 
# Elderly Controversy Viewed by an Elderly

# Jon Van Loon

# Copyright 2013 Jon Van Loon

# Smashwords Edition

## 

## Preface

Warning

This is a very different book in important ways from the usual treatment that concentrates mainly on suggestions for improving the daily life of seniors. It is not written by an expert on seniors but by a senior whose diverse experiences and problems transcend the standard content purveyed by traditional experts. Many will find this to be a very controversial treatment of the category of seniors.

Most importantly this is in large part not a feel good book but had to be written to as one might say to level the playing field. It is in stark disagreement with the bestselling, but seriously flawed book, "Abundance". In fact I predict that many potential readers will not download this book after reading its first sections. This treatise consists of 3 parts, urgent problems thoughtlessly created by or heedlessly left unsolved by the elderly generation which portend serious consequences for our progeny, coping with seniors problems as viewed from my own experiences and amusing stories in my life of the bygone era to entertain and stimulate the senior reader to remember similar issues in their own life. I purposely put the problems related to our elderlies generation's notable failures as part 1 because I felt this to be the most important section and in dire need of thoughtful consideration. The reader may wonder why I omit obvious triumphs that have occurred during our tenure. This is because despite these triumphs our world has developed during this same period into serious state of decrepitude.

Thus I plan first to outline selected critical challenges and crisis that my generation including me failed to resolve. These will include those we consciously decided not to worry about, ones which developed and were discarded from our minds as issues that would be resolved by others or because required remediation would interfere adversely with aspects of our happy existence. Herein I, a strong proponent of democracy, provide a hardnosed look at selected possible reasons why often for selfish motives the world we have developed as our legacy for our progeny is essentially dysfunctional and fraught with critical threats to the sustainability of mankind. Happily there are solutions to some of these that the elderly can still provide curative assistance.

Additionally this book is non-conventional in this field since in the second part of this treatise I use in large part my own and related experiences to discuss problems faced day to day by seniors. Recommendations are frequently drawn from my own hard won experiences. In making this choice the reader should know that I have dealt with a plethora of medical experts and experts in a wide range of other fields as a senior and have had more than my share of indifferent treatment therefrom. The reason I have had such a wide range of experience with medics is that I have a severe learning disability and am bipolar as well and yet I became a Full Professor at the University of Toronto. In the case of the latter I have published several peer reviewed research papers in the clinical field that allowed me to see medical science from the inside. I also have a pacemaker the presence of which shows serious deficiencies in medical treatment as will be detailed below. Other qualifications are listed below. The third part with amusing stories is to help the readers ease out of this treatise by reviving old memories of our their bygone lives based on incidents from my own.

## Seniors Legacy to Their Progeny

I wish to emphasize that what follows in this section is a statement that applies in the average senior's situation there are numerous praiseworthy exceptions. The elderly have all spent at least 65 years on this earth in at least 40 years of these most of us share some degree of culpability for the major problems that presently threaten the sustainability of mankind worldwide.

Some will claim they were largely unaware of the critical state of the urgent problems I will be divulging. Many will claim freedom from blame since they were not employed in any area that related to these issues. Or there are those who would assert that there were others better positioned to communicate on these serious issues hence they assumed these individuals were handling the problem. None of these reasons relieves anyone in my generation, this generation of elderly, of their portion of the blame for the major predicaments we now face. In a democracy and in a well-informed world like ours each of us has had the responsibility to become aware of the crucial predicaments and then pressure our representatives at the relevant levels of government for remediation.

To an agree understandably a large fraction of us live our lives in a very self-centered manner and have engaged in actions and pursuits mainly to benefit our own family unit Taking Climate Change as an example, few of us were climatologists or related scientists who had the expertise to study and propose changes to avert this disaster. Still fewer seniors were in the decision making chain that could have enacted legislation to effect these needed changes. Yet as must be emphasized again in a democracy all of us are empowered to exert pressure for corrective action when needed; but how many do? How many of us took up the chalice in this broadly publicized mess and bothered to keep pressure for needed change constantly flowing to the crucial climate change pressure points. What if 100% of the citizens of Canada made a plea to government for remediation of the Climate Change issue do you not think action would be forthcoming? But most of us don't bother to communicate our concerns to authorities. This permits the government and the vested interests to divert most of the population into believing that actions like planting trees, cleaning up urban clutter and recycling represent an adequate show of Environmental responsibility. Most politicians and I say this after years of experience locally and worldwide, despite their political leanings are like buckets which are full to the brim with promises and intentions, some deeply felt and many purely intended to garner votes. Once elected these political buckets begin to empty, and are left with a few deeply held beliefs and intentions.

Most importantly why specifically do I dare think I have the credentials and required erudition for such an evaluation and condemnation of my generation? I am a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto who was cross appointed and engaged in teaching and research in 2 departments and 1 Institute, Earth Sciences, Chemistry and Environmental Studies. My research At the Institute for Environmental Studies consisted of interdisciplinary subjects that involved direct daily cooperative work with physicists, life scientists, biological scientists, economists, lawyers, political, social scientists and others. In addition I worked as consultants in Canada and worldwide for groups such as UNESCO, The World Bank, CSIRO (guest worker) and PACE. In these consultancies I lived and worked for short periods in a variety of jurisdictions on 6 Continents covering the gamut of political systems. Thus unlike most seniors I have a uniquely diverse yet powerful perspective on the world as it now exists, why this is so and can then make an informed assessment on the prospects for its future. This latter is of particular importance since it has ramifications for the prospects of our progeny Of course it might be logical to argue that for this very same reason I might be more culpable in the non-solution of the critical world threatening problems than most since I had all these credentials to provide the answers and the impetus. I can only state that I spent my whole career in attempting to have important remediation put in place both in North America and in many other worldwide jurisdictions. For the most part I failed. I might cite the dysfunctional nature of local governance, gridlock among the superpowers relating to the nature of viable solutions, detail dirty tricks employed by those opposed to my attempts at needed change and a dozen other excuses but I accept my fate and admit that perhaps a better individual than I would have been much more successful. You will have your opinion after reading this account.

Notice

Data abounds about the elderly thus instead of providing direct quotes from a particular source the numerical and specific statements given in this treatise in most cases represent averages or generalities divined by the author from many sources. Some (W) has been provided from the website www.worldometers.info. The names of persons used in the manuscript are purely fictional except of course for my own, where quotations are cited or famous historical individuals are identified.

The Basics of our Feelings

The phrase "you are only as old as you think you are" is widely used. No doubt about it a person's mental and emotional mind set can make a huge difference not only in everyday attitude towards life but in physical health and wellbeing as well.. Most of us have seen people recover from seemingly fatal illness based more on their belief that the problem can and will be beaten rather than through any medication prescribed.

Just for fun let's divulge a widely used definition of elderly? The World Health Organization states "Most developed world countries have accepted the age of 65 years as a definition of elderly or older person." Using this definition and averaging estimates from a variety of sources about 15% of the US population is 65 years of age or older 1n 2012.

At the age of 76 by this definition I have had 11 years of elderliness. When I was 65 there was no way you could define me as elderly, I was for example still writing books, constructing computers from scrap parts, jogging 10 km per day, digging new gardens in hard packed clay and taking public transit to all my appointments. Now at 76 I again for example I am writing books, walking 5km per day and planting in my garden. Others at this same age of 76 can still do what I did at age 65. Thus defining a numerical age value for elderly is obviously a fool's game. Anyone over the age of 65 who reads this book has their own stories of personal incidents that relate to the process of aging. These experiences relate to medical issues, technology challenges, treatment by business people and/or those in the commercial world and in the service industry together with a variety of other experiences. Often in my case these experiences have been negatively (inferiorly) tainted because of my age a situation I find is common for many others in my category.

Let's share our experiences by you comparing yours to mine. Then let me make some suggestions on how best to handle aging in the atmosphere of runaway technology and related areas of rapid development. Perhaps I can define in this kaleidoscope of change just what are the most essential issues the "elderly' need face, my main purpose being to bring some order from this massive muddle of change.

The elderly should have fundamental prerogatives. A person should have the right to live in their own domicile or at least reside as an independent individual as long as possible and this is particularly important for most elderly many who often feel challenged in this regard by family. One of my pet peeves is fighting to have my needs be considered as important as those in younger age groups. In a related matter there are times that I struggle even to be taken seriously or even considered capable particularly by professionals in the medical and business worlds. Most of this can be summed up by the need to be treated with the respect similar to that would be accorded any person at any age.

Much also depends on the view we have of ourselves that determines how we react to situations that occur as we age. The reactions and subsequent actions over the years end up formulating our true view of our self.

Self-Worth

"I'm me and what the Hell can I do about it"? Langley, towards the denouement of his seemingly irrational Fifth Ave New York existence, utters this frustratingly terse self appraisal in E. L. Doctorow's epic study of 2 eccentric brothers in "Homer and Langley". This succinct and cryptic message jolted me to the realization that as we zig zag along the corridors from birth to maturity this just about sums up our ultimate fate. The only question to be resolved really is how "I" became "Me". In our advancing years as I now reside, indeed there seems little one can do about the final outcome.

Real change will come to the world through the attitudes and deeds of individuals. As Ghandi stated, "You must be the change you want to see in the World". This is why a balanced view of self-worth is so important as it is the driving factor for our attitudes and actions.

It is hard to imagine a humble Head-of-State; one important living example to my mind might be the Dali Lama. Of course in the recent past Ghandi and Nelson Mandela spring to mind. Humility unlike notoriety often results in persons of importance being enveloped in a shroud of obscurity. It is not uncommon to think of an important discovery but then be unable to remember the perpetrator.

On the other hand names such as Mao, Hitler and Stalin stand out not only due to their deeds but because of their self-hype and demands for subservience. The desire to intrude into the limelight is a state much too common among the human race.

Our opinion of ourselves is the engine that powers the tenor of our daily living and to some extent those who live around us. Development of self-worth can be a complex progression of factors or it may be dominated in large part by a single circumstance.

Spirituality, whether represented by a conventional religion or subjectively devolved, can be the most important component in self-expression and in the treatment of others. On the other hand sudden changes in spirituality eg. becoming a born again Christian, can result in a lock step change in self-worth perception.

The opinions of others received directly or from an intermediary or even just presupposed, affect our perceived stature. This latter category may be a false declaration by individual(s) that is deliberately demeaning based on a variety of factors such as jealousy.

Mental and emotional makeup and changes throughout life therein can be immense factors in influencing the sufferer's interpretation of wellbeing. Closely related is physical health, with serious childhood maladies and degenerative diseases particular challenges to self-perception. Mental and physical challenges have both genetic and environmental components'.

There are those who deliberately purvey a false sense of positive self-worth. Although frequently obvious to others over time this impression can superficially, publically clad their real vexatious feelings; the latter spilling through amongst family and close friends.

Success or lack thereof in a vocation whether as a homemaker and/or otherwise can have an extraordinary influence on self-opinion. A confident individual can much more easily construct their opinion in this matter without undue influence being absorbed from attitudes of bosses or colleagues. Our perceived contributions to the betterment of mankind through vocation and related activities such as volunteerism can be an important component in this category.

An event of cataclysmic proportions at any point in our lives can suddenly change self-perspective. A classic example for many would be the death or serious maiming of a child in a car collision in which they were involved as the driver. Strangely the effect on a person's psyche would often differ little whether the incident was their fault or not. The death of family member or close friend although not primarily related to self-perception can become such through qualms over things left unsaid or incidents of their mistreatment.

Deserving of particular consideration in matters of self-estimation is family life, friends and associates and upbringing. A crucial factor herein is the proximate external environment in which we evolved throughout our formative years. In this regard an individual friend or foe can dominate. In the extreme the nature of this influence on self-worth can be to create sameness or indeed to result in the exact opposite characteristic. Particularly surprising is the frequent failure for an individual be it friend, family member or even medical professional, through logical reasoning to alter self-worth appraisals.

In the end one must hope to have journeyed through life's astounding carnival of events and experiences with a positive self-appraisal. After all the demeanor of others is strongly affected by the nature of our own feelings be they vexation or contentment.

#### A Selection of Notable Major Problems that Unfortunately Remain Unsolved through the Seniors' Tenure as the World's Caretakers

Many of us in the elderly classification still have positions of influence through former occupations and must be encouraged to employ this influence to urgent problems facing our progeny. After all staying mentally and physically active as our health permits is crucial to our wellbeing at this time in our lives. Why not use the mental side of this requirement to help effect change. The following are a few of the crucial need areas in which many of us could provide influence for remediation.

The Real **Problem**

Many of the top scientists and other experts who are attempting to assure sustainability of life on this planet are working on the popular subsets of what is the real threat, Human Overpopulation. Climate Change, Food Shortages, Water Scarcity, Resource Depletion, Recycling and Waste Disposal, World Distribution and Provision of Health Services and Financial Crises are simply issues related to this overriding predicament.

In the July 29/11 special issue of the influential journal Science, devoted to population, the lead editorial written by Babatunde Ostimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, begins in a related vein. "As the World's Population reaches 7 billion this year, we should reflect on the many ways in which population dynamics matter to the planets future. Population growth patterns are linked to nearly every challenge confronting humanity, including poverty reduction, urban pollution, energy production, food and water scarcity and health"

As the world population expands at unsustainable rates those dealing with the above subsets are always working to catch up with an accelerating predicament. Scanning the scientific literature on the overpopulation threat most documents show a surprising tendency to relate this crisis to only one or two of these subsets. A typical symptom of modern scientific research is narrowness of topic and a failure to recognize a more pervasive controlling factor.

Population related features appear infrequently in the popular press. The following are typical examples- "International Conference on Family Planning in Uganda", "How do Recent Population Trends Matter to Climate Change?", "Experts Worry as Population and Hunger Grow" and "Contraception is an Economic Issue." Articles such as these though narrowly based when taken together demonstrate the fact that climate change, world food shortages, widespread health problems and economic inequities cannot be solved outside the context of World Overpopulation.

There have been a few important related statements from well known sources on this issue. The following 2 are typical examples.

David Pimentel Professor Emeritus at Cornell University, has stated that "With the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources, humans must actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy, and biological resources".

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) called the Global Environment Outlook which involved 1,400 scientists and took five years to prepare. It "found that human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on Earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply.] It faults a failure to "respond to or recognise the magnitude of the challenges facing the people and the environment of the planet. 'The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged - and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay'.

Using the World Population clock provided by Princeton University on their website http/opr.princton.edu/popclock/popupclock.html the world population at the time of this notation was 6 billion, 994 million and increasing by an astounding 2.4 persons a second, a massive accelerating change from the 2.5 billion in 1950. The preeminence of the problem of overpopulation prompted Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall to state, "If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity - and will leave a ravaged world".

Many of North America's largest urban areas are blessed with a plethora of communities encompassing a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. Those who are new North Americans should be more highly aware than most of the urgent need to address important global issues. After all many still have family members suffering severely from combinations of the above dilemmas back in their countries of origin. Probably an even more relevant reason is that many have emigrated here from these problem plagued locales largely to provide their progeny with better opportunities and hence a superior future. The "Catch 21" is that this desire will not be realized in the future without worldwide action to prevent these problems from becoming an issue here. In reality it is possible to recognize as a result of the relatively elevated standard of living enjoyed by the North American majority and the now obvious environmental stresses and other consequences there-from that North America will develop or might even now be beginning to exhibit some of the symptoms of the overpopulation predicament.

More pointedly it is difficult for most to conceive that North America, a relatively large area with a population of less than 350 million, could suffer from over population when compared with our usual overpopulation benchmarks of India and China with populations in the billions. However when considered in the light of interrelationships related to disproportionate consumption of resources, consumer demand for goods and services and the wastes generated there-by, a relatively small highly developed population can exhibit the properties consistent with overpopulation. The following is a statement that supports this view.

US National Research Institute on Food and Nature (INRAN), estimate the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. According to this theory, in order to achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States would have to reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population would have to be reduced by two-thirds.

An appreciable portion of the population in North America was born here. Unfortunately with the probable exception of climate change, many of this group has had little need to consider the world in its most urgent contexts. Unlike most in this grouping a few have had the privilege of living and working for various periods in various jurisdictions on every Continent. In my case contrary to most of the born in Canada Canadians including those world vacationers who may also have visited these locations, I made it a point to live in typical neighborhood communities throughout the areas of my assignments whenever possible. In thus doing and partly because of the work which involved environmental chemistry, awareness developed of the good fortune that most North Americans enjoy in this world simply because of their birthright. Thus an important responsibility becomes clear and that is to publicize among our citizens the obligation to broaden and amplify our global concerns.

A compelling difficulty exists in a broad context, between New and Born in North American North Americans. That is the lack in large part of meaningful interrelationships between their members on a daily basis with the important exception of the children in our schools and in to some extent in the work place. However neighborhoods, particularly in large urban centers, frequently develop that consist largely of single ethnic groups. The benefits of diverse ethnic interaction in microcosm, is obvious for example in the multicultural nature of many research groups within our Universities. Despite the many societal and cultural background differences and the existence of individual goals each member interacts in an intimate manner to efficiently stitch together a focused and unique research strategy. Clearly because of these background differences and not despite these, the projects have a more meaningful and broader success in defining and proposing solutions applicable to the challenges being researched. Success at this level provides hope that such an approach might be applicable in the broader community, country and worldwide sense.

Many new North Americans, particularly those dynamic individuals emanating from countries in the developing world, upon establishment here, in due course find themselves enjoying a much higher standard of living. This contrast has unfortunately not been experienced by most of those of us born in North America. Distressingly only those in North America, Europe and a few other locales representing a relatively small population, presently enjoy this extraordinary standard of living. Not surprisingly due to many contemporary factors including the worldwide spread of television and increased frequency of travel, the not unexpected desires of those in developing countries to achieve life style improvements are developing at a rapid pace. This presents a difficulty, not only because we in privileged countries will be hard pressed to make substantive changes such as a more equitable sharing of resources to accommodate these desires, but because developing countries represent the largest portion of the population. Unfortunately as outlined in recent volumes of prestigious journals such as Science and Scientific American, technologies although much advanced in recent years, will be unlikely to generate, alternate energy, food supplies, medical treatment and refined natural resources at levels to meet worldwide demand in the face of widespread improved health and lifestyle expectations. These are difficulties that will be further complicated by present high rates of population growth.

So what is to be done, wait for a natural disaster to solve the overall overpopulation problem? This inevitable consequence predicted by Nobel Laureate Professor Kendall as the certain consequence of not discovering and installing an alternate solution must not be allowed to transpire.

On the world level any responsible solution most certainly rests by establishing widespread cooperation and establishing a vigorous dialog between the diverse indigenous groups that populate our globe. North American large urban communities, being microcosms of world ethnicity, should be a seedbed in which to demonstrate the feasibility of developing a widespread understanding. This implies drastic improvements in religious and political benevolence and a rapidly changing attitude in recognizing the equality and human rights of all responsible individuals. Worldwide experience personally gained in negotiating a few solutions to environmental issues suggests that the only way necessary progress can be achieved is to first dwell on similarities of purpose and on factors through which relatively easy agreement can be achieved. Breakthroughs consummated even at this level generate an atmosphere of good will which is the only umbrella beneath which meaningful dialog for progression towards the solution of big dilemmas can occur. Working in the reverse has and is presently resulting in failure.

### Selecting 2 of these subsets for detailed discussion

Water the Ultimate Problem Resource

Up to 1.8 million children die yearly due to water related disease!(W)

About 800 million people worldwide have no safe drinking water.(W)

In my view problems in maintaining an adequate world supply of fresh water is most likely the tipping-point in the fate of mankind and a sustainable earth's biosphere.

"While the amount of freshwater on the planet has remained fairly constant over time—continually recycled through the atmosphere and back into our cups—the population has exploded. This means that every year competition for a clean, copious supply of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and sustaining life intensifies". This is a quotation from a recent National Geographic article entitled Freshwater Crisis.

A related statement occurs in the Executive Summary of The UNEP/GRID- publication Sick Water? "The world is facing a global water quality crisis. Continuing population growth and urbanization, rapid industrialization, and expanding and intensifying food production are all putting pressure on water resources and increasing the unregulated or illegal discharge of contaminated water within and beyond national borders. This presents a global threat to human health and wellbeing, with both immediate and long term consequences for efforts to reduce poverty whilst sustaining the integrity of some of our most productive ecosystems".

There is a persistent migration throughout the world but particularly in developing countries from rural to urban centers. This trend is particularly troublesome for dwindling freshwater supplies and the ultimate pollution of nearby water bodies by the polluted waste water remnants of that water. These discharge areas, frequently depended upon as a local aquatic food supply are damaged by the pollutants so that they no longer are useful for this purpose.

Most mammals including humans are over 60% water by composition making continuous water replenishment on a daily basis essential. The world is 70% covered by water but of this less than 3% is fresh and of this 2/3 is tied up in polar ice caps and glaciers. With Global Warming melting this latter this fresh water is mixing into the surrounding salt water oceans and hence relentlessly depleting the small existing fresh water supply. These figures emphasize the tiny amount of water, about 1%, in the world that is directly useful to humans and much of the rest of the water dependent world's life forms. Since there is no desalination process that is simple, not highly energy consumptive and economical on a large scale for use widely on ocean water we remain dependent on the present fresh water supply.

A look at the map of North America shows a landscape dotted densely with fresh water lakes in the north including the Great Lakes. These latter large fresh water bodies contain 20% of the world's fresh water and 80% of the freshwater in North America. Statistics are boring but the essential point in this data is the revelation concerning the relatively tiny amount of fresh water available to the bulk of the rapidly expanding human race.

Not all available fresh water is visible on the surface of the earth, 30% being below the ground level in the form of large bodies of water known as aquifers. Several large cities such as Phoenix which are appreciable distances from an adequate source of surface water must obtain their fresh water supply from sources natural and man constructed from some distance away. Often aquifers exist beneath the surrounding area and even underlie the cities themselves. In many cases as with Bangkok replenishment of these sources is slower than the withdrawal causing potential problems due to subsiding of inhabited areas residing above and in the case of this city a 1.6m subsidence has occurred in only 10 years. Some of the world's largest aquifers are brackish in composition that type of water being unfit for human consumption. Probably the most famous of these brackish aquifers, the Great Artesian Basin, underlies much of Australia and although too salty for human use fortunately some major farm animals such as cattle can tolerate water in this condition.

