The Scythe

Last week my friend asked if she could borrow a tool to cut long grass. She told me her grass and brush was too tough and long for a weedeater. She said "Do you have a sickle? I know you have a lot of tools." I don't have a sickle but I have a scythe. The scythe is not only an ancient tool, it is a great tool. It ranks with the binder and the combine in the march of agricultural harvesting technology. I lent her my scythe and a stone. You can maintain a scythe's sharpness with a stone, but from time to time, if not used much it needs a grindstone for starters. Nowadays, it is sadly not used much! When I was 17 and 18, I worked for the CNR as a section man in the Touchwood Hills for my summer job. Our June job was to cut the long grass on the right-of-way. Five men would move along, cutting between two telephone poles, and then leapfrog ahead to the next available interval. After each cut we'd roll a cigarette of course! Because the right-of-way is a downward slope and we were responsible for six miles of track, we always cut on the downward slope side since it was easy and fast . Once you got going in tandem there was some irregularity in 'smoke time' determined by the fastest man. Of the five of us, no one wanted to be the slowest man but after an hour the pace evened out. When you have six miles out and six miles back the only time you hurry is the last 10 yards or the last ten minutes in any job. The important thing about the scythe is to keep it sharp. The stone has to be used in the correct way! It takes time to learn to sharpen the blade to make the job easy. No job , however so humble, is simple. To cut effectively, one develops a rythym much like a golf swing, with the back stoke equally important as the cutting stroke. The swing becomes relaxing! The blade of the scythe leads at a 15 degree angle from your coronal plane. I haven't seen my friend since she borrowed the scythe but I hope she enjoyed it. There is no finer feeling than a sharp tool, slicing through long grass, which lies down in geometric windrows at your bidding.

The World, A condominium oceanliner

It must be a growth industry! The cruise ships get larger and longer and higher and the amenities proliferate like fruit flies! Now, ships like The World, whose time has apparently come, are floating condominiums with a permanent cliental that are citizens of the world at large! Living aboard all or part of the time, visiting and observing the sights of the world by water. Wow! The World moored off our little, possibly exotic to some, certainly funky to many, island in the Salish Sea. There are no docking facilities for boats of cruise ship size on Lotus Island, so The World anchored out a mile and a half from the the town in Ganges Harbour. We locals and yokels spent the weekend gawking at her! The ship's tender plyed the water back and forth on an hourly basis with its condo cargo as they visited the town, and the market, all weekend. They have licked their lips, those sellers in the trinket market, but the passenger-owners were here to simply absorb the bucolic atmosphere. Lotus Island is not a destination for the Isla Cozumel crowd, two weeks and home. We may have arrived for bucolic viewing, but no Mardi Gras like ambience exists as a destination for the lively. I guess cruising ship condominium-owners would be older and more sedate than the two week bunch. A battle anew about our role in the tourist industry is about to occur with the Nimbys and the Progressives . The Progressives will prevail. Money, like water, flows to the lowest level. I am not self rightous. I like money and water too, but Eco Tourism is what we have been largely all about. Our strong point! How much to sacrifice to get the right balance? Those of us who live here and have done so for a long time have deep roots. We are not exactly spectators. We are the inspected. I'm not really sure that a condominium on the ocean ,with many ports of call, and a rootless existence is all that appealing. Shubert wrote of Der Wanderer. Says the song "Where are you my beloved land?" I can answer that because I am a 'stick in the mud'!

Leonard Cohen

For my 75th birthday my daughter gave me a 2 part disc of the essential songs of Leonard Cohen. He chose from his repertoire and though I am not sure why, he didn't include some of the favorites. I suppose he's entitled, since he is my age and therefore taking the long view, thinking elegiac thoughts and trying to clean up his legacy. He is my favorite poet. He sings from the heart; he is not obscure;he pronounces his words so you understand easily; and his music is exciting and novel. His books are a diary of his life and the changes that have been wrought as he has evolved into a Canadian Icon. Though some of his poetry is dirty and some opaque, there is a constant sense of honesty and humanity, a constant sense of humility, uxoriousness and at times despair with the world and himself. Welcome to the world of candour, I say. That's why he speaks to so many! Who would have 'thunk' that success would be reinvented for him in this day and age with it's love of virtual reality. Few, and then, least of all him! His modesty becomes him at the present time. The pianist makes fun of his voice and says his songs are for men. A man's songster! That may be the case, but Jennifer Warnes and kd Lang are acolytes as well. That may be the case but the attendance at his concerts belie that opinion. Whatever he has, he has it in spades!
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The Touchwood Hills

