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That's how many people died in traffic accidents in the one hour I was grocery shopping this morning.  Nevermind Avian flu, Swine flu, malaria, Ebola, Zika, H1-N1 or COVID, cars are killing 1.5 million people every year around the world, according to the World Health Organization.  That's almost 4,000 deaths EVERY DAY!

Traffic accidents are the top killer of people aged five to 29 -- outpacing any illness and exceeding the combined annual casualties of all the world's armed conflicts.  From 2013 to 2016, the traffic death toll jumped by 100,000 -- not including the 50 million who don't actually die, but are severely and permanently maimed.

In the U.S., 36,560 people died in car crashes in 2018 -- about the same number as killed by guns.  It's astounding!  And in case you think you're safer walking, or riding your bike, in the U.S., you're not.  In the same year, 7,140 health nuts bit it doing these "harmless" activities.  Yet, no one gives a sh-t?!

So, while we're all wringing and washing our hands, staying home and wearing masks, we're in more danger crossing the street or tooling around the average parking lot.  All this delicious data I gleaned from an article in the March/April edition of 'Foreign Affairs' magazine.  Folks, it's always in the numbers.

But the reason no one talks about this is because it's all about the auto industry.  As I always say, whither the car, whither the world economy.

The world runs on cars, so mum's the word!

   

I don't get it either?

Many people die every year from regular flu and this year is no exception, which is why I don't get the hysteria around the new virus?  Here's a headline stashed in the back pages of 'The Calgary Herald':

It's the same with pneumonia.  About 7,000 Canadians die from that disease every year too, mostly seniors.  So, as I said, I don't get it?!

A failure

Canada's reaction to this virus has been an unmitigated disaster.  All too little, too late.  Here's one reason, this person:

Canada's chief medical officer, Teresa Tam, didn't act quickly enough because she didn't want to single out and blame China for fear of racism, etc., etc., etc.  Hello!  Wake up or quit!  

Tam failed, as many editorials have claimed.  As a result, here's what's happening in Alberta:

Here's the reality for most households:

All the provincial premiers are ignoring Trudeau and doing their own thing(s).  Thank God for that! 

E I E I Oh

Trudeau's daily "briefings" are a joke.  He says nothing and answers nothing.  As far as getting all that money announced out to those who need it, forget about it.  All talk about EI might just as well be "E I E I Oh".  Joe Blow can't walk into a local office, stick his hand out and say, "Please give me some of the money the prime minister promised yesterday."  Bureaucracy doesn't work like that.  A lot of paper has to be filled out, forms approved, stamped and moved around and around and around before any money appears.

As I said, it's all a joke and anyone who knows anything about Ottawa knows it.  They didn't call us "paper pushers" for nothing.   

But I wanted to talk about a friend in Italy, who has not been outside her home since Feb. 20th.  With two young children, she and I are in touch via fb and email and my heart goes out to her.  Two of her close neighbours and her aunt have died, several more are in intensive care, she can't see her sister, who lives in the same city (Milan) and her parents are far away and isolated.  Unfortunately, Italy didn't act quickly enough and the whole country is a ghost. 

Our local grocery store announced that the store would be given over to seniors from eight to nine each morning.  Stupidly, I went.  What a disaster!  Shelves empty, long check-out lines and the place filled with much younger people swarming us.  Won't be doing that again! 

Civility is dead among any culture other than the middle-aged, white one.  Waiting in line, I said to the middle-aged, white woman behind me, "Sorry, I have forgotten something.  If the line moves, just go ahead of me, please."  Off I ran, but when I returned, she had pushed my cart along without taking my place.  I cannot say the same for other cultures in that store.  For them, it was every shopper for him/herself. 

Very sad to see.  Puts me in mind of 'Lord of the Flies'. 

We weren't, they were

I'm always bragging that my cohort invented feminism.  "We went to the barricades for you," I scold women who don't take advantage of -- or abuse -- everything we fought for in combining life as a wife and mother with staying in the workforce.

Reading an obituary in 'The Glob and Mail' today reminded me that we weren't in the vanguard.  Women like Donna Scott (and Jean Portugal, see "A true press suffragette," Jan. 10, 2017) were.  How well I remember Donna Scott during my years at Maclean Hunter Publishing in Toronto in the early seventies.  Back then, I thought she was a bitch; now I realize how tough she had to have been to get where she did when she did.