On average over 70% of the world's available freshwater is used agriculturally. Depending on location the fraction of domestic to industrial sources vary. In North American locales domestic and industrial usages are about equal. Whereas in Southern Asia only a small percentage of available water is used by industry and for domestic purposes the vast majority being required for agriculture. This situation is changing with rapid urbanization and the associated large scale industrialization that must result.

Climate Change, often termed global warming is certain to have an effect on the water cycle if only to change precipitation patterns perceptibly. Changing patterns involving drought and excessive rainfall are already being noted in many parts of the world. Climate Change and problems related thereto will be covered in much greater detail in a section to follow.

Pollution of fresh water by human, industrial and farm use rises rapidly as a threat to the sustainability of adequate supplies. Water pollution in Developing countries remains largely unabated. This problem is now being addressed in many jurisdictions in the developing world in some cases with new ingenious technology. Schemes have even been developed whereby the water in sewage steam arriving at sewage treatment plants is recycled and purified to the point of being suitable for drinking. Yet presently even in many Developed Country urban centers poor quality waste water treatment abounds.

The urban populations present astounding rate of increase will likely result in doubling the current 3.5 billion urban value by 2050 thus being the main contributor to the rise to a total 9 billion estimated world population in 2050. Sadly the population rise in the associated slums will be even greater than that of the urban population as a whole. Only a miracle can hope to solve the attendant increasing urban fraction of discharge of largely untreated wastewater outside those forward looking large Developed Country urban centers with installed advanced wastewater treatment. With the concentration of most large urban centers being positioned on the world's major waterways the destruction of self-sustaining aquatic ecosystems due to waste water pollutants in both salt and fresh water is rapid. The attendant damage to natural aquatic food resource follows in lock step.

The greatest benefit to dealing with wastewater in urban areas is to have a system whereby the sewers that connect to homes, industry and businesses are separated from storm sewers that carry waste water from urban runoff. Thus by concentrating the waste water that requires special treatment in sewage treatment plants by separating this from the runoff waste water, treatment plants will not suffer raw sewage overflow problems during storms and other periods of high volume waste water runoff. Low Impact Development (LID) is a program that takes this sewer separation a step further in treating runoff sewerage as a resource rather than a waste. A variety of practices are already available for this bio-retention of runoff. These include, rain gardens, vegetated roof tops, rain barrels and permeable pavement. In areas where road salt run-off into storm sewers occurs in winter care is required in making choices in the receiving area that do not involve the salty discharge contaminating any soils.

Sewer separation is an expensive proposition, especially as a retrofit procedure. Thus to avoid municipal tax increases many municipalities are wary of this approach. Again we find ourselves facing the problem that environment related choices that will be essential in the long term often fall by the wayside to prevent expenses that could contribute to a loss of constituent spending power and hence an assault on living standards.

The supply of potable water in Developing countries is sadly restricted since half the population in these jurisdictions does not have adequate sanitation facilities. Under present condition of rectification the problem is bound to become worse with climate change and population increase. Currently over 1 billion people suffer from water shortage likely to increase to close to 3 billion as early as 2050. My experience of working with environmental chemistry problems in developing countries indicates a persistent lack of will within governments to tackle even such dire problems.

Although seldom mentioned in well informed sources that I am reading the problem of corruption at all government and government services levels is rampant in many of these counties. Thus money often donated from foreign sources diminishes significantly through pay outs to officials at all levels and is greatly reduced before reaching its intended beneficial destination. In my view this is a problem that in magnitude and nature is often more atrocious than most others. Thus the reader is cautioned in reading in detail an account of promising sounding solutions in any of these comments that a genuine will to implement such programs is frequently sadly lacking.

Despite the availability of high tech solutions to wastewater treatment, many of these processes being energy intensive require consumption of large amounts of energy resources and often result in other forms of pollution during the process. This cycle of the abating of one form of pollution requiring large energy consumption while often resulting in an additional other type of pollution is a dilemma that ranks high amongst those that inhibit the process of establishing worldwide sustainable conditions of the biosphere. As in most problem issues debated here exacerbation due to the mushrooming population and the larger proportion of the growing population demanding a standard of living equal to the average in North America pertains.

Climate Change/Global Warming

Carbon dioxide emissions (2012)-about 34 trillion tons.(W)

The so called greenhouse gases include mainly, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and ozone and all are present naturally in the atmosphere; the fifth a group of fluorocarbon compounds are manmade.

The consequence of excesses of these gases in the atmosphere is designated by many under the umbrella of Global Warming, Climate Change is a weather related phenomenon; a very obvious consequence of global warming. This public confusion has been generated through over use of the moniker "Global Warming" to represent the total consequence of human source (anthropogenic), greenhouse gasses.

A further confusion in understanding the ramifications related to human source greenhouse gas emissions is the slow deleterious acidification of the world's oceans resulting from the dissolution of carbon dioxide in ocean water, which sets up a reaction whereby carbonic acid is a product. Carbon dioxide the most prominent of the human source greenhouse gases is emitted into the atmosphere and causes increased levels there-in, but it is also dissolvable in water accounting for the present ocean acidification trend. The most immediately proposed ocean acidification consequence is the partial dying off of ecologically important coral reefs in some localities. But for this treatise we will look at the better understood atmospheric consequences of greenhouse gas emissions.

Presently the phenomenon of global warming is most obvious in Polar Regions where the predominant rise in average temperature is now occurring. In particular the 2011-2012 discovery in the Western Antarctic, a region some distance from the atmospheric ozone hole, that temperatures in this region are rising at rates 2- 3 times the global average is particularly ominous.

Weather is a phenomena related to air pressure differences from one locale to another, the latter thus being responsible for daily weather patterns. Mid-latitude yearly seasonal weather variations are due to the change in the angle of the rays of the sun passing through the troposphere (atmospheric layer that intersects the earth's surface) and hitting the earth's surface. The temperature difference between polar and equatorial regions generates the "Polar" Jet Stream in the mid-latitudes. The Northern Hemisphere jet stream is a thin band of fast flowing air which itself moves from west to east together with the daily weather causing high and low pressure zones.

Climate is the yearly combination of changing weather trends on a seasonal basis. Climate Change is a phenomenon whereby the average weather patterns undergo a permanent change. Ocean temperatures vary seasonably to a lesser degree than those on the land and hence have a buffering effect on coastal temperature fluctuations. Warm or cool ocean currents occur along most coastal regions and these can have a very tangible effect on climate. In the Northern Hemisphere the warm temperature massive Gulf Stream is of particular importance. By this system which travels far north the climate of Western Europe is moderated.

In the mid- latitudes which possess the greatest world population density, climate change is the more prominent vestige of the global warming phenomenon. For this reason the public's attention to dangers there-from are more easily captured noting presently occurring changes in local weather patterns. Shifting regions of wet and dry zones, increased frequency and ferocity of storms and widely fluctuating seasonal temperatures both hot and cold are presently occurring. It is important to stress not all weather changes in every locale are reflected in phenomena suggestive of rising temperatures; some few regions are actually showing colder trends at present. A frightening comment indicative of human non concern of Climate Change vagaries is the common statement, on a particular cold winters days here in Ontario; "wouldn't a little global warming go well just now"?

It is not uncommon to encounter in the press and by word of mouth the view that human source global warming is not occurring. Even a few well-known scientists engender this concept. Many try to reason that the warming being noted today is similar to some of the many natural warming cycles that have been noted in the earth's history over hundreds of millions of years of geological time. Fast forward to an article in the July 2012 Scientific American reporting on a fact finding scientific expedition to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The study was carried out by a group of scientists under the jurisdiction on the Worldwide Universities Network by world renowned experts representing a wide variety of specialties and emanating from England, Norway and The Netherlands. The following is an interpretation in my own words of what I felt most relevant in this content.

The concept was to compare the rate of temperature change and consequences that occurred in a particularly notable natural cycle of global warming 56 million years ago, which will be designated (GW 56M), with that occurring today. The (GW 56M) temperature rise maximum of 8 degrees C, with catastrophic consequences, occurred after an ascent lasting about 20,000 years. However it then took another 200,000 years for the earth's natural defenses to decrease the temperature to what we consider normal. In (GW 56M) there were many consequences including a large rise in ocean levels, rapid ocean acidification that destroyed much of the ocean life and a forced migration of much terrestrial life both plant and animal toward the poles to ensure survival.

Unless drastic measures are very soon taken to cut human activity sourced carbon gas emissions, the same catastrophic 8 degree temperature rise on today's earth will occur in only a few 100's of years. Grievously all the same (GW 56M) consequences would happen but ever so much more quickly. Considering the massive human population involved, heading the consequence list this time would be unthinkably large losses of human life. As demonstrated through fossilized evidence found in cores drilled in many locales into the oceanic subsurface there becomes a point-of-no-return. That is at a presently uncertain point in the temperature rise curve; the disastrous upward temperature rise becomes self-sustaining and hence continues unaffected by any human intervention. At this point-of-no-return mega tons of methane gas now trapped safely in the oceans depths in the form of methane ice begins to melt in the warming ocean water and bubbles into the atmosphere. At that point the unstoppable methane gas release becomes the dominant cause of Global Warming.

Is anything of real consequence presently being enacted to slow or prevent the present calamitous human induced greenhouse gas emissions damage to the earth's environment? In a word; no.

The very savvy Bill Gates, ex CEO of Microsoft and the personal computer guru is one of the World's richest persons. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he gives billions to charity and in support of innovative research and technology. In this regard one of his largest grants is supporting a particular favourite, the production of ultra-safe Nuclear Power technology. On the other hand the Ontario Government while speaking of expanding Ontario's nuclear power capability has spent billions of your tax dollars on Wind Power and Solar power projects the former Gates terms sarcastically "cute" and the latter he treats as so expensive as to be not worth considering. For emphasis again, remember that when comparing wind and nuclear power, 1GW of energy requires 1 nuclear power plant. In contrast a wind farm covering ¼ of the surface of Lake Ontario and running at full power 100% of the time (impossible) would be necessary to generate a similar amount of energy. Meanwhile our yearly output level of carbon containing, greenhouse gas emissions remains undiminished. Remember also that for now, climate change is an appropriate term to describe the present consequences of human source greenhouse gas emission. But under existing political and economic circumstances global warming will soon have migrated to cover even our temperate zones. Most disconcertedly, due to worldwide changing greenhouse gas emission dynamics, the time in the future when the point-of-no-return will occur is not known and cannot be predicted.

Let's look at the earth from another perspective that casts global warming in an innovatively different light.

Gea better known as Gaia, is the Greek Goddess of the earth (Ge=earth).

What possible connection to anything relevant in modern times, could be ascribed to Gaia? James Lovelock in 1968 while working at NASA, chose this name for his world renowned and revolutionary theory. Here-in he postulates that the earth can be best described as being much like a living organism, particularly in determining earth's atmospheric compositional makeup from its inception until its final hot passive state hopefully sometime in the very distant future. This precept replaced for most scientists the static earth concept of previous theories.

Since the earth is in dynamic interaction with the atmosphere the composition of the latter is then dependent to a major degree on the reactions occurring in the biosphere and the lithosphere. This self-regulation is crucial not only to maintaining the 20% atmospheric oxygen content into which the human race evolved, but also to preserving life sustaining climatic conditions. Reasoning that helps verify the Gaia approach is convincing, but involves points concerning the need to employ nonlinear rather than linear differential equations in all climate modeling, the first law of thermodynamics and the natural regulation of methane and is beyond our scope here.

But in any case through this approach we can see that the maintenance of this self-regulation must be considered important in deliberations of today's urgent climatic concerns.

In his latest book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" 2009, James Lovelock outlines the indomitable threat that human sourced emissions, now and in the near future, pose to this self regulation mechanism named Gaia. It is important to emphasize that after the title is appended the phrase "A final warning" which should be ample to garner our rapt attention. But why should this book be singled out from the many others on climate change? Like other authors of popular Climate Change/Global Warming books Lovelock carefully hunts amongst the available data for material that best serves his purpose. However as the inventor and main purveyor of the dynamic earth theory he builds his arguments in a scientific, yet very readable format, around this theory, a fact in marked contrast to most others which have no accepted central theoretical dictum. This scientist who possess earned degrees in Chemistry, Medicine and Biophysics, all from first rate universities, looks at climatic problems as an expert from a multidisciplinary perspective, also unique from writers of other popular treatments.

Some may ask, how with some current local trends to cooler, wetter, summers and cold winters could Lovelock and indeed I, still offer an urgent plea to please take seriously the present warming trend of this planet as caused by the activities of man? This brings out one of the strengths of the Gaia based approach. Lovelock bases most of his important conclusions on average Northern and Southern hemispheres open ocean temperature trends and accompanying biochemical changes rather than terrestrial local variations. The rising ocean temperatures are most discernible closer to the poles and as stated above the oceans have a buffering effect against short term land based temperature fluctuations providing a truer picture of the serious Global Warming trend.

What are Greenhouse gases and why is the situation relating to mans contribution to these so urgent now? Greenhouse gasses are substances that when introduced into the atmosphere impedes the reradiating of heat produced at the earth's surface by radiation from the sun. This can occur because the wavelength of the pertinent radiation from the sun is of such values that they freely penetrate the greenhouse gas laden atmosphere; while on the other hand the heat radiation thus produced is of different wavelengths and upon attempted re-radiation are susceptible to greenhouse gas interaction thus becoming trapped. Of particular note; when we introduce "greenhouse gasses" into the atmosphere their effects are not instant but take several years to develop. Thus should we find some time later, maybe even in the near future that human source atmospheric discharges are causing a serious problem, it may be too late for meaningful action. This could transpire since the warming trend will continue regardless, based on the delayed affect of years of previous uncontrolled emissions. That could then result in 'The Demise of Gaia' as this indispensable self-regulation gives up and leaves us in an essentially out of restraint situation.

Of the 5 most common greenhouse gases 4, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone are present naturally in the atmosphere; the fifth a fluorocarbons (a commonly used refrigerant) is not. Each of these naturally occurring gases has a different efficiency of effect as a factor in Climate Change/Global Warming. For example methane is many times more severe a problem than is carbon dioxide based on the radiation spectral region in which it is most active. On the positive side methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime than carbon dioxide. Up to the present time carbon dioxide has largely been the greenhouse gas released due to human induced activity. It is important to understand that methane, largely a low volume human induced greenhouse gas emission presently results mainly from cattle husbandry in agriculture venues. However it is important to remember that humongous quantities of methane ice, most at great depths cover large areas of costal ocean floor. Some of these deposits; most particularly in the Russian North have been noted to have been subjected to warming typical of far northern localities and hence are releasing methane gas that has begun slowly bubbling into the atmosphere.

Over millions of years variations in the levels of the naturally occurring greenhouse gases, solar radiation intensity, volcanic activity and other factors have themselves caused climatic disparities. As noted above there have been well defined cycles of natural climatic warming and cooling on the earth each normally lasting 10's to 100's of thousand years. Yet variations of climate under natural circumstances have been recorded that lasted for much shorter times, some even as short as a few hundred years. Again this has led some few scientists to question whether present climatic change trends are just a natural occurrence. Although no absolute proof exists of human sources being the cause of present climate change, the best meteorological models absolutely do require a human induced component to account for the magnitude of present global warming trend. Thus approximately 90% of meteorological experts are now convinced that human activity, particularly extending since the period of the industrial revolution and rising in a lockstep relationship to the magnitude of this human activity is the cause of this phase of Climate Change/ Global Warming.

This delayed reaction time associated with emitted greenhouse gases is an important parameter of unknown magnitude in establishing the size of the problem being caused by present and predicted greenhouse gas emissions. This unknown affects all models of Global Warming and not only Lovelocks Gaia model just discussed above. Thus in attempting to establish the point at which the human induced greenhouse gas emission effects will become irreversible is exacerbated in all cases by this delayed reaction unfortunately of unknown magnitude in whatever model exists or may be developed.

As emphasized throughout this book one of the most worrisome characteristics of the average human being is to carry on as usual particularly when said problem has been developing over a considerable period of time as in the present problem of Climate Change/Global warming. Thusly we largely ignore such a predicament until it becomes a full blown crisis. The cause of this popular trend is many fold but mainly results that up to now something has normally been devised that will provide a solution to such a problems just before the catastrophic point.

With Climate Change/Global Warming a variety of worrisome climate related changes are yearly being revealed with little meaningful remedial phenomena resulting. The plethora of circumstances that one can delineate for example the increased frequency and destructive power of wind related events, widespread drought and record high temperatures in some regions and flooding accompanied by destructive erosion events in others are likely results of this inaction. Of these, economic ramifications at governmental, industrial and personal and particularly at agricultural levels are particularly noteworthy. Greenhouse gas emissions being the main source of Climate Change/Global Warming phenomena and a rapidly rising increased human activity related component of these is now abundantly obvious as the main culprit. Real progress on reduction of this source can only come at the Federal government and International levels as a worldwide initiative. In democratic countries Governments themselves although directly contributors often through their ownership and/or control of utilities; the problem falls most precipitously within the jurisdiction of industry and individuals. Resistance to amelioration at these latter levels is particularly strong due to the very appreciable added costs that are inherent in any positive action. Of course democratic governments react strongly to pressures imposed from constituent and business and industrial sources and are unlikely to invoke meaningful changes with negative reactions from these jurisdictions.

Again it is important to remind ourselves that cost increases incurred for pollution abatement if imposed have strong negative ramifications related to maintaining our present standard of living. The situation is totally different in concept with non democratic systems of government. Depending on the form of governance the government or individual in power can make decisions independent of the operators of industry and individuals, but instead of taking positive steps toward amelioration of their pollution sources in general they tend for many reasons in my experience to be on the average more recalcitrant. Additional comment appears below on worldwide organized attempts to develop multinational strategies to ameliorate the Climate Change/Global Warming Problem.

But first let's stop here for a moment and remind ourselves again that in the recent past, solutions often technological or political in nature have been developed in good time to prevent serious problems from taking place. Where are/were those solutions in the case of the present problem of climate change? Even looking forward do effective remedies seem likely? Problems that affect the continued sustainability of the world's biosphere are gargantuan being highly multi-disciplinary in nature and demand radical procedural changes at all levels of government. Pure and applied science funding and reordering the priorities of and interactions within the disciplines must change drastically.

## Why Major Crises such as the above Develop?

In the US in 2009 there were about 2,000,000 people injured in vehicle crashes, 250,000 were incapacitated and 42,000 killed.(W)

In the US in 2009 about 122 people died in air crashes. In the same period in the US there were 9,000,000 commercial flights.(W)

The press is prone to jump on stories with seductive content.

Thus a single aircraft crash commands instant news coverage and bits and pieces of news relating to this accident are on major news casts for many days.

#### Public Confusion on the Magnitude and State of Life's Critical Problems and the Resultant Inattention There-to

**Twenty First Century Complex Problems face 19** th **Century Styled Governance**

I strongly believe in democratic systems of government but must note the following:

Governments of the 21st century in Developed Countries are limping along at glacial pace with only slight modification of the structures and procedures that have largely been dragged along out of the 19th century!

We the elderly are responsible for the nature of governmental styles and procedures. What have we done of major significance to effect change from past government to improve reaction to fast forming critical issues that began appearing during our tenure in the past 50 years or so? My experience in attempting to achieve remediation for important problems during this period suggest very little substantive change to governance has occurred.

The 21st Century is characterized by issues that differ from those even in the fairly recent past. Many problems are now multilayered and involve inputs from multidisciplinary teams of many experts. Solutions proposed by such teams are often so technologically complex that they cannot be understood by heads of Government or even the government departmental groups of experts who from my experience cannot hope to include nearly all the relevant disciplines involved. Additionally, procedures for the approval of proposed solutions and the enacting of the required amelioration must occur quickly to prevent the possible long term consequences that can result due to today's protracted decision making.

From my experiences in dealing with governments that run the gamut from left to right, including those which have no need have public support, political reaction is based most commonly on, furthering actions related to conflicts with perceived enemies, predetermined agendas, a wide range of special interests represented by lobbyists, feeding egos, lining pockets of their supporters and/or themselves, and avoiding any hard decisions that have long range implications. In fact government activity can be likened to action occurring within a complex maze designed on a template basically but not totally containing avenues relating to a predetermined agenda. Surrounding this maze reside the real problems that beset humanity desperately needing to gain recognition and amelioration. Interaction with these crucial issues directly, occurs in the unlikely event that the Government activity will somehow work its way through this trivial maze during its present term. Government activity is directed along pathways within the maze, according to party policy most of which is superficial and commonplace and based on the factors listed above, only choosing new directions on emergence of urgent short term issues.

Governance as it still exists today was geared for the slowly contemplative discussions of much earlier times. Today complex issues and solutions are identified that require almost instant government legislation for remediation. These are still often referred first to committee, then come back to be discussed by the government whose members have often been lobbied by special interest groups opposed to the proposition and then before a decision can be made another referral back to committee is possible. It is not uncommon for urgent problems to remain 2 or more years in this tangle of bureaucracy before a bill is finally passed. These procedures relevant to the 19th century have not significantly changed. I could speak of different problems equally or more sever sly debilitating to obtaining quick decisions on urgent change that exist with other forms of government I have dealt with worldwide, but this manuscript would thus be unduly protracted.

Exacerbating today's decision making is the multinational nature of many of our most life sustainability problems. In these cases we formulate multinational Groups to study and then suggest rules for remediation of the issues. We also have institutions such as the United Nations. Most of these formats have been unsuccessful in obtaining the needed agreements. All of these have been at one time or other lead by the elderly.

One of these the Kyoto protocol is a typical example of such an endeavour that essential failed miserably. Regarding the Kyoto deliberations initiated in 1997 the participants being largely government representative groups with a vast range of different perspectives on causes and blame and hence solutions; mixed together with short sited territorial and economic agendas were largely immovable from these view points throughout deliberations. From this authors point of view the developing nations garnered a disproportionate level of blame and were pressured unfairly by the developed nations for remedial actions. Most recently, Nov. 26 2012, and as the Protocol is about to elapse Lord Stern, a climate economist, thankfully and correctly took a sharp "right " turn by saying that the Developing Countries must face the "brutal arithmetic" of their culpability for emissions. Despite this wakeup call it seems unlikely that a deal other than toothless generalizations will result at the end of this first period. An agreement to an extension to the first period covering 2012 to the end of 2020 has been made. Of particular concern is the designation of the perception of participating countries statist. Most of the developing countries are designated as having agreed upon binding targets. Of the developed countries only most Western European jurisdictions and Australia are in this laudatory group. The USA is a signatory country with no intention of ratifying the agreement. My own country Canada is totally irresponsible being the only major country that has not only no binding targets, it has vociferously denounced the Protocol.

