturopath–for his accreditation, the DHANP, he was required to study Homeopathy in school to the same basic extent that I was: five years of conventional medical sciences following a completed university degree, combined with a full three year Homeopathic medical science training course, and two years of supervised clinic work in classical homeopathic medicine. This is an American accreditation, one we don’t have in Canada at the moment–mostly because NDs here have succumbed to demands made by conventional medicine that they prove themselves to be “science based” practitioners. As a result, the “ND” designation here allows you to claim that you are a Homeopath even though you’ve never studied homeopathic medicine. When the NDs got that little plum, they were also given quite a political pedestal, which raised them far above the Homeopaths and other alternative medical practitioners below. Suddenly NDs were the authority, their patients could seek out help and receive repayment for their expenses from private insurers…while the NDs ensured that Homeopaths, Traditional Chinese Medical doctors, and others would no longer be covered under those policies. Divide and conquer, effectively implemented, part one.

Divide and conquer part two came along when the “self-regulation” process became an opportunity to destroy both NDs and HDs (homeopathic doctors) by attempting to create a regulatory “college” board which included them both. The first clue that this was to be a destructive idea was the fact that the NDs were under fewer practice restrictions, would not fulfill education and ethical standards set by Homeopathic medical societies, and finally, held a great deal more political clout in the conventional medical community than their Homeopathic counterparts, and nothing was being done to fix that inequality on this proposed college. That should have been a glaring clue we could not overlook: and yet, I remember my own doctor thought this college would be a great idea. When I protested that he wasn’t thinking about the poor training most NDs have in Homeopathy, and how so much of our future as homeopaths will be compromised because of the lack of priority that has been placed on the need for full training of homeopathic medicine as opposed to it’s opposite paradigm, conventional medicine…he pooh pooh’d my concerns as if I couldn’t understand what was going on. I insisted: I pointed out to him that the very school in which he used to teach student Naturopaths classical homeopathy, the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, no longer employed a classical homeopath on its teaching staff. He no longer taught there himself, and the full extent of the school’s courses on homeopathy were now being written and taught by a pharmaceutical company selling polypharmacy patent medicines mislabeled as “homeopathic” to untrained physicians, all looking to practice lucrative homeopathy as if it were the same as conventional medicine. He agreed there was a problem there, but couldn’t seem to understand that this would put us all at a disadvantage. He couldn’t see that this pharmaceutical company, now the sole Canadian-based lab making the Homeopathic remedies Hahnemannian homeopaths use, was poised to reach into a promising new market of untrained MDs, who’d be far more inclined to use their rote prescription patent medicines under the guise of treating patients with Homeopathic medicine. After all, alternative medicine is a huge growth market right now, our patients have all tried conventional methods and those methods have failed. Over 70% of the population now uses some form of alternative medical care–that’s a big chunk of the marketplace that’s up for grabs to Pharmaceutical companies looking for even bigger profits. And that fact puts all the bona fide alternative medical physicians in a disadvantaged position.

He meant well, he was idealistic and completely bamboozled by the lure of “scientific legitimacy”, the kind conventional medicine approves of, the kind that keeps pharmaceutical companies humming. He protested that not enough Homeopaths were familiar with the basic medical sciences, even though he knows full well that those courses are handy in terms of reference, and of knowing about the conventional medical paradigm and how it differs significantly to Homeopathic medical science, which requires a completely different perspective in which to practice effectively. I argued then, and still argue, that a Homeopath had better understand Homeopathic medical perspective and method thoroughly–or stay away from the medicines and the practice of homeopathy all together–choose a modality that’s a lot easier, closer to conventional methods, instead. It would be more useful for us to know what diagnostic tests are available here, so that when our patients bring their results to us we can interpret them effectively, and act accordingly (send them out for even more tests, or use the information in our own differential diagnoses for finding the similimum). But that information’s only taught to MDs–and they’re not willing to share that knowledge. Another fact that should alert everyone concerned that the last priority in this “protective measure” is our patients’ care, that public health and consumer protection are definitely not on the agenda for these regulations.

This conflict was the greatest disappointment I’ve ever felt in my teacher, and in my doctor: to me it was mystifying that he would be willing to argue a point even if it meant we would both be compromised in the end. When I told him this, he told me not to worry, and said, “The government can never take away your right to make a living.”