Though not as well known as the Cypress Hills, the Touchwood Hills in Saskatchewan are another height of land left by the glacier as it receded. The Touchwood Hills are the point of land at which Henry Kelsey, the great overland explorer, turned back east after his epic travel (1690-1692), a century before any other white man visited the area. There is a cairn to mark his furthest point of exploration. I grew up in the Touchwood Hills. Our little town became sequestered from the Muskowekwan Reserve when the Grand Trunk Railway was built and a depot was needed. The original land treaty was signed by the Cree Chief Muscowequan in 1874 at Fort Qu'Appelle with the other Chiefs of Little and Big Touchwood Hills! Ken Edwards and I, both of us from town, played midget hockey with the Indian team from the Oblate Fathers Mission school. The Cree Nation boys from the Muskowekwan reserve welcomed the two of us and we felt part of things! We never felt white when we were there. There is nothing like sport, to unite young men. We were a good team, but we only had two forward lines and two defense men. We must have been in good shape. The outdoor rink we practiced on was at the Mission and the roads were not good in the winter. A farmer, Lyle Reichert, used to take us out to practice, on the back of his tractor, in November. He went to "the coast" after November for the winter. He told us it didn't snow in Burnaby. I remember thinking about Burnaby as we bucked through the drifts and the wind and driving snow whistled by our cheeks as we stood behind him on the tractor, holding onto the tractor seat for dear life. One day, I said to myself, I will go to Burnaby!

Pelagic Buses for Scholars

About 100 high school students, every weekday, make a journey of an hour or so each way, to and from the high school back to their island homes by water. We are island people and water is our highway. We live in a Southern Gulf Island area with four outer islands and the larger Lotus Island with the high school serving the entire area. These Gulf Islands lie, or more properly, bask, in what is now called The Salish Sea. Every day the pianist and I watch the two large water buses, The Scholar and the Graduate, transporting their precious cargo too and fro, passing our harbour window, beginning to leave for the outer islands at 6: 45 am, returning at 8:15 am and transporting the students home later in the afternoon. The commitment of society on these islands to education and scholarship is enormous. The commitment of the youth is exemplified by the sacrifice of time due to the travel required. The Winter in the northern waters, while largely inshore waters, is still periodically rough, and cold and dark at the times of coming and going ! If you are prepared to put that much time and effort into getting an education, it follows that you take yourself seriously. You have the right to be taken seriously by everyone else as well. The curious thing about it all is the trip through the islands is one of the country's, nay, one of the world's major beauty spots, even from time to time in the winter, but the students, so take it for granted, that it's old hat. As they get older and depart the islands, they will come to realize, I am sure, the incredible nature of their school journeys. In the meantime have fun, talk a lot,text a lot, do your homework and never bother to look out the window.