Now we turn for anxious attention to the December 2012 UN Climate Conference in Doha Qatar (COP 18). Early news on the results of this important initiative suggest that the commitments fall far short of what will be necessary if climate change is to be addressed with sufficient rigour in the next critical 3 to 5 year period.

It seems senseless to observe and discuss results of further initiatives of this Kyoto or COP 18 format since participants consistently fail to generate radical new proposals that might free the present pattern of simply building incrementally on past proposals and procedures. Participants in these meetings consistently acknowledge the urgency of the Global Warming/Climate Change problem and then just as faithfully fail to recognize that previously failed formats when reborn with only minor revision are equally destined to failure.

United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) has produced a Rapid Response Assessments series that although having no directly related action component like the Kyoto Protocol; is very highly recommended reading for those who desire an in-depth view of these crucial topics. Of particular note is the emphasis in these documents on the population growth component. The following in this series relate most closely to the content of this book. Living Planet: Connected Planet, Dead Planet, Living Planet: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Restoration for Sustainable Development, Sick Water?, The Environmental Food Crisis and The Natural Fix.

Then we have the high profile well-intentioned but unqualified Committees such as those that are represented by the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Copenhagen Consensus initiatives in which every 4 years a panel of 8-12 Economists, some being Nobel laureates, are faced with a carefully selected group of global challenges. Taking the 2008 and 2012 meetings as an example the challenges to be considered by economists were in2008, Malnutrition and Hunger, Trade and Subsidies, Diseases, Education, Woman and Development, Global Warming, Sanitation and Water, Conflict, Air pollution and Terrorism. Then in 2012, Armed Conflict, Chronic Disease, Education, Infectious Disease, Population Growth, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Hunger and Malnutrition, Natural Disasters and Water and Sanitation were chosen. Sounds like a worthy group of subject areas many currently on the topics in this book, crying for solutions. Clearly, only in a worst case scenario would economists have the credentials, even in consultations with experts, to develop solutions in most instances with any meaningful innovative long term content available therein. None of the prominent problems among this 2 year list of challenges has a meaningful solution by a group of single discipline experts no matter how talented.

The present disaster we are experiencing right now from Climate Change is in large part a testament to this outmoded style of governance and ineffective multinational procedures.

We thus find ourselves in the Developed Nations although a small fraction of the total world population, presently based on the senior's generation developed excessive and self-centered lifestyles on the brink of the overpopulation subsets of critical problems. Exacerbating this problem are large groups in highly populated Developing Countries like China and India that feel entitled to similar high standards of living starting to compete with us for the worlds diminishing resources. Voila as examples we have the following serious misunderstandings and misdeeds.

The Persistent Sustainability Myth

The summer 2011 'York Region', York Works Transportation and Environmental Services Newsletter trumpets; "Sustainability is a focus of York Region's community development, reflected in our commitment to efficient transit, clean water, waste management policies and environmental protection". York Region is a region of 1 million in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). On the initial page of Markham's (a city of 300,000 in York Region, population 1 million in the Toronto region-GTA) Greenprint Sustainability Plan recently published, the mayor states; "During my inaugural speech when I was elected Mayor in 2006, I announced the creation of the Greenprint as part of Building Markham's Future Together. It is my pleasure to present the Greenprint, Markham's Sustainability Plan – our commitment to transforming Markham into one of the most sustainable cities in North America". Apart from the erroneous implications of such statements, I have personal evidence from several jurisdictions that this type of implied commitment is lacking. In my experience it is for the most part only under conditions of duress that remediation of environmental problems can be accomplished.

In environmental publications of a plethora of communities of all sizes, exemplified by the two above, "Sustainability" has become the quintessential buzzword that is apparently used as a supposed seal of validation and a political exigency. How this erroneous use of the term came into such prominence is hard to fathom. The use of qualifying phrases such as "most sustainable cities" is also redundant and will be obvious in the following.

Sustainability is an imposing term and when used in an environmental sense it implies a state that exists pursuant to the stable existence of life. Additionally it implies the endurance of the world's ecosystems over the long term. Thus for true sustainability to be developed for any community on this planet the locale must, for example, be able to control climate change. How can York Region and Markham produce a plan for its own sustainability when the world's climate including that pervading Markham is in serious deterioration? Obviously any contribution that Markham can itself make toward climatic stability is welcome but not integrated into a national plan and is therefore infinitesimal. The same argument can be expressed for most other of the crucial sustainability parameters. True sustainability implies worldwide control of many other essentials including, water quality and its long term availably, equitable resource availability including oil, metals and forest products, world health research as in the case of the prevention of pandemics and Political and economic stability. Such programs must originate and be applied at the National and International level.

Thus in order for relatively small communities like Markham and in a somewhat more extensive area York Region to claim that they can develop a plan for a sustainable future in their locales they must be able to include in their scenario procedures that will exercise control over parameters that are worldwide in nature. This is a very obvious impossibility.

Time is too short to work from the bottom up as is the case when planning like this occurs predominantly locally and in a nonintegrated form in a checkerboard manner.

An important example of the difficulties encountered even in providing meaningful plans for large scale responsible local environmental practice is evident in the attempt to choose a workable alternate energy plan. For example choosing the most competitive form, wind power to power Markham, would require a wind farm covering an area the size of all of Markham which would have to run 100% of the time. Solar energy sarcastically deemed "cute" by Computer guru and philanthropist Bill Gates, is hopelessly expensive and land coverage intensive. Other environmentally friendly proposals such as widespread adoption of electric cars cannot become a viable option because of lithium ion battery limitations, the most important of which is unacceptably short driving ranges between charges coupled with lengthy charging times. Unfortunately with the exception of nuclear power generation, where a 1GW installation is equivalent to a wind farm running 100% of the time and covering ¼ the area of Lake Ontario, most scientists agree that for the foreseeable future there are no viable schemes for alternate energy emerging.

Thus the claim by politicians in municipalities to be able produce a sustainable local environment anywhere in the world is an often exercised, unforgivable political desideratum and misleading myth.

Outsourcing Manufacturing a Multipronged Threat

Think about this:

Sit at your desk and grab 4 or 5 items at random. Where were they manufactured? Here's what I found for my items.

1. Panasonic Telephone 5.6 GHz Digital Gigarange: Made in China.

2. Sharpie Pen: Assembled in the USA.

3. Olympus Stylus Camera: Made In Indonesia.

4. Gear Head Optical mouse: Made in China.

5. Boston Grip Stand up stapler: Made in China.

As this exercise indicates most of Brand Name consumer items sold in discount stores in North America like Wal-Mart, COSCO, Target etc are outsourced, that is usually made Offshore in cheap labour markets such as exist in much of Asia. As a result the average household is well stocked with items that have become 'essential' to the 'good life' most of us including myself enjoy. Shopping has become an obsession with many. As I write this it is "Black Friday" 2012; the day of the year when shopping is at its peak. People even line up over night for blocks at some shops in anticipation of obtaining loss leader bargains available at opening time. Some of these bargains are in such demand and short supply that fights have been known to break out causing stores to require heightened security. But the shopping proclivity of many citizens is not restricted to such occasions but is practiced as simply an almost daily activity out of habit and often to prevent boredom.

Here is an important indication that mankind driven by its own innate greediness, intensified by the commercial interests surfeit advertising style and easy credit is headed for problems.

Although an issue relating to our shopping addictions appears on the surface to be of limited consequence; it is actually a potent example illustrating a predicament that, when exacerbated by, limited and miss-apportioned resources, large scale energy consumption, labour cost inequities, and other related consequences has grown to assume something of major proportions.

A major cause of inertia to dealing with issues like those that relate to consumerism which are on the horizon poised to becoming long term major impacts, relates to our up to the present ability to successfully pull ourselves back from the brink of disasters at the last moment. This problem and its implications and breakdown under modern conditions will be discussed in further detail later on. For our purposes here suffice it to say the Science and Engineering disciplines when faced with former serious problems have been able to relatively quickly invent solutions and cures for most problems because of the skills of the personnel and abundance of information about these problems being faced. In many cases the problems had few dimensions and involved a restricted number of disciplines.

That was then and this is now.

The world population has expanded to levels that mean the impact of even relatively simple problems is exacerbated by mere numbers. Now in a crisis if a solution is found it may be ample for the short term but the impact of growing numbers of individuals involved can mean that the invented solution for coping today may have to be drastically revised or totally revamped to handle a greater density of individuals in the near future. Long term solutions are seldom possible on a crisis basis.

**Our Energy** Resource **it's Sources and Conversion Misconceptions**

I had trouble with the placement of this section that covers various energy topics. It is as extensive and in many ways critical as the 2 subsets I chose to discuss in detail of the population problem above, those being water and climate change. Yet our mismanagement of energy issues is one of the major reasons that major issues have developed during the present senior's tenancy on this planet and in that guise really deserves placement here.

Energy used Dec 26 2012- about 316 million mW-250 million from conventional sources-about 60million from alternate (green) sources.(W)

Days left to end of oil-about 15,000 days, natural gas-about 60,000 boe.(W)

"Renewable energy" as dictated from the tenants of basic physics is a seriously erroneous term. Use of what is commonly designated not only in the popular idiom but by some respected scientists as well this term renewable energy originates from reports about devices such as solar cells and windmill generators. To be correct these should be referred to as something like alternate energy technologies.

The first Law of thermodynamics defines irrefutably that energy cannot be created (i.e. cannot be renewed) or destroyed. In solar and wind electrical energy generation, instead of making new energy we are converting solar and wind energies respectively into electrical energy and waste heat. In conversions of other energy sources such as solar the efficiency of the conversion to the desired form of energy, electricity can be calculated. Thus we find the conversion of energy in the sun's rays by solar cells is only about 35% with 65% being waste using 2012 technology.

But speaking of wind and sun as energy resources you could say "so what", we have an unlimited source of solar and wind energy so who cares that the conversion efficiency is low. The trouble in both the sun and wind energy conversion cases is as follows. Both technologies are expensive to fabricate, install, maintain and connect to the existing power grid. Worse they require large areas of space and their generation is intermittent. Thus compared to cost of electricity from conventional electrical energy sources electricity from wind and solar installations is several times higher. Here In Ontario we already have seen the overwhelming public reaction opposing increased electricity bills which are presently based on electricity generated by conventional sources.

But let's assume that if by some miracle the idea that the very significant cost increases incurred by switching to alternate less polluting sources of electrical has been accepted as a necessary consequence of our need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions we still have the problem of the huge space that would be necessary being unavailable if we were to produce our total requirement for electricity in these ways. There is no direct solution to the intermittency constraint associated with both wind and solar technologies. Importantly there still is no storage technology for large amounts of energy. Thus excess capacity when it is produced cannot be saved for use when required at another time. Thus as things stand these electrical energy sources must have intermittency back up by fossil fuel electricity generators.

Of course any problem such as this lack of suitable alternate energy electrical generation technology capability is daily being exacerbated by population growth. This coupled with more and more of the existing and increasing population insisting on a higher standard of living such as many of us now posses in North America; the space requirement for these existing technologies, already a serious impediment becomes rapidly more acute. Thus in 2012, even if we demanded that the government work toward adopting alternate electrical energy technologies as our sole form of electricity generation this could not be accomplished.

###### Electricity Storage Technology Constraints Hamper these Technologies

A closely related problem is the lack of adequate battery technology to make electric vehicles a practical reality. Electrochemistry, the science on which battery design depends, has been investigated to death and the lithium ion battery in current use in most electric cars is the technically superior. The trouble is that from a really practical stand point these batteries don't fit the bill. Continued research relating to this technology can only achieve marginal improvements. Lithium ion batteries that are in use today are large, provide electrical storage power for only short trip driving, recharging is relatively slow, no practical scheme of battery exchange has been proposed and these batteries are expensive and must be replaced at regular intervals after the recharging limit is reached.

If as has been supposed here no electrochemical scheme will be found to provide batteries of a practical capacity are there other technologies for such a purpose. One present area of investigation is the ultracapacitor. These devices have 2 oppositely chargeable metal plates which are coated with porous activated carbon and are then immersed in an electrolyte. The plates are closely separated by a thin sheet of plastic or ceramic insulator material and the whole device contained in a package. When ultracapacitors undergo the charging process, 2 layers of opposite charge form on each of the 2 plates instead of just 1 layer per plate in conventional capacitors; this results in the alternate name dual layer capacitors. During charging and discharging no chemical reaction occurs as in a battery and hence ultracapacitors do not suffer the wear and tear as does a battery when in operation and hence have a much greater lifetime. These capacitors have the same properties as a battery in the sense that they can deliver an electric current to run an electric motor. Presently available ultracapacitors are unsatisfactory for use in electric vehicles because when used for this purpose they can only store about 5 to 10% the charge of the lithium ion batteries currently in use.

The above discussion relating to electrical storage devices presently available having insufficient capacity for really practical all electric vehicles holds has a parallel in the field of high capacity electricity storage for intermittent electricity generation sources. Availability of such a storage device is essential for standalone wind and solar electrical power generation.

Electrical Energy Transmission Blunders

An important factor to be considered in costs of electricity is that necessary new electricity generation facilities both alternate and conventional for greatest economy in provision of product should be built near the points of greatest demand. An important factor in electricity transmission along the electric power grid is the power losses that occur therein. For a given unit of power generated the fraction of that unit that is received by the consumer depends on the distance travelled from source to consumer. The greater the distance of the power generating station from the consumer the lower is the percentage of each unit of generated power that arrives. Unfortunately attempts of electrical power generating utilities to construct generating facilities within local areas of high electricity consumption demand thus lowering transmission costs are met with a not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) attitude. This resistance to locating power sources near the consumer is so hard core that a week or 2 before a recent Ontario election the government currently in power promised to relocate some long distance away a partially completed, urgently needed, gas fired power generating plant out of an urban area to save a government politicians which was presumed likely to be lost because of NIMBism. The politician's seat was indeed saved but at a projected cost just for disassembly and reconstruction of the facility of nearly 1 billion dollars! Of course increased transmission costs incurred by this move will be ongoing.

Serious Enigma of Using Depleting Petroleum Resources as Fuel

Interesting crucial but seldom thought of serious consequences pertain as to the types of resources chosen as energy sources. Petroleum and natural gas are the most common resources used for production of vehicular propellants.

Both resources consist of organic polymeric compounds that were synthesized over periods of millions of years over a variety of epochs of the earth's evolution; but in large part during the Mississippian era 200 to 400 million years ago. Plant and animal life was at a peak and petroleum resulted from the remains of these life forms in locations at depth and at extremely high pressure. The polymers that form petroleum (hydrocarbons) are long strings of many different lengths of carbon atoms chemically bonded together with hydrogen atoms which in turn are chemically bonded to each carbon atom along these strings. Why bother the reader with all this millions of years, high pressure and chemical bonding palaver? First and foremost the crux of the matter is the tremendous energy contained in the carbon atom chemical bonds. In the production of gasoline petroleum is placed in a distillation chamber together with steam and subjected to additional heat whereby the various hydrocarbons are separated according to the length of their string of carbon atoms (The shorter the carbon atom string the more volatile the hydrocarbon) into different size fractions with the gasoline fraction being quite volatile, containing that with only 5 to 12 carbon atom strings. Other fractions form other useful products for example that averaging 12 carbon atoms being diesel. Other less volatile, longer string fractions are sent to a petrochemical "cracking" reactor where the carbon atom chains are broken into shorter more volatile hydrocarbon products such as more gasoline.

Not to worry if I lost you in some technical pot hole along the way because the critical concept relates simply to the consequence of using the largest portion of our rapidly dwindling supply of petroleum resources for combustion in vehicular transportation. The process of vehicular combustion is the breaking down of the gasoline or diesel carbon atom strings in the engine cylinders releasing energy for vehicular propulsion resulting in the waste pollutant exhaust gases, the worst being the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Yes this is a serious consequence of our use of petroleum resources as a fuel, but it is not the one I want to emphasize.

The chief raw materials for plastic production are presently petroleum products. The petroleum industry is commonly cracking the longer carbon atoms in petroleum to augment the amount of gasoline and other more volatile hydrocarbons produced from a unit of petroleum. Instead if these products were treated in other chemical processes they would be also useful as raw materials in the plastics industry.

The rapid depletion in our non-renewable petroleum resources using most of the energy locked up over millions of years in the carbon chemical bonds as a source of vehicular propulsion means that when the presently economical sources of petroleum are soon depleted the main raw material from these sources for plastics will likewise be gone. In itself this does not mean that no plastics or gasoline will be available. There are costly sources of petroleum products such as the Athabasca Tar Sands in large supply as a raw material source.

###### Lack of Understanding of the Essential Need to ramp up use of Modern Nuclear Electrical Energy Producing Technology

Of great relevance to energy resources, scientists demonstrated to the public that humongous amounts of energy are available from tiny sources when they used a relatively tiny quantity of a fissionable isotope of uranium for the destruction, during the 2nd World War, of a large portion of 2 Japanese cities. A natural consequence of this discovery was the subsequent development of nuclear reactors as electricity sources. It being impossible to use the explosive release of energy as was done in the detonation of a nuclear device for energy conversion to electricity Nuclear Power Generation Facilities employ a controlled fission reaction in a very trivial way to generate heat which in turn produces steam that drives turbine electricity generators. The many controversies surrounding this method of electricity production are well-known and the relevance of this to our energy future will be touched upon below.

This leads naturally to the idea that since bonds between subatomic particles in atoms represent a source of immense energy, might there be some way to tap directly into this as a method of energy conversion and acquisition; hence the proposal to use the concept of nuclear fusion as a possible approach. The world famous Einstein Equation Energy equals the Mass times the square of the Speed of Light holds the secret to how this could be accomplished. Since the speed of light squared is an immense quantity only a tiny amount of mass represents a huge amount of energy. Thus a nuclear reaction was proposed whereby 2 different isotopes of the element hydrogen would be fused together to form on an atom of neon. If this can be made to occur the energy sums would mean that the product neon atom formed, having slightly less total mass than the reactants would release this excess in the form of an equivalent amount of energy which in magnitude would be massive. To this date in actual fusion experiments even on a very small scale the output of energy obtained has yet to exceed the input energy required to initiate fusion. Even assuming this problem will be overcome and the output exceeds the input energy the scaling up to large plants for commercial sized production is very problematic.

Thus back to realistic sources of energy that might provide a practical long term solution to our energy needs. In this category nuclear stands out as a technical winner. Since one nuclear power plant can generate the power equivalent to a wind farm that would cover an expanse ¼ the area of Lake Ontario this form of electricity generation must be considered thoroughly.

Nuclear radiation hazards to any life form can be extremely serious. Deservedly a few worldwide nuclear reactor accidents have polarized much of the public against creating technology that is capable of causing widespread radiation damage. Thus new Nuclear reactor construction remains widely opposed.

Lest we allow a very serious nuclear catastrophe such as that in Japan to determine our future attitudes to the relative safety of the nuclear power generation worldwide I wish to make the following points. This perspective is based on the very different Geological and technological situation as it exists in many other regions.

Geologically Japan is located on top of an area that is underlain with continuously very active continental tectonic plates. The earth is not a solid system of continents and sea floor that is inherently stable and unmoving. Instead the continents are forever moving, the movement being more in some areas like Japan while much less in most. The crust and upper mantle of the earth, often denoted geologically the lithosphere, comprise the total surface and under pinning of the earth. The lithosphere is broken up into sections called tectonic plates. There are 8 major tectonic and many minor tectonic plates on the continents and on the sea floor worldwide. There are 3 types of motion occurring along plate boundaries; these are transformal, convergent or collisional and divergent or spreading.

Tranformal movement is most troublesome and is characterized by major earthquakes, volcanic activity and mountain building, this approximating the situation upon which Japan is located. Strong earth quakes happening at sea are accompanied by a tsunami, which usually accounts for the largest proportion of damage and deaths. Twenty percent of the world's earthquakes occur in Japan making this region the most probable for such a problem. When I was living in Tokyo it seemed unusual for me not to feel minor earth tremors weekly. Japan has an immense person to surface area ratio and a large industrial base much of it concentrated along the coast. The power requirement is high and in Japan natural resources for conventional power generation are low by proportion making supplementation by nuclear electrical power generation attractive. Unfortunately even using the best safety precautions, many unavailable or improperly maintained in the 40 year old 4 Fukushima reactors affected by the recent earthquake, the chances for serious nuclear accidents resulting from an earthquake were high. A frightening figure is that there are a total of 55 nuclear reactors in Japan.

Need this recent Japanese experience cause us to dynamically alter our plans for development of new nuclear electrical power facilities Worldwide? For example according to Natural Resources Canada in all of Eastern Canada 450 earthquakes can be expected to occur each year. Of these only 4, averaging about a magnitude 4, will be strong enough to be felt and then only very slightly. In comparison the recent Japanese quake was about a 9. This is 5 orders of magnitude greater or in other terms 10x10000 times greater. The reason Eastern Canada does not have large structural damaging earthquakes is that geologically this region is in the middle of a very broad and stable continental land mass containing very old and relatively stable fault zones.

For the more technically minded, a few comments on the design and safety features of present Canadian reactors used for power generation. CANDU reactors, originally designed by Canadian Researchers at Chalk River Ontario, are among the best and safest available worldwide. Multiple systems exist that can detect loss of coolant in the fission (the nuclear reaction) reactor vessel and any one of these can shut down the reactor and inject a reaction poisoning mixture under high pressure to prevent overheating and meltdown. These entities are multiple so that if one or more fail there will always be others to take over this function. Additionally the reaction rods in the core are grouped so that coolant failure can affect only small sections of the total reaction chamber, not the total chamber as occurred in Japan. A large volume low temperature fluid moderator surrounds the reactor chamber and is a heat reducing (heat sink) safety shield that can safely absorb heat from heat causing events. This again is surrounded by a water shield tank for biological and further thermal shielding. The heavy water neutron kinetics (an energy expression), a property of the CANDU nuclear reaction process, is several orders of magnitude slower making control easier than in the Japanese type reactors. There are other technical factors relating to safety too complicated to discus here that are part of the CANDU design.