The publishing business was definitely a man's world back then, but if you had talent, there was a place for female journalists and I grabbed one.  I landed in the business publications division of M-H and ran into Donna periodically.  A no-nonsense "broad" in the best sense of that word, she straddled both sides of the street.  In other words, she used her feminine charms when she had to and pulled out the tough street smarts the rest of the time.  I knew she was older, but I would not have guessed 19 years.  In other words, she was blazing the trail while I was cheer-leading my way through high school and drinking and "ahem-ing" my way through university.

"She was just about the first woman in everything she turned to," reads her obit. She was the first woman promoted to the senior ranks of M-H and thereafter hit the top rungs of a whole host of private and public sector positions.  "Donna mentored many women and inspired others," it goes on.  She chose not to mentor me, but she did inspire me to take absolutely no BS from male colleagues or bosses.

She had both flare and presence.  "When she entered the room, one would know she had arrived.  Never hesitant to point out one's grammatical faux pas or violation of etiquette rules, she also made sure her family and friends knew that following the proper dress code for every occasion was mandatory."  To all that I can attest.  While we were all sporting mini skirts, Donna was clad in a business suit.  However, when it came to grammar, I still copy her in this obsession.  Working at M-H, you had to have it all grammatically correct, or else the red pens would mercilessly attack your copy.

All the while I worked with Donna -- well, not really "with", just in the same building -- I assumed she had no children.  I knew she was married, but she kind'a kept that an irrelevant aspect of her life, choosing instead to hang out with the boys at the top who wielded the power.  Did she ever bring her husband along to social events?  Never, so neither did any of the other women.

But lo-and-behold, along with a husband -- whose name she never adopted, by the way -- Donna had four sons!  Well, blow me away!  Daycare?  Must have just handled it.  Time off when a kid was sick?  Didn't happen.  Leaving early for a parent-teacher interview?  Out of the question.

Donna, I bow to you.  You were truly the definition of the "liberated woman" 20 years before the rest of us even knew what it was all about!       

 

Ghoulish

So, they had to drag that cadaver Pastor Mansbridge from the crypt today to pronounce on Covid 19.  Gawd!  Why?  "This isn't like 9/11," he intoned.  OMG!  That was absolutely breathtakingly brilliant, pastor!  I had no idea! 

Here in Cowtown, the pools are closed.  Why?  Afterall, pools are really one, huge vat of hand sanitizer, are they not?  We should all just eschew the showers and go home covered in chlorine, but they have shuttered the pools, so that's that. 

Did a speedy booze-shop drive by today, even though I am on one of my regular cleanses.  Ralph privatized the liquor industry here a number of years ago, so there's one on every corner and they're all open.  I hear the LCBO is closed.  Wow!  Have they started rioting yet?!  Throwing caution to the winds, I even went out and got a haircut today.  No point in looking ugly while one is in lock-down. 

Declaring a "state of emergency" means governments can tap into bigger money pots, so that's the trick there.  But everything's still operating and if you keep your distance, you're OK.  Afterall, all we've heard from "experts" 24/7 is "wash your hands and maintain a social distance."  Done and done. 

 

Wet markets

That's where all these plaques, viruses, epidemics and pandemics start and this one is no different.  The black plague came out of the Gobi Desert in the middle ages, the Spanish flu, bird flu and SARS from China, etc., and now this.  And all because Asian cultures eat bizarre creatures, insects, reptiles, monkeys and birds which they purchase live, take home and kill in the kitchen.  Is this mainly to enhance sexual prowess?  Probably because there is a huge underground industry in the stuff here in North America. 

Just heard another genius medical "expert" on TV say, "The good news is that all cases are originally travel-related."  Well, duh!  Of course they're travel-related because the disease started in China, not here! 

Ah well, time to hunker down and eat leftovers. 

Getting sick of it

You can't turn on CTV or CBC without being bombarded by the same information about the virus.  Yes, yes, we all know, wash your hands and stay away from people.  After two weeks of this, it's all a bit tedious because, unless you are living on Mars, you know all this.

The disturbing thing to me is that all the messages from medical "professionals" are different.  With the pretend-PM at home, hiding under the bed, there is absolutely no leadership in this crisis.  All the provincial medical officers give different advice and the federal "expert", Theresa Tam, rarely says anything.  So, it's every "expert" for him/herself at this point.  Our mayor, the useless and absent Nenshi, gave this profound advice the other day, when he poked his head out from his lair in his mother's basement:  "Well, it wouldn't hurt to have a few extra cans of tuna on hand."

I kid you not!  That's all he said! 