CawCawphony

My neighbor has a large stand of West Coast Maples and Cottonwoods between our properties.In addition I have Holly and Hawthorns on the property line, as he has. These trees are a safe repository for nesting crows, particularly the thorn bearing trees where the nests are well hidden from marauders. I have an orchard with cherries and small fruits, amongst others. The crow's bedrooms, nursery, and living room appears to be largely the inter property area and my neighbor's property. The kitchen, dining room and toilet is the pianist's and my property. This seems to be fledgling time and the constant cacophony is frightful. There seems to be a crisis of ownership between the humans and the crows. The kitchen also doubles as the toilet. When eating a cherry, or a small red plum, the crow , after picking a juicy one in the garden, brings the cherry to the kitchen. The kitchen is a branch near us where some food preparation goes on. Positioning the cherry or the plum between the toes, on the branch,tenderizing the skin, pitting, and finally swallowing following stone removal. The crow's gastrocolic reflex is triggered by the meal . They appear to have a repeatedly sensitive trigger prompting the gastrocolic event. Possibly the shorter distance from the stomach to the rectum than yours or mine. Since the favorite place to eat is perching on a branch of a Western Red Cedar overlooking our painted deck, we are greeted with abundant guano that seems to have remarkable adherent properties. This gastrocolic event is accompanied, dare I say, by enthusiastic crowing. Maybe even derisive! Each time I leave the house to toil in the soil the watchbird announces my progress. If I bring my pressure washer to remove hardened and adherent guano, I am greeted with a chorus of insults. They don't seem to care! The variety of vocalizations they have is remarkable. It's just they are so darned intrusive, or maybe it's me.

Rationality

I no longer worry about the exclusionary principle of rational people, promoting exclusively rational things, to other exclusively rational people. Particularly troublesome is the attitude of dismissiveness toward anything that cannot be accounted for by a mechanistic view of life. I'm sure when it comes to things like how long it takes to cook a loaf of bread, or a bus schedule, that approach makes sense. Rationality is then an appropriate assertion. What about the big questions of life? Rationality is never certain therein. There is always the next unexplained phenomenon. Religion is never certain,because many things are inexplicable and undermining, despite faith. We all live by the seat of our pants, and faith is omnipresent, religious or irreligious. If rationality is a step in the twilight, with things undiscovered but faith that they will be, religion is a step in the dark with things yet undiscovered but faith that they will be. No one I think, has a choke hold on truth. Most have given up abstract thought or existential reasoning as too opaque and too troubling. Leave it to the experts,the philosophers, they say. Why leave the most important aspects of our time to experts and seek diversions that buffer your reality? Truth, from whatever standpoint, only exists for those with a candle, and candle power is only so bright. It is however, bright enough to let some walk the path, but where they are going is at best, only glimpsed. There is no place for dogma on either side of the big questions of life. We have to deal with uncertainty as a matter of humanness. It encourages us to explore , think and grow. Better to know what you don't know than know what you can't know. Pity the person who has arrived at the full knowledge of the God filled or Godless universe. A portion of humility and a capacity to listen to the world, your neighbor,or the Ground of all Being may serve you in good stead.I have found that each step of insight seems to raise more questions than more knowledge. I suppose it's better to know what questions you'd like answered than not knowing what questions there are to ask.

Shrinking and expanding

If you ever watched a time lapse cartoon of the ageing process you would know what I am going to say! I have weighed and taken the height of hundreds of patients over the years. They always think they are taller than they are, and weigh less than they do. It's not a cheerful job. We have considerably more than a baker's dozen intervertebral disks in our back contributing to spinal length and a bunch of vertebral bodies as well. Over time, these plump and resilient disks dehydrate and narrow. This loss of height is a result of a natural degenerative process. The vertebrae flatten as well, as we age, and so we lose several millimeters of height from each disk and from each vertebral body. In addition, because they flatten more in the front of the vertebrae than the back, the spine bends a bit forward, contributing to the loss of height from the shoulders to the pelvis. That's why my mother's head eventually sank below the top of the car seat when she was driving, and my mother-in-law ended up eating at the table with her chin near her place mat. They lived much longer than their males. The limbs, on the other hand, do not vertically shrink, so that the shortening, when sitting ,is the more dramatic and the foreshortened can reach their knees without bending forward. Since for me, I'm now in that group, the loss of several centimeters in shoulder- pelvic length decreases the vertical volume available in the abdomen for our guts, so we expand sideways. Egad! Ergo, I've become more potbellied. Couple that partly facile excuse, with the substitution of muscle bulk by fibrous tissue and fat, and one's legs become skinnier and skinnier. Man becomes globular stick man. A nurse friend watching me walk down the hall in a hospital gown one day said " You know ,my father would have said you look like a fat man being carried by a chicken." Pretty smart, blaming her father for her tart observation. If there is anything more revealing, less concealing, than a hospital gown I don't know what it is. This is a fertile source for an intelligent couture, to make a bundle, recreating cloth for the new, old shapely!