Although safe disposal of nuclear reactor waste, even just the large amount accumulated to date is a serious problem; locations and adequate containers for this purpose are being sought. Recycling procedures have been developed to recover reusable components of nuclear waste Additionally treatments now exist to reduce drastically the volume of waste by separating the relatively much smaller quantity of highly radioactive waste components from the whole thus reducing the disposal problem. Much more research is still urgently needed.

Nothing exists of a complicated technological nature that is totally foolproof. However nuclear reactors for electrical power generation in Eastern exist under favourable geological conditions plus they possess the superior safety features embodied in the CANDU design. This means that as long as safety precautions are continuously reviewed and then updated when these are determined to be advantageous and stable areas are chosen there should be no need to delay plans for building new nuclear power installations despite the catastrophic problem with the 4 inferiorly designed and drastically geologically misplaced Fukushima reactors in Japan.

Of particular desirability is that unlike the harmful nuclear waste products characteristic of the fission reactors the fusion reaction produces virtually none. As we noted the problem with fusion is that to date the energy output from experimental fusion trials has not exceeded the input. Full scale energy production using fusion is likely decades away if it is ever achieved.

Public Unrealistic Expectations in Energy Pricing

A serious problem that begets public confusion is energy pricing. At present in round figures Ontario residents pay on their electricity bill 6 to12 cents per kilowatt hour depending on the time of use with the new Smart Meters. This is however very misleading. The present mammoth costs associated with the establishment and production of electricity from alternate energy, a legitimate item in the price of electricity, are also being paid by you but from your taxes as Government subsidies. These subsidies for wind and solar power alone are estimated variously as between 3 and 5 billion dollars. At these subsidies Ontario consumers will obtain about 800 to 900 megawatts of electrical power. Contrast this with the present output from the Darlington nuclear facility of 3500 megawatts which is over 3 times as much. At present total Ontario electricity generation potential stands at 19,000 megawatts. Thus this subsidy from our taxes will replace only about 5% of existing electricity production with wind and solar power. Similar dichotomies are common throughout North America.

There has already been such a public ruckus over rising electricity bills that the government dares not admit to the real cost of electricity. Government subsidies like this for electricity are common across the alternate energy sector and for that matter in some instances for conventional energy processing.

Electricity pricing differs from Province to Province in Canada. Consumer complaints about billing for this commodity in Ontario have been vociferous of late. But again on a nationwide basis, comparisons of our electricity costs with those of other nations are possible. In this case comparing 20 prominent industrialized nations Canadian prices were the third lowest overall. Similar consumer unrest due to energy pricing exists in many of the Developing Nations

Recently Ontario residents will have received a missive from the Ontario Government entitled "Electricity Prices are Changing-Find Out Why". Herein the opening gambit states "Like a lot of places around the world, electricity prices in Ontario are going up". Under "How much will I pay" we learn that each year for the next 20 the rise is projected at 3.5% but the likely increase in the next 5 will be 7.9% per year. This will add up to $300 annually to an average electricity bill by about 2016.

Alternate electrical energy producers have contracts promising payment for power produced and hence the government must pay for the electricity whether needed or not. An option is to sell excess power to adjacent US and Canadian jurisdictions. As was reported recently, at times the government has even had to pay these neighbors just to rid ourselves of this surplus. Since the wind does not blow nor the sun shine consistently it is not possible to rely on a steady supply from these electricity suppliers.

Note how the government tries to hide the costs for subsidizing companies to build alternate energy installations by emphasizing the many jobs thus produced. Down the line when these expensive sources of energy cause electricity rates to skyrocket there may actually be a loss of jobs when other industry decides to avoid investment in Ontario due to exorbitant power rates.

Clearer power technologies are indeed needed to combat climate change. The problem is worldwide in nature. The USA and developing countries continue to persist in an appreciable reliance on coal, the dirtiest but cheapest method of power production. Industry in Ontario will thus be in a disadvantageous competitive position if clean energy costs do not continue to be subsidized from our taxes but are passed on to the consumers.

Another important misconception exists relating to the price of gasoline, a factor that enters the public's mind after every trip to the gasoline station.

According to a recent Yahoo pole 63% of the respondents identified gas prices as the top money issue in a recent Canadian election. Gasoline prices in Canada differ city by city. Taking an average on a national basis several surveys showed Canadian gasoline prices to be in the 40% range of about 150 countries surveyed. For example gasoline is more than 2X as expensive in The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the UK; while in the US, China and Russia gas is only 0.8, 0.7 and 0.5 as costly as in Canada. Perhaps the chronic complainers would like to move to Venezuela where gas costs a measly 5 cents per litter. Also just for fun compare the current Markham gas price at about $1.36 per litter with local supermarket prices for 1 litter well-known, Brand Name, bottled waters averaging $1.60 when checked recently.

A large proportion of Canadian Oil reserves are located in the Western Canadian oil sands. Production from this source is still subsidized at the billion dollar level by the Federal Government. Often referred to as the worst source of pollution in Canada any large scale oil production from oil sands must be queried on this basis. Never-the-less as the amount of oil production in Canada from conventional wells inevitably decreases over time, reliance on oil sand produced product will undoubtedly rise. It is essential that this also be accompanied by innovative improvements in oil sand processing pollution control. The result will have to be an attendant increase in the cost of gasoline, diesel and the many consumer products based on petroleum as a raw material.

No one can deny that present higher gasoline and diesel prices can unbalance the family budget and cause problems for commercial and industrial users. With gasoline prices always likely to vary up and down, over the long term a relatively consistently rising trend cannot likely be avoided. The only answer is to plan to adjust our cost expectations both for fuel and for products and services that depend on this commodity.

Considering these inevitable cost increases in consort with a growing population and mode of resource consumption particularly of the conventional type; such will presage the fate of our present average middleclass high standard of living. This detailed discussion involving the fate of a familiar and widely utilized conventional resource is just one example of our constant the relentless shortsighted approach to life that continues to be typical of mankind.

Consumer Credit

Consumer Credit that potentially dangerous bear trap on the road to improving our apparent ability to possess commodities has become a major calamity for many consumers by encouraging over spending in the scramble to enhance life styles. One vehicle of credit, the personal Credit Card, is particularly dangerous to our financial wellbeing.

The following are rounded off figures from a variety of sources relating to consumer credit card use in the USA in 2011. Six hundred million credit cards are held by consumers in that country having a total population of 310 million, which number includes 60 million that do not qualify for credit card possession. Fifty percent of credit card holders pay only the minimum monthly balance. There is nearly 1 trillion dollars of credit card debt included in a total of 2.5 total consumer debt from all sources. Many unsettling statistics are available that can be calculated from these statistics and I leave the readers to do their own calculations of interest.

No figure could be found that estimates the number of maxed out credit cards in the USA. However there were a numerous personal accounts in which the consumer indicated possession of multiple cards that were at their credit limit. Of these it was not uncommon to have more than 3. This begs the questions of the ethical practices of Credit Card Providers. My personal experience is that I shred all of the average 2 or more unsolicited credit card applications received in the mail per month. Another questionable practice is the frequent unsolicited offers to raise the credit limit on existing personal credit cards.

Recent estimates place the total wealth of the population of the world at between 100 and 200 trillion dollars. A value of about 10% of this represents the present level of the USA debt based on a 150 trillion dollar figure. Total world debt from all sources has been estimated at nearly 200 trillion dollars. At this writing debt crises of major proportions exist in much of Europe

But what does all this mean in relation to long term sustainability of life on this planet? Consumers in North America cannot continue living at twice their income levels as has been the case over the last decade and is persisting at present with no sign of a let up. Additionally nations worldwide are economically performing in a similar manner at a variety of untenable debt levels. Overpopulation and all its dire subset of problems continue largely unabated. Scattered programs presently in existence in relation to amelioration of some aspect of these problems are generally deficient in a meaningful sense and often simply a political smoke screen to suggest that real progress is in the offing. All such programs familiar to the author are heavily government subsidized and thus exacerbate nation debt levels.

The main problem in developing adequate and innovative strategies for dealing with Critical Problems which continue only to worsen can be seen on the national level by showing how a untenable agenda has developed as a dangerous and negligent position on a dire world problem right here in North America. For this elucidation I choose Canada

In the first place Canada is one of the worst polluters on a per capita basis in the world. It is not difficult to understand how this unforgivable situation arose.

A January 2, 2013 Editorial in the Toronto Star entitled, "Bad Year For the Environment" reports that in a budget, "the most austere in over a decade", consisting of spending cuts in the 5 billion dollar range; projecting the impact of these cuts in many areas will be impossible to measure, due to the lack of evaluation of most cuts by the relevant committees of Parliament. Further the Editorial points out that the 2012 government environmental policies demonstrate a process of emphasizing a short term economic benefit that triumphs over the risk of possible long term problems. The Editorial then concludes that "there is an important debate to be had about how to negotiate between the economic potential of Canada's natural resources and the environmental cost of exploiting them".

Nowhere is there a better illustration of the government's policy long term planning shortcomings than in its approach to the highly subsidized recovery of petroleum from an almost endless supply of tar sands in the Northwest of Alberta. Canada's Federal Government favouring the powerful commercial prospects in this sector, has no intention of meaningfully rectifying this situation. Couple this with equally weak, ineffective government management of many other pollutant sources frequently based on foot dragging input from vested interests and it is obvious why at the international level Canada is rated so poorly. Then add the widespread adoption in some Provinces of highly subsidized poorly chosen alternate energy schemes based more on political expediency than on a genuine attempt to be solving a problem and you have the prototypical formula for eventual widespread environmental disaster.

Shortsighted national policies such as Canada's described above when combined with many other phenomena of a similar ilk from other countries and together with the general ineffectiveness of multinational organizations in finding long term solutions is specifically illustrative of why mankind is indeed incessantly marching to extinction.

Many respected commentators speculate on the consequences on the untenable and increasing levels of world debt which range from recession to hyperinflation. Some even predict total economic collapse worldwide. In any case economic problems of such a nature would stem the flow of money essential for dealing with Mankind's sustainability on this planet. Any prolonged period of inaction in such a way would be a disaster. On the other hand a cynic might be led to predict that such an outcome might help solve the overpopulation problem and therefore some of its subsets.

Maintaining the Average Middle Class Living Standard

Straight out it will with certainty be impossible for us to maintain our present living standard if we wish to guarantee the sustainability of life in this world for future generations. Has the reader ever considered the amount of resources that would be required particularly in the light the finite nature of resources and with the mushrooming population to carry on in our present lifestyles as usual? What about the energy consumption inherent in producing the needed manufactured goods and the amount of pollutants released thereby and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The sad reality is that in our daily life most individuals and governments do give consideration to what they presume are the factors that will ensure security for our children and grand children. The problem is that these factors being considered are miniscule when placed in perspective of what is really needed to ensure this goal. This erroneous deliberation has been the case in the past still remains and continues to march basically unabated into the foreseeable future. What is particularly disturbing is that some of proper corrective factors needed for future planning, though well known are unpleasant in being disabling to our present life styles. It is my supposition that these needed corrective measures are not being acted upon in large part is because humans do not have a conception on how immanently critical they are; still having faith that miracle answers will be found in science, engineering medicine and economics that will solve these potential disasters without requiring uncomfortable lifestyle changes.

Take the need to reduce or even eliminate human source greenhouse gas emissions as an example. The sources of greenhouse gas emissions are well documented the most common being vehicular exhaust, electricity utilities, a smattering of other definable industry eg. cement, deforestation fluorocarbon refrigerants and agriculture. Concerted attempts have been made in the electrical utility and vehicular emission source categories to find solutions. At present rate of utilization of vehicles and electricity the proffered solutions are too slow being enacted or will not solve the problem. In Developed Countries the present rate of consumerism in these categories is driven by maintaining current personal relatively high standards of living. Obvious solutions which would imply significant standard of living cuts like drastically reducing personal vehicle numbers and greatly reducing electricity production would not even be considered. This demonstrates in microcosm why current everyday personal lifestyle priorities that even at present population numbers dictate our present environmentally intolerable status quo. But worse the environmental consequences we now experience on this account are being exacerbated by improved life style demands from the population in Developing Countries. If all this is not disquieting enough there is another aggravating factor in this environmentally destructive lifestyle equation and that is the perpetual incremental consumerism demands from population growth.

Mere sustenance of today's human population at the present average standard of living and the maintenance of the retinue of life forms upon which we depend for this state require a continuous consumption of resources. Ignoring recycling for the moment there are 2 types of resources, renewable such as food products and nonrenewable an example being metals.

In the case of the nonrenewable resources and using metals as an example, metals such as iron would appear to exist in infinite supply it being one of the more abundant metals within the earth's crust. Why this is not in a practical sense true relates to energy consumption required to extract a metal from its natural state in an ore. The number of, "rich" i.e. high grade deposits of a given metal, vary depending on which metal is being considered. Extracting metals from high grade iron ores requires much less energy than will be necessary when the rich deposits are depleted. Since energy consumption is of crucial concern in itself there becomes a practical limit on the lowest grade of iron deposit which can be considered as a source for that metal. The refining of metals from a source whether high or low grade requires the consumption of energy and in both cases environmental pollution results. The problem is that the amount of energy required and the resultant pollution rise quickly to a point where the only source for the metal becomes so low the amounts of energy required and the pollution generated are too high that the process cannot be tolerated. Of course more efficient iron refining processes may be developed but even these will eventually become intolerable for the same reasons.

Recycling is an obvious rich source for a depleting resource and must be utilized. Any process used to reprocess scrap to recover, eg. iron from car body wrecks, also results in energy consumption and pollutants. Thus this method of prolonging the availability of a resource has its own typical limitations.

Mention was made above of improved refining processes perhaps coming available. These would work by reducing the energy requirement and/or decrease the resultant pollution or are more readily useful for lower grades of the metal. One of these worth a mention in 2012 is the use of bacteria for some part of the refining procedure. While this is attractive and would seem to reduce energy requirements and might reduce pollutants for that part of the process; problems like keeping the bacteria alive and active, the unique infrastructure outlay needed and other factors will have to be assessed before any conclusion can be made relating to possible benefits.

This is a good illustration of how new concepts that on the surface would seem to be of benefit must always be critically appraised in depth before their true usefulness may be concluded.

Please note that even the refining of an abundant metal such as iron results in energy consumption and pollutants. Also note that as the grade of ore or scrap decreases the amounts of energy and pollution increase finally reaching the point that the refining of even the formerly abundant iron will be untenable. Our increased needs for energy caused thereby will exacerbate the already problematic depletion of energy resources in other venues. Since the population demanding the present average standard of living is also rapidly increasing so the demand for a resource increases accelerating resource depletion and energy consumption.

The case for processing other natural resources for the recovery of a needed commodity is often more problematic. In many instances the resource sources are few and of lower grade. Gold is an excellent example although it is by no means a crucial resource. Apart from jewelry, industrially it is employed in applications that require a superb conductor in the electronics industry. Its case is complicated because all high grade sources of this metal are presumed to have been consumed. Gold is present at extremely low levels both in the native state and in ores of other metals where it is recovered as a byproduct. Many Mining resource scientists are describing gold as a peaked out resource, that is that we have found the major sources of this metal and thus the production of gold will also have peaked. This of course implies that future production from natural deposits will be in ever sharper decline. Gold with few exceptions although not required for the sustenance of life still the main consequence, if demand patterns remain as at present is the price will for the most part keep trending higher. Indications of the reality of the need for constant gold supply even considering today's non largely urgent demands is the recent strong demand from dealers for purchase of "old" or scrap gold.

## Dealing with Galloping Technological Change

Probably one of the greatest challenges for the elderly is keeping pace with the rapid rate of technological change. Undoubtedly the most important question to be wrestled with is; what technology changes do the elderly need to bother with?

My background in science and in particular my research programs had a heavy technological slant and yet even I am baffled by many of the new mechanized devices available to consumers. For example it's a little embarrassing to have my 5 year old granddaughter straighten me out on a problem with a computer software snag I had encountered. Thus one of my greatest concerns is how do the elderly who unlike me do not have much background in this regard hope to cope with these accelerating changes.

For the Seriously Ill who wish to stay at Home

For seniors that have serious medical conditions and want to stay in the home the following 4 devices are most commonly recommended.

Personal emergency response system (PERS **)-** The old push the button device around your neck when you are having a medical emergency was chancy at best. How often might you be unable to push the button? New devices work automatically and are sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a fall and someone stooping to pick an object up from the floor.

Motion sensors-These devices are programed to recognize deviations from the senior's habits in moving around the house. Significant deviations in these daily movements alert a caregiver.

Medication dispensers-Prescription medication is a fact of life for the elderly. A counter top medication dispenser now exists that is carousel in format and can be loaded with a few days of medication in the correct daily pattern. A code is entered and the device automatically dispenses the correct medication at the proper time.

There is a variety of other equipment which is more specific for those with special needs, for example compressed oxygen and other gas dispensers on a movable cart,

Special Feature telephones\- These basically include large buttons and photographs of familiar and often needed contacts. Models are available for those with problems like being hard of hearing and having sight difficulties. Other choices are listed in the smartphone section below.

Basic Computational Technology for Seniors

I have senior friends that span the gamut from refusing to have anything to do with computers and related technology through to one who is a whizz with any digital gizmo. My feeling is that it is almost impossible not to have knowledge of the use of some modern technology. Otherwise a senior loses even a handhold on some important almost essential and very helpful equipment. For those who wish to have only the most essential technology the following is recommended.

Computing devices-Today there is a bewildering array of home oriented personal computing devices many of which should not be included in the category of a computer. There are fundamentally 2 types of full function computers the desktop and the laptop. In these 2 sub divisions there are a small variety of variants like netbooks (small laptop) and all in one desktops (screen has all the computer hardware inside). Very popular so-called tablet mobile computers should never be classified as computers because they either lack fundamental components, or those components are poor imitations of what is contained in a real computer. The tablet will be discussed in a separate section. Many people with full function phones even consider these as small computers. Even gaming systems such as Nintendo and Play station have some computing capability.

It is a fact that seniors in general use computing devices mainly for writing and checking email, video chatting and photo viewing and thus most computers, tablet devices and full function phones can do these. The problem with tablets and phones is memory limitations in photo storage.

Personal Computers-I have fixed and upgraded wrecked computers purchased from EBay or assembled computers from components so that I have 24 units processing mostly medical and environmental research. These programs come from a selection of worldwide high profile research programs provided by the University of California to the volunteers like myself who lend computing power for this research over the World Community Grid which in turn is enabled by IBM. This then is an indication of my commitment to conventional computers. Using these 6 and 8 core processor containing units the equivalent of 23 years of research has been processed in under 3 years. Thus what follows is bound to have a bias toward full featured computing.

A personal computer for especially designed for seniors the Telikin has been introduced, priced in the $700 range. This is an all-in-one desktop which has been simplified by a screen hugging row of large blue buttons that can be pushed to activate commonly used functions such as email, video chat, web browser, games, calendar, contacts and write. Instead of windows it is based on the Linux operating system. Reviews to date, that are available to me although complimentary of the concept reveal significant shortcomings with the operation that at this time of writing (May 2013) are being addressed by the manufacturer. It would probably well to wait before making a purchase of this item. Potential purchasers should follow the upcoming reviews.

I have chosen to mention the above computer initially in this discussion since it was introduced with features specifically to suit seniors. My view however is that most of us are used to the conventional Windows or Apple operating systems and conventional computers and thus would opt for such a choice. However one major drawback to the Windows option is the introduction of Windows 8 a tablet operating system that is inadequately modified for conventional computer use. All newly manufactured PCs come loaded with this makeshift operating system. Rumors suggest that Microsoft will introduce fixes for the major shortcomings of Windows 8 in PCs. Non-the-less I cannot recommend purchase of a new PC with Windows 8. At the time of writing there are still a few new computers with Windows 7 and readers would be well advised to snap these up. Apple computers remain an excellent choice. Fortunately all my PCs are running Windows 7 a highly recommended operating system.

A new money grab gimmick has arisen among PC manufactures and that is the preloading of trial versions of software. During and after the trial period the owner is constantly being urged to buy this software. As a rule one of the first operations I perform on a new computer is to uninstall all trial software programs.

Assuming seniors are using conventional computers and then most being PCs. The following is the minimum software for safe and easy operation for relatively light duty operation.

Most large urban located internet providers provide a basic antivirus function but this is not sufficient. In my experience for normal use a free antivirus either the free version of AGV or Avast can be recommended. Seniors still using their equipment for business purposes may wish to consider the extra features of a commercial version. For the most part computer users are the main culprits in acquiring viruses. Perhaps the most serious violation in this regard is the user that downloads uncertain executable files from emails. Never open files contained in emails unless you are certain of the safety of their contents. Of course never even open emails that are from unfamiliar sources. Viruses again the fault of the computer operator, can easily be obtained by downloading software from the internet that has not been certified virus free. Download sites like Major Geeks, File Hippo, and CNET can usually be trusted. Freeware, that is software that has free license for its use, has to be carefully stepwise downloaded to avoid insertion of additional and unwanted material. Thus when downloading freeware take care to read every screen and uncheck unwanted offerings that may try to slip by.

To maintain computers at top speed and safely operational a few freeware utilities should be loaded. The hard drive of any computer suffers a fragmentation of the files stored thereupon which in turn causes poor computer operation. Thus disk defragmentation freeware should be installed. (Window has its own defragmentation software that can be used but it is much simpler to use good free downloaded versions. In this regard I recommend Auslogics Disk Defrag. Probably the next freeware to be considered id a disk cleaner which removes all useless files that clutter the hard drive after days of internet use. CCleaner is highly recommended for this job. Bundled in CClean is a registry cleaner. Registry clearers although generally useful and recommended can a very few times after use cause a program to poorly function.. CClean has a relatively unique feature to prevent such a permanent problem occurring and that is it automatically suggests and then can perform a registry backup. An optional but well regarded freeware computer care system called Advanced System Care is installed on my computers.

