Social Distancing as done in Qualicum Beach, BC

Living the good life on Vancouver Island.



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Tree Spotted in Downtown Core Frightens Residents

“Haven't we progressed beyond that nature shit yet?” asked a high-rise building security manager when a tree was spotted in the neighbourhood. It was growing behind a nearby community association's daycare centre. “I mean: nature? Birds? Seriously, in this day and age?”

“We live right around the corner from it,” said one tenant of the high-rise, mouth trembling, on the verge of tears. “Does it harbour disease? Bugs? Poisonous songbirds?”

“And right beside the daycare centre too,” added her companion, disgusted. “Right in front of innocent urban kids. We don't pay high taxes to live in a dense smart city for this. This is dumb.”

City officials couldn't say whether the tree was an overlooked survivor of development or a new sapling unaccountably sprouting from dusty, chemical-laced earth: no biology-trained staff who might have a theory remain in the City's employ after recent staff changes. 

“What I don't understand,” said one City Councillor, “is how this outlaw tree escaped the surveillance cameras. As guardians of the public purse we need to hold the surveillance service-provider accountable. We love pavement here, but we won't allow anyone to pave over cracks in official transparency and accountability. The next thing we know, freedom will replace bureaucracy and leaves will be falling in gutters. They'll land on top of safely-injected homeless people just lying in their sleeping bags, minding their own business.”

Police suspect that Someone might be extracting Something from the bark of the tree in an archaic process once used by illegal substance labs. The Mayor promises to acquire Bark Recognition Cameras for the city. Volunteers from the “Leave Leaves Out” campaign applaud this announcement. “We'll never go Back-To-Bark in this town,” they assure the Urban Purist Support Group.

Do YOU know what time it is?

Whatever Happened to All the Clocks? 

Every self-respecting town square used to have one. Now everyone's supposed to look at their cell phones. The clock tower once bound the townsfolk together in shared chronological awareness. Now there's no tower to orient by (in space or in time), only the gadget in the pocket. But the cellphone-free holdouts never quite know what the time is ...
http://www.short-humour.org.uk/10writersshowcase/youare.htm

Virus Causes Ladder Shortage

If "the first casualty of war is truth", the first casualty of an emergency is civil rights.

Healthy people not diagnosed with any illness are being told to turn their homes into jails and keep themselves imprisoned. Sheep-like, many do. Free-thinkers are in danger of being criminalized. The concept of personal adult decision-making is fragile, likely to collapse at the first puff of panic.

This has led to unintended consequences. Everyone has forgotten the shortage of masks due to a new shortage: ladders. People jailed at home have taken to their roofs as platforms for fresh air and a view of something other than a computer screen. To get up there, they've bought all the ladders. Suppliers are running out. Even people afraid of heights and without roofs have stockpiled some "just in case".

Unfortunately some roofs are steep and an increasing number of jail-breakers have fallen off them. Injured, they've had to be taken to hospitals where they're filling beds that might be wanted for virus patients, so Government has issued a new bulletin: 

LADDER PURCHASES FORBIDDEN. TRESPASSING ON YOUR OWN ROOF IS A CRIME. TEAMS WILL BE SENT OUT WITH BINOCULARS TO FIND HOUSEHOLDERS DEFYING THIS PROHIBITION. EXPECT FINES OR JAIL TIME -- AS IN, HOUSE ARREST. (PM clarifies - sort of: You can't be sent to public jail because you're not allowed to congregate publicly. If you didn't want to be sentenced to house arrest, you should have stayed inside.)

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Health Officer Recommends --To escape Covid-19 AVOID DIGITAL DEVICES

