May Joy and Peace be Yours this Christmas

To all of our friends and family who celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas we wish you all the love, joy and peace of Mary's Babe of Bethlehem this Christmas season.

Terry & Ingrid, and all at Kwa-McCann.

Eve of Memorial Day - November 11th, 2009

Last year, I think it was, Ingrid and I were driving east on the 401 on a Friday afternoon, on our way to Ottawa, along the section known as the Highway of Heroes at a time when one of the soldiers from the Canadian Armed Forces was being "brought home." The scene was exactly as described in this YouTube video. As we passed under one of the bridges we could see the motorcade approaching from the east and I looked at the blocked-off on-ramp on the other side of the road and saw a dozen or so very, very elderly veterans standing to attention and saluting this young soldier, I think he was just 21, who had given his life in Afghanistan. I choked up. They knew. They understood. Even after fifty years they will never forget. Nor must we.

I decided that, beautiful as it is, I would not use John McCrae's In Flanders Fields this year but rather Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est. It has rather a shocking ending that reminds you what war really is. A five-nine referred to a German 5.9 inch artillery shell in World War 1.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfrid Owen (1917)

Bent double, like of old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind: Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime… Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If in sonic smothering dreams you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,- My friend, you would not talk with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Movember Day 1. Tally-Ho!

Click on the link to see Movember Day 1.

Movember coming up

I have created a new blog especially to track the goings-on of our 2009 Movember team, the Mo Stashed Hairiers. Click on the link and go on over and take a look.

...and now Ingrid cuts her hand

My wife is starting to sound like an accident waiting to happen.

This latest one happened at work in the new family shelter that Blue Doors has just opened. The gory details are waaaaay too complicated to explain. The summary version is that she was trying to get a key out of a door with some special "thingy" (dingis) on a wire that gets keys out of doors. The thingy suddenly came loose and Ingrid gave herself a cut between her thumb and index finger for which she needed an anti-tet shot and some glue - yes, glue, not stitches - and a bandage that is not allowed to get wet for some inconvenient number of days.

My Personal Tribute to Peter, Paul and Mary

Mary Travers died on September 16, 2009. R.I.P.

Even before Simon and Garfunkel, who were a huge influence on my musical preferences and guitar playing, there was "Peter, Paul and Mary". They were my first exposure to "modern" folk music when I heard them singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" in my final year of high school (1963) while doing my homework at the dining room table. It was from their songbooks that I taught myself the basic guitar picking techniques that I still use today and that transformed my guitar playing pleasure from thrumma-thrum thrum thrum to plong-pling plingkity pling.

Ever since hearing the news of Mary Travers' passing, "Puff, the Magic Dragon" has been going through my head. May she rest in peace and be rewarded for not burying her talent.

Ingrid fractures her foot

Actually, this is hardly news considering as it happened about 10 days ago, but it does make for a dramatic headline, doesn't it? It happened while Jeroen, James and I were sight-seeing at Niagara Falls. Fortunately Judith was home. Ingrid slipped on the front stairs of our deck, landing heavily on her foot. It was only some hours later, as the pain increased, that Ingrid decided she should get her foot examined and phoned Mark, who works close by, to take her to the hospital.

Enjoy the photos of the intrepid wife and mother hard at work in her new office at Blue Door Shelters.

I have also posted a small album with some more photos from Luisa and Mark's wedding. These were taken at the church before and after the ceremony. None of the photos feature Mark or Luisa. As it happens, tomorrow (Thursday) is Mark's birthday. Happy birthday, Mark!

The Moomba Song - Lyrics

By popular demand Kwa-McCann brings you the lyrics of "The Moomba Song" as sung by the McCann Family Singers at Luisa and Mark's wedding reception.

Words by Ingrid "Moed" McCann

To the tune of Zulu Warrior

Moomba Song

Mark found his Moomba, Moomba, Moomba

Mark found his Moomba, Moomba Love. 2x

Hold your course you mighty captain,

Straight and fast you mighty chief, chief, chief, chief.