I couldn’t believe such a capable and learned person could be so politically naive, so gullible. And so thoroughly unaware of our shared history as physicians in North America. They damn well can take away our right to make a living as practitioners away. They could, and they have in the past. Using very similar tactics. Successfully.

I’m on the verge of heartbreak when it’s clear that companies like WalMart have discovered a way to make themselves look virtuous and green for Earth Day. Driving home from the GO Station this morning (Ontario’s own version of Lip Service on the issue of the Stewardship of Nature), I managed to catch almost the entire radio spot (they’re running one on TV, too), featuring WalMart’s “healthy” snack options. There aren’t many of them, just your usual Sun Chip corn/wheat chips, flavoured with an MSG chemical manufacturers can legally call “cheese” because of the political and economic clout companies like WalMart command, selling for “the famous WalMart low price”. The big selling point of the commercial is its message: for every package of such “healthy” foods you buy, WalMart will donate a portion of the proceeds to purchase “green points”, which then go to support and promote the use of “alternative” (and yet unspecified) forms of energy. No word yet on exactly what “green points” we’re talking about–Kyoto Accord green points? The kind of Green “credits” discussed in Brazil’s last biodiversity conference, way back in the last century? What? It’s mystifying in that familiar sloganeering way: you know the phrase would have a little disclaimer star right above it if it appeared in a print ad. In a TV or radio spot, however, it sounds right only until you ask, “what do they mean by that?”

And that’s all WalMart has to do to be absolved of its myriad transgressions against life, people, food, labour, and the planet: feature a pretty, smiling hippie girl on television holding a bag of junk food, telling the world what a good corporate citizen it’s become. That, and perhaps hire Renzo Piano to design them an Optic Green head office somewhere in the South, full of light, and air, with a token nod to solar energy in a glistening panel installation on site. Something more like a sculpture than an actual working fuel source. Just to, you know, say that they did it. So they have a place where they can consult with other “green” experts, who’ve found a way to cross that line between activism and corporate resistance.

In a way the rash of suddenly green corporate citizens is part of a timely lapse in “holidays” — and I have heard an advertising executive interview that Easter and St. Patrick’s day came so close together this year, which left a kind of gap that Earth Day filled perfectly–just in time for “green” marketing, exceedingly lucrative and new. It’s not really that new, however, and definitely not new where food is concerned. What’s interesting is its coincidental presence in a world where so much is happening around food and its distribution right now, so much is affecting its price and accessibility. So much is happening around the kind of food that’s being produced, what’s being wasted, what’s being hijacked for use in non-food product, and what’s being misrepresented to us as “real” and “healthy”.

WalMart’s just another big box store in Canada, most recently a big box food store to rival the 5 other massive big box food corporations currently running the show here–Loblaws, Sobey’s, A&P/Dominion, to name a few. Ever since Loblaws came into the “green” food business, however, nothing in the typical supermarket has actually lived up to the European standard of “organic” food; and the resulting legal definition of “organic” in Canada has become as believable as the legal definition of a “trans fat”. Plenty of the food being sold in these major chains are billed as organic, despite the fact that the only difference between these foods and the store’s regular brand items seem to be packaging. In these grocery stores, “organic” foods contain as much genetically modified grain and soy, as many refined and “enriched” foods, as many soy-derived glutamates and hydrolyzed proteins, and as many artificial colorants, hydrogenated rancid fats, and perfumes as their non-organic counterparts. It’s all about labelling now, as opposed to content–labelling and definition: WalMart is perfectly suited to walk in to a market that’s already been hoodwinked to buy less-than-what’s-stated foods made by other large corporations, usually from food sources far, far away from home. China, mostly; or in countries recently forced to allow grain materials formulated by companies such as Monsanto and Cargil to be grown in large quantities, despite their farmers’ and consumers’ resistance (places like Brazil).

That sounds like the antithesis of “green”, doesn’t it? No matter: sell the consumer a plastic weave bag they’ll think is made out of cloth for a dollar extra, and you can make him or her believe even more strongly in their virtue as protectors of this planet for the coming seven generations. It all looks good and real, just like Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth–but everyone remembers the end of that brilliantly produced film, with its well articulated but terrifying argument: the one suggestion made to “make the effort” to stop Global Warming came in the form of asking people to buy fluorescent light bulbs, instead of incandescent ones.