Ha! Scared you, didn't I? Although the virus does indeed land on surfaces like keyboards and smartphones, they aren't telling us to "stay away from crowded websites" yet, or "maintain distance from computers".
What would life be like if they did, if "computer virus" became a biological as well as a digital thing?
What if the Chief Medical Officer told everyone "YOU MUST IMMEDIATELY DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM YOUR COMPUTER BEFORE IT KILLS YOU"? Imagine the panic then - and the wailing about the economy.
Maybe we'd spend more time outdoors, enjoying nature and fresh air, and less hunched over our digital devices. That would be healthier indeed.
Maybe, without email, we'd communicate with hand-written notes, dropping them into each others' mail slots like characters were forever doing in Victorian novels.
We could have message boards in every community -- physical ones that is, on suitable walls.
We could escape the group-herding of Facebook, the mindless trash-talk of Twitter, the surveillance of Google.
This is looking better by the minute. Maybe we'd learn to remember things again, instead of just Googling them. We'd keep mind and memory in our brains instead of out-sourcing them.
We'd avoid the prison camp of Smart Cities like the one Google-Alphabet is planning for Toronto's Waterfront district -- a prison worse than any hospital, one where it's civil rights that are on life-support.
We would no longer be stalked by our devices which track us around cities and stores, reporting our movements to police and advertisers alike.
Maybe the old-fashioned Soap Box Orator would come back to the parks and squares -- anyone with ideas to share would stand up and speak, keeping free speech alive in the "agora". (Stand at the edge of the crowd to listen, if you insist on avoiding physical contact -- at least you could get to see the faces of other regulars. Actual facial recognition!)
Being outside so much we could watch birds coming and going, and the colours of trees changing, and at night notice the movement of moon and stars.
I don't know about everyone else but I'm feeling healthier already! I do get the irony of what I'm saying though: I'm telling you online how great it would be if we all went offline. So far it's but a health-work-in-progress. But thanks for the possibility, "corona" virus: if only you really did crown our lives with this silver lining.


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When the Colonials Leave Canada

"You stole our land - now go away," said a Canadian First Nations protester recently to the descendants of colonial settlers. So, what if 37.6 million Canadians agree to leave?

"Be careful what you wish for, in case it comes true", goes the old saying. Let's do a thought-experiment: what would happen next, if First Nations people got their wish and non-aboriginal Canadians self-exiled?

With descendants of Colonials the more recent immigrants also depart -- including the very last one from wherever s/he came in the world whose people Canada had welcomed in. After the 37.6 million Canadians leave, one and a half million First Nations people remain.

What's life like now, for the 1.5 million? The tax base is gone: no federal or provincial governments are left, meaning no more subsidies, no support for Band Councils, no welfare, housing programs, native health services remain.

The hated "colonial" education system is gone. Illiteracy grows, quickly and alarmingly. Roads deteriorate, no engineers remaining to maintain them. Ferries stop running. Avalanches are not cleared nor bridges repaired. Auto repair businesses are gone: no brake checks, no oil changes. No oil is refined or imported.

The railways, closed down by protesters in February 2020, stay closed for good. Food, gas and heating fuel are no longer distributed. Universities are abandoned. Professionals in all fields disappear. Their buildings -- universities, hospitals and offices -- are emptied, and then looted. Police forces have left -- sent away like everyone else employed by colonial institutions. Air traffic controllers too are gone, their towers abandoned. Planes from elsewhere cannot land. They try, and collide, and everyone on board is killed.

Parliament and Legislative buildings in each capital are abandoned. Homeless people move into them. They quarrel. One invention aboriginals were glad to inherit from "settlers" was guns. They use them. The justice system that ran the courts has disappeared, de-populated of experts. Anyone can be a lawyer now -- practicing indigenous law. People don't feel that justice is being done, so the tribes replay the wars of the past. Raids happen, rivals are killed, slaves are taken once more.

With skidoos, all-terrain vehicles and ferries un-serviced, breaking down and their parts not imported, and grocery stores emptying of food, aboriginal people are now able to return to "traditional lifestyles". The Nature they considered themselves the guardians of no longer seems welcoming however, for winter temperatures kill when there's no heating fuel. Only foraged wild plants are available to eat, once food-importing colonialist grocery chains are gone. Animals are killed with extreme cruelty, once the bullets are used up: now spears and primitive traps do the job -- slowly. Off the west coast, some people decide to hunt orcas again. Calves are killed, mother orcas mourn, hunters drown.