Ventured to the local grocery store early this morning, after I got out of the pool.  Usually empty at this time of the day, it was packed!  The shelves weren't empty, just spotty, but the lineups at the cash were ridiculous.  "There is nothing wrong with our supply chains," the cashier told me.  "All you need is three-days' food because we have the supplies and we're constantly re-stocking shelves."

Of course, that fell on deaf ears.

The good news is the lanes at the pool are pretty well empty, so I get one all to myself these "pandemic" days.  Every morning I look for Jerry, my family physician swim buddy.  If he's there, I feel reassured and he was there today. 

Onward and upward!

Clipboard Boy

"How's everybody doing today?!  Now, ladies, let's move our arms and legs," he screams into his famous mouthpiece while strutting around the pool deck.  I'd like to kill him!  He is instructing the fat ladies' aquasize class while some of us still try to swim lengths, jammed into two lanes from six.  Do they listen?  Absolutely not.  All they do is chat and float around with their belts on.  With apologies to those in other pools who actually work in the water, for these slugs it's not an exercise class, it's a social event.

They'd be better off to go away and have a coffee.  And don't get me started on the shower caps!  But back to Clipboard Boy.  For some reason, I am one of those shallow people who judges people on first impressions.  I either like them, or I don't.  With Ken, it was an instant "Oh Gawd".  On he shuffles to the pool deck a full half hour before the class starts.

Chomping at the bit to collapse four swim lanes, it's all he can do to restrain himself until the prescribed 15 minutes ahead.  But just to screw up one lane, he puts in the fat ladies' stairs, effectively closing one lane to swimmers.  "It's a health and safety regulation," he solemnly intones when I ask why so early?  "But we can't use that lane," I used to fruitlessly add to deaf ears.  These women get into that lane a half hour before their class starts and dog paddle around blocking it completely.  Why they are not told to wait 'til their aquasize class starts is beyond me?!  "Can you imagine if I got into that class and started swimming laps through it?  Or if I wandered onto the basketball court and walked around while a game was underway?!" I once asked the manager.  "Oh well, you couldn't do that."  So why can they eff up our swim lanes?  Same logic, but it escaped her completely.

But back to Clipboard Boy.  There he is, with his famous shoes, shorts and officious clipboard, checking off names.  Gawd help you if you haven't registered 24 hours ahead!  (Clipboard actually instigated that rule so he would have some reason to wave his clipboard and pen around.)  But never mind, these women just push past him and lumber on down the stairs.  If you ever watched 'Kids in the Hall', Clipboard Boy is exactly like that nerd with the plastic pen holder in his shirt pocket who ran around yelling, "My pen, my pen!" if anyone ever walked off with one.

A year or so ago, B decided to try the class.  Here's what happened:  "That's my wife over there, swimming in that lane."  "That's your wife!" shrieked one 250-pounder.  "Everyone hates her!  Doubling down she went on, "How can you stand to live with her?!"  "Why don't you go over and have a chat with her," advised B.  "I'm sure she would be happy to straighten you out about the rules."  Commenting on the fact that she had had both knees replaced, he added:  "So what you're saying is because you are so overweight, you have cost Alberta health $75,000 or $100,000, right?"  She hasn't spoken to him since.

I endure this three mornings a week.  I really need to get there earlier. 
 

Another farce rolls around

As another International "Women's" Day rolls around, we remain mired in the same-old-same-old.  Frankly, it's embarrassing.  In fact, "celebrating" women's achievements probably turns more people off than on.  I know it does me -- sort of like Secretary's Day, an excuse to take your secretary to lunch and put the moves on her.  Frankly, singling women out and setting them aside with a token day is on a par with making them wear the degrading and identity-erasing burka or hijab.

(As an aside, it's not really "International" because you can't include dumps like Afghanistan, where the movement hasn't exactly caught fire.)  These pictures are just a couple of examples of how one group of women are not exactly treated as poster girls for the "movement":

Naziel is a hereditary chief who has come out in support or gas and oil.  Note how two women of the same rank were treated.  A hereditary chief since 1988, Naziel said, "I'd like to see them try that with me."  Yep, we've come a long way, baby!

The fact that we have to laud achievements that are everyday, ordinary jobs for men is ridiculous and only highlights the reality that women still lag far behind -- often by choice.  I'm talking about the many well-educated women who quit working when they have a kid.  You don't see men doing that, notwithstanding the few "liberated" fathers who take parental leave instead of the mother.  That's another joke statement right there.  "I'm so privileged to be able to stay home with my baby," brag so many well-off new mothers.  Frankly, you're not.  You're betraying those of us who went to the barricades 50 years ago so you could actually continue to work after a short maternity leave.  Face it, daycare provides a much more stimulating environment for infants and toddlers than any "mum's club", ( i.e., "wine-drinking" gaggle) could ever pretend to.

