Lessons from a former boom town

Mining proponents have lately been at pains to tell us that today’s industry bears no resemblance to the mining that occurred in previous generations. This is greatly reassuring. But for those who subscribe to the old-fashioned notion that we should scrutinize the past pretty carefully before drilling into the future, Charlie Angus’s new book may provide some useful insight.

Bringing in the May

Back in March, as always, we took cuttings of forsythia and “forced” them to bloom indoors. It sounds almost unkind – but tricking plants into doing what we want is fundamental to horticulture. After decades, the old Russet tree still tries to reach for the sky, and we ruthlessly cut off all those vertical shoots. The grape vines tolerate more mutilative pruning, and every year they throw fruit as if this is their last chance.

Cultural innovation

We are approaching the 50th anniversary of the movie Soylent Green, which is a bit of a cultural touchstone even for those who have never seen it. With Hollywood heavyweights Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson playing key roles, it was a somewhat crude depiction of a society blighted by pollution, climate change, housing shortages, dying oceans, sexual oppression, and corporate control of the food system. You know, crazy sci-fi stuff.

Let’s pencil it in!

I don’t think I’m going out on an icy limb when I say that these last few weeks of winter tend to drag on a bit for many of us. It is a season of neither here nor there, of being flung back and forth from one extreme to the other. It’s hard to plan, hard to focus. We shouldn’t complain, but it passes the time. Though we know, intellectually, that we shouldn’t point fingers, we may harbour feelings of animosity toward groundhogs, and possibly toward marmots in general. Alack, it’s the human condition!

Virtually useless

Maybe you have heard about Hans Forsberg, the Swedish engineer who has trained magpies to collect bottlecaps. Forsberg, who is a robotics expert, used a 3D printer to build an avian-oriented vending machine in his backyard – just for fun. When one of the birds inserts a cap, the machine dispenses a peanut or a feed pellet.

Seeing the light?

At this time of year, getting your butt out of bed in time to watch the sun come up does not make you an early riser or a high-achiever. Late autumn sets the bar pretty low. There are many of us stumbling around in the semi-darkness.

Fully furnished

There is an exquisite feeling of self-loathing that comes with purchasing a ticket in the hospital lottery. It’s the sense of being duped, combined with the humiliation of having your baser instincts exposed. On the other hand, there’s a sense of belonging.

Fortune good and ill

Do you have grievances? By golly, I’ve got some! One of the grievances I’m cultivating at the moment concerns the radio weather forecaster who announces, almost every day, that we have a certain percent “chance for showers,” rather than a chance “of” showers.

Make fast!

During a violent storm, lying in bed in the upstairs of our house feels a bit like being at sea. There’s definitely some give in this 19th-century structure. People have tried to tell me that the capacity to bend and flex is a design feature – that the old-fashioned building methods were meant to allow for shock absorption, to help a house withstand big gusts.

Saving food

When the federal government rolled out our first-ever Food Policy for Canada two years ago, one of the primary objectives was to address a troubling reality: there are such vast quantities of farm produce on the market that much of it goes to waste, and yet some people do not have enough.

Changing our tune

There’s a catchy new song that’s sweeping the nation, though it hasn’t been heard in the Maritimes yet. Like every other trend, it will arrive here in the fullness of time. We may have to be patient, because this hot number is being tweeted and liked and shared and copied by non-electronic means. Its increasing popularity is entirely dependent upon White-throated sparrows learning it from other White-throated sparrows, and then passing it on to still more White-throated sparrows during their migratory stopovers.

This spud's for you

My goodness, look at the calendar – National Potato Day is coming up on May 30! Wait a second, that’s National Potato Day in Peru. Canada appears to follow the U.S. lead, celebrating this tuber tradition on August 19.

Vernal notes

Spring has sprung, but the grass ain’t yet riz. Give it another week, maybe. While the field I’m thinking about harrowing is still too squishy, we’re getting some of those breezy days that really dry things out. It’s not an ill wind if it bodes well for tractor work, but it could bring another bad fire season, given the absence of snowpack in the woods this year.

Remedial food literacy

“I’m glad you guys made me eat a lot of different kinds of weird food when I was little,” said our teenager, during supper the other night. Of course, any kind of positive feedback received from a 16-year-old should be viewed with suspicion. You’re not supposed to start appreciating your parents until you hit your 20s or 30s. Maybe he is trying to butter us up – currying favour, so to speak – for strategic reasons that will soon become apparent.

Should the one-percenters control agriculture?

In 2014, when the Indian writer and activist Vandana Shiva was speaking in Halifax, I had the opportunity to sit down with her for a fairly extensive interview – mostly on topics related to genetically modified (GM) crops, which was a key theme of her address. When it was clearly time to wrap up the conversation, I blurted out a rather lame closing question, asking where she saw her work going in the next five years.

’Twas the night before, etc.

There’s a certain tradition, in the month of December,
to cast the mind backward and fondly remember –
or perhaps not so much; based on how we’ve been treated,
we may wish these past episodes never repeated.

A creeping phenomenon

As harvest season rolls along, we will soon get a more complete picture of how agriculture in the Atlantic provinces has been affected by dry conditions this year. In mid-summer, most parts of New Brunswick and P.E.I. were experiencing drought, and in some areas the situation was deemed severe.