An office suit including most importantly a word processing and spread sheet component is normally desirable. A Microsoft Office Home and Student cost in the $100 range but is well worth the investment. I recommend Office 2007 or 2010 since these have licenses allowing installation on 3 computers. These vintages of Microsoft Office are still widely available for example on EBay. Open office is a free office suit and is satisfactory for most purposes except when attached to emails the recipient may be unable to open these files.

Because of my very limited experience with Apple computers I can give little detailed coverage here. Apple provides conventional desktops, all-in-one desktops and their ibook laptops all excellent choices for seniors familiar with the Lion series of operating systems. Of interest in this regard is the purported relatively freedom from viruses of Apple products because of their fewer numbers and hence attracting less interest from hackers. I have a Power Mac desktop but have only rudimentary knowledge of its operation at the time of writing.

Tablets-You can't help but love these, touch screen portable devices that operate through the use of dedicated touch activated software "apps" that line the screen and also possessing search, email, reader, camera, video communication and other capabilities. They have quickly have become favourites with the many of the computing crowd. But wait a minute are these really computers or souped-up toys? What they really can be are great gadgets for light duty computing applications. If your total computer use is following email and performing other internet tasks, taking and keeping a few pictures, storing messages, keeping notes on a note pad, constructing a daily calendar and listening to music tablets are ideal. They are also excellent for doing puzzles an activity highly recommended for preseving active minds. There is a wide range of puzzle types available as free apps In fact smartphones discussed below can do most of the activities contained on tablets with less ease due to their smaller screens and relatively short battery. But remember tablets will never replace full scale laptop and desktop computers for many important tasks.

Disadvantages of tablets are lack of full function keyboards, Limited port capability. Printing is difficult, RAM and storage capacity are limited, no DVD, most graphics being integrate into the mainboard are poor, Multimedia editing is a problem, low end performance processors, and the high price for a good tablet is out of line with a comparable computer.

It goes without saying that if you wish to do useful computing for most applications conventional computers are still the answer. Admittedly I own an ipad but use it 80% as a reader. One excellent feature that relates to this application is that the reader can download eBooks free from many libraries at home using their regular Library Card number and a password.

We should consider the existing relevant 2013 technology and then postulate a selection of what should be of most use to seniors. But first There have been a few very exciting new developments that can be listed just for interest sake.

**Smartphones** -Phones have truly taken on a life of their own and can cautiously be listed with computing devices. Of all the computing devices smartphones are least useful for computing.

I fondly remember the old dial phones that were hard wired to a simple distribution box usually in the basement. Many of us as teens without permission ie illegally ran our own homemade phones (Bell had total control of phone sales and distribution at that time) to our bedrooms simply by tapping into the circuit in the basement box. Some of you may even remember having to be a member of a multi-customer "party line". Each member on a party line had their own personal ring but every person on the party line could listen to any conversation taking place on all the members' phones. Fast forward to wireless home phones which allow customers to place phones in several rooms that ran from the primary phone.

Then came the advent of Cell Phones that were portable and could be used outside the residence at any point that had adequate signal from the cell phone provider's cell transmission and reception towers. I remember our first cell phone in the car. It was large and weighed several pounds. Cell phones have SIM cards installed for each user.

Again fast forward to Smartphones that are cellular phones and thus have SIM cards installed. They also have a variety of different functions that run alongside their use for making phone calls. For example there are actually more apps. For the iphone than the ipad which attests to the popularity of smartphones for other purposes besides phoning. It's hard to walk along a city street without encountering several individuals with smartphones in hand at the ready.

What then are smart phones? As pocket sized devices they have relatively small screens and for this reason alone may be hard to use for some seniors. Since they bear the name phone one might expect these devices to be mainly for phoning. In fact I had to borrow someone's smartphone to make an emergency phone call and found serious trouble adjusting the device into the phone call mode. Apart from having available many apps, email (in fact anything on the internet), media players, games, readers and camera functions are just a few of the available features available. They come in basically 3 operating system varieties, Apple, android and Blackberry. Those Smart phones with separate key boards have a QWERTY keyboard which is similar to the small computer keyboard. Text messaging has become more popular with many users than a standard phone call. Both hands held on either side of the keyboard are used in texting and some practitioners are capable of typing text messages with blinding speed.

Features that seniors should seek in a smartphone include a simple interface on a large screen such as that available on an iphone. Apps on the first page of the interface should be chosen to reflect frequency of use. Graphics are not a smartphone strength but a bright screen is crucial. Smartphones require high battery capacity which is the main reason that determines weight. Generally the less features the lower the battery drain so in order to get a reasonably light phone seniors may have to choice a minimum of features. I was amused sitting in a Doctor's office with my daughter who was playing games and checking email continuously for an extended period only to find the battery was dead when she needed to call her husband.

A couple of important comments that relate to the relative usefulness of all the devices above include the following. First Desktop computers are always ready for use since they require no charging. Laptop computers can be used pugged in without need for charging but must be charged if portable use wire free or away from a power source is desired. It's important to also point out that laptop batteries generally last for longer periods between charges than batteries in other devices.

Manufacturers that supply two or all three of the above devices now are beginning to provide storage in "Clouds". Clouds are massive storage online server data centers. A good example is Apples Icloud service which stores data from all your Apple devices and can provide any of these devices with any piece of this data no matter which device was used to originate the material. For example you may have downloaded an eBook to your ipad and have begun reading. Let's say you are on page 125 when you turn off your ipad and then decide to start reading again but on your iphone while waiting in the doctor's office. When you turn on your iphone and open this same eBook you will find that icloud has this book automatically ready on your iphone at p125. On line cloud storage is also available from unrelated independent operators for other purposes.

**Social Media for Seniors** -More than one third of seniors in age groups up to 75 years who use the internet were found by Statistics Canada to be involved with social media. There are a variety of social media sites but the most famous of course is Facebook. There is also Linkedin a form of social media for seniors still involved in business. A variety of health surveys have found that there is a socially based wellness benefit to using sites like Facebook regularly. For example such use can reduce the loneliness factor.

Beware however there are hazards involved in social media use. Make certain that any information you place on social media is something that you don't mind making public. Plenty of undesirable types monitor social media to find items that can be used for their illegal purposes. So the main rule is before placing an item on social media be sure you consider your and other people's privacy that an item might have potential to compromise. Identity theft is a main problem to protect against.

New Technology and what new type of Mechanization is Soon to be Anticipate

The top emerging technologies for 2013 as proposed by David King, Word Economic Forum, Feb 14, 2013, are as follows (The actual items come from this source but the discussion of each is mostly my own).

Online electric vehicles\- electric power is delivered to the vehicle wirelessly from a source embedded in the roadbed.

Three dimensional printing-Printers capable of creating 3 dimensional objects will be computer controlled by digital files. In this process layers of material are deposited on top of one another. Such a system can potentially be used in manufacturing objects from a wide range of materials and even has future potential in body part synthesis. The full potential for this technique is awesome but will not come to full bloom in most of our lifetimes.

Self-healing materials-These would be inanimate materials that have the capability to self-repair problems like tears in clothing.

Energy-Efficient Purification of Water-Probable the most serious deficiency arising in the natural resources field is the dwindling supply of fresh water. Higher levels of energy efficiency in processes like desalination are being achieved. Forward osmosis using waste heat from existing technology is becoming a viable process.

Use of carbon dioxide-Carbon dioxide the most abundant of the anthropogenic sourced greenhouse gasses is a major problem in the climate change danger. Photosynthetic bacteria can now be used to convert carbon dioxide into fuels and chemicals. This process is up to 100 times more efficient than natural land based photosynthesis. In my view there are problems that still beset such a process that render this as an important method of carbon dioxide conversion into the foreseeable future.

Enhanced Nutrition for improving Health at the Molecular level-Basically this means used our advances in gene sequencing to define the structure and composition of naturally occurring important nutritional proteins in the human diet, we can produce much improved protein supplements for this purpose.

Remote Sensing-Of particular note would be the use of real time remote sensing to monitor bodily functions. Blood sugar levels and blood pressure are 2 examples that could employ invitro transmitters and remote sensors for remote monitoring of these functions.

Organic electronics and solar cells-Organic materials that conduct electricity and those that can convert solar to electrical energy could be manufactured by inkjet type printers. In this way, for example photovoltaic cells could be manufactured to adhere to any suitable material in any shape that might be advantageous eg an automobile roof.

Fourth Generation reactors and improved waste recycling-Energy recovery from uranium fueled reactors is only about 1% efficient thus leaving large amounts of long half-life radioactive waste. Improved methods of recycling spent fuels and use of other radioactive isotopes that produce less long half life waste are presently undergoing reseach and development.

#### Medicine and the Elderly

The medical aspects of getting old are diverse, often many-fold in nature and experiences with the results of prescribed treatment run the gamut from useless to very successful. In my case having been on heavy doses of medication related to my bipolar condition and having a pacemaker has dominated the conditions I now face as a senior. There are so many medical possibilities facing the elderly it is impossible to be very specific in discussing the medical kaleidoscope that is possible in this age group. Yet there are a few general statements that may be useful.

Attitude toward Ones Illness(s)

There is a school of thought that suggests that strong belief that you are going to be well when the treatments for an illness are complete can in itself ensure a positive result is obtained. Some even go as far as believing the only treatment needed to cure a medical problem when such is identified is to believe in your curative mental powers intensely enough that you do obtain a positive result. Obviously there are conditions which no matter what we belief will end in fatality, but a positive mental attitude can often prolong astoundingly the period of grace. I have personally been involved with individuals in my own family that represent the opposite ends of the mental, attitude spectrum in this area. Before detailing these for your consideration of the effect of mental attitude I wish to state that I am a strong believer in the curative powers of the mind.

Story one involves my mother who died at a relatively young age of breast cancer. Her illness spanned a t least 4 years but lest you think this had any positive mental connotation straight away I must stress it did not. During this whole interval my poor mother seemed to be preparing herself for death. She was subjected to a string of operations that started with a lump and lymph node removals ending finally in a double mastectomy. Both Chemotherapy and radiation treatments dotted her treatment. She was in a depressed state from the beginning and took to her bed for long sad periods. In this book I attempt to avoid any religious intrusion. My mother however was a pillar of her church and I had hoped this might promote a positive view toward even under her most tying condition.

Story two involves my wife Maureen who despite 2 separate serious cases of breast cancer 6 years apart believed from the beginning in each case that she would be cured. Both instances involved different strains of the disease, the second being one of the most virulent types. She took all the prescribed treatment of chemotherapy and radiation and despite hair loss, constant nausea and fatigue never missed a day of work as a Private School Director and Principal. What also amazed me was that she would have periods of illness during these times but never once had the thought these might be in anyway linked to her cancer. Today she is in better health than most of her friends even those who have had no definable diseases.

Above I stated that I believe in the curative power of the mind I just wish I could let this rule in my own life.

Living at home, Communal Assisted Retirement Living and a Nursing Type Home Living

Although most of the elderly that I know would opt for living in their own homes until something serious prevented this approach, there some that enjoy communal assisted retirement living. Removal from the independence of living in one's own home or some other form of relatively independent type of environment would willingly be chosen by few. However the necessity for having the care nursing homes provide may eventually remove any other choice.

Let's look at the nursing home option first. I have direct experience in this type of existence as a volunteer for 5 years. In fact it was the only time in my life that I was ever fired from a job.

The Volunteer Debacle

After my stroke I spent about 5 years just lying around the house, feeling sorry for myself and doing nothing useful. Maureen, my wife, was still working full time and so I was not under foot, or the whole episode wouldn't have lasted even 5 weeks. But in any case, she finally became fed up of returning home to find me in the identical position, sitting on the sofa, as when she had left. There was no evidence that I had even moved since the lawn was uncut, the garden full of weeds and no supper was on the BBQ. I lacked the motivation to even clean the BBQ, so on this point, she was probably glad that I had not ruined some meat by attempting its use. My usual manic behavior was still manifest, but only in that I was unable to sleep more than 2 to 3 hours per night and was reading through the complete stories of Dickens for the second time. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky had also been completed and I was beginning on Gogol and other Russian authors, whose names have drifted from my poor memory over the passage of time. All this reading activity was actually a bit of a feat considering my learning disability reading handicap.

One morning out of the blue, after getting ready for work Maureen commanded me to get into the car. She drove without any explanation to the Donner Lodge parking lot and commanded me to get out and go in and ask for a volunteer's job. Then she reversed quickly back onto the street and drove away. Donner Lodge, a rather pedestrian quality retirement home, did not rank on my list of good career choices. As I stood there feeling like a typical homeless waif in a Dickens novel, I was comforted by the thought that I would most certainly be refused. In fact it came to mind just to turn on my heels and walk back home without even entering, and lying that I had been turned down. This latter thought took flight however, when I remembered that Maureen always seemed capable of seeing through me and extracting the truth. Thus I was horrified, bewildered and in many other ways in discomfiture, when the friendly woman in charge said she was thrilled to have acquired another volunteer.

My work was scheduled for two days per week, including free lunch and as time moved along my old enthusiasm returned and I began to even look forward to my work. Such could not be said though for the free lunches, which lived up to the reputation of institutional food in every insipid regard. When I happened to comment on this to my boss, the Physiotherapist, she kindly began driving us to the local restaurant, where I enjoyed excellent fare. She also enjoyed the lunches, although she was on a diet, the type in which food portions had to be pre-purchased as part of the plan. These dietary allotments were not only diminutive, but unappetizing and amusingly after consuming one of these offerings, she regularly could not resist the temptation to purchase a desert, or a plate of fries and yet was continuously complaining that her diet plan was not providing the desired result.

The patient base at Donner Lodge consisted of 70% Dementia patients, mostly Alzheimer in nature. As a large city run organization with full medical facilities, all stages of severity of these problems were represented, providing a wide range of challenges. Typically, family interest in the affected family member, varied from daily visits to total disregard. As Dementia proceeds the patient becomes less and less aware of every facet of daily life, while even losing control of bodily functions. Towards the end, the family members suffer much more severely than the afflicted person. Sad cases of the patient declining to the point of not even recognizing a close family member, often produced very emotional responses from their family. Worse still, patient cognitive abilities varied daily. Family members might arrive and suddenly become very excited, thinking a vastly improved recognition of family and surroundings was a sign of permanent improvement. In fact these temporary high points were just a blip on a decline curve. Part of a volunteer's purpose was to attempt to explain, but in a kindly way, this typical behavioral pattern, without totally dousing the flames of enthusiasm. In my case, while finding this initially severely challenging, I became more polished with time.

As the assistant to the Physiotherapist, my main job was to aid patients that were requiring therapeutic exercise. I had a fairly hard and fast routine that I was supposed to enact and this involved the following. First I was to chase down wheelchair patients and bring them to the physiotherapy room. This "chase down" phrase was a slight exaggeration in the majority of cases, as the requisite patient could usually be found asleep in the TV lounge. As many of them were nearly deaf they usually had the electronics at ear splitting volume. Waking them was always a potentially dangerous act, depending on their current demeanor. I then wheeled them into the Physio room and strapped their feet into a stationary bike. This unit when activated revolved their feet and legs at a prescribed rate and for a fixed time interval and was strangely termed exercise, despite no effort on the patient's part. After this "strenuous" activity, I unstrapped their feet and wheeled them back to repose again in the TV lounge. And so it went, one after the other, until the entire group had been exercised. If I was lucky a patient or so would require the application of heat for strains and pains and I might be required to perform this treatment, with a careful choice and application from the abundant heating pads available.

Now it may have entered the reader's mind that my pursuits so far described, might be a bit mundane and lacking in challenge and perhaps even utterly boring and if so this has been very perceptive. I never could handle boring work willingly and as a result, I looked for alternative tasks. These tasks, which I could easily perform, were supposedly the purview of the regular staff, but in my view were going begging. Strangely such initiative was not appreciated and as a result my position at Donner Lodge was becoming more and more tenuous.

Increasingly horrified by the needlessly slow pace of many of the Nurses and particularly the Ward Aids, I continually overstepped my volunteering boundaries. Even the Doctor seemed to me to be incompetent, although there were some Nurses and Aids who were excellent. The majority of incompetent staff were mistreating patients more by errors of omission, than by any physical abuse. Unfortunately, all regular workers on the wards belonged to a strong union, which protected their lazy behavior.

I did a number of things which incensed the unions. One involved my favorite patient, James, who I came early to visit for a half hour or so each day before my work began. James suffered severely from angina attacks and as a result had been prescribed the habit forming painkiller Percocet and became quite contrary if its administration should be delayed. When this occurred he would beg me to hunt down the medication cart and the Nurse in charge and procure his medication. Although I usually persuaded them to give it to me, such an act was of course highly irregular.

Other acts which put me at odds with the union were things like finding a male patient who was left in a dirty diaper for hours on end and either raising hell about this situation or in a few cases performing the job myself. These latter actually involved two volunteer infractions against the union members; 1. Purloining a clean diaper from carefully tended supplies while the attendant was on coffee. 2. Actually then performing the task. Well you can probably get the drift of how I was now mounting up union infractions on a regular basis, some of which were coming to the attention of senior management.

Perhaps the final straw was when I was discovered closing the eyes of a deceased patient who had been left unattended for several hours in his bed. Or it might have been when the physiologist had taken sick and retired home for the afternoon and I decided to finish the session on my own. The union did the usual posturing which ended with the threat of strike action if I did not desist. When this in my case proved ineffective, I received the fateful summons to the Director's office. Apparently my actions were threatening a precipitation of a serious problem and unfortunately were grounds for dismissal, after 5 years as a volunteer at Donner lodge. It wasn't much consolation when she added that I was the best volunteer amongst the bunch.

This is a shocking story that occurred at a single nursing home and may not be representative of the industry in general. However frequent reports in the media of poor care in nursing homes in Canada suggest that a careful investigation of a nursing home is essential before placing a loved one therein. To put an exclamation point on this point, at this time of writing (May 31) this morning's Toronto Star newspaper ran a story headlined "Nursing home ripped by ministry over death".

Retirement homes have a wide range of reputational dilemmas and should also be investigated carefully before a placement choice is made.

Most desirable for most seniors is to prolong the interval that he/she remains relatively independent in the home. Recently in Canada Governments are providing better funding and a wider range of programs making it easier in obtaining onsite assistance for seniors in their own homes.

Medical Research in the Public Domain

Consider press research reports on medical advances. How many media announced breakthroughs in medical research actually pan out and benefit patients? Unless you are a mouse, not many. As seniors we are all too familiar with medical information read or listened to in the public media which report on new cures or treatments for the medical problem that we ourselves are facing, only to never hear of the "miracle" again.

In this high profile research field widely reported results from respected researchers at High profile Medical Schools and Hospitals often make headlines. In many cases the content is premature and misleading based on the nature of the research but is still portrayal as a proven new and crucial development. The following illustrative comment is common in most fields of life sustaining concern; I call this common dilemma "Mousey Medicine".

Presently there is a wide spread use of animals for testing purposes in medical research. This practice, embracing a wide range of nonhuman species, is however largely centered on rodents. Of these by far and away the greatest number are mice. An important reason for this choice is that mice have a genetic composition that is about 90% identical to humans. For this reason many researchers expect results obtained on mice to closely approximate those that might be expected to be obtained with humans. However, close genetic similarities of species are just one factor to be considered when choosing a species for this experimental work. Many other important factors such as adsorption and elimination of test substances in mice and humans can still be quite dissimilar. This and other important factors greatly affect the use of such experimental results in predicting their implications for human treatments.

In perhaps the best historically documented case of this type the drug Thalidomide, a supposedly harmless sedative and nausea suppressing drug, was prescribed for expectant mothers based on excellent results obtained with mice. This substance occasioned a disastrous outbreak of widespread human birth defects, up to 10,000 before the problem was discovered and thalidomide use discontinued. In this instance a follow-up study found that mice could actually tolerate about 8000 times, on a relative basis, the dose compared to humans without ill effects of any type. The thalidomide disaster beginning in 1961 caused dramatic changes to occur in procedures and permissions for human testing using substances flagged as possibly useful based on results obtained with experimental animals.

It would appear however that many medical researchers show little concern for reporting results as possibly having favourable implications for treatment of human disease from research still at the mouse stage that is before enacting any testing directly on humans. Since rules for human testing of such substances are now so stringent and time consuming the temptation for reporting of new potential human disease treatments at the mouse stage is high. Those of us who have reached middle age or greater are very familiar with this practice followed with the very common disappointments that result when mouse study predictions for favourable human treatments are never realized. In fact less than 10% of successful treatments on mice translate into successful treatments for humans. Being learning disabled I have a great interest in possible medical treatments for this problem. At the age of 76 I have seen several dozen predictions for successful drug treatments of this problem doomed for failure. As of this date no properly documented cure for learning disabilities exists.

Due to revolutionary advances in analytical biochemistry the genetic composition of a large number of organisms including humans has become known. Researchers can now identify defective and marker genes related to a variety of problems and using this information can predict the likelihood of certain diseases being developed through individual testing. For example this can infrequently even result in women opting to have mastectomies despite the absence of any actual physical symptoms of breast cancer. Should individuals results fall into the public domain genetic testing could be utilized in pricing and even determining whether to grant life insurance. Likewise genetic information could be used in making hiring decisions.

Although some successful genetically based treatments for human disease actually exist today, I have particular concern relating to the following growing practice. Here non human laboratory research studies show that a genetic procedure has cured a disease or drastically improved the treatment of that disease, in a test population of mammals such as mice. These results are then used as the usual springboard for predicting the likelihood of developing medications or favourable clinical procedures and even cures, when used with humans in the future.

Results are still often being reported without any vestige of human testing having been done. The problem today is the much wider ranging, still weakly based, but much more aggressive nature of this type of prediction, something the science of my day would strongly have disavowed. Many medical research facilities actually maintain Media Rooms for release of such material.

Charitable organizations and research groups in the medical domain depend on favourable research results for the granting and improvement in monetary support. Many of us donate to charity and would be predisposed to be more generous if favourable predictive medical results applied to diseases affecting our progeny, other loved ones and the fate of life in the long term. It is worrisome to me, as a scientist who believes that some research indication of human benefit should be accomplished, which is publishable in peer reviewed journal, before probability of any human success is announced. Otherwise, less rigorous press released material; totally non-human based may wrongly influence the charitable actions of generous citizens. Non-the- less carefully validated genetically based medicine does hold tremendous and wide ranging promise for treatment now and in the future.