Standing in the wind

Over the years I have served as President and Chairman and Warden, and other things in various organizations. I was basically a committee man only because I find it hard to say no. If you serve long enough and don't make too many mistakes you will eventually become top dog, till they realize you aren't. I'm inherently lazy and therefore developed, early, a penchant for delegation and, honorably, a reluctance to take credit for other's good work. This was not altruistic, but in fact a continuation of my self interest in doing less, by encouraging others to do more. I confess I've felt guilty in the past for some of this lassitude, since others of a more skeptical bent have seen through my subterfuge. The one redeeming factor is, however, my ability to stand in the wind, however stiff. Someone needs to do it. It isn't thick skin because often suffering arises and bruises are inflicted. Hopefully if you do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or the wrong thing for the right reasons, you can at least keep your balance in the wind. If you do the wrong thing. for the wrong reasons, you are toast and deserve what you will eventually get, which is blown away. I can remember my father saying to me once , if he said it a hundred times, " Jim, you have an excuse for everything, all of the time". I know that about myself. I was a dreamy boy growing up who was always optimistic about himself and everyone else. If you always think things will work out in the end and you haven't absorbed the fact that they don't, then the wind is not a problem to you. This feeble minded guy is standing in a hurricane smiling and saying, "At least it's not a tornado." Blows your mind!

Bee Bumbling

Wild bees had made a nest under the seat of my rowboat in the styroform float. They had hollowed out a home in the styrofoam which was not accessible to sprays since it was hidden from view, and they weren't too pleased to see a face near their home. The boat sits on a ramp down to the beach. Our property is for sale, and I didn't want a PP (putative purchaser) to get stung, at least by insects. I elected to drown them because I knew no other safe way to get rid of them. Access prevented spraying and I didn't want to burn my boat seat. I hate doing this to bees. It's so contrary to Mother Nature's grand design. My son-in-law and I manoevered the boat at gingerly intervals onto the beach. We pulled it down a foot or two and then ran away when the angry bees looked around for the enemy. Pulling and scattering eventually got the boat off the ramp and on to the beach and relatively level so it could be filled completely.We then filled the boat with water from the hose. The tide came in but thankfully it was calm. I went down in the evening to see the results. All the day time foragers were back, and were angry and hanging around the ramp. I couldn't ramp the boat up since it was full of water and they wouldn't let me near the ramp or boat, so I, in securing it for a further tide, was stung and fell over on the beach. No problem. The following morning I was going to work and searched high and low for my cell phone. I'm never without it. I phoned myself in various locations. No luck. I finally went down to the beach where I fell. There it was, lying on a pile of seaweed. It had rained that night. I was sure it was trash. Then it rang. The pianist was calling me. This whole epistle sounds like an episode with the Keystone Cops at work. They always seemed to get their man the hard way!

Loss

My young Irish Setter,still less than a year old, was across the tracks near the Pool grain elevator. I didn't know he was there. It was a favorite spot for a dog because there were lots of rats,a focus of interest rather than food,around the elevator annex. He was still young enough that he lacked savvy, and had separation anxiety in new situations. I first noticed him when the freight train was standing, waiting for orders at the platform. I heard the freight start to move with that characteristic squeak of axles mobilizing, and looked under the box car that began moving at a slow walk pace.I could see Rusty trying cross the tracks under the box car.He made several tentative passes and then pulled back. I yelled at him to go back to no avail and as he tried to slip under the moving boxcar to the platform where I was standing, he was caught by a rear wheel in his midsection. I watched in horror as each wheel of a long train passed over his body. Each boxcar and the caboose.I ran into the kitchen where my mother was. She comforted me. BMc, the Pool elevator operator and my dad stayed outside after the freight train pulled away. Then my dad came in the station and said, " You have to pick up your dog and bury him." My mother and BMc said, " he can't or shouldn't do that!" My dad said I had to do it, it was the only way. So, I picked up the two parts of my dog and put him in the wheelbarrow. I went about 500 yards down the right-of-way and buried him near the tracks. I'm not sure what my dad was thinking or why, but then I'm not sure that he was wrong. I guess no matter what, we have to face our grief head on. We cannot sanitize the events of our lives. Doing what I did probably allowed me to participate both in the life and the death of something I loved. At fifteen I suddenly took a further step towards becoming a big boy. I never had another dog till much later in life. Beside the tracks, on the main line, with 10 or 15 trains a day, is not the place to have a dog. I think , in retrospect, I'm grateful to my father.