So the problem of sustainability, which is perfectly attainable, just gets worse. WalMart is moving in very quickly, even where the company faces a great deal of resistance from citizens who are targeted as its market (WalMart inevitably just overrides public concern, decision making power, and law to open up anyway, putting competitors out of business easily). It’s well known for its questionable business practices, its legal transgressions in terms of pay and working conditions and labour practices. It’s known, in Canada, for union busting (since so many WalMart stores have been unionized by their workers–WalMart simply appeals to the local or provincial governments and the unions are dismissed outright and dissolved in those stores, or WalMart just closes up shop until such time as it can reopen as a non-union store). There’s no doubt WalMart needs to account for a great deal of what it does to generate profit, and people need to rethink shopping at WalMart all together: it’s unfortunate a bunch of Earth Day ads demonstrating a commitment that’s as small as possible is the best the corporation is willing to do.

It’s dispiriting, I know. So is the fact that the last canning factory east of the Rocky Mountains, CanGro, is closing, here in St. Davids Ontario. The countless farmers who continue to grow fruit like peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, apples, pears, and berries of all kinds will no longer be able to sell their produce to companies who would put the stuff on the market. We’re talking about arable land in Ontario that’s been used to grow fruit for the last 400 years: no longer marketable because the large food distribution corporations like Loblaws and WalMart prefer to buy food products and produce from China or South America or Chile or California instead. It’s a lot of good Niagara land producing a harvest that is simply ignored here, no longer valued; and, it’s another massive aspect of the Ontario economy (it’s largest sector, actually) that is just shutting down. A lot of people will be forced to pull out fruit trees for a subsidy, and replace them with…what? Corn for ethanol? Or, worse, corn for…the refined processed food industry? More grapes for more agribusiness wineries, fruit which costs tens of thousands of dollars per acre to plant and won’t yield for at least 5 years? And if there is no subsidy, or the subsidy for these changes aren’t enough? What then? More newly constructed Niagara bedroom communities?

The more I learn about this, the more I realize something really sinister seems to be at work here in Niagara. In the CanGro case in particular, the 100 plus staff members were ready and willing to negotiate purchasing the plant themselves, and creating a fruit farmers’ cooperative: but the local Member of Provincial Parliament, Tim Hudak, was once again ineffective at bringing the parties involved together (he also let Cadbury Schweppes close last year–another very important canning/fruit processing plant Niagara farmers depended on, another large employer in the Niagara region). The first and only grape farmers’ cooperative in Canada, 20Bees, was also allowed to fall into receivership despite the fact that so many farmers and wineries in the area need a co-op and the ensured supply of the best quality fruit in order to sustain the Niagara wine industry–but again, no “bail out” could be arranged. Seems very clear that ever since Hudak’s been around, Niagara’s industries have been shutting down quickly and without obstacle, no matter what attempts people have made to save them, and themselves, in the process. Like dominoes, we’ve lost a huge chunk of Ontario’s (and Canada’s, let’s not be simple about this) agricultural industry–this was the biggest industry in the province not 20 years ago. Following that, we’re watching the auto industry close, massive layoff after massive layoff, while Hudak and his party’s federal counterpart, Harper, throw billions of dollars to GM, Chrysler, and Ford just to watch them keep the money and fire everyone anyway, because it’s always given with no strings attached. The Auto industry was the province’s second largest industry–in particular, the second largest industry in Niagara after food–so Niagara is really in trouble. With so much money and effort invested already in an industry as vital as food, I can’t help but wonder why it is we let such astounding opportunities for real “green” business to flourish go, while people we elect continue to prop up businesses which simply aren’t “green” in any way, and simply aren’t interested in giving anything back to the communities which provide them with tax free business operation, a market, and lots of underpaid labour so their profits can soar.