A specific area of medically related research that illustrates the public confusion that may arise on prominent issues relates to cell phone use. Controversy is rampant as to whether cell phone use can cause cancer. This is an example of a field of research that being very high profile attracts a multitude of researchers many of whose credentials are marginal at best. The Press is commonly unable to judge the validity of results and reports those that are most attention getting regardless.

On the surface there appear to be a large number of important studies on whether the use of cell phones can be linked to forms of cancer particularly of the brain. These are much divided as to whether such devices do or do not present a cancer danger. Because media is prone to report on new research studies as soon as they appear often without regard to validity unreasoned public concern arises. The main problem is that the majority of this reported research is inadequately performed making the conclusions useless and worse misleading. Decisions by the public should be guided for the most part by seeking recent results reported or reviewed by major government health departments, world renowned health agencies and national Cancer agencies and institutes.

To understand the reasons for the conclusions of these reputable sources and the issues from which these conclusions result it is important to have a few facts. These include the nature and consequences of the radiation that carries cell phone signals, the controversy related to this radiation and the requirements of a properly designed study to evaluate the possible consequences of cell phone use.

Strange Approaches to Diagnoses, Treatment and Medication

Would you not think it a little strange to take a car to have the steering fixed only to find that they insisted the problem was actually with the exhaust pipe? Granting that strange things do happen in the car repair field this would still defy the imagination.

In my seniors years I have complained for over a decade of slowly growing problems with my balance when standing upright which get worse when walking. Instead of concentrating on my head via a neurological and ear nose and throat work ups, much more time is spent in exhaustive testing of my heart function. Oh yes I have seen a variety of these 2 latter specialists but after it was determined that it was not a vestibular problem and after viewing CT scans the neurologists stated they could do nothing for me without a MRI scan. these avenues of investigation ceased. Although I have proof that there are conditions under which pacemaker patients can have an MRI there is apparently no radiologist in Toronto that is willing to take this chance even with my written consent. So these avenues of investigation ceased. At this point many reinvestigations of heart related issues became exhaustive.

There are several issues around my inability to have an MRI and why that provoked a neurological dead end that require explanation. As stated earlier I have a pacemaker and an MRI is deemed impossible in those with pacemakers. This is because RF radiation in a strong magnetic field as in MRI would heat up the wires implanted in my heart with the wires in my there-in causing it to fry. MRI testing was introduced clinically in the early 1980's and the CT scan in the 70's. The neurological dead end that this caused in diagnosing my problem is representative of a failure in modern medicine and that is recent miracle tests like those from an MRI seem to have cased neurologists just as one example to lose sight of the old methods. Of course there were neurologists around long before the 1970's and 80's, Thomas Willis being the father of neurology (1621-1675). Although I would not desire neurological treatment by a seventeenth century practitioner I would presume that problems such as mine were routinely diagnosed and if possible treated before the 1970's.

Diagnostic procedures involve divulging of symptoms by the patient for the Specialists consideration and from these medical testing is proposed. After listening to my litany of symptoms the several neurologists that have been involved with my case commonly posed the following question. What are your two most severe symptoms? That seemed like a reasonable approach until I found I was ending up after much deliberation with what seemed like a rainbow of possibilities all dead ends due to my problem in not being able to have an MRI test or with suggestion that another part of my body might be causing my problems. In particular they commonly suggested seeing a cardiologist. In fact consultations with a cardiologist which I had been having yearly showed that my heart was in very good shape. This demonstrates another weakness of the modern specialist approach. Despite computerization of health records specialists I discovered in my case seldom read the other available specialist reports on patients.

Wait a minute I thought to myself, individual specialists are unable to deal with my problem using the standard approach so why not create a specialist who could work intimately with a multitude of symptoms using the best available data bases. So I created such an entity and instead of having human appendages and organs this specialist consisted of 4 networked computers. This arrangement was constructed so that I could use up to 8 defining symptoms and run these through up to 4 different data bases available from institutions such as John Hopkins University hospital and the Mayo Clinic. After several days work I had 2 major possibilities, one would have already have caused my death, the other Multiple Syndrome Atrophy (MSA) was selected. I was then sent to the Toronto expert on this disease. He stated that he could not positively confirm this disease based on 1 symptom out of 8 being not in agreement. **Disclaimer:** I want to emphasize that despite out of frustration I adopted this approach I recommend against this method for others.

MSA is a disease that has no cure and is inevitably fatal usually 7 to 12 years after the first appearance of symptoms. As I write this account 6 years after first symptoms I have progressed through the early stages common to MSA to the point that physically I am nearly off my feet.

At this point it was clear further consults with neurologists were a waste of time.

Other Selected Medical Issues Particularly Difficult for the Elderly

Having had been sent by a specialist to be examined by a colleague I was given an appointment return date by the referring doctor to discuss the colleagues findings in perspective to all my other results. Arriving by taxis for this appointment at the designated date and time I was sent by the receptionist into the specialist's office. I sat and waited as he finished up something he had been writing at which point he thumbed quickly through my file and then looking up asked to be reminded why I was there. I pointed out that I had seen his colleague and was here for a follow-up to discuss the colleague's findings. This occasioned another search in my file and through documents in the outer office resulting in his stating that no such report had been received. With a simple sorry he was about to set another appointment for me to return at a later date at which time he would make sure to retrieve the missing report when I grew angry and pointed out that it cost me $140 for the taxis each time I visited his office and insisted that I would not be making a return trip at this cost for a duplicate of something he had carelessly mishandled. I insisted that instead he email me the results and any conclusions he might have. Seniors like myself who are unable to drive but do not qualify for assisted transportation have 2 choices either take public transit or a taxis. In my case and for many others in a similar situation I was at that stage unable to handle the rigors of public transit and hence had to pay for costly taxis.

A common money grab by doctors is to refuse to renew prescriptions over the phone even when said prescription has been used for the patients treatment for years. Instead the patient is required to make an appointment to see the doctor only to be handed the prescription by the receptionist or to sit in the doctor's office just to watch him scribble out the prescription. This is an unnecessary inconvenience for any patient but is particularly difficult for seniors dependent on public transit or a taxi.

Exorbitant wait times in doctor's offices can be annoying. Occasionally, due to unusual circumstances related to something in a previous patient's appointment such wait times are justified. However over the many years that seniors have been involved with doctors most have experienced a particular doctor whose practice is typified by such an inconvenience at every visit. An odd variation of this problem that I encountered once was that I had arrived mistakenly 1 hour late for my appointment only to note that even had I arrived on time I would still be waiting for my turn to come. Never mind I still had to wait the same interval from my arrival 1 hour later because my name was put at the end of the existing line.

These types of practices by doctors sometimes have amusing outcomes, the following story, I call "The Laughing Wheelchair", being a case in point.

A strange air of happiness pervaded a Markham/Stouffville Hospital doctor's office. The doctor was 30 minutes late a fact that usually engenders annoyance and a restive mood among patients.

Suddenly a fit of coughing erupted to from an enormous woman, thundering with a volume which mirrored her stature. In an instant the doctor's secretary appeared with a glass of liquid which she poured down the cougher's throat between spasms. Abruptly the coughing ceased and a smile appeared. The effect was so instantaneous and unexpected that it prompted a comment that surely the liquid had to have been vodka. The afore mentioned opinion emanated deep from within a wheelchair positioned next to the sufferer and was followed by voluble spasms of laughter from the same source. The laughter was so intense it caused the wheelchair to begin shaking. Typically hesitant to stare at a person in a wheelchair, I none-the-less cast a glance in that direction. To my surprise there lay what appeared to be a tiny elderly woman so bound up and covered with blankets that it looked like a conveyance of laundry supporting a head. One could not help but suppose that a serious medical problem resided within the very shriveled confines of that laughing females anatomy .

To pass the time I was stimulated to engage in friendly banter with those forbearing members of the waiting room and our conversation was frequently and unaccountably accompanied by bursts of merriment from within the bowls of the wheelchair. Had I been the suffering personage of this conveyance there would undoubtedly only have been a self-pitying silence. Upon directing questions to this amazing woman I discovered a rich Toronto and then Markham history consisting of an abundant life of high level social activity that she hosted from several historical homes in which she had lived. From the dates mentioned in her conversation I judged my respondent as more than 70, certainly closely similar in age to me. Yet her demeanor, attitude toward life and view of the future was full of hopefulness and mental stimulus in the form of literature, the performing arts, musical concerts and educational TV. Each of her answers was bright, full of humour and often heartfelt laughter.

After the 30 minute demurral, instead of sneaking in through his inner office entrance, the tardy doctor entered purposefully and confidently through the waiting room front door acknowledging everyone by name, as he passed. Upon reaching the wheelchair he paused and made a special effort to pronounce something meaningful and light which was received with a bout of chortling which again set the wheelchair into a quaver. Taking the handles himself he then glided this patient quickly into his office leaving the rest of us to our continued but more subdued, deliberations. Immediately there was a general sense that something inexplicably uplifting had disserted this room.

Doctors are paid per patient visit so the more patients a doctor can cram in the higher his income. As a senior I have once in a while been the victim of what I call an 'assembly line doctor'. A recent ophthalmologist appointment relating to potentially problematic cataracts and fading vision incidents is a case in point. I walked into this specialist's office 35 minutes before my scheduled appointment time only to discover that not only was every chair in the office occupied but 2 patients stood forlornly against the wall. My instant reaction was that I was going to be faced with a long wait time. But no almost exactly to the appointed minute I was ushered into the lab/office. All those who had been there when I had arrived had also been previously processed. This practitioner had his procedure organized so that the patient was hurriedly cycled through each piece of examination equipment at a torrid pace, then exiting without due time for first providing symptoms or at any point asking questions from the last piece of apparatus strategically positioned for such a rapid fire exit. Total time for examination by 3 pieces of equipment and then out the door was 12 minutes accompanied by a cheery comment that my eyes were fine. Many ear nose and throat (ENT) specialists are prone to assembly line approaches.

My experience in having had medical treatment in many jurisdictions worldwide suggests the Canadian system is the best. However like all services that have relevance to the elderly Our medical system requires an upgrade.

Medication and the Elderly

Avoiding falls is crucial for the elderly. Medication procedures must be carefully considered in light of some drugs that by themselves or in combination with others can promote dizziness, balance and other problems that might increase the likelihood of a fall.

My own experience with medication and other incidents of heavy medication use I noted in the nursing home is apparently common among the elderly. It is not uncommon for seniors to be regularly taking 4 or more types of prescription medication. This figure, often referred to as poly-medication or poly-pharmacy, is a common thread in articles appearing on this subject from a summary done on the internet.

Concerns relating to this practice range from side effects of individual pharmaceuticals to harmful problems related to interactions of these amongst each other. Cumulative damage from long term heavy use it must be emphasized can result in symptoms that include development of balance problems similar to those I myself am experiencing. Use and abuse of prescription medication and in particular pain relievers, an example of which in the case of pain medication was apparent in Sven's case described above abounds amongst the aging population. Estimates suggest that the pain prescription medication abuse among the elderly problem could double by the year 2020 unless steps are taken to remediate the situation.

Medication has dominated my life. Bipolarity, also known as Manic Depression, went undiagnosed in my early years until age 45. When unchecked, this problem is typified by emotional oscillations from deep depression to manic excesses. The oscillation frequency in my case varied from minutes to weeks.

Perhaps it would be incorrect to label cigarettes, or more correctly the addictive chemical nicotine, as a medication. But on looking back I wonder if my 2 pack per day habit during the 15 or so years following my teens, helped to tranquilize my undiagnosed bipolarity.

Enter Psychiatrists beginning in my 20s, as a dominant monthly feature for the rest of my life. But even for 20 years under their tutelage my bipolarity continued undiagnosed, as the early practitioners filled me with valium. This medication coupled with alcohol became the perfect camouflage, by repressing my emotional extremes. I encountered an unusual variety of Psychiatrists that could be grouped according to their treatment preferences. A few worked without emphasis on medications. My favorite amongst these used biofeedback as his weapon of choice. He taught relaxation procedures and their effectiveness was judged by evaluating squiggly signals on a monitor, with the device being attached to the patient. When the baseline of the signal travelled lower on the screen, it meant the patient was becoming more relaxed. The effectiveness of this approach became abundantly clear in one session, where my baseline signal indicated severe agitation, but when I looked over at the doctor I discovered that he had fallen asleep.

Of course the most effective practitioner was the one that finally diagnosed my bipolarity. Surprisingly this gentleman had also previously employed the heaviest doses of valium, which had most effectively hidden my bipolar mood swings. To say he diagnosed this problem would perhaps be an error in semantics. After a hurried consultation with a colleague he returned with the question, "Do you think you might be manic depressive"? I stated "perhaps". This really marked the onslaught of medications. Valium disappeared only to be replaced by an arsenal of up to twelve different drugs, all being consumed simultaneously on a daily basis.

The first major new drug introduction was the substance lithium carbonate. This is the most common staple used in the treatment of bipolar disease. In another form lithium will be recognized by most readers as the major constituent of rechargeable batteries, in electronic gadgets and electric cars. Although the previous comment on lithium batteries would appear to bear no relevance to my problem, lithium carbonate, while effectively performing its magic on the emotional swings, it had the not uncommon side effect of causing me to shuffle and shake as though I was a malfunctioning battery powered toy. The problem was so severe that I could not move from point A to point B while holding an object, without shaking so badly the item in question crashed to the floor. The only alternative consisted of a medley of three drugs. The main one, an anti seizure compound with the unpredicted side effect of being useful for treating bipolar problems, had to be administered in massive 1.5 gm doses.

To understand the treatment of bipolar disease one can imagine playing the violin. The musician practices until the melody contains the correct combination of notes and cords. These must then be played with satisfying emphasis and tonal quality. Likewise effective drug treatment for my emotional problem is a matter of practicing. The combinations of medications and the amount of each are varied by the practitioner at each appointment, until the types and amounts of those that control the manic highs and the species and level of those that prevent depression, have resulted in as close to a stable emotional state as possible. Imagine then the wear and tear that this chemical assault must levy on bodily organs.

Although having been subjected to a chemical smorgasbord of drugs my entire adult life, I have also been fortunate enough to witness an entirely different and extremely effective type of medication. Animals have long been known to be useful for improving the emotional wellbeing of those in health care institutions and homes for the aged. As mentioned in another chapter, I spent five years volunteering at a local nursing home and subsequently came to befriend one of the patients named Sven (not his real name). On many weekends over this five year period I would take Smudge, our black Labrador, in to visit with me and here-in developed an unusual story.

Sven was a remarkable person in several ways, including being a much decorated WW 2 veteran. Hence this man was no stranger to bravery. As Smudge and I entered the picture, Ben had severe heart and emotional difficulties. As the relationship developed I became aware of the intensity of pain that was involved daily in Ben's life, particularly related to periods of angina. Concurrent with this, I also realized just how important a dog can be in deflecting a patient's outward awareness of pain. Ben and Smudge shared an intense relationship, where-by Smudge's presence seemed to become as effective as pain killers. At 45 kg I was always hesitant as Ben would motion Smudge to jump onto the bed and lie beside him with her head in his face. Thus I always very cautiously guided the dog up and made certain that the rest of her body was not resting against any of Sven's chest area.

One Sunday morning Smudge and I arrived in the hallway to hear loud moaning sounds of painful angina emanating from Sven's room. For a second this anguish precipitated a loss in my concentration. At this point Smudge also became aware of her friend's predicament and bolted from my tenuous grasp. In horror I watched her tail disappear around the corner into his room, followed closely by the sound of a large object crashing onto the bed. Then total silence resulted. As I dashed to the bedside with fearful visions of what might have occurred, I half expected to find Sven dead from a heart attack. When I rounded the corner, I was dumbfounded. As I feared the dog had indeed impacted on the center on Ben's chest. But instead of a dead body, I found Sven breathing peacefully, a mammoth smile enveloping his face and a big pink tongue licking his smiling lips. About to utter a litany of apologies, my throat choked up and no sound came out, which turned out fortunately to be much more appropriate.

### Examples of Medicine I Experienced Elsewhere

Thailand My Donnybrook

Unexpectedly Part 1 of our around-the-World trip prior to arriving in Australia was to end here and It was not, as might be expected, because of young Jon's illness.

We all arrived in the pink of health. There were 2 episodes that bear mentioning here. On the first day, after a restful overnight in the hotel in Bangkok we began the sight-seeing.

First, we took the famous floating market tour. These markets are Some distance from the center of Bangkok and we traveled to the location by motor boat. These were the strangest water craft I had ever seen. Long, low and narrow they had motors, which were small car engines mounted on long shafts with a propeller at the far end and the handle for steering protruding from the other end near the motor. The Pilot must have had arm muscles like steel, yet a gentle touch to maneuver so carefully as he needed to do. In open water the craft must have traveled at 40 to 50 Kph. Upon arrival at the markets we disembarked into several small crafts. A Thai woman guided this boat skillfully through the maize of floating markets and other traffic. In an indifferent type dialog that she had obviously enumerated countless times, she described all the most important occurrences. At one point she nonchalantly bought a bunch of bananas and casually dispensed this into the bottom of the boat without missing a word of dialog. Some time later in the tour she told people to help themselves to a banana. However when she looked down there were only 1 or 2 left, our young Jon had eaten all the others. Upon arrival back we continued the days events with a walk in the crowded streets, our main destination being the temple of Dawn (Wat Arun), a Buddhist Temple of magnificent architecture and construction. It's spire, 70 meters tall, is world famous for the intricate and colorful ancient china (porcelain) and glass fragments embedded in the surface.

The highlight that evening was an authentic Thai meal (this is 1975 so such cuisine was not generally available in Toronto). Of particular note, I chose a seafood soup which was remarkably delicious. The rest of the courses were typically spicy, but not overly so. We retired to our hotel beds soon after, exhausted by the many activities of the day. At about 2.00 AM it began! I darted from my bed to the toilet with a fiery stomach and promptly lost all my meal. I was unable to vacate the bathroom, losing fluids from both ends in an almost continuous manner. A frantic call brought the Thai trained hotel Doctor. At a relatively quiescent point in my proceedings he gave me two 5 mm round, red pills. I almost immediately became light headed and with a silly smile on my face I staggered back to bed. For the next many hours and the next day and night after (the doctor came again with 2 more of these pills in the morning) I had the greatest feeling and sensation of flying about 20 cm above the bed. Mean while, after fending me off Maureen and the kids had to walk to an airline office through a very seedy and apparently scary district of the city, to amend our tickets in order to bypass Singapore, our next destination, so we could travel straight to Melbourne. On the day of our departure I was trying to remain in case the doctor might appear again, with his magical pills.

The Dilemma of a Touch of Flu

Mystification was the name of the game in many routine seeming situations in China of the 1980's. Whilst situated in Canton for a chemical research assignment for the World Bank I had a most unusual flu dilemma.

At the time, a variety of accommodation was available in the big Chinese cities, which ranged from American and Chinese style Hotels to University residences. I opted for the University residence, however a couple of weeks cooking on a single gas ring using leaky pots, having an air conditioner which regularly caught on fire, and enduring a meagre 1 hour per day of hot water, soon propelled me to relocate in a nearby Chinese Hotel. As I had always endeavoured to live as much as possible amongst the citizens of the country in which I was working, I was somewhat dismayed with myself at this move.

In those days each floor of the Chinese hotels had a reception type desk manned by English speaking male and female attendants, at which the resident was required to report and be escorted to his room. The door was duly unlocked and the room inspected before the hotel official handed over the key. Upon leaving each day the patron was required to hand the key in at this same desk before being allowed to leave the floor.  
I had already become something of an enigma because I took my daily exercise by running in the stairwells between floors each morning, rather than trying to run on the crowded sidewalks outside. As might be expected this always drew an audience of bewildered hotel workers who clustered to watch from the entrances to each floor.

One morning I seemed to have developed mild flu like symptoms and felt the need for a pain killer for my headache. Attired still in my pyjamas I went to the reception desk on my floor and thinking that Aspirin must be a known brand even in China, I asked for 2 tablets. Without producing any pain killers the gentleman on duty mysteriously escorted me back to my room, although it was still unlocked and to my bed and then remained with me. In what seemed like only a few moments later 3 persons appeared in my room. I was then told that 2 were doctors, a man and a woman, both of whom conducted a cursory examination. The other a Government Official was in charge and he stated that I could choose to be treated using Western or Traditional Chinese Medicine. By then my headache had disappeared; consumed no doubt by the over dramatic incident that was unfolding in relation to my possible touch of flu. Surprisingly I heard myself say that I would try Chinese Medicine. What did I have to lose; it wasn't as though I was facing a fatal disease and after all my mantra had always been to gain as much experience with local traditions wherever in the world my work was to sequester me.

The woman doctor then stepped to my bed side and extracted 5 bottles from her satchel each containing what appeared to be 150 or more red coloured BB sized pills and deposited these on the bed side table. She then directed me to take one. Thus I dutifully removed the lid from 1 bottle, spilled out a few into my hand and then carefully choose one pill. I was about to swallow this acrid tasting orb with the aid of some water, when she interrupted and stridently stated not one pill, the complete contents of the bottle! It was at this point I wished I had remained in residence and was only having to extinguish another air conditioner fire.

Back at the University my Chinese colleagues carefully explained this dilemma. Apparently I was classified officially (they were always big during that period on fancy sounding categorizations) by the Chinese Government as a "Distinguished Visiting Expert" and as such it would be a horribly awkward international incident in their view if I were to perish while in Chinese precincts. To this end, as a precaution and no matter how minor seemed the complaint, I was to receive their ultimate diagnosis and treatment.

Upon returning home it came to my mind, whether by divulging this grandiose sounding foreign status to my family doctor in Toronto I might gain some advantage? Sadly, I dismissed this idea on the grounds that he being of Chinese background himself, he would probably see through this nonsense and instead penalize me by extending my already aggravating 1 hour office wait times.

#### Politics and the Elderly

Political Agenda Ruses, an Example

Political agendas when played out in the public venue often appear to have imbedded therein solutions to critical long term problems. For this discussion let's retrace the energy problem in an election campaign format. The following relates to an election campaign at the Province of Ontario level. Our already detailed environmental examination of the alternate energy issue will help us to see how politicians employ such a high profile concern to for political purposes misleadingly.