Dog Show

Irish setters are a beautiful animal. I was 14 and visiting my grandparents in Winnipeg when my mother phoned me,crying, from our home in Saskatchewan to tell me that my Irish Setter had been poisoned and died of strychnine seizures. He was a gift from my Aunt and was one of a number of dogs poisoned in the area. My family made it up to me by purchasing an Irish Setter puppy from Harry Dean in Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, a well known hunter breeder. My new Irish Setter , Rusty, I was convinced was a winner. He had a beautiful, darker red coat. When he was 9 months old I entered him in the Ladies Kennel Club dog show in Saskatoon. We had practised standing and heeling for months. We were bonded. I had fancied I would be one day become a professional dog handler. I had a subscription to the Canadian Kennel Club Magazine and read what I could about dog handling. We lived about 200 miles from Saskatoon on the main CNR line. The "Flyer" came through the town about 4 am every morning. The day before the show I washed my dog thoroughly. The "Flyer" stopped for us, this time, at 4 am the day of the show and Rusty and I both travelled to Saskatoon in the baggage car. He slept on one side all the way in to Saskatoon. Unfortunately he was still slightly damp from my doggy bath and sleeping on one side for that many hours was a disaster in the making. We got off the train at 8 am and walked to the arena. He was curly on the damp side and fuzzy on the other side. His glistening coat was dull and free of natural oils. He was too young to have good feathers. My debut in the doggy world was a disaster. At 15 years of age, the humiliation was intense and I was alone. I believe that seminal moment led to a change of vocation. Despite that, I dreamt of revenge on the Ladies Kennel Club. Don't ask why revenge! They didn't do anything wrong except, in the doggy world competition ,there is no charity good enough to assuage that kind of felt disaster. I consoled myself, on the long road back, that I would become rich, buy the best dog in the world, and win Best in Show at the Ladies Kennel Club of Saskatoon. I never did. I hugged my dog and he licked my face!

Changing of the Guard

Dr MC was an early pioneer in the "Morgantaler" movement. She had studied under him at his post graduate course and encountered with him, the ferocious opposition. She was committed to change, and weathered untold adverse criticism from various quarters, medical and non-medical, in that era in Lotus City. Dr. MC had the drive and zeal of an evangelist and stuck to her guns through and through,year after year, till the winds of change blew! She worked in the public, short stay surgical suite with the the rest of us, who were doing the less controversial surgical bits and pieces at the time. Even if you disagreed with Dr.MC's actions there was no one that questioned her professionalism or her tenacity to follow through! She knew how to get things done and invariably provoked a certain envy at her capacity to take a stand and weather a storm. The surgical change rooms at the time were labelled "Doctor's Change Room" and "Nurse's Change Room". The male orderlies changed into greens in the doctor's change rooms and the female doctors and other female staff changed in the nurse's change room. One eight am morning, the anaesthetist Dr GS, came barrelling out of the doctor's change room as I was going in. "Dr. MC is in there changing", he said. Well, I wasn't going to be buffaloed like he was so I went in, and there she was in bra and panties. She said, "I'm damn well a doctor and this is my room." I went to a locker and dropped my pants and shirt. She quickly dressed in greens and fled. I think the sight of me was disgusting enough that she wasted no time. This is all beside the point because the following morning, the signs on the change rooms were altered to read "Men's Change Room" and " Women's Change Room." Just as it should have been of course! Real change sometimes just requires a nudge. Activism has a broad and often pertenatious reach. Dr MC was an expert at it!

