It was a discouraging time deep in the depression of the 1930s when men were riding the rails in search of work and their next meal. Labour laws were non-existent and abuse of the less fortunate a reality of every day life.  A naive young man, Jacob ((Robert Pattison), was about to graduate from Cornel Veterinary School when his world was suddenly turned up side down.

He fleed school and joined a second rate circus run by an unscrupulous and abusive owner, August (Christopher Waltz), who was married to the seductive centre ring performer Marlena (Reese Witherspoon).  Events spun out of control as the circus crossed the country and Jacob found himself in a love triangle fighting not only for his own life but also for the lives of the animals in his charge and some of the carnies who had befriended him.

The show engagingly begins and ends by means of flashbacks with Hal Holbrook playing ‘Old Jacob’ in a manner that brings into close focus the ephemeral nature of love, life, birth and death. 

Lynn and I very much enjoyed this 120 minute movie and gave it four thumbs up. Without reservation we encourage you to put this movie on your ‘must see’ list.

Cheers
Harold     
 

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 Jack Tackles the Giants on the Beanstalk

Do you remember ever having the feeling your world has just been turned upside down?  Perhaps you were nearing 50 when your wife came home and calmly stated: “Guess what honey, I’m pregnant?” Or, in the worst case, it was not your wife it was that less than full time girl friend (not as uncommon as you might think). In either case it was a game changer.  I experienced the former but, thanks to my chaste behaviour, never the latter.

In another case perhaps it was your boss who came in and said:  “Sorry, but due to the recession we are cutting back, ah, but not to worry, you are a good worker so you should have no trouble finding a new job!” Bummer dude! Perhaps we are about to experience a similar type ‘game changer’ on the national political scene.

Having closely followed the campaign over the past few weeks I was struck by how mundane everything seemed to be evolving when, suddenly, late last week, the folks in Quebec decided they might just want to try something different.  No, they did not start importing tons of the best BC Bud (not a bad idea through), they just found a new religion called NDP. It is now possible the Bloc might soon be a footnote in history.  Can’t say I would be sorry to see them finally exit stage left.

Now what about poor Jack?  How would you like to have the whole La Belle Province riding on your coat tails?  All I can say is he had better have a strong ‘constitution’. After the election he could be leading a group of neophyte politicians, including a number of young student candidates with no political background, into the blood sport that is Ottawa. Perhaps that is just what we need in opposition, a bunch of young idealists with nothing to lose.

From my perspective, it would be an excellent outcome – a Harper minority (140 seats), NDP (90 seats, including a major position in Quebec), Liberal (60 seats) and Bloc (15), Independent (2) and Greens (1) as somebody has gotta finally throw poor Lizbeth a bone. Taken in combination it just might be the tonic we need to shake things up on the Federal scene. Just as the Conservatives moved to coalesce the right a few years back, the left needs an ‘earth shaker’ to cause them to put the left leaning house in order. 

Given the heavy turnout in the advance polls and if the current poll trends portend future seat results, we might just go to bed on May 2, 2011 with a game-changing Parliament.

Cheers
(Harold is a card carrying Liberal but willing to look at alternatives)

¹For a good chuckle on this very subject read “The Best Laid Plans” by Terry Fallis (McLellan Books, 2008), winner of the CBC Canada Reads Award, 2011.  The book takes a peek inside the back rooms of national political parties where a crusty old Scot, Angus McClintock, is suddenly and unwillingly thrust into the fray. He quickly becomes a media darling and throws every party, including his own Liberals, into disarray.  Just as has every movie and TV series hero that challenged the status quo found a cult following, so does the reluctant Angus McClintock.

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Traditions

Jamie and Kia Charko

 April 16, 2011

The matt upon which Jamie and Kia were married has been in the Simonsen family for over 300 years. During this time dozens of family members have been married. Here their daughter, Liala, shares in the celebration.

Cornucopia Cake: The Cornucopia (korn-yoo-KO-pee-uh) symbol stretches across many cultures and peoples from Ancient Greece to modern day. That it is part of many wedding celebrations is only natural.