During a recent election campaign people's perception of the energy issues surrounding this critical part of each party's platform became a minefield of misdirection. Does anyone seriously believe that energy prices will not continue to climb relentlessly despite any electioneering rhetoric to the contrary? The chances of new major oil fields being discovered are minimal and as petroleum supply must eventually peak or even start diminishing with time the unsubsidized prices must increase. Costs of producing electricity are rising steadily and thus likewise the unsubsidized price must rise. Meanwhile the 2 major party leaders that were involved in this election in particular are making the subject of alternate energy into a election ruse.

"The Ontario Government Plan has delivered 20,000 new clean-energy jobs for Ontario families and is on track to create 50,000 by the end of 2020, the incumbent Premier announced today."(CNW Sept. 8). This statement based largely on a deal with a large multinational company and other closely related statements have continued to be a vanguard of the Ontario Liberal electoral platform.

The opposition party leader threatened to cancel the Multinational Company part of this initiative and 16,000 jobs involved therein and rightly states this Liberal Party aspiration is part of an "expensive experiment" which will cause electricity rate increases. While promising to reduce taxes (amounts to a subsidy) on electricity, he will not commit to ruling out increases in electricity costs in the future. Analysts in a prominent local newspaper point out that the opposition platform has only 2 substantial changes from the present status quo. As an indication of the importance accorded energy in this election one of the Opposition Party substantial changes relates to scaling back the government rush to alternate energy programs together with "lowering homeowners hydro bills", the latter being an impossibility without substantive subsidization . Despite the importance of energy production, no specific details on Opposition Party future plans for alternate energy or how they would otherwise maintain adequate energy supplies, have been presented.

We have defined 2 classifications of energy production conventional and alternate. For perspective, consider present conventional electricity production situation from the following figures gleaned from the Ontario Power Generations (OPG) official web site. These are based on a total current OPG output capacity of approximately 20,000 mega watts. It is important to realize that the original procedure for mass production of electricity in Ontario, that of using the energy of moving water-usually waterfalls, to drive turbines is the cleanest of all methods and still accounts for about 7,000 megawatts. Nuclear energy production, accounting for 6,600 megawatts, although involving very small amounts of greenhouse gas emissions during nuclear fuel production, transportation and erection procedures in relative terms is considered a non contributor to the climate change problem. Thermal electricity generation involving mainly coal or natural gas facilities have a capacity of 6,300 megawatts. These plants are the major source of climate changing greenhouse gases. Coal still used but now being phased out, is the worst polluter because of its emissions of additional harmful substances, 2 being mercury and sulfur dioxide. Thermal electricity generators are indispensable because, in contrast to nuclear and hydro sources, output can be ramped up and down quickly to suit the current demand.

Nuclear energy requires additional information. New technology nuclear reactors are inherently safe. The chance that you will be harmed by radiation from such an installation built in a relatively tectonically stable area such as exist in Ontario is close to zero. The technologically savvy Bill Gates of Microsoft fame is so enamored by new style, safe, nuclear power generation that he has funded a company developing such reactors. The 2 major parties are promising more nuclear energy which as stated above is considered in the conventional energy source grouping.

Enter into this election the wishes of concerned citizens who pressure politicians to choose clean, i.e. very low greenhouse gas emitters, methods for energy production.

Our main forms of energy requirement are electricity, heat and vehicular propellant. Considering for the moment only the major non greenhouse gas emitting alternate energy methods for yielding electricity, all the above forms of energy requirement are served by wind and solar.

To the contrary of much political thinking, proposing the presently heavily subsidized (from property taxes) wind and solar power as technologies for future production of an appreciable percentage of Ontario's electrical power requirements is a particularly inane election proposal. While the Government promises new jobs and sources of electricity in developing these technologies the Opposition promises to save money by cancelling this investment but without any plans for required new alternate energy sources. As we already know not only are wind and solar power overly expensive, they have immense territorial requirements and in both cases the electrical output is intermittent depending on time and speed of wind and hours of sunshine respectively.

Energy prices and supply and the job creation stimulated there-by has proven to rate among the top issues in the upcoming election. Sadly the 2 major parties have nothing sagacious to offer the electorate in this regard. Unfortunately proposals that have been offered, if implemented would seriously exacerbate the present rising energy costs. Therefore the electorate in demanding alternate energy initiatives must understand implementation is not possible without incurring much higher utility bills one factor along with government services in general that could become a significant component in the struggle to maintain current standard of living standards.

With this confusing information how does the electorate make an environmentally friendly informed decision?

The above is a detail high profile illustration to indicate why the public has distorted perspectives on issues of importance through no fault of their own. Because of such examples it is not difficult to understand why subjects related to The Overpopulation problem, although critical to bio-sustainability on this planet, are widely misunderstood and do not sustain intense public concern.

## Stories of Life at Earlier Times

The purpose of this section is to provide the elderly with some amusing stories of Life in earlier simple times in our development. This is an effort to not only to entertain but to help you recall and mentally relive some of your own experiences on these subjects. Most of these stories, although with different context appear in other of my writings.

**Shadows** of Youth

My father never tired of childhood reminisces. Somehow the early 1900s stood out in my father's mind as special and worthy of perpetuation in his children's lives. I could never understand his fascination with this time. The eldest of three children, I grew up in austere living conditions, which I have never pined to relive. Although, I grew up in Canada, later in life I encountered similar abodes in developing countries, where I worked as a UN and World Bank consultant.

Awaking on my youthful back each 1940s morning, I would look up and see razor sharp galvanized nails, penetrating menacingly half their length through roofing lumber. Completing the decor was a small primitive dresser thickly coated in cheap tacky white paint and replete with three sticking drawers, plus a cloth covered box for bed linen. Hidden under the bed resided an often malodorous, fancy porcelain "night soil jug", which needless to say, was difficult to ignore.

Living quarters in those days were often very discordant, compared to the relatively lavish domiciles most of the youth of developed countries have become used to in the 21st century. In my family's case, our home was totally lacking insulation, the walls and roof being simply 2x4s clad on the outside with 3/4in lumber This was protected from the rain by moss infused cedar shakes.

Heat on chilly days was provided by a large cast iron, wood burning stove in the kitchen and a modest living room stone fireplace. The upstairs living areas relied on the warmth that escaped upward through the generous cracks between the flooring lumber and that which wafted up the stairs. If you were fortunate and occupied the bedroom through which the thin blue metal stove pipe arose, this became your own private heat source. Modern day fire regulators and our insurance companies would surely be mortified to contemplate such an arrangement.

Plumbing consisted of a community shared long handled mechanical pump residing 80 meters along a pathway cleared through the woods. Usually it fell to the family children to retrieve buckets of ice cold water for use with an outdoors washstand. Bars of gelatinous surfaced soap, in an old china soap dish and a chipped enamel washing bowl, completed these amenities. The crown jewel of the bathroom plumbing was a two holler outhouse which was hidden in the woods, 20 meters away from our house. This facility was a special joy to have to attend in cold and damp weather.

Although electricity arrived in our area in the late 40s, my father refused a connection. Foul smelling kerosene (paraffin) burning lamps, together with Aladdin pressurized mentholated spirit lighting fixtures, illuminated the premises. These latter, when operated properly, produced an intense white radiation. It was however easy to blunder the ignition process and burn a hole in the delicately thin mesh mantle, thus requiring a cumbersome and costly refit. Such mismanagement, which I admit to deliberately provoking on occasion, seemed to me a just payback for some of my father's harsh punishments.

Due to the enormity of the old fashioned, wood burning stove, it was difficult to move about in our relatively tiny kitchen and often resulted in nasty burns to protruding body parts. This cooking device contained a chamber in which several litres of water could be heated. In the winter, its purpose was to evaporate moisture into the typically dry indoor air. Another misdemeanour perpetrated by myself and my wayward siblings, was to fill this cavity with water on a hot summer's day when a roaring fire had been set for baking. The result was such oppressive humidity within the dwelling that we were all driven outside. Lacking electricity meant my overworked mother also used this stove to heat pressing irons. These were used to laboriously remove wrinkles in all our devotional-go-to-meeting costumes.

My favourite appliance was an icebox that engulfed a musty corner on the back porch. Every several days the upper compartment was recharged with a large block of ice. This provided a welcome source of large ice chunks, hived off with a lethally pointed ice pick. When I had the opportunity, I would then place these inside the upper clothing of my fractious younger siblings. The pleasure of its effects could be extended for more prolonged periods by applying a tight grip around their waists, until the drippings could thoroughly glaciate the recipient's nether parts.

My frugal fathers' childhood replay came to a sudden end one day when he suddenly realized, that despite its absence in our dwelling, he was encountering a large sum in taxes for the privilege of paying for poles and electric cabling that provided electricity to our delighted neighbours. Needless to say, within weeks of this discovery the modernization of our residence was underway.

The **Third** Floor

My mother vanished from our lives at the age of 47, after many painful years battling cancer. Gommy, my maternal grandmother, now became the cornerstone in the lives of me and my brother and sister. Gommy was designated thus from my infantile attempts to say Grandma. Her main mantra in life was to give pleasure and good care to others. In fact I can't once remember her thinking only of herself. Since Granddad's forced retirement, due to shortness of breath and painful bouts with angina, Gommy and Granddad had occupied a large space in our daily lives and lived in a small third floor apartment in our family home.

Looking back at it now, Gommy's view that bacon should be purchased in long fatty chunks and cut into 10mm thick slices for frying, is certainly out of sync with today's health conscience, over packaged society. Worse still, she would use the resultant abundant grease for fried bread or save it for future cooking purposes. This was common practice and although counter to today's wisdom, I don't recall a particularly serious rash of fatal heart disease back then.

Staccato thumping on my bedroom ceiling was Granddad's signal that a sports event of interest was screening on his small black and white TV. This set, purchased in the early 50s, was in frequent need of repair and I provided this function using the local Drugstore tube tester. Second-hand smoke had yet to be defined as a serious cause of lung cancer. Responding to his frequent impatient clarion summonses, meant that at the top of the narrow stair case I would be immersed in an all-pervading murky envelope. With his present cigarette often lit from his last, Granddad maintained this caustic atmosphere from before breakfast through to bed time. After 1000s of hours of exposure to such an effluvium, how Gommy and I avoided serious illness or death from lung disease, to say nothing about Granddad, must have had a miraculous genetic origin.

Having been in such a close relationship with Gommy and Granddad, I am startled to realize how little I actually know about their personal backgrounds. Granddad was a particular mystery. Despite being obviously very intelligent, as was easily discernible through the searching discussions we had on politics, religion, philosophy and other related subjects, he paradoxically worked in jobs with little intellectual stimulation. These included being a helper on an oil drilling rig, a maintenance person in a printing shop and a metal stamping machine operator. Additionally I am uncertain of the depth of his capabilities in reading and writing, as Gommy did all his written correspondence. I also surprised her on a number of occasions, when she would be busy reading him the newspaper. In retrospect, I have concluded this inconsistency must have been due to a learning disability, similar to my own. The tragedy for him was that his problem, unidentifiable in that era and often misdiagnosed as stupidity, would have most likely resulted in forced early curtailment of his formal education.

All in all, living with Gommy at the helm after my mother passed on, restored a certain equanimity to the household. Pandering to our every need became the rule and I in particular, greedily basked in this atmosphere of self indulgence. Former onerous rules faded quickly into oblivion and were replaced with a much more general aura of permissiveness.

Family finances for household needs were never in doubt, so life ran smoothly. However, except for managing the essentials, Gommy and Granddad had little in the way of personal funds. Thus when Granddad proudly produced funding for my 4th year university textbooks, I knew a considerable and irrefutable sacrifice had been made. Despite owning no personal aggrandizements of any value, upon my graduation from McMaster University and from her own meagre savings, Gommy bought me an expensive gold ring with the university crest and the year of graduation, 1959, on its flank. Today the graduation year has eroded and the crest only faintly remains. In contrast, the ever present memory of her love, sacrifice and generosity, remains with me always.

I imagine many readers can rend the brume of time with memories of persons and events which dominated your early times. I only hope that for you, these were as pleasantly noteworthy as mine.

Summer Jobs When I was A Student

**The Great Pig Fiasco-** Farming in Ontario in the early 1950's was still very technology poor by today's standards. As a young boy of 14, I periodically worked at a local farm which had a full complement of equipment, all of which I helped operate. The equipment consisted of 2 thirty-five horse power Allis Chalmers tractors that powered a 10 foot plough and disc, a 12 foot harrow and a 14 foot drill (seeding mechanism). A community owned self propelled combine was also available to be shared .

Driving a 1930's vintage badly battered Chevy pickup truck and attached wagon fully loaded with hay bales, was one of my main duties. A sloppy 100 degrees of play in the steering mechanism gave the task an added dose of zest, as I navigated fields, roads and ditches. However what was truly scary was that at this tender age of 14, I learnt to drive in this vehicle. Equally nerve wracking, were the vintage tractors that I also drove on the farm, as they were of a type that were very prone to rolling over and often seriously maiming or even killing the driver. Had my parents been aware of the nature of my duties, I most certainly would have been forbidden to accept this employment.

A prize herd of 55 Guernsey cattle was a cornerstone of this little farm. The cows were milked early morning and again in the evening, laboriously using the relatively inefficient milking machines of this era. The residual milk from each cows udder then had to be removed by the old fashioned hands-on technique. Sadly hand milking turned out to be one of my weaker points. This was a source of extreme annoyance to the other workers, because I unwittingly continuously hindered their attempts to establish an efficient process . Slightly offsetting this annoyance was the amusement I afforded them whilst I attempted to hand milk the cows. Often I would inadvertently position the milking stool too close, giving many opportunities for a crotchety cow to send me leaping and yelping in pain with a well placed kick to the shins, or once in an excruciating fashion to a more delicate personal location.

During this era of time, there were often disastrous accounts of farmers freezing to death, having blundered about in early morning darkness, in a blinding snowstorm, attempting to reach the barn. Luckily this was not a hazard of concern for me during my summer farming hiatus. However I certainly empathised with such lost farmers, for as a city boy arriving for duty at 4:30 am every morning, I was often not at my sharpest mentally.

Early in my tenure, as I was approaching the barn one foggy dawn, I came as always to two side by side gates. The one on the right allowed entrance to the barn and the other to a small neighbouring field. My eyes blurry from lack of sleep and mind in oblivion, I stumbled along and entered the wrong gate. Suddenly I found myself confronted by the shadowy figure of a prize massive bull pawing the ground menacingly. Fully awake and aware of my quandary in a heartbeat, the thought struck my mind that death by freezing would be a Godsend compared to that which now threatened me. Immediately snapping out of my somnolent state, I managed to race to and lurch over the fence a very few seconds before this **capricious** brute was able to thunder down upon me.

I had originally obtained the farm work as I was friends with the farmer's younger brother. Unfortunately, the farmer, his brother and the hired hand, were all famous practical jokers; a fact that became more apparent the longer I worked with them. A memorable encounter transpired in the piggery. I'm sure the majority of people have not had the sense of gratification that encompasses organizing hogs to be sent to market. This is definitely a serious omission from any worthwhile bucket list.

A complex series of pens in a roofless antechamber connected to the barn, contained 200 pigs at various stages of development. One miserably drizzly day it was determined that about one third of these beasts had reached the proper marketing proportions. Those animals appearing of correct size had to be caught, the girth measured and if they qualified a dark blue mark then applied across their backs. I was informed that as the junior member of the team I was responsible for this mission, with some trivial assistance from the others. A market size swine can accelerate at discouragingly high rates of speed and weighs about 100kg (220 lb). For about 15 minutes, I attempted to grab these large hogs. With each attempt, I was rewarded by being dragged through the mire face first, without succeeding even once. The rest of the group laughed uproariously, before taking over and completing the task in a disturbingly easy and expeditious manner.

At the end of this exercise we had 75 blue labeled pigs milling randomly amongst the 200. From here on the game plan seemed clear cut and relatively straightforward. I was simply to hold a small, temporary gate across the opening to the main pen and the other workers would run the blue branded pigs up a ramp into the truck. When this was completed, I was to set aside the gate and let the unmarked pigs back into the main pen. Frighteningly, instead of running up the ramp, the first blue pig lowered its head and rocketed straight towards me. It crashed directly into the gate I was holding, I hit the dirt and the entire holding of pigs cascaded over the top of me. Luckily, although trapped underneath, I had fortunately landed on one side and hence did not take the full brunt of the lumbering horde. When they finally hauled the gate off me, I was badly winded and began rolling on the ground, gasping for breath, trying to get some air into my lungs. You might have thought my co-workers would be panicked by this, but no, they laughed so hard they had difficulty regaining their composure.

My survival at the end of that summer was attended by an enduring desire to never attempt farming again.

**A Dynamite Summer Job-** An alcoholic "Shooter" was not the most propitious addition that our seismic team could imagine. Of course his problem was unknown to company officials at the time. He was however a friend of the Crew Chief.

Shooter was the moniker given to the crew member whose job it was to drive the dynamite truck and set off carefully calculated charges of dynamite loaded into holes previously drilled along the road side. Shock waves from this controlled explosion reflect off the underground rock substrates and were detected by "microphones" on the ground strung along the roadside. The pattern of detected signals were assembled into a subterranean map. The object was to find salt domes and other structures that often trapped large reservoirs of oil.

My summers as an undergraduate university student were spent in Western Canada, mostly southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, in the lucrative oil exploration business. In stark contrast to today during my university undergrad tenure in the 50's there were too few skilled students to fill the needs of the burgeoning job market in almost every category. In fact potential summer students with my training were so few that perks such as first class airfare were commonly offered. In my case for my "drunken shooter summer" as soon as my ticket tumbled through the mail slot it was quickly converted into a chit for the transcontinental train then known as the Canadian. Funds from this exchange were so ample that I was able to purchase a round trip ticket that outbound from Toronto included travel, bunk and all meals across Canada through the mountains to Vancouver and back around to my destination of Regina.

Wawota a small farming town in SE Saskatchewan was designated headquarters for this summer's exploration. We were billeted in the community's one local pub. I say local because this relatively immense structure, particularly the pub severed a large farming belt. Not being the savviest of my colleagues I avoided the scramble that ensued during the assignment of rooms. The result being that by default I found myself ensconced in the flat directly above the pub. The results of this placement were both amusing and frustrating.

On the plus side I developed the priceless skill of being able to tell the exact hour by virtue of the level of noise and vibrations emanating from the beer hall below. As the evening progressed these same parameters became the bane of my sleep paradigm.

Not being adverse to a tipple or two from time to time I noted that the bar keeper had the habit of filling each tray for a waiter followed by the downing of the contents of one of the glasses himself. This same person had the job of signaling the end of each night's session by pulling the chain to turn off the bare light bulb over the bar. After a particularly busy evening those of us still with a degree of awareness were highly amused to observe this bleary eyed gentleman tug so briskly on the chain at evenings end that the fixture dethatched from the wall and fell in a trail of ominous looking sparks finely landing on his ample belly as he stumbled to the floor.

The majority of farmers their sons and hired help (women were forbidden in these pubs in that era) chose Friday evening to have a good old fashioned Whoop-de-do. Having the foresight to consider their fate at the end of the evening's festivities they came by tractor with large attached wagons. Saturday morning provided an amusing site. The view from my window consisted of a panorama of tractor wagons filled with sprawled out slumbering bodies. A few not having the requisite agility to clamber into a wagon could be seen prone dotting the sidewalk nearby.

The coup-degas that summer was the demise of our "shooter" and my appointment as one half of his replacement. One typically clear hot day the crew was startled by a deafeningly loud blast that accompanied the usual muffled thump of the detonation of a dynamite charge in its hole. Upon emerging from the precautionary protection of our trucks we speculated on the cause of this disturbing phenomenon. Upon weaving unsteadily from his vehicle our shooter very seriously and with a straight face announced that the bang was merely a clap of thunder. No chance of this and with the wires from the detonator dangling over the overhead power lines. This a potential serious danger to the team and the major sin for a person in the shooters position, the crew chief fired the aberrant technician on the spot. This dismissal had not occurred earlier because of the friendship and the scarcity of technologists with requisite skills for this job.

The Crew Chief was qualified for the position of preparing and discharging dynamite so to prevent the necessity of shutting down the operation he combined this task with his premier responsibility of operating the instrument truck. The remaining problem was the dynamite truck had no driver and no one to handle the dynamite into and out of the vehicle.

As was to be expected the driver of such a vehicle and the purveyor and manipulator of the dynamite requires special training and licensing. Since I was the only other scientific member of our party but as a student was doing less demanding work, all eyes focused on me.

A course given by the Crew Chief for the training and operation of the vehicle required only a few days. The testing had to be provided by a specially qualified Provincial examiner only available in Regina. On the appointed day I was sent to Regina and was subjected to a stringent written and practical test. Dynamite handling procedures within and outside the truck were examined, I had to show that I could drive the vehicle safely off road and finally a written test was performed. Everything went without problems and I had passed this testing easily. Now came the easiest part, the driving test on the typically quiet roads of Regina. This was to obtain what in those days was called a Chauffeurs License. Had my Ontario driver's license been in that category, graining one for Saskatchewan would have been automatic. This not being the case I proceeded confidently with the test along the prescribed route. I drove not too slowly and not too quickly, I took care to observe all traffic signs and signals, particularly being certain to come to full stops when required. Parallel parking the truck, my only real concern, required only one backing motion. During our return to the testing office we conversed freely and happily. Imagine my shock when my examiner signed the test paper and smilingly handed it to me with the word "failed" at the bottom. What could I possibly have done to deserve this designation? The answer was very simple. After stopping at a red light and ascertaining no vehicles were approaching from the left I had turned right before the signal became green, legal in Ontario but not permitted in Saskatchewan.

My smiling verbose protagonist made me repeat the entire test! According to local mythology these driving testers loved to lie in wait for smart a.. Ontario City Slickers.

**Metal tags and Wooden Pallets-** USA, USA came the shouting, even their caps had USA in big red letters covering the bills. Here I was working as a summer student in a smelly dusty heat polluted, steel plant off Barton Street in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. What was all this damned USA?