Telling the truth

When I began training with the bluntest man I ever met, he said to me," I know you don't know any orthopedics and don't pretend you do.If you want to stay here, there are only two requirements, be on time and don't lie! If you screw up a surgical case , say so. That way you never have to remember what you said. You have an insurer to look after your interests. It's his problem, not yours." The orthopedic service in the 50's in Olympic City was one of the better organized services but the system was run like a military establishment and you obeyed orders or you didn't survive. There was little room for free spirits and no room for sluggards. If you had a family and children and your wife needed a little down time with you, it was a task to escape the taskmaster. We probably would have been better to have adopted a celibate monkish existence for the training period of five years. How the pianist ever survived that period of neglect is a wonder. The Chief, at the end of each training year, told you where you were to go the next year. No one ever said no. Unfortunately I did as my putative year was to be a traveling year. I had 2 children and a wife and no money. I said I couldn't do it. I went from golden haired, to close to persona non grata! Senior surgeons came up and upbraided me for daring to say no to the Chief. Even then, as a lowly 2nd year surgical resident I could not get over the willingness of talented senior surgeons also bending to the rule of one man. What's more, as I think of the first interview and the Chief's observation that we don't lie because we don't need to since we can offload the responsibility to the deep pockets of the insurer, I believed, even then, that there are other reasons to be transparent and tell the truth. I can't deny however that having an insurer is handy. I spent 12 years on the College of Physicians and Surgeons adjudicating patient complaints about doctors and the most prominent cause was lack of transparency. If we screw up a case we can be forgiven by most patients, most of the time, if they know we were there for them, on time, and we didn't lie.

bonding and fishing

When my 51 year old son Rob was 9 yrs old we bonded over fishing.I needed a father and son activity, and he, at that time, was working away with little boy efforts and rudimentary equipment, to lake fish on the shore, without much luck! I had neither the interest or past experience with fishing and if it hadn't been for his enthusiasm I would have never started. I began in the interest of a father son relationship and in the process, got hooked! Our initial fishing trip was to the high Okanogan lakes for trout, then stream fishing on the way back to the coast and finally fishing the bay at Port Renfrew. Just the two of us for two weeks. We caught nothing, but the bug. We bought a 26 and a half foot, wooden, diesel cabin cruiser and my daughters and the pianist entered the pursuit. We all became keen and fished together, inshore fishing, good gear, for the elusive Pacific Salmon. It's not so easy for the novice to catch a salmon. It's also scary for the novice to take responsibility for the safety of a family in inshore waters! We spent days in fruitless pursuit and plenty of bucks on lures and gadgets to entice the 'crafty' creature. Even empty handed, there were lots of adventures on what was, to us, the bounding main, and the bonding was good. Nevertheless, the prize evaded us. Then, miracle of miracles we caught a 13 inch salmon grilse. When we put into the marina, Rob said, "Dad, can I gut the fish?" Part of the pleasure of gutting the fish was being observed by an abundance of tourists at the Lotus City Marina. Interest and questions were often asked of the 'fisher folk', as as our prize demonstrated. In a few minutes the little guy returned to the boat, crestfallen! As he began to gut the tiny fish, and answer the questions, and display his prowess, the slippery fish squirted out of his hand and slid down the drainhole of the fish basin. He forgot to hold it by the gills. It was quickly gobbled up by a seal. That fish sure was small. What to say? The drain hole must have been too big! There's always another day. Over the next ten years all of us tasted fishing success though out the southern coast! Yield is not all that counts. More important is the doing it together. Getting skunked is as interesting as limiting, but different! Fishing has stuck with my children over the years but when they left home, I did not fish again. Fishing with them, when they were growing up, is among my most prized memories and a source of endless stories, but I remember best, our first ever fish!