In the decaying cities, elevators get stuck, often with people inside them, trapped until they die there. Rats take over the high-rises. Banks are closed; no money can be withdrawn from cash points. On reserves, pipes freeze and crack in the houses. Hot water heaters aren't replaced. Once the plumbing fails hygiene goes out the windows -- which aren't replaced when they break. Drug stores run out of medication; what's left is looted and sold on a black market. People begin burning books as fuel, looting them from the public libraries with relish, as hated records of "colonialist" thought and culture.

The printing presses fall silent, newspapers die, the whole publishing industry dies with no means of production and no customers for consumption. No service providers remain to maintain cellphone coverage. Gradually, tablets and laptops reach their planned obsolescence and aren't replaced. The Last Nations gather around their book-fueled fires, beating drums and telling stories about the time they got what they wished for: the time when the colonials were banished and their traditional lifestyle came back.

In Canada, every day's Apology Day

My Apologies

    I want to say I'm sorry for your loss. I heard you'd lost inclusion and respect, and possibly my ancestors were responsible. I'm sure my ancestors would be very sorry had they known more about inclusion back in the day when they were alive and people didn't fret enough about exclusion and inequity and such.

    I'm sorry you feel dis-entitled and disrespected -- if you do -- my apologies if I've got that wrong and you're actually perfectly fine. Although it must be a burden if you are unfairly excluded from victim-hood. Sorry about that. I didn't mean to be insensitive. My mistake: sorry.

    I apologize if my race has had anything to do with it. My race is something I inherited unconsciously, but I know that's no excuse. I apologize for my ancestors having the genes they did, I'm sure if they'd realized all the trouble their genes would cause they wouldn't so thoughtlessly have passed them on. Some of them even had the bad taste to get their names on monuments and statues, not knowing how offensive monuments would become (or even that their names would be on them), but again, that's no excuse. I'm sure they're posthumously regretful and that they’re perfectly okay with having their statues torn down. Sorry about historic names and places. Sorry about history, it should never happen.

    But don't worry, the politicians will apologize for it, they're in training for the Apology Olympics. I'm only a recreational apologist myself. But it's puzzling that an "apologia" originally meant a speech in defence of something, explaining and vindicating when no offence had been intended. But sorry: I know intent has nothing to do with it and that making amends means you must pretend that offence was intended, even if it wasn't ...

    But sorry, I'm losing the thread, I apologize for not sticking to the point which is my guilt and your victim-hood. Sorry for being obtuse, for it's clear that the insulted have a right to feel insulted and no one can take that away from them, for that would be to pile guilt upon guilt and even all the hand-washing of Lady Macbeth would fail to wash the stain away.

     I'm sorry that that lady was so entitled by the way, she being titled. And not only that but heterosexual and Anglo-Saxon, so her descendants would be settlers of a particularly accomplished, educated colonial type, which is elitist. No wonder she couldn't stop washing her hands, perhaps anticipating the unclean doings of her race.

    But sorry Lady Macbeth: maybe it's not all your fault because you had to deal with toxic masculinity in your partner. So you don't need to hate yourself as much as I do. If only I could hate myself enough maybe I could finally stop apologizing. 

    But sorry -- let's get back to you. You have every right to feel aggrieved about ... your grievances. I hope you'll forgive me. I'll follow the political leaders in learning what you're aggrieved about – or would that be cultural appropriation? Sorry: by “learning” I didn't mean I'd become in any way elitist-ly "learned" (mea culpa).

     I don't know why, since we have a national “day” for everything else, Canada doesn't have an Annual Official Apology Day. We have a day for every disease, we have Oceans Day, Bee Day, Orange Shirt Day, Seniors, Child, Multicultural Day, and dozens more. If we had an Apology Day everyone could celebrate it by surging into the streets and blocking traffic (so the traffic knows we're serious) and waving signs saying I'M SORRY. A blanket apology would let all the offended people feel included at once by the apolog-industry.

     But wait -- I am begin to feel something new: I believe it's the onset of apology-fatigue. I even foresee the day when I will retire from this tearful wallow. Sooner rather than later, I think. In fact: why not now?! I feel that my sorrow-stamina has suddenly run down. I'm afraid I may not make it to the next national apolog-orgy after all.

Please accept my regrets,

FJ

"Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl." -- Nellie McClung

Is it time Canada listened to this one-time Member of Parliament?


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