The reason there remains a wage gap between women and men is because women drop out and can never catch up.  You get out of the race and the employer quickly fills your spot with someone else.  For my kids, I took six months off and returned to work to find someone else sitting in my office, doing my job.  But I took on another and caught up, retiring at the executive level with a nice pension.  No so the many women who take a few years off and find themselves being asked, "Jane Doe who?" A few years out of the workforce is deadly, something that hasn't changed in the many years since I had kids, which is why I jumped right back in.

As for daycare, mine went through neighbours, after school programs, live-in nannies, parents and a whole host of child-care solutions and did very well -- in spite of the fact that I wasn't around to provide a "Sesame Street" environment for them.  You do what you have to do, but leaving the workforce was something I never even considered.

The whole "Women's movement" thing has clouded and warped societal impressions of women that impede us today.  "The primaries show that gender equality is a pipe dream," writes Lawrence Martin in 'The globe and Mail'.  Talking about the humiliating defeat and drop out of Elizabeth Warren, Martin says:

"What a washout for women the presidential race has become.  The Democrats fielded the strongest, most impressive list of female candidates for a presidential nomination ever.  They've gone nowhere.  It wouldn't have been so dismaying if the women were(sic) up against some mightily impressive male candidates at the top of their games.  But they were trounced by two men in their late 70s and beaten in the early primaries by a kid mayor of a mid-sized town."

What the public apparently rejected were female candidates, thanks to the women's movement's insistence on special rules, exemptions, considerations and allowances over many years.  The electorate simply saw men as more dependable, less sensitive and less shrill -- unlike the hectoring Warren, who sounded like everybody's nagging wife and finger-wagging mother.  That leaves a contest between two white men pushing 80, which tells you how low public opinion remains for women.

"Ban-Men feminism is a now a trend within the movement that encourages women to play up any 'ugh-men' sentiment we may have experienced," writes Phoebe Maltz Bovy in today's 'Globe and Mail'.  What she is referring to are the sexual predators and overt male chauvinists, like Weinstein and Trump.  Some in the "Ban-Men" movement urge sex strikes, but the problem with the whole mess can be summed up like this:  If we hate men, what are we doing with them and -- with the obvious exception of men like the aforementioned -- why do we find many of them hot?

Thank you Gloria and Germaine. 

p.s.  Has anyone else noticed that blacks get a month, aboriginals a week and women a day?  Not that I care, but who decided that and why?

   

A complete dog's breakfast

Although it is unceded, i.e., not signed away or acquired, The Crown nevertheless owns so-called unceded land and that includes all Indigenous lands, traditional territories and reserve land.  It's complicated, which is why lawyers are making so much money squabbling in the courts.

According to the research I have done, the courts have reaffirmed that areas under Aboriginal title are not outside the jurisdiction of the provinces and that provincial law still applies.  An Indian reserve is specified by the Indian Act as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band."  Further digging reveals that, simply stated, First Nations do not own their land.  "Her Majesty continues to own the majority of reserve land, continues to have complete jurisdiction over the land and continues to manage the use of the land for the benefit of the residents."  

I was not aware that only 9.7% of the total land in Canada is privately-owned; the rest is Crown Land -- including all indigenous and unceded land.  In B.C., where the blockades began, 94% of all land is owned by The Crown, two percent of which is covered by fresh water.  Federal Crown Land makes up a further one percent of the entire province, including Indian reserves, defence lands and federal harbours.  In that province, five percent is privately-owned.

But as the legal battles attest, lawyers on both sides argue different positions.  In my mind, unless the Indian Act is amended, it's clear who owns the land:  The Crown.  Time to damn the torpedoes and pull down the blockades.  At this point, 10,000 rail cars loaded with grain are rotting on sidings and even if goods started moving today, it would take four months for the system to get back to normal.  In my mind, that means eight.

This has got to stop.  The Indians have to get their own act together and decide who speaks for them, the elected councils or the hereditary chiefs.  As this is a rule-of-law country, it has to be the elected officials.  Otherwise, it would be like me saying that since I live on a certain parcel of land and have been given local, traditional authority, I override our elected city councillor.  

Huh?!