cigarettes and whiskey

My paternal family has, for many generations, including the present, had a romance with John Barleycorn. It was spirits for us, because we were Scots and Irish origin, and wine was for 'foreigners' in the olden days, or 'rubbies'. Grain alcohol was more available where the product was grown, and it also could be homemade.It didn't stop us from working or being productive but it made it more difficult.We also, over the generations, provided large subsidies to the tobacco industry. To be dominated by one's addictions leads to guilt, remorse, salvation and relapse, and shortness of breath, all of which serve to diminish one's self image. Looking back, with today's ethic in mind, I see a smattering of the abstemious, and an abundance of the surreptitious fallen. I believe genetic makeup predisposes to the addictive personality. This is not an excuse as those of higher rectitude might insist. It has been a struggle for many of my family, and a cautionary principle for me, finally learned, but as we have aged, the scourge has mostly been overcome. However, it may be a case of " too soon old, too late smart". We cannot walk in anyone else's shoes and make judgements because love of family conquers all in the end. Why we have such a change in habit these days with cigarettes and whiskey, I have no idea but certainly there is an immense change. Maybe some of the young have just changed what they are habituated to. Maybe the old have got more interested in living longer! I have often said if I live to 90 I'm going to smoke again because I loved it, and the stream of smoke and conversation that floated on it. It wasn't called a 'peace pipe' for nothing. Augment that with a glass of spirit and everyone becomes a conversational genius. It just sneaked up on you, that it became too much of a good thing! When one of your family stumbles, the bell tolls for all. Tough love is not as tough on the loved,as it is tough on the lover!

slugs

It's raining today, so it is a good day for dispatching slugs. I no longer use toxic materials added to solid bait. It is toxic also to furry and feathered friends. These chemicals were always highly effective and the liquid slug bait is still safe if used sparingly when necessary. The best organic method is to cut them in half, a rapid and humane way to eradicate them, and let them recycle 'in situ'. We have blacks, browns, grays and the ubiquitous banana slug. If you tally your kills you will be able to assess the efficiency of your control mechanism. You can even plot, number killed against cutting days, and come up with a nice Bell Curve if you are so inclined. Slug killing methods are contentious here in Lotus country! An incredible fact is, even killing is mildly contentious. That is because a zealous few see the active and ongoing digestion of organic material as nature's catalyst. Thank heavens they are not my neighbors! In respect to methods of execution, some advocate animal friendly methods such as ferrous compounds. They are not toxic, at least in modest amounts. The crows here however,eat the Safers ferrous pellets as soon as they are spread. They look like seeds. The company doesn't tell you that on the package. Those with small gardens advocate copper wire or copper impregnated fibre strung about the periphery of the garden. I'm not sure it works any better than a copper bracelet on the wrist keeps away demons but if it does, it would require constant adjusting. Various trap and drown systems are also available.Beer bait or other food materials are the bait. One year I collected a full garbage bag of hair from the barber shop sweepings, since someone told me slugs would not cross over a hairy strip. The pianist forbade it's use on the vegetable patch! Since slugs will cannibalize the corpse of their fellow creatures of any stripe, a dead slug half is the best bait of all for another slug. You can return with your trusty secateurs and slice the cannibal in half while he is enjoying himself. Two for one day! This keeps them occupied and away from your plant. Certainly, of the organic control options this is the most effective,surgically satisfying, accountability accurate, and consistent with good non-toxic recycling principles. It just means you have to get up early before they go under a rock. My tally today was 110 slugs including one banana slug.

Bill Leach,botanist

The Botany examination final, the first year I was in University was a week after the rest of the final exams. So, to save money and relax, I gave up my boarding house room and took the train home for the week, intending to come back in time to write the exam. My dad was the railroad station agent so I had a pass and my transportation was free. The night before the examination day, I stayed with my nanny and grandfather. I was ready, and I wanted a comforting place with supportive people. When I got to the university in the morning I found that the examination had been held the previous day. I was in a panic. I had misread the examination timetable. I had done badly enough that year anyway despite my best efforts. Culture shock bewilders! Botany was my best course! I thought my putative career was dashed. Nanny said, "Why don't you phone Dr. Leach and tell him what happened? He's a nice man and he goes to our church ". I called Dr. Leach at home and told him my circumstances. I don't think I told him he knew my grand parents, or that I was an Anglican but that's not to say I wouldn't have, as a last resort. Botany was a small class and he knew I was an interested student. Our family were lifelong gardeners and I was also interested in the flora of The Whiteshell. Dr. Leach spent his summers tramping the lower reaches of the Canadian, Precambrian Shield, of which the Manitoba Whiteshell was a part. Despite being in his 60's,Dr. Leach, didn't differentiate his vocation and his pleasures. They were one. The hallmark of a happy man. "Well", he said, "I'll write you a new test and you can come to my office for invigilation today". " Mind", he said, " You won't get a really good mark". The relief I felt, I can still feel today. The blessing that kind man gave me was a precious gift! When you are close to the edge, as I was that year ,the little things are important.

Road apples and ketchup

Probably about 1943 or so I was nine years old. My father worked in the railway depot in Kindersley, as a telegrapher, on a shift known as 3rd trick. This was from midnight to 8 am. He was always home at supper time. The war was on and so food was sometimes scarce or choices limited. My mother was a quick cook with no frills. She would have equaled the fast food industry in speed. As you grow up however, you develop a taste for your mother's cooking that knows few bounds. That was, and still is, the case for me though she is long dead and the western world has become eclectic and international in scope with respect to food. The exception to my mother's cooking was, and still would be, that she made a tomato soup with canned tomatoes and milk and never bothered to remove the tomato cores. I hated that soup. I hated the soft, sloppy, slimy, tomato gobs attached to the tomato cores that floated in the soup. I would sit and gag for hours over it, but got no relief. My parents would not bail me out, no matter how long I sat. I said to my dad after a particularly long session, just to give him an idea of the seriousness of my situation, " I'd sooner eat shit !" I remember this as vividly as if it was yesterday. It was the dead of winter. He went out to the street and picked up three frozen road apples. He brought them in the house, put them on a plate, put ketchup on them and said take your choice. I ate the soup. There is now, almost no food I will not eat and relish. The pianist makes all our soup from leftovers but there are no tomato gobs. The only role to then, that I knew for frozen road apples was to make a little pile on the street to mark goalposts for road shinny and to occasionally use if a puck is not available. In the meantime as they used to say on the farm, when a contrived and undeft argument was being made," Don't eat that Elmer, that's horse shit !"

The plywood snowplane

A plywood vehicle, with an automobile engine and propeller in the rear and on skis was the transport of choice for our country doctor in the dead of winter in Saskatchewan. The snowplane must have been an early forerunner of the Bombardier.They were manufactured in Saskatchewan. Dr CM had a driver, and could treat emergencies over the twenty mile radius required, running on otherwise impassable roads. and on snowdrifts over fences. The "cachet" for the teenage boy I was? Immense! The thought of a medical practice that depended entirely on your own resources, even today, fills me with admiration . As I think of it now, I believe he also tried a Bombadier with treads, which was larger and could transport patients to the little hospital. It wasn't as efficient however, in deep snow as the snowplane. He also had a new bustle back Oldsmobile, probably 1953. The only other new car in town I can ever remember was a new Dodge that the parish priest owned, and that belonged to the church. That Dr CM could afford a new car was a source of awe. Dr C.M. left his general practice while we lived there, to undertake a surgical training programme at the Mayo Clinic.He had a family, as I recall,a wife and two children. Banks and bank transfers were less utilized at that time and he showed me his savings he was taking to look after his family for the four years he needed. I had never, in my wildest imagination, seen fifteen thousand dollars in bills in a roll. I think he was proud of himself ! Those three things were the original stimulus, I believed, for me to study medicine. Years later, in interviewing prospective candidates for the medical school and listening to the " reasons for entering", it strikes me now, that I would have had to sacrifice honesty for expediency at the time! As it happened, there was no interview when I entered medicine, so I didn't have to restrain myself from blurting out my three reasons. As I reflect on the matter now, it wasn't those three things that were important, though I thought so as a young man. We identify the tangible more easily than the intangible. What Dr. CM really represented is the skill and dedication and incredible creative resourcefulness that a good medical training can provide to the right kind of person with the right stuff. That's what I would have wanted to emulate, though I couldn't articulate it at the time!