Here comes his Moomba, Moomba, Moomba

Here comes his Moomba, Moomba love. 2x

Then Mark met lovely Luisa,

Mark has found his wedding match, match, match, match.

Ayikhona Moomba, Moomba, Moomba

Ayikhona Moomba, Moomba love. 2x

One bright day, Luisa’s family,

Came to visit very brief, brief, brief.

Mark went boating with his Moomba,

Luisa’s heart was filled with grief, grief, grief, grief.

Mark chose his Moomba, Moomba, Moomba

Mark chose his Moomba over me.

Mark loves his Moomba, Moomba, Moomba

Mark loves his Moomba more than me.

Mark decided to do something,

He proposed for them to wed, wed, wed.

One romantic Saturday morning.

With rose petals in her bed, bed, bed, bed.

So…. Here comes the bride,

All dressed in white…

Slipped on a banana peel

And went for a ride.

A Trip to Niagara Falls

Tuesday was Jeroen's last full day. He, James and I made the trip out to Niagara Falls.

Congratulations on your marriage, Geoff & Miriam

Yesterday, Saturday, Geoff & Miriam exchanged their wedding vows in a beautiful ceremony in the United Church just down the road from where they live.

After a photo shoot in the old CAMH grounds...

...we all celebrated with a braai/barbecue in their back yard.

This morning, Sunday, we finished off with an Italian brunch at the Amore Restaurant.

Over the next few weeks I hope to get my photos grouped into albums. Please be patient.

August - One Hectic Month of Weddings

OK. Let's review where we've come over the last 3 weeks and what is still ahead.

Relatives from Holland - a

Relatives from Scotland - a

Son and best man from South Africa - a

Relatives and friends from Manitoba - a

Relatives from Saskatchawan - a

Friend from BC - a

Friend from California - a

Stag & stagette parties - a

First rehearsal - a

After rehearsal Portuguese BBQ - a

Luisa & Mark's wedding - a(beautifully)

Reception - a(great success except for the air conditioning not working)

Next day brunch - a(42 people in our little home)

A week of on-going partying with Luisa & Mark at the Penfold cottage near Perth - a

Ingrid and I were hoping to take a breather by going back to work this week but we'd forgotten that work is not like that...

Still to come...

Miriam & Geoff's rehearsal

After rehearsal dinner

Miriam & Geoff's wedding

Reception ("small" BBQ affair at their home)

Next day brunch

Finished. Klaar. Finito. Eindig. Fini. Phelile.

Photo's to follow.

Dinner, speeches, skits, bouquet, garter

Here is my selection of wedding photos from the dinner, speeches, skits, bouquet toss and plunder of the garter. Click here. I apologise that so many of the pictures are grainy. My oversight. I forgot to change the ISO from 800 to 400 so the cropped pictures are somewhat grainy. Ja, well, no, fine... Half a loaf is better than none.

This one is my favourite. I have seen this glint a number of times when Mark knew he had someone in his power and there was nothing they could do about it, but never before caught it on camera. For some reason Luisa seems to be enjoying this loss of control.

This next one is like catching a lightning strike - pure fluke. See the glance between bride and groom. Ag, sweet, eh?

Wedded At Last

Mark married Luisa in a beautiful ceremony at St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church, Newmarket, on Saturday, August 15th, the feast of the Assumption of Mary and, not coincidentally, the wedding anniversary of Connie and Luis, Luisa's mom and dad. It was, however, by curious coincidence that Mark had popped the question on Ingrid's and my wedding anniversary.

After the church ceremony there was a great reception and party at the Water Stone equestrian estate.

Click on here for a short slide show of the happy couple. The pictures were taken during the photo op. before the dinner.

This smacks not just of prejudice, but of apartheid.

These words were written by Toronto Star columnist, Christopher Hume, in today's edition of the newspaper under the headline: Is citizenship now defined by the colour of your skin.