We aren’t manufacturing anything much in Canada anymore as the largest employers started to leave Canada in droves way back when Free Trade was forced on us. That was Niagara’s first blow: produce grown here would no longer make it into Canadian food stores as Loblaws et al contracted to do business with American agribusinesses first. The wine industry grew as a response to that death: people were paid about $4000 per acre to pull out their trees and replace them with vineyards. Now that that industry’s been taken over by multinationals trying to look like small boutique wineries (while putting all the small wineries out of business as quickly as possible), those vineyards are also being pulled up (the 20Bees Co-op represented at least 20 individual vineyard owners, independent farmers–now all out of business as well as out of their vineyards, as some lost everything when that co-op failed). What we have now is more Escarpment land that can serve no purpose for the production of food. We could turn this into a real opportunity to put food from this area on the map, so to speak, as one of the world’s best high quality food sources, particularly to consumers who want to buy from local producers, and want to buy food raised sustainably: but the sad reality is that developers end up buying the land from exhausted farmers. When the Niagara on the Lake farmers who’ve been farming peaches and pears bulldoze their trees this week (that’s Niagara farmer Bill Duffin’s doomed peach orchard being pushed over in the photo above, one healthy tree at a time), they won’t be given enough subsidy to plant anything new–and even if they were, what could they plant that they could actually sell? Agriculturally, the land is worth nothing–unless alternative means of farming can be explored, and implemented–and lets face it, these could just as easily be subsidized as any “replanting” project, and they’d continue to keep producers here, and people working. As a site for a new subdivision development, because of that other bastion of Lip Service in Niagara known as “The Greenbelt Law”, a lot of farmers will be selling their land to builders in exchange for anything they can get to move somewhere where they can actually make a living doing something. Or, the other option: sell the land to developers who put in “Power Centres”: strip malls featuring big box stores in predictable combinations. Invariably, WalMart and Loblaws’ defense strategy to WalMart, the Loblaw’s SuperCentre, come in with these Power Centres to take over where the farmers used to be.

So, finally, even small business owners like farmers are being lost by the thousands in Niagara, all so that big box stores can stomp on in. The foundation of the Canadian economy is still individually owned, small businesses–entrepreneurs, even on a small scale, have always been the most resilient, the biggest form of financial stability and employment possible to the country’s economy. What does it say about us if that’s dying here, so rapidly? It says we have a strange idea about exactly what “Green” entails, for one thing. My secret wish is to see some backbone and fury here: I’d love it if every farmer could take every penny of those subsidies to plant whatever nonsense they’ll be told to plant–genetically modified soy, or Round-Up Ready corn (whatever version of that seed they’re in now), or even the deadly genetically modified rapeseed they use to make Canola oil–and leave their peach trees exactly where they stand. They could use the money to buy the CanGro operation outright and run it themselves anyway, just like the co-op they wanted to create. Grow the fruit sustainably, without deadly chemicals and crazy biotech seeds or caustic fertilizers and market it directly to Canadian consumers who want to buy local, fresh, native, “organic” produce, as that market is growing. Happy Earth Day, yeah.

I have to look for any kind of hope I can find, any sign that people have the means to figure out a way of taking back some of this lost access, the loss of control over something as basic and as fundamentally required as real, nourishing food. And it does exist.

There are still farmers out there who are actually growing produce organically–careful about using heirloom seeds, careful about saving and storing those seeds particularly for foods that have become so heavily modified by the biotech industries. Some people are doing this on a small scale, others are stepping out of that small model and setting up community supported agricultural schemes where local people subscribe to the harvest in advance. All of these farmers have carved out their own markets–educated consumers who will buy from farmers’ market stalls in city centres, or restaurateurs and chefs who insist on sourcing the best and freshest foods available in what is becoming quite a culinary hot spot. Many of these farmers are proudly “uncertified” organic, since “certified organic” has come to be an empty marketing strategy in these parts–and all encourage you to get to know what they do on their farms, get to know what all local producers do with integrity. The vegetables pictured here come from local organic producer whose work in the area has made her something of a leader among foodies and people in the know Linda Crago’s Tree and Twig Gardens Heirloom Vegetable Farm, a CSA she started in my area about 5 years ago that’s grown so large she’s supplying restaurants all over Ontario, as well as customers who can now order as needed every week instead of “buying in” every season.

The produce is not about shipping possibilities or storage ease or even marketability: it’s all about taste, fragrance, variety, the sensuous reality of food we all miss when we consume processed foods or junk foods we’re told are “healthy-er” than plain old Doritos or potato chips. We’re always jumping off from that point of comparison because we’re led to do so: we assume nothing like the assortment of texture and hue and flavour exists for us to choose from, and that our frame of reference begins and ends at what we can buy in a big crinkly package, in a supermarket. But that diversity does exist. The minute I look at those purple and green tomatoes I think of panzanella salads, or simple tomato sandwiches, or even rich homemade sauces or soups that burst with their sweet, intense flavour, and how each variety I choose to work with will create something far less predictable in its quality than the hothouse varieties we can get anywhere. Heirloom plant varieties always surprise with their appearance, texture, and flavour, and they can’t be had in local supermarkets doomed by contractual obligations to buy from large agribusiness producers thousands of miles away. They mature in the garden, their flavours develop from sunlight — not from food additives which coax our bodies to respond so that the lack of real flavour in our food doesn’t seem so apparent.