My summer job involved mainly wooden pallets, collecting and piling according to sizes. I had been assigned to Jim, as his summer helper. After a few intensive weeks of training for a job that was so straight forward I had the hang of it in just a few hours, Jim pronounced me competent. Being competent really meant that Jim could send me out on the job by myself while he smoked and slumbered in isolated pockets deep within the pallet piles that he had painstakingly shown me how to create. After his 2 weeks instruction I finally succeeded in creating pallet mazes where Jim could disappear in a manner that even befuddled our diligent Forman.

I suppose you might be wondering what ordinary wooden pallets could have to do with the manufacture and rolling of steel. The short answer is very little. There were in fact many aspects of this massive complex that had little to do with steel production. A farfetched but fascinating aspect of this involved professional football. If you were a rabid football fan as was I, going to a football game was not the best venue to meet the team stars. No right here in the steel plant labored the pick of this litter. Canadian Football League salaries were far from adequate, even those paid to the most of the star players. Many of these individuals required a second part time vocation. Hamilton, not having a major brewery, the first choice for such a purpose in larger venues, its major industry being steel, meant that many here found the management of this industry willing employers. Here these golden boys of the gridiron were elbow to elbow with some of their most fervent admirers.

Arriving with high frequency in the cold rolling mill were large coils of steel sheeting fresh from initial processing in the hot rolling mill nearby. Cold rolling to a given thickness was dependent on the ultimate use for the sheeting, such as automobile body or perhaps home appliance construction According to width and diameter these rolls were perched atop various dimensioned wooden pallets. Large cranes, moving along tracks just below the ceiling rumbling back and forth with these large rolls of sheet metal held in place by electromagnetic discs, suspended at the terminus of thick metal cables. From time to time accompanied by the flickering of building lights a tremendous crashing noise would occur as the electromagnets lost power and the formerly suspended high tonnage metal coils came crashing to the floor. Apart from depressions that resulted in the cement floor from time to time this was infrequently accompanied by sickening red splashes and a protruding body part betrayed the remains of an unlucky worker who had the misfortune of having been located directly below. These were the early 1950's and comprehensive safety precautions were only in their extreme infancy. In consequence such accidents were provided for by a supply of canvas sheets stored here and there throughout the mill upon which the remains of the unfortunate former employee could be swept onto and wrapped tightly for transport to the morgue followed by a hosing down of the offending location. Needles- to- say my first exposure to such an event left me mentally shattered with the contents of my stomach lying close by on the floor.

It's amazing what the sensation of making big bucks does to an addle minded teen in dire need of funding for university. Despite a laboring job such as mine in a steel plant paying in the top range of summer jobs of that era, I was seriously considering an addition that would triple my intake. On Sundays the cold rolling mill ground to a halt for weekly maintenance. After a weeks toil the milling machines became sopping in oil and in the well below each machine lay piles of metal tags lying in puddles of the excess oil.. These tags flat, about 5cm by 7cm in size and on their corners sharp as knives originated as protruding milling transition markers throughout the rolls of steel. As many as a dozen of these per roll were discharged uncontrollably and periodically into the mills well. Any fool dazzled sufficiently by triple pay could undertake the Sunday only occupation of descending into the well beneath the milling machine and recover the aberrant tags together with a cleanup of the pools of oil. Certainly the reader could be forgiven in wondering what was the big deal that should skyrocket the remuneration offered for what aspersed to be a relatively straightforward clean up. There was a small safety consideration that complicated matters sufficiently to warrant this monetary largesse. Access to the mill well could only be effected after the mill had been rolled away a few feet on a set of makeshift tracks. Containment of the mill in that obstruction free position was procured by wedging the massive wheels. History had recorded several incidents where these containment wedges had surreptitiously given way causing the mill to almost instantly roll back into its usual position over the well. The consequence of this accident was severe injury to the cleaner presently working therein.

Now this mystery of this Canadian steel company employee's fixation on the letters USA comes essentially into play. These letters were initials not representing our neighbor to the south but the workers union the United Steelworkers of America. All full time steel workers in this plant were compulsory members of the USA. One hard and fast edict that had been enacted was that no USA member was permitted to engage in the Sunday mill cleaning occupation. Thus only temporary employees such as me were thus eligible and I accepted this position.

While the extra money earned thereby may be long gone, the fact that I am able to record this story with all my physical appendages intact attests to the luck of this draw.

Expo 67

**Under the Yardarm-** Perhaps her general sense of slight dilapidation should have been enough warning; but without hesitation we slipped the mooring and slowly motored our rental craft away from the marina. But wait this yarn began weeks earlier with other hints of ensuing adversity.

Careful planning and faultless execution would be essential to for successful adventures such as our long conceived boat trip to Expo 67. Fact was that neither Bill nor I were particularly well endowed with these desirable characteristics. But we were nothing if not brimmed full with enthusiasm.

Standing on the front porch holding a suitcase I watched with eager anticipation as Bill's car rumbled up our driveway. The procedure by which the basis of the capital for purchase of this present vehicle, large enough to transport 2 couples and their essentials to dockside, was obtained perhaps best illustrates our convoluted solution to problems. In 1967 we all were struggling to make ends meet and the fact was that Bill's Mini Minor was hardly capable of our proposed adventure meant a lager car was essential. How to maximize the returns from the sale of this rapidly decaying relic was to be our first hurdle. With intelligent conniving our procedure developed as follows. The car advertised in such glowing terms in the newspaper that we could attract buyers, did attract a small gathering one Saturday morning at the appointed hour for the auction. After this group of potential purchasers had made their offers, posing as a genuine purchaser of interest I stood amongst this group and called out a higher figure. Despite Bill's cautionary warning not to make my figure so excessive to prevent a higher offer I ended up unintentionally winning the auction. The legitimate bidders having dispersed our only recourse was to trade the car in at a dealer for the vehicle now gracing my driveway at a ridiculously lower figure. So, having deposited my suitcase and Maureen's garment bag carefully in the trunk, we were ready to roll.

Now back to our vessel a 7 m long motor launch that Bill, with celebratory cigar clenched firmly between his teeth, was carefully maneuvering towards the lock leading to the first lake below our point of departure. The plan was to exit through the Rideau Canal into Lake Ontario, then cruise east to the St. Lawrence River and travel thence into a rental sip at Expo 67. Having transected 2 sets of locks without any difficulty we found ourselves motoring happily in a large lake about 1 hour south of our point of departure. A fetid smell began wafting up from the living quarters below followed closely by Shirley who was loudly complaining that the toilet although flushing was failing to empty the contents. It being well known that Shirley was not the brightest mechanically inclined light in our bullpen husband Bill volunteered to fix the problem while I took over the controls. After what seemed to be an inordinately long period of time Bill reappeared with a small bucket filled to the brim with a foul smelling liquid which he hastily discharged over the stern. This was followed by Bill refilling the bucket with fresh water from the lake and then disappearing with said bucket to the precincts below. He reappeared to declare that the toilet was broken. It was assumed by "all" that the toilet had been faulty before we acquired the boat and hence would have to be bailed and refilled thusly for the remaining 3 weeks of this odyssey. This was particularly disastrous consider both of out wives were 2 months pregnant at the time. The tight reservation arrival time at Expo gave us no option to return to the point of departure to have the toilet repaired. Although our nights would be spent moored in other marinas our equally tight budget prevented expenditure on any such repair.

Never mind, the sun had sunk below the yardarm and thus as all sailors will relate it was therefore permissible to break out the cocktails. Honesty requires me to reveal that a motor powered vessel such as ours had no yardarm, that being an accoutrement of sailing vessels; but since it was necessary to have nautical means of establishing the onset of the cocktail hour we arbitrarily imagined its position as if this had indeed been a genuine sailing craft. Soon the difficulty of having a malfunctioning toilet seemed to be evolving more into the form of a slight inconvenience.

Apparently lady luck had at least one other disaster in her repertoire. That evening Maureen had occasion to search for a pair of pajamas for our first nights repose. It was at that point discovered that her suitcase containing all her casual wear in my rushed departure, still remained sitting in the hallway of our house in Toronto, together as it was discovered with my suit bag containing all my evening wear. That's not quite true since in my case the suitcase with my casual wear did include my best pair of dress shoes. Be that as it may my credence net worth had received a serious demerit. In actual fact considering that Maureen had a penchant for spiffy and I had a serious aversion for anything more upscale than jeans and a sweat shirt covered in coffee stains these circumstances seemed to suit this happenstance to a T. Additionally whenever a possible set back like this was discovered it seemed always concurrent with the sun being below the mythical yardarm and the onset of cocktail hour.

Expo 67 was indeed an enervating experience and residing as we did in the marina inside the grounds we had 2 important perks. The first related to the upscale washroom facilities reserved strictly for marina residents. Herein the simple freedom from toilet bailing would have been sufficient compensation; but added to this was being able to be first in the lineups every morning to enter the most popular attractions.

Problem free intervals in our case seemed to end suddenly and unexpectedly. Unknown to Maureen and I, Bill had accepted the invitation from a well to do relative for an evening's outing in downtown Montreal at the roof top restaurant at Place Vile de Marie. Jeans and sweats not quite meeting the dress code requirements left me in a gaping hole. Not to worry, Bill had packed 2 suits and I had a pair of dress shoes in my suitcase. The vignette now unfolding is me dressed in one of Bills suits with pant cuffs and coat sleeves rolled up, a 5ft 9in body in a suit of the 6ft 1in owner. Worse my dress shoes having gone missing and mysteriously located floating in the bilge. These when donned and utilized sounded like rubber boots full of water. The Maitre de upon our arrival gave me a look that suggested that I appeared like one of Al Capone's henchmen protecting the Boss.

It seems this trip required 1 final mishap for its completion. To return the boat to the rental marina on the Rideau Canal we opted to exit the Expo Marina and travel down the St Lawrence River to its confluence with the Ottawa River and then motor up his byway to the city of Ottawa and from here travel south on the Rideau Canal to our final destination. The Ottawa River during that era was singularly bereft of marinas. Thus at one point about noon the boat sputtered to a stop out of fuel. At this point the self-appointed captain handed me an empty gas can and sent me swimming shoreward with the instruction to hitchhike a ride to the nearest gas station. During this traverse I distinctly heard from the boat ice cubes being discharged into glasses. How the remaining occupants could have determined that the sun had sunk below the yardarm at noon thus signaling the onset of cocktail hour remains an unsolved mystery. Standing by a roadside dripping wet I figured my chances for transport rated slim to none, when a piece of unimagined good fortune occurred. The first vehicle to arrive was driven be a friend of my uncles in Ottawa. Not only did this kind gentleman provide me a ride to and from the gas station but I was treated to an ice-cream cone to boot.

Upon arriving back at our boats rental marina the owner politely enquired about our enjoyment of this voyage at which point we lambasted him for sending us forth with a defective toilet. As we were filling the car trunk at the marina parking lot in preparation for departure we sensed the arrival of the not too bemused marina proprietor. With one hand on his hip and in the other rubber gloved ensconced hand he was clutching firmly a disgusting waterlogged ruminant of what appeared to have been a cigar butt. This he was pointed out had been discarded into the toilet and was the cause of our sorrows. It was impossible to prove that this was the remains of the celebratory cigar; non-the-less Bill suffered our displeasures severely.

Experiences in Earlier Aircraft

**The Little Laboratory in the Tundra-** It was mid June 1974 and I was heading to the "land of the midnight sun". We lifted off smoothly from the busy nickel mining community of Thompson Manitoba and headed towards a mining site near Edehon Lake in the Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) of Canada.

This was long before the advent of GPS and flight navigation was generally by radio station beacons. However, due to the absence of radio beacons in the target area and the inaccuracy of compasses at this latitude, the pilots on this flight relied almost solely on visual identification. Aerial photographs on the co-pilots knee and verbal radio contact were the only means of navigation for this twin engine DC3 aircraft.

Aboard were a very experienced bush pilot, co-pilot, myself and a cargo consisting of food supplies, drums of fuel and the remaining space chockablock full of boxes of dynamite sticks. The latter commodity was of great concern to me, but I kept this matter to myself. A well known fact in those times was the consistency with which Transport Canada cargo and weight restrictions were ignored by the carriers, due to the intense atmosphere of competition amongst the many charter companies in the north.

With cruising altitudes of only 2600m, we were ensconced from time to time in cloud cover which not only made for a very bumpy ride, but must have caused difficulty with aerial photographic navigation. This was one of my first experiences with "bush" flying and the constant clatter and banging of dynamite boxes thudding together, coupled with the poor visibility, had my heart in my throat for the entire several hour flight. Neither pilot nor co-pilot showed any worrisome symptoms and in fact kept up a constant laughter filled conversation, except for snippets of navigational comments. As we circled to land the sight of a relatively short narrow landing strip, almost indistinct amongst the tundra, did little to settle my nerves. The choppy descent, the bouncing about upon landing and a grinding and sudden stop, had my heart in my throat. Stumbling down from the aircraft I commented upon my relief at having safely arrived, despite flying in a live bomb! In an incidental manner the pilot informed me that dynamite would never explode without specially designed caps and we had no caps on board. I made a mental note that in the future I would seek such details prior to, rather than after the journey.

A quick appraisal of the mining site indicated a very small operation. In fact no mine actually existed and at this phase the operators were engaged in exploration drilling, to remove cores of the suspected gold bearing sub surface rock from various locations. Essential to this phase was a laboratory in which to analyze crushed cores that the geological engineer was singling out as potential gold bearing prospects.

I was directed to a small heavily insulated windowless clapboard structure. It had wooden counters along two walls, a porcelain sink, a conventional electric hot plate for heating solutions in beakers, cupboards holding chemicals and a spectrometer for the final analysis step. Electric lighting was excellent and a propane heater supplied ample heat. The only deficiency was that the wooden counters could not stand up to chemical spills and this problem could easily be rectified with a chemical resistant overlay.

My gear had been taken to the long and rather narrow Main Building, which housed all other essentials including an electrical generator. A guess would be that this building was constructed by connecting a number of large caravans end to end. Strangely a large section of the building windows had been covered by an opaque silvered material. The wisdom of the modification became evident in my first night, as the sun shone brightly 24 hours per day. In this way the sleeping quarters were provided with night time darkness. Time seemed to be seamless and the use of a watch became essential to retain normal schedules.

In my consulting capacity I was solely involved in the training of laboratory personnel. Bob the head chemist had a university degree in this discipline. His assistant Steve was a chemical technologist. As anyone who wears jewelry can attest, gold is unreactive and unlike silver which tarnishes easily, gold remains shiny and clean even under frequent exposure to household chemicals. Ironically this is a daunting problem in the determination of the levels of this metal in crushed rock from the cores. Using conventional acid dissolution procedures, the gold in a gold containing powder would be undissolved and thus undetected by the spectrometer, giving the impression that the core had no gold. Consequently, I assisted in developing special methods not only to dissolve the gold totally from the powders, but to keep it soluble until it was determined by the spectrometer. Bob and Steve were excellent disciples and my job was proceeding very quickly.

As a naturalist and environmentalist I fell instantly in love with this treeless tundra terrain. Quite opposite to my previous conceptions, the area was inhabited very densely by a wide variety of plant and animal life, too numerous to write about comprehensively. Most obvious were the nesting migrant birds. The nests densely lined much of the tundra and it was necessary to take precautions not to make a misstep and cause serious damage. Most families of North American birds were represented; most notably, robins, vireos, flycatchers and warblers amongst the perching bird classification, while water fowl included, shore birds, gulls, loons and ducks. Their day round cacophony was delightful. Food was abundantly available and the time required to raise a brood was much shortened by the 24 hour daylight conditions. Food was provided by the dense clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes, which in contrast were a constant aggravation for all humans. Additionally plant life was abundant with flowers, berries, tender shoots and root lings easily obtainable. The water birds dined on sea snails, copepods, plankton and green algae.

Readers who are fishermen would delight in the Arctic lakes. Out of curiosity I was examining the contents of freezers in the kitchen and to my surprise one was full of huge Lake Trout. Apparently this species is so abundant that only those over 15 kg are ever kept for eating purposes and even the few fishermen amongst the crew can easily maintain this freezer to overflowing.

Although a variety of mammals exist, I was treated in my short visit to only a few well camouflaged rabbits and a fox. Of particular interest in the area was the Arctic Tern, which during the northern winter makes a 19,000 km migration to the shores on the Antarctic, the longest migration ever recorded amongst birds.

A permafrost layer characterizes the tundra which itself consists mainly of sphagnum peat moss. The tundra is easily damaged by human activity and vehicles leave track mark depressions which remain barren and relatively permanent. An example of this were some track marks near the main building, which had been unaltered throughout a ten year period. This dictates great care is essential to maintain this crucial ecosystem. One precaution was having vehicles travel over the tundra only in mid winter when the freezing and snow cover prevent any such damage. Such a necessary activity is difficult and exacerbated by the 24 hour darkness that characterizes the Arctic winter.

All too soon my job was completed. Bob and Steve were so proficient that my delightful stay at this unique location was only one week and I was to leave on the next weekly supply plane. This return trip back to Thompson was in a close relative of the DC3, a modification developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company for war time purposes, a C 47. A full load of supplies was discharged when the C 47 arrived and thus with a cargo free return flight to anticipate, I was in a carefree happy mood.

Perhaps I should have been more sensitive to the pensive mood of the flight crew. At the time, I also failed to take note of subtle irregularities in the prefight inspection procedures. After a choppy but otherwise uneventful liftoff, we slowly attained cruising altitude. After about 3/4 hour of the several hour flight, I was suddenly pitched forward in my seat belt. The aircraft was straining as though it wanted to make a hard left turn; this being accompanied by a few puffs of exhaust smoke from the left engine and abnormally slow rotation of its propeller. The pilot quickly killed this engine, while struggling to maintain the normal flight path. We immediately descended a few hundred meters and at this point I was extremely concerned. The copilot, assured me that this aircraft could be readily flown with only one engine, but this belied the present contortions on the pilots face. I assumed that we would return to the relatively still nearby mining camp, yet no effort to turn the C 47 back had been made. When I questioned this wisdom I was told that Thompson was still our destination. Apparently a return to the mining camp would be unacceptably costly to the charter company owners, as the aircraft mechanic and parts would then need to be flown back. I was very perturbed and annoyed, as it seemed to me that this aircraft possessed two engines for the purpose of stable flying and that flying with only one was a risk that I was unwilling to chance. None-the-less, pilots have full authority in command of the aircraft and nothing I might spit out would had any influence on this decision. Another complication of losing an engine was that the air speed was appreciably reduced and 200 miles out from Thompson, twilight descended making our visual flight impossible, but by good fortune we had reached an area where VOR beacons were being encountered. My set of earphones and microphone to the cockpit had much earlier judiciously been disconnected and the remainder of this flight was a frightful blank. Reacting to the sudden downward pointing gesticulations of the copilot, I could see a glow of orange light from my side window, outlining two intersecting runways. Moments later we were taxiing safely towards the small terminal building.

Several months later in casual conversation with another consultant that had travelled to this mining camp, I divulged this unnerving one engine C 47 flight. His comment, rather than one of surprise and commiseration was; "oh did that happen to you also"? Apparently it was well known that this particular aircraft had a propensity for such predicaments.

**Walking on Water and Related Debacles -** Several decades ago, an environmental pollution problem was brought to the attention of the wildlife division of the Canadian Government. The apparent culprit was a notoriously polluting lead and zinc mining and smelting operation in a low arctic location in Canada. A bio-scientist colleague working in this division and myself, were chosen to travel to the area and mount an investigation. As an analytical chemist, I had worked with this colleague before on similar issues, so we had a well-grounded plan for such research studies.

Our investigation was concentrated on the many small lakes that dotted this area, with a view to do water chemistry and fish health studies. For this project we were provided with a modified large utility vehicle. This truck had been equipped with all the requirements for off and back road maneuverability and safety. Large heavily lugged tires provided high clearance above the ground and traction for muddy rock strewn terrain. Most importantly the vehicle possessed a winch often required if we skidded into ditches and found ourselves in positions impossible from which to drive back onto the road. Of equal importance was the cage like device of welded steel piping that surrounded the front of the truck, to prevent front end impacts from perforating vitals such as the radiator.

Our rented cabin for this mid May investigation was located about 50 km along a rough rural road in from the main highway that had brought us from Winnipeg. We drove with particular care on the recently thawed soft muddy local roads. After the trip we arrived as two very tired scientists, ready for bed. Unfortunately the temperature that night was below freezing, so we took the precaution of unloading any items that might be harmed by the severe cold. It was fortunate that we did, as morning broke to reveal that a 10 cm snowfall now blanketed the region. This not unusual for May, but still a debilitating occurrence, meaning a work delay for a couple of days until the hot spring sunshine could melt the snow.

At this pause in proceedings we made our first serious error in judgment by deciding, as a simple act of courtesy, we would walk over to the mine office to inform them of our mission. To our gratified surprise we were made welcome and were treated to hot coffee and stuffed with tasty sweet rolls. During our discussions we divulged our delay in investigations due to the snow. This revelation occasioned an even greater surprise, when the mine manager invited us to make use of the company Twin Otter float plane complete with pilot. The only constraint was that only one of us could be taken so that weight restrictions related to takeoff from small lakes could be met. We accepted with much enthusiasm knowing that 1 day of plane operations would equal 4 or 5 in the truck and best of all there would now be no delay. Having had plenty of prior light plane experience, I was chosen for the job and packed myself and our sampling gear onboard. Upon the pilot's arrival he was motioned over for a pre-flight conversation with our new friend the mine manager.

As we taxied away from the dock I thought I detected a bit of a smirk on the face of the pilot but thought little of this. I placed the regional map on my knee and in conversation after takeoff mentioned the name of the first lake on the list. Everything seemed normal as we proceeded in the direction on the plane's compass that I had predicted from the map. Strangely however, minutes later I was alarmed to discover that we were beginning to overfly the first lake. I quickly let the pilot know and in one fluid motion he thrust the stick forwards which caused us to rocket downward in a steep dive. We were both thrust forward towards the ground as far as tight seat belts would allow. Then at what seemed to be a few meters above the lakes surface and under a horrendous downward feeling thrust, the plane was maneuvered into a horizontal direction. A moment later we touched safely down on the lakes surface.

I was in a complete state of disarray, having regurgitated my sweet rolls and coffee, this gooey mixture now flowing freely into my lap and onto the floor. The fear of God was clearly stenciled in my features. