News and Opinion from Montreal, Canada and the World
When the Montreal General Hospital first opened in 1823, three percent of the first 3665 medical cases treated were for malaria. Yep, malaria…in Montreal.
Our lovely grey city used to be surrounded by a lot more swamp and marshland than it is now. Cases of malaria stretched from here all the way out to the prairies. And we can still get malaria in Montreal; the host of the malaria parasite is the Anopheles mosquito, who lives here, too.
The decrease in Montreal malaria cases happened because…
It wasn’t all that long ago that we needed to use an outhouse to do our business. Even my mom remembers using newspaper instead of toilet paper in the 50s because it wasn’t a common household item at the time. Living in rural Ghana during the summer of 2007 brought me back in time to Montreal’s pre-indoor toilet era. My compound had one communal latrine (a tiny closet of a room with a hole in the ground and…
Unbiased reporting is very difficult when it comes to the environment. How can one deliver a balanced report when ultra-rich investment corporation ‘X’ forgoes the environmental impact assessment, and goes ahead with project destroy-precious-habitat-for-profit-again? Unfortunately, this is a tale of that exact old story. The happy ending will come from a simple click to share your voice. It’s easy to feel heroic these days.
What do you say about killing another’s baby, replacing it with your own and forcing the parents to cancel out their genetic contribution to the world line in favor of your own. One side is obviously a bunch of dummies, and the other, vindictive jerks taking advantage of maternal niceties…
We can’t talk about it at the holiday dinner table because one of the kids picked himself up and got himself out of debt by getting a job there. Sure, we’ve touched on it briefly after a couple of mojitos, but when I first learned that my brother-in-law was a mechanic for the larger-than-life trucks that speckle Fort McMurray, Canada’s oil-country, it put a frog in my throat, especially since I used to be heavily associated with Greenpeace, a leading campaigner against the Alberta tar sands. Getting into the pros and cons of the Alberta operation would lead…
It’s wonky out there. It’s warm, it’s frigid, it smells like poo, and tulips are trying to push through semi-frozen dirt. In other words, it’s good ‘ol spring weather. The frequency of elections in Canada is almost as reliable as the changing of the seasons, and the parties we have to vote for are warm, frigid, smell like poo, and try to push up through frozen fodder. So who gets your vote?
The CBC has a vote compass tool to check which party most represents your values…
Dirt, mud, snow, ice, slush, branches, fences, sand, sunburns, bruised knees, leaves, hills, fields, bikes, shovel and pail, hide and seek, skates, tag, slide, skipping ropes, skateboard, ball-bat-mit, burping contests, cloud watching, popsicles, trampolines, puddles. And now?
Who doesn’t like a good gloat? A self-satisfying ‘told ya so!’ to the people who doubted you and a pat on the back from supporters when everyone else swore you were wrong. Sometimes smugness feels great! Well, I’ll tell you about a bunch of people who actually aren’t happy to brag about being right – the folks who have been warning us about the effects climate change will have on the global food supply…
Welcome to the Earthship. No, it isn’t a ship made out of earth, and no, it isn’t a spaceship made to boldly explore where no one has gone before. It’s an innovative type of home, typically built of recycled and reclaimed material, where the household itself functions like an ecosystem. The ecological footprint is minimal to nonexistent, and most of them are completely off the grid, using solar panels and wood stoves for heating, and semi-artistic designs for temperature regulation. Some use composting toilets, or just a plain outhouses in friendly year-round climates.
We humans are part of the environment. Really, all those trees, bugs, birds, sand, walruses, ice floes, endangered orangutans … we’re part of that. Call me out for pointing out the obvious, but this notion was once a big revelation for me. I studied and worked in a few different aspects of the environment; as a technologist, a student, scientist, a field practitioner, an activist, an idealist and now a journalist.
Throughout most of these experiences, I always pictured myself as an observer, but not necessarily part of any type of ecosystem. I guess you could picture it like being a plumber; you fix the pipes, but they’re not your pipes. Well guess what – they are our pipes.