In my area alone there is a massive potential for a grass-roots-up food regeneration movement: many farm owners are growing older and large farms are too pricey to operate; fruit farmers can opt to find a new market for their produce by targeting consumers directly, or creating “value added” small scale industry to go along with selling the produce directly. If fruit farms are now becoming useless, and so many once-active acres become fallow land, there’s a perfect opportunity for new farmers who wish to court and nurture a more informed consumer base for real organic produce. Since so many fruit farmers will no doubt be asked to rip out their orchards for a subsidy to plant grapes or corn, why couldn’t they be subsidized to farm organically anyway–or even to designate their land for organic farming use, so that agricultural schools could set them up to create community initiatives? The fact is there are thousands of the really “green” agricultural scientists who are emerging from graduate schools already well trained and well versed in the many ways we could produce foods more sustainably in this country–we could actually employ them here, instead of watch them move away to places like Norway or Italy or Sweden, where people see real value in what they know and corporations have far less power over the way food is produced. If we want to think about killing a few birds with one stone, we can even think in terms of economic problem solving–supplying a learning environment/food source/nutritious lunch program for kids in schools, as Alice Waters does in the US with the Edible Schoolyard (or as Jamie Oliver and his friends tried to do in the UK–but we can plan against the outcome he got there); or, we can supplement already overrun food bank programs all over North America with community garden schemes, community canning efforts (especially for those forgotten fruit farmers whose orchard’s produce won’t be canned any other way), and opportunities to help those “in need” produce their own food, even if they haven’t got the land to do so. The possibilities for community and cooperation with each other seem to explode whenever gardening comes up, don’t they?

There’s a real need for foods that are rich in nutrient content, whether those foods be grains or fruit or meats and dairy–and there’s a growing awareness that real foods, in particular the traditional foods, are vital to creating and maintaining human health. What we think of as cultural food traditions are actually stores of nutritional knowledge gleaned over long periods of time by trial and error, and long term observation. Many of the foods we’ve now been led to believe are “deadly” or “unhealthy” simply are not so, nor have they ever been–and ironically, many of the foods we’re now told to believe are healthy (particularly the ones sold to diabetics or those who suffer from cardiac diseases of all kinds) are simply marketing opportunities for various processed food producers. Even mainstream media have begun to expose some of these marketing scams–a recent CBC Marketplace feature focused on the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation’s mandate to sell “Health Check” labels to producers of foods like Becel margarine (100% pure, rancid, hexane-laced hydrogenated soy oil, which we know exacerbates heart disease as well as diabetes). Many Canadians have become outraged to learn that these “labels” are still allowed by the Canada Food guide nutritionists, despite scientific research which warns against ingesting these foods. On the plus side, however, many of the newly outraged Canadians who used to believe the marketing (and in the Canada Food Guide, which has been exposed as yet another big corporate marketing tool) have become even more determined to learn how to make better food choices. And that’s a start, if not a focal point, in creating a demand for real food.

Real food will certainly continue to be a focal point for alternative medical practitioners who specialize in treating and reversing chronic disease, and in averting the long term effects of chronic disease on populations in general. After all, we know that chronic diseases don’t just affect us individually, they have an impact on a generational level, and on a community level as well. Human health in the developed world has actually become significantly compromised over the last 2 generations, despite what modern medicine would like us to believe. People now become chronically ill sooner in their lives, chronic disease is much more commonplace among the population, and overall quality of life declines much sooner for people in our generation and the one preceding ours. What I’m seeing in the latest generation doesn’t bode well for the future, either: we’re at a stage now where prosperous societies produce children with chronic illness that begins very early: from autism and other neurological disorders, to severe allergies to food which start in infancy (or before that), to severe allergies to the environment in general (“environmental” allergies are so prevalent now that various foods and all perfumes are now banned in places like schools as a policy, throughout North America). How did we get so sickly we can’t even live in the world, which is no more polluted now than it’s ever been?