Mohamud's case is a perfect example; her nightmare began when a functionary in the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi agreed with a Kenyan airport official and decided she wasn't the woman whose photograph appears in her passport. We were told, incredibly, that it had something to do with her lips. She was immediately declared an "imposter" and Kenyan authorities were asked to prosecute her.

Although she produced all kinds of identification – including a driver's licence, OHIP card, social insurance card and a Canadian citizenship certificate to boot – her fate was sealed. The poor woman even spent time in a Kenyan jail, the horror of which one can only begin to imagine.

Conclusion? Nothing in Canadian law stops the government from "picking and choosing" which Canadians it will help and who it will abandon, a former senior diplomat warns.

I still find it incredible that: 1) Canadian authorities would hand over a purportedly Canadian passport to the authorities of another country, even after they have stamped it void; 2) Canadian authorities take your finger prints and then "destory" them.

I'm also curious to know what they did with the OHIP card, SIN card and Canadian citizenship certificate. Did they hand them over to Kenyan authorities too or give them back to the supposed Imposter?

Ja, well, no, fine.

Racial Bias in Canada?

As a white South African old enough to remember Diefenbaker and Trudeau's campaigns against apartheid and my parents' disparaging remarks about Canadian "hypocrites" who should mind their own business (I didn't agree with them but that's another story,) I was naively surprised when I first learnt about the unresolved issues in Canada around First Nations' treaties and quite shocked upon first hearing about the forced removals of Inuit and Métis children from their families and being placed in "civilised" residential schools. Given these issues and after being raised on a diet of race and human rights in South African politics I am amazed at how insignificant a role race actually plays in Canadian politics, at least judging by the amount of silence raised on these subjects in political rhetoric.

Although not registering the same levels of shock on the Richter Scale as the above, I was still surprised on reading Rosie Dimanno's column in The Star on Saturday which opened with the following words: In a Hamilton courtroom recently, a mistrial was declared – in large part – because too many potential jurors declared themselves to be intrinsically biased against the black defendants.

I don't automatically agree with everything Rosie Dimanno writes and there are some issues where we are far apart, but this article is worth reading. Click here for the article.

2009 Holst Picnic

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We missed last year but I am glad that Ingrid and I got to go again this year. As usual the pavilion was booked in case of rain but the weather was excellent. Of course if we did not have the pavilion then Sunday's downpours and steady rain would have come a day earlier.

Herb provided his usual half drum brickette BBQ which was more than adequate for the job. For the first time Ingrid and I did not have boerewors - and some people even noticed and commented. We had chicken sosaties instead.

Here is a link to the full 2009 Holst Picnic album - my first on flickr.

Multiculturalism Day at the Office

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Today we had Multiculturalism Day at GE. I was very impressed by the extent to which a number of people really got into the spirit of it all and have set up mini displays around their office workspace over the last two weeks. Here is a sampling. For the full set of photos have a look at my album, 2009 GE Multiculturalism Day.

Belated May Update

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Going back a bit in time, we all got together at Miriam and Geoff's place for Mother's Day on 10 May. Geoff again demonstrated that he is Master of the Braai and produced some great boerewors that was polished off before the afternoon was finished. We took a much needed walk past the church where Miriam and Geoff will be getting married at the end of August. We also passed this history plaque on the first airmail in Canada that I found interesting.

At the end of May Blue Door Shelters (where Ingrid works) put on their second annual Bed Race fundraiser. I did not participate this year other than by taking pictures, but "the kids" and their partners entered an eight member team, "Clan and Co." As with last year, they again excelled themselves and were presented with the winners' gold medals though they had two legs of the race where they were very shaky. To Ingrid's and their own embarrassment they were the worst of all the teams when it came down to knowing or guessing statistics about homelessness in York Region. For some more photos of the event have a look at my Picasa Blue Door Bed Race 2009 album.