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Harold doing some in-store testing of the new Blackberry Playbook for Seniors

It was chilly with a dusting of snow when I left home at 2:00 am yesterday to join the line a Future Shop to get my new Research in Motion Blackberry “Playbook for Seniors’. My trusty Tim Horton’s super mug in hand – a double, double, triple, triple with a couple of shots of Kahlua (and small bottle in my backpack) – helped to ward off the cold and calm the knot in the pit of my stomach. Would I be too late? Not to worry, by 9:30 am I was inside and the supplies looked to last.

Photo: Harold bikes our for his usual morning cuppa at Tim Horton’s. The two litre cup cuts down on refills.

My first surprise was the size. The new Seniors Edition was at least 32 X 55 cm (12 X 22 inches) but with a high definition screen and large print (even at 36-40 pt. you can still get a full page on the screen) it is certainly easy to read.  You know, you can actually enlarge words and flip pages with just the flick of a finger? Amazing!

Now, a word about price! At $700 (2 gb storage) a crack, plus $200 for the tax and extended guarantee, it is well within the means of most seniors. Just don’t forget to factor in an average $400 per month for Apps, internet access, download fees, book purchases, etc. so you don’t over extend yourself (1). My bets – move over Apple – this new RIM Seniors Edition Playbook is about to take the market by storm. 

The only real challenge I found was trying to fit the device in my jacket or briefcase and I am wondering whether getting through airport security is going to be a problem.  Perhaps, in the future, RIM will consider a folding model.

Congratulations to Jim Balsille and Mike Lazaridis, you and your RIM Team from Waterloo have made Canada proud – another first for Canadian Technology that is on a level with the Canada Arm.  From this Canadian Senior – two thumbs up.

Harold McNeill

Victoria, BC

(1) For BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) there is connectivity from that BES to RIM’s NOC, and that’s an extra charge. This is done via the SRP (Service Routing Protocol). Each BES has a unique SRP, just like our handhelds have a unique PIN. BES has better guaranteed service versus a BIS plan. On a BES you get way more functionality than BIS and you get more security, etc. These are matters are near and dear to most seniors.

(My young friend Riyad at Future Shop, passed along these helpful tidbits)

Staff at both Future Shop and Staples had to catch a coffee on the run as business was so brisk.

IPad vs Blackberry:  While IPad has a jump on the market, the Blackberry Seniors model is likely to become a very big hit with the boomers who are just now entering those mellow years.  My guess is the larger Blackberry will outsell the IPad by a factor of two or three.

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Pax Canadiana in the Twenty-First Century

PAX Canadiana:    In the 20^th Century the term PAX Americana came to indicate the pre-eminent military and economic position of the United States in relation to other nations, just as PAX Britannia was used the 19^th Century (Wikipedia background).  In the 21^st Century, Canada will eclipse the United States and PAX Canadiana could become a reality. This article provides a satirical look at the alternate path we may choose to follow.

February 10, 2016 Update

1. Corporate Taxes

What got m thinking of this was the whole issue of “Corporate Tax Reductions.”  With our Federal rates approaching 15%¹,  I checked the G20 major economies and found none below 25%.   Then I checked on Ireland  – poor little Ireland (not a G20 by the way) – they went bankrupt – just when they achieved a Corporate Tax rate of 12.5%, lowest in the EU and lower than the rest of the world, save for a few OPEC countries.

This happened even after Google and dozens of big companies moved to Ireland to catch a piece of that generous corporate tax pie.  As supply-side economists, trickle-down theorists³ and deregulators predicted, unemployment shrank to near zero and “things were booming”.  Ireland was sitting at the top of the EU financial world.  Then bang – the crash – banks folded and massive debt took the country down.  The prescription for a sound financial future sounded great but the patient was dying.  On their knees, they went to their EU partners for a bailout.

Could this happen in Canada?  With a projected national debt exceeding half a trillion, with further tax cuts promised and cash being handed out for everything but the kitchen sink (well that too if the Conservatives reconstitute their billion-dollar “home improvement program”) it could happen.  We might very well be headed down the same path as Ireland and our good neighbour, the USA, whose move to supply-side economics and deregulation over the past several decades lead to the worst economic meltdown they have ever experienced.  They are now printing money so fast many of their presses have overheated and, if the rumors are correct, may have broken down⁴.

Then, to my great relief, two newspaper articles appeared – one in the National Post, the other in the Globe and Mail. The first was a three-page spread in the Post entitled: “Global Warming – Bring it On” and, the second, in the Globe, “Republicans Urge New Pipelines.”  Republicans?  Republicans?  It was no surprise to see the National Post calling ‘Global Warming’ a “good thing”, but US Senate Republicans calling for help from that great white, socialist enclave called Canada; that was when the loonie (our new penny) finally dropped.

Footnotes:

¹  Between 2000 and 2006, the Liberals reduced the Corporate Tax Rate from 29% to 21%.  From 2006 to 2011 the Conservatives further reduced to 16.5%. The Conservatives indicate a further reduction to 15% is needed to boost investment and reduce unemployment.  Now the question, if a reduction from 29% to 15% was needed to boost investment and decrease unemployment, would not a further reduction from 15% to 0% be even better? We might wish to ask: “For whom?”

³  Referencing “trickle-down theory” humorist Will Rogers, said during the Great Depression (known as the “Dirty Thirties”): “The money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.” (partially Wikipedia)

⁴  Unless the US Congress takes drastic steps they will be dead broke and shutting down parts of government when they reach their debt limit. A debt default by the USA will have worldwide implications.

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  Photo  (Oak Bay Star):  Detective Sergeant Al Campbell (left) and FBI Agent, Bob Hanis from South Bend, Indiana.
January 15, 2012:For a recent similar case in Canada involving an estimated one billion in marihuana, read the National Post article: A Great Movie Script

A Soft Landing in Canada

Do not get on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, or have your mugshot broadcast around the world as that could be the beginning of the end of a financially rewarding career in crime. Such was the case of one young man who dared try to hide behind the Tweed Curtain in Oak Bay, British Columbia. For Constable Al Campbell it was an exciting time as he chased one of the FBI’s Most Wanted through the streets of Oak Bay. The story began many months before in Indiana…

Unsolved Mysteries – Joins the Chase

In 1987 Robert Stack began hosting a new TV Series, Unsolved Mysteries, that soon became a perennial favourite. In addition to two or three feature articles each week, the hour-long production profiled persons on the “FBI Most Wanted” list.  On January 9, 1991, the program included two international drug traffickers – Thomas Paul Hickey and William James McCarthy, both men then in their early thirties.

Photo: Robert Stack, who was a periodic regular host of the show through the 1980s and 90s, was better known as the handsome, no-nonsense Elliot Ness in the TV and movie series the ‘The Untouchables’.

In late 1986 Indiana State Police indicted Hickey and McCartney on forty-three counts including drug trafficking, participating in a continuing criminal enterprise, possession and conspiracy to distribute marihuana, obstruction of justice, interstate transportation in aid of racketeering and, for good measure, a charge that was the undoing of many mobsters in the ‘Untouchables’, income tax evasion.

The broad-ranging criminal enterprise built by Hickey and McCarthy from early 1979 through 1986 was spurred on by a high demand for marihuana that had developed during the ’60’s and ’70’s “hippie years” on College and University campuses across North America. In the 1980s the taste for that exotic weed soon spread to the business and professional community as college and university students, after graduation, were not about to leave behind all the perquisites of campus life. While Mary Jane was bulky to transport and distribute, Hickey and McCarthy overcame the challenge by contracting a fleet of semi-trailers to move the parcels to dozens of cities across the United States.