I’m also seeing a universal weakness in an extremely important area, and that is skeletal development. Children with poor dentition are so commonplace now, where once (I’d say even thirty years ago, just over a generation ago) this was very rare. What we’re also seeing quite frequently now is the shocking occurrence of heart disease in even the more physically “fit” athletes, at very early ages. Heart attacks that kill at 13, for example; heart attacks that take place right on the basketball court, or at the track meet. In children who are supposedly supremely physically fit, at ages closer to childhood than adulthood. At some point, we have to begin to acknowledge how much of these deteriorations have taken place not as a result of genetics but of the supposed “better living through chemistry” diet we’ve all subsisted on for decades now. And we have to begin to seek out the real “green” alternatives our ancestors depended on for full, sustained health. In our own era, right now, that means the work that small scale local producers are trying to get done in the communities around them, with community support and cooperation.

So, yes, it does look bleak when it looks like all the Big Food Boys are muscling their way in to take over what it is we’d really like to see happen with our food, what it is we’d really like to (need to) buy and use: but the fact is that things can definitely be made to change in our favour. Organizations conducting privately funded, independent research on nutrition aren’t the standard yet, not by a long shot– but they do exist. The largest one and the most comprehensive in its scope is the Weston A. Price Foundation, which creates a wealth of information on nutritional science based not only on traditional cultural food knowledge but also on pure scientific inquiry, funded by nothing except individual participant donations (in other words, they aren’t working for Big Pharma, or government food marketing boards, or bio-tech firms and chemical farming companies in any way). This foundation also does advocacy work–with its foremost scientists often speaking out to demand access to real foods such as raw milk and dairy. As a resource for people who need access to these foods to treat health concerns such as autism and environmental sensitivities, WAP has brought many people together. From there, people seem to be naturally creative when they work cooperatively. They can work together to lower the cost of access to various foods or supplements or even medical care, just because they create solutions to their existing common problems. It’s quite a revolutionary thing, community. Right now, in the Niagara region, it’s our only hope if agriculture as its been done in this area of the country is to continue.

Even if all we have the strength or energy or inclination to do is plant our own garden, no matter what size it is, that’s a significant contribution to ourselves as well as to the world’s ecological health–quite an impressive point for “green” living against the efforts of big box retailers intent on making themselves look good despite their long and ongoing records for exploitation and abuse. As small as that seems, it would have a great deal more impact than switching out your incandescents for some twisty neon bulbs you’d probably only be able to find at WalMart.

Okay, so I moved my blog here from blogger a while ago, thinking the transition was going to be a bit of a hassle, but nothing near the headache it’s actually become.

I don’t know why it seems to be beyond me, but the set up of this template is driving me crazy. Nothing about this layout seems to work as it says it will…and consequently the sidebars on this blog appear to be compiled by an illiterate. Worse, by a computer illiterate. All I wanted was a bit of anonymity, some protection from the ability to be found on line. Sure, I did a foolish thing, I published someone’s name and it brought him straight to me…but is this the kind of punishment I have to endure? Is bad design going to torment me my whole life long, no matter what I do? Haven’t I paid my penance already, in being “found” and forced to move?

I’ve tried setting up the blogspot site again and naturally I can’t import everything I’ve put here since the move, so, no go. But no wonder it’s more popular. It’s just a lot more intuitively designed. I have to keep saving and redoing and saving and clicking to save and hunting about for the obvious with this format on wordpress and I get nowhere–the text boxes don’t format or allow for or respect punctuation. This shouldn’t have to be tougher than brain surgery, people. And for the love of all things pertaining to the goddess, I shouldn’t have to change and rechange and reset and go back and reset the damned colour of the font after changing it for the entire goddamned post.

Already.

(sigh)

To round off my streak of odd fortune, this morning after I dropped M. off outside his office, I waited by a stop light to make a left turn. I inched up a bit, anticipating the advanced green…and it’s a good thing I did. The next thing I saw was a green car flying over the median , sent careening over some ice so that it was airborne for what seemed like 10 seconds. It landed just millimeters away from my trunk, with a loud “crash” sound as it hit the pavement, hard, facing oncoming traffic. Bits of metal and ice sheets were just flying off it, I looked back at the car in time to see the little shower of parts end.I narrowly missed yet another collision. Don’t think I’ll update my doc with this incident–just don’t want to give it that much mental space. But this is incident number 3. It’s happening, I’m accepting it, and I’m hoping it will wrap up soon.