This Sunday we went to the annual Aurora Street Sale. This is reputed to be the world's longest annual street sale (from Yonge St. & Wellington St. to Yonge St. & Allaura Blvd. approx. 1.5 km) and Yonge Street is reputed to be the longest street in the world.Aurora is the next town just south of Newmarket - a very pretty and quaint town. One of the stalls, Curly and Company Salon, was offering free neck and scalp massage with any donations going to Blue Door Shelters. Ingrid was on hand for a few hours to answer any questions about Blue Door Shelters. She and Judith both took advantage of the occasion to get a massage, but I declined.

This evening Ingrid and I finished off the the weekend with a drink on our front deck. Just as we were going inside one of the largest single formations of Canada geese that I have seen flew almost directly overhead. I counted 56 birds.

All along we thought we were South Africans

Mark has been preparing for a trip to South Africa for himself and his wife-to-be at the end of the year. Luisa's parents are from Mocambique so he and Luisa want to visit there as well. Somehow in the process of preparing for this he discovered that he lost his South African citizenship when he became a Canadian citizen. We were all under the impression that dual citizenship was automatic but we have now learnt that we had to make special application to retain our South African citizenship before becoming Canadian citizens or lose it. Sooo... since 2003 we have been Canadians, proud of our South African heritage, but not South African citizens - just Canadians with South African accents (except Judith.)  We just didn't know it.

I must say that for me, personally, I am battling to get my head and heart around this new information about my identity - or loss of part of my identity. I'm trying to understand why this is an issue for me. Nothing has changed in my personal or family history. My memories are still the same. I still have the same friends here and in South Africa. Lots of people ask me where I come from when they hear my accent, some have even told me that they love my accent, but nobody has asked if I am still a South African citizen, or a Canadian citizen for that matter. 

So what's the issue? Why do I feel like I have lost something? I have lost the right to vote in South African elections but then I have never attempted to vote from outside the country because it is my conviction that I have nothing to say if I am not prepared to live with the consequences of my vote. I have lost the right to free healthcare in RSA but then I never had free healthcare in RSA and the Canadian system is 5-star by comparison. I have lost some rights but I cannot tell you which ones that really seem to matter to me. So that doesn't seem to be the issue.

I think the feeling is more like having or not having full membership in a club.  However dubious its reputation, there is a spirit of loyalty and belonging among the paid-up members even when they argue among themselves.  They have a right to be in the club-house. Friends of club members can only be visitors. I can now only ever return to South Africa as a visitor. If the Government were so inclined they could demand visas from Canadians just as the Canadian Government requires South Africans to obtain visas for trips to Canada. That jars me - being a visitor in the country of my birth. That's like losing a hand or a foot if not an arm or a leg.

Ja, well, no, fine. My rugby team is still the Sharks even though they let me down in the last half of the Super-14 and I am now supporting the Bulls as the only SA team left and they must blerrie-well win the final. Life goes on and more is nog 'n dag and 'n boer maak 'n plan and all that. I have no regrets for the decisions I made in coming to this great country which is Canada. Maybe next season the Toronto Maple Leafs will win the Stanley Cup, or at least make the playoffs...

The Hell of Chemotherapy

I recommend this article to anyone who has tut-tutted over the story of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old with Hodgkin's lymphoma who did a bunk.

We shouldn't be judging the 'chemo kid'

The hell of treatment gives cancer survivors insight into Hauser's decision to flee

May 25, 2009

DR. RAHUL K. PARIKH

SALON.COM

The story of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old boy from Minnesota with Hodgkin's lymphoma, instantly grabbed international headlines last week when the boy and his mother went on the lam. Daniel's mother Colleen refuses, because of her beliefs, to authorize chemotherapy treatments for her son.

Hodgkin's lymphoma has a 90 per cent cure rate with chemotherapy, and a 95 per cent chance of killing a person without it.

Chemotherapy will likely save Daniel's life and, as a pediatrician, I would not hesitate to recommend it.

But I would also like to turn down the volume on the talk-radio chatter and outraged editorials. That's because nobody seems to be talking about what it takes to beat Hodgkin's (or any other cancer).

...For the rest of this excellent article go to The Toronto Star's parentcentral.ca

Response to Reinier's letter re U of C wasting money

Dear Reinier,




Whether we are talking about abortion or free speech, the essential premises of the pro-life group are based on the following aphorisms:
1. human life begins with conception
2. there is a human being from the moment there is human life.

Syllogism 1 (Abortion).
Human beings have a right to life.
This foetus is a human being,
Therefore this foetus has a right to life.

Syllogism 2 (Free speech)
Human beings have a right to be heard.
All those foetuses (fetuses,foeti) about to be aborted are human beings,
Therefore all those foetuses have a right to be heard.


Obviously my presentation of the pro-life premise is heavily flavoured by my faith as a Roman Catholic but I believe that this, purely and simply, is the crux of the great divide. If pro-choicers are basing their conclusions on premises contradictory to these then all discussion on the conclusions will sound like a discussion with the Mad Hatter.

It seems to me that people are spending too much time debating, arguing, fighting, whatever, over conclusions to syllogisms based on different or contradictory premises instead of discussing the differences between the critical premise. (For readers who don't know, a syllogism is a conclusion based on two propositions called premises, e.g.: all dogs are mammals; Lassie is a dog; therefore Lassie is a mammal.)

Before going on further down this road I would like to get your response to the above. Also, I have presented you with what I believe to be, at least the Catholic cohort's version of, the essential premise of the pro-life movement. I would be curious to know how you would state the essential axioms and premise(s) of pro-choicers.

Best regards
Terry

Take it like a man, ladies

The following article is taken from yesterday's edition of The Toronto Star.

No girl power in shaming cheats

May 11, 2009 08:50 AM

Rosie DiManno

Advice to cuckolded women: Man up a bit.

(Yes, cuckold is technically a term applied to husbands of unfaithful wives. But there's no reverse equivalent that I can find in the dictionary. Suggestions welcome.)

Two such high profile missuses have been in the news lately – Elizabeth Edwards, a.k.a. St. Elizabeth, and Veronica Lario Berlusconi, née Miriam Barolini.

Both have been profoundly wronged, certainly to hear them tell, which each is doing via the vehicle of biography and TV confessional, for one, and ambushing emails to the media, for the other.

Say what you will about husbands who are cads – as their respective spouses, disgraced Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – appear to be. Yet males, even those who have been on the violated end of infidelity, are rarely wont to open a vein in public.

There are exceptions to this generalization, of course. But for the most part, men do not go whingeing to Oprah or pen avenging memoirs that simultaneously mortify a couple's children or wash the dirty BVDs out in the open.

I suspect this comes from the social conditioning of boys, who are still raised to not shed tears in public or otherwise reveal themselves as pussies. Girls, by comparison, are nurtured in the culture of tattle and tell-all grievance from the time they're subjected to their first schoolyard name-calling.

Females are inundated with mass media messaging – subliminal and overt – about bred-in-the-genes persecution, the biological and manifest destiny of their X chromosome, the gender for whom offence is endlessly done to.

The consequence, too often, is a kind of emotional indigestion with public burping as the antacid, especially for women who can command an audience.

They seek public validation for their pain.

Elizabeth Edwards has always seemed a smart, tough lady who might have been a fine public servant on her own merits had she not subsumed herself in the advancement of hubby's career. There have been dreadful tragedies in her life, from the loss of a teenage son in an automobile accident to a recurrence of cancer, untreatable.

But of one thing she remained assured: That devoted husband would not betray her, sexually.

As everyone now knows, John-Boy Edwards was a two-timing cheat who may have fathered a child with a woman who had been making campaign videos for him in 2006. Before the world found out, Edwards admitted the "indiscretion" to his wife, at which point she screamed, sobbed and threw up. He said it was only that one-night-stand time, a lie.

Elizabeth Edwards has recounted all this, wincingly, in her just released book, Resilience, and appeared on Oprah last week to discuss same – the only proviso that the name of The Other Woman never be mentioned during the interview.

The purpose of dragging her hurt into the limelight escapes me. Quite apart from further embarrassing the father of her children, she also makes herself pathetic and sound like a fool; can't understand the why of his unfaithfulness. But the why of adultery is never that complicated: Attraction, availability, boredom, horniness, because it's there.

Instead, beyond a vague reference to her husband's "narcissism," Elizabeth Edwards puts the blame on a woman she portrays as a bimbo and whose baby she describes as "it."

"It didn't occur to me that at a fancy hotel in New York, where he sat with a potential donor to his antipoverty work, he would be targeted by a woman who would confirm that the man at the table was John Edwards and then would wait for him outside the hotel hours later when he returned from a dinner, wait with the come-on line "You are so hot" ... And if you had asked me to wager that house we were building on whether my husband of then 28 years would have responded to a come-on like that, I would have said no."

Shows how little she knows about men in general and her husband in particular. What planet is this trained lawyer living on? Must be the one where bitter women wield their anguish for vindication and town square shaming.

There's nothing dignified or girl power-ing about it.

Meanwhile, back at the palazzo ...

That would be the suburban Milan mansion where Veronica Lario has been living, apart from her vulgarian husband, for several years. This marriage has been over for ages and Lario has maintained a mostly low-wattage existence, except for the occasions when she wasn't – by unburdening her ample chest on the public zeitgeist.

Long-suffering is how Lario is usually described.

That's manipulative, the conventional take on a wife who chose to stay wedlocked to her perma-tanned husband despite his chronically cheesy behaviour, from phone calls to a sex chat line (purportedly for the purpose of opinion polling, a typical Berlusconi stunt) to old-coot flirting with curvaceous TV starlets (some of whom he put forward as candidates in the upcoming European parliamentary elections) to verbal (at minimum) groping of women who usually sex-wagged right back.

Two years ago, Lario – by newspaper correspondence – demanded a public apology from her boulevardier husband for telling a former Miss Italy contestant (now minister of equal opportunities in Berlusconi's cabinet): "If I weren't married I would marry you immediately." Of his many gaffes, that one seems fairly harmless, actually.

But a baroque mea culpa was issued forthwith, published in the many Italian newspapers Berlusconi owns: "I beg you to forgive me."

More recent provocations – especially Berlusconi's attendance at the 18th birthday of a Napolitano nymphet who calls him "Papi," when he allegedly has been a no-show for his own kids' 18th birthday celebrations – had Lario blasting away again in late-night emails to two news agencies. "I cannot stay with a man who frequents minors," she sniffed, while dismissing those bimbette election candidates as "shameless rubbish to entertain the emperor."

Cue the divorce lawyers and upcoming war over the 72-year-old billionaire's fortune.

It's hard to view Lario, 52, and gorgeous if cosmetically enhanced, as the fregato victim.

The couple met almost 30 years ago when she was performing topless in a play at the theatre Berlusconi owned. While still married to his first wife, Lario bore him a son, then two more children before they wed.

No doubt the first Mrs. Berlusconi thought her usurper was a home-wrecking seductress too.

You reap what you sow. Sometimes you weep over husbands spreading their seed elsewhere.

But public parading of intimate betrayal – by book or by online crook – is tawdry payback.

Stay or go. Just take it like a man, ladies.

A river flows through it - our very own

Today we had 50 mm (2 inches) of rain in just a few hours. The result was a river of stormwater through our backyard.


Here are some pictures of our very own river starting from our neighbours' property and going out at the bottom of our yard. The dark thing in the middle of the third picture is our fire pit.

A response to "U of C wasting money"

On Feb 3 I posted an article published by the Calgary Herald, U of C wasting money.  My brother-in-law in Scotland, Reinier, sent me an email expressing reservations and defending the university's position. Reinier and I have had many debates and discussions on many things. I love him dearly, as he does me, and we have a deep respect for each other. We simply do not agree on some issues - this being one of them. With his permission I post his response here. The photos are nothing to do with the article or Reinier's response but were taken when Ingrid, Judith and I visited Glasgow two years ago. The one on the left is Judith, Maya, Reinier and Ingrid walking along the bonnie banks o' Loch Lomond. On the right is Fleshmarket Close in Edinburgh where Ian Rankin had somebody murdered in his book of the same name.

Hi Terry

I, too, expected you to disagree with me. But, perhaps, both of us are wrong to’expect’ these stances from one another. On second reflection, me, you, and people generally are far more complex in their emotions and reactions to life’s challenges than we would credit.

I know that the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ debates conjure the most bitter and emotionally-charged arguments. Your  blog entry and links to the U of Calgary and their SU webpage (I’m sorry! …don’t know how to do these links!) reveals an abundance of opinions regarding the rights and wrongs of abortion. 

The issue regarding banning the particular group, though, seems to be about the rights and wrongs of free speech. And the right – if that is claimed – of a group of people to confront very vulnarable women regarding their fucundacy or pregnancy. I believe that’s wrong - and if you go to the U of C website and read the comments I think you’ll agree that, at the very least, the pro-life campaign is problematic.

Of course you are welcome to publish my response. Like, you – even if from the opposite angle – I would welcome further debate. 

Fond regards,

Reinier

James has breezed back into our lives

I think the obvious place to start to catch up since February is with the biggest item of news first, which also happens to be the most recent. James has breezed back into our lives after totally disappearing off our radar for more than ten years. James, for those who do not know, is our adopted son, our sixth "kid", older than Miriam by three years. He will be the first to tell you that his policy has always been, "Don't call me, I'll call you." He backed this up by keeping his whereabouts secret even from the Security Police, CSIS, FBI, CIA, KGB... Nobody ever knew where James was except James, and God.

Last Saturday Aunty Bessie (about to turn 93 - has just memorised Pat Prinsloo's new phone number because she is pretty-well blind - don't ask me the number, I have it written down somewhere) asked me on our weekly phone call if we ever heard from James because she has been praying for him every day for ten years and it would be nice to know if her prayers were being answered. I told her I had not heard from him since before leaving for Canada in 1998 and at this stage did not expect to hear from him anymore. On Tuesday somebody named Steve left a comment on this blog telling me he has been trying to get hold of me about James. I replied and told him he had my full attention - I had been ignoring his "friend request" on Facebook. One email led to another. Apparently James had been looking for us and Steve tracked me down to this blog. On Friday Ingrid & I had an hour long phone conversation with James at the place where he has been boarding with Steve's mother for the last eight years in George in the Eastern Cape. Miriam and James were talking on Saturday; Mark took his turn today (Sunday). Everybody is very happy at the "reunion" - James so much so that he has given us all his contact info! Deo Gratias!

Other news...

Mark and Luisa "actualised" their Christmas present to Ingrid and me - a weekend of painting and DIY getting our house a bit more ready for all the relatives who will be visiting for the wedding in August. They did a great job and seemed to enjoy it; we enjoyed having them.

We all enjoyed getting together at Geoff and Miriam's for a braai (BBQ) to watch South Africa beat Australia in one of the recent Twenty/20s. Geoff has impressed us all learning the laws and terms of cricket as well as doing an excellent job with wors (South African sausage) on the braai. Afterwards they all jammed down in the basement where Geoff and Miriam have a really nice setup with drums, keyboard, guitars.

Final news item: it snowed. What's new about that in Canada you ask? Well, if you consider that the picture of the the mourning doves basking in the sun was taken March 1, and the pictures of the snow were taken April 6 & 7, then you can understand the communal depression that came over the people of southern Ontario as the snow hung around for another 9 days. Yesterday and today were just wonderful and I even saw dandelions. We'll be overwhelmed by weeds before we know it. Come on summer.