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Photo (1961): USAF Crash Rescue Crew From Cold Lake taken while in training at CFB Camp Borden
(Photo: Courtesy of Guy Venne)

Top Row: U/K, Ken Cuthbert, Les Eshelman, Al Edstrom, Ed Vallee, George Grimstead, Morris Hill,
Wally Armstrong, Fred Bamber, Roy MacDonald, U/K, Art Axani
Front Row: U/K, Instructor, Instructor, Harold McNeill, Instructor, Guy Venne, Instructor, U/K,
Denis Armstrong, Derek Bamber, U/K
(All names subject to clarification — Click photo to open, then click again for full-size download or printing. Names in bold, all Cold Lake High School buddies)

October 14, 2017 (4200)

Fire Walkers: A Nuclear Challenge

2011 will mark the 50th Anniversary of a unique experience in my life and that of several friends and neighbours from the Cold Lake area of Alberta. Forty-five men, ranging in age from twenty to thirty-eight, were selected to work as Civilian Crash Rescue Firefighters for the US Air Force at the Strategic Air Command base being built at the RCAF Station Cold Lake. For a full list of names of those selection Link here to Chapter 6,

Two other SAC bases built in Canada were also selecting civilians to perform the same duty – 45 for Namao (just outside Edmonton) and another 60 for Churchill in Manitoba. All were to be trained over the summer and fall of 1961 at the Crash Rescue Fire Fighter School in Camp Borden, Ontario, a school that had an established reputation as being the best in the business.

While a few of the men destined for Cold Lake had small town, volunteer firefighter experience, most, including myself, were taken in as raw recruits. Over a period of five months spread over two training groups, the men moved from the training stage to manning a full-service Fire Department.  This included a process to select a Fire Chief and Crew Chiefs from within the ranks of those trained at Borden.

The expedited process resulted from the reluctance of the RCAF, in the politically charged climate of the deep Cold War, to have RCAF personnel fully integrated into what was essentially an independent USAF operation on Canadian soil.

For their part, the USAF was not able to field a sufficient number of firefighters to perform this duty due to a rapidly expanding Cold War Strike Force that stretched around the world. This included manning over 450 SAC bases within the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii.

The threat of a nuclear attack and potential annihilation of mankind was one of the most feared events throughout the 1950s and 60s. The proliferation of nuclear weapons following the Second World Wars and the resultant partition of Europe lead to almost continuous conflict from 1914 through 1975 (the end of the Viet Nam War).

An all out Nuclear War between the Western Democracies and Russia would most certainly have ended life on earth as we know it. By way of comparison, the current day “war on terror” is a rather trivial event.

It was a time in our history when the Cold War mentality paralyzed much of the world and a time when Canada hosted a nuclear arsenal that was globally fifth in size behind only the United States, Russia, England, and France. The nuclear weapons in Canada, the subject of secret agreements, were stored across the country as well as carried aboard giant B52 bombers that circled high in the skies above the Canadian Arctic twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  The giant USAF Base at Goose Bay hosted between 12,000 and 15,000 USAF personnel in what was one of the largest USAF bases outside the United States.

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Fire Walkers – Fire School – Chapter 2

On July 25, 1961, our group of twenty-three was packed and ready for lift-off, the assigned transport an Air Force, Fairchild, C-119 Flying Boxcar, a supply and troop transport. For troops (and wannabe firemen), canvas slings hanging from the sides of the fuselage, provided a place to sit but little in the way of comfort. Immediately outside the fuselage the roar of the two 1500 hp radial engines made conversation nearly impossible.

With a painstakingly slow cruising speed of 200 mph, it was a long, bladder filled trip to Winnipeg where we stopped for a bathroom break, quick lunch and change of flight crew. By early afternoon we were off for the ten hour leg to Trenton. After a late dinner we bunked down but did not get much sleep that night as we all seemed to be giddy from the long flight and thinking about the new experience that awaited. Early the next morning we left by bus for the final 120 mile leg to Camp Borden.

As civilians we were assigned barracks separate from regular recruits – I suppose the brass didn’t want our rag-tag group of civilians to unduly contaminate their sparkling fresh troops. The accommodation and food was great but we generally stood out like sore thumbs in the mess hall and around the base where all military personnel sported freshly pressed uniforms and spit polished boots. By the sarcastic comments directed our way, it was clear the regulars didn’t view us with high esteem.

From the course overview given over the first few days, it was certain the next several weeks would be hard work, both in class and in the field, as first we studied, then put into practice, the skills required to become top-notch crash rescue fire fighters. The real shocker came on our first visit to the practice area with Corporal Breckinridge, our field trainer.

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