Pat and I went out to see a mindless movie last night–the least favourite thing for me to do on a Friday evening, when all the theatres in town are crowded with restless, excited teenagers who want nothing more than a place to blow off some steam. She had complimentary tickets to the movie, and I bought the requisite popcorn and soda. She’s been dealing with an unhappy and frustrating relationship lately, so we both needed an couple of hours just laughing at foolish sight gags and rapid-fire dialogue. Owen Wilson was my personal bonus to the whole deal.  Aside from twisting that whole blonde boy archetype into rubble with his broken nose, he strikes me as the kind of man who’s not a simple matinee idol.  Anyone who’s made a career making films like Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tannenbaums deserves a second look, even if the “comedies” he’s making now are stringently well suited only to the howling bands of teenagers lining the cinema rows this evening.  There’s a sensitive and thinking black comic soul in that sunny Texan package:  I’ll watch just about anything he’s in, provided this is as bad as it gets.

We hung out afterwards just talking about new developments, things that have been happening to us and for us since she and I last talked. She’d been away up North with her fiance after having a bit of an argument with him about the circumstances around the holiday…and I knew the trip wasn’t really going to be relaxing for her. I listened, and then kept bringing my mind back around to a patient I worked with this week who was stuck in the same obsession as I was. 43, frustrated with a husband who didn’t seem to want to prioritize financial needs for their future, and restless from being out of work and a little rudderless, she started to think about another man. It’s exactly what happened to me last year, when M seemed more than ready to work against my efforts to find some kind of financial stability.

As Gilda Radner used to say: “It’s always ’somethin’.”

I’m beginning to see the problems that come up with relationships as less the result of individual failure and more the result of poor design.   How much easier would all of this be if we didn’t all feel like one special person must be the one to provide us with all our emotional needs?  All our physical needs?  And out of that concerted effort, all of our spiritual needs too? Why are we still, despite what we now know of its origins in ownership and trade, hooked on the idea of marriage, for life?

So we finally signed the contract on the new car last night, and I’m finding it hard to process my emotions about this ordeal. M. took a long time to get this transaction to take place, and when it happened it came out in a way that was quite different from the way it was represented to me. The salesman was dishonest about so many things–so I’ve come away from the deal feeling completely suckered. But the worst part about the entire experience is M.’s reaction to the situation: when I signed the contract for the car, I voiced my displeasure about the car as a demo–it had 10000 kms on it, before I even saw it! And yet we were being given a price which was only a few dollars less than the price for a brand new car; finally, when the car was delivered to me, another 60 kms had been added to it–so, in effect, I signed for a car which had fewer kms, but was not delivered that car…and now M. is reluctant to demand that that change be made to our documentation, to reflect that. He’s furious with me for voicing my concern, but he seems to have no qualms about committing me and my income to this deal for the next five years, no matter what I think of the deal. It’s an understatement to say I’m disappointed, and not just with the car, which is almost irrelevant.

What’s most hurtful is the fact that I was being made to feel that I could not voice my concerns about what was obviously an unfair deal: we were buying a used car, not a new one, and yet my husband had agreed that we would pay the full price; the car was further used so that our documents would have to be changed, but the salesman decided he would try to get away without changing them (probably because he duped my husband so successfully on every other point). I found out as well that my husband agreed to pay for “delivery” charges on the car, which I would never have allowed since the car was used when we received it. I would never agree to pay those charges on a brand new car that was being made to my specifications, and then delivered: I’d never allow it on what we got. And I’m furious to the point of violence that my husband dared to silence me on these points, while strapping me to the agreement regardless of my concerns.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt shortchanged and silenced by M. in matters where my financial stability and future have been the issue. He doesn’t see that, and it’s extremely troubling. When this discussion took place last year about this time, I felt my mind was completely made up on the matter: we were through, and it was just a matter of time before that would be evident. I looked to other sources for intimacy, and got on with things. This time around, however, I don’t think I’ll need intimacy or support so much at all.

If I can’t get him to understand this well, we are not going to last. He’s a good man, who claims to love me: but he’s a good man who acts like he does not love me whatsoever. 

Times like these, I don’t want to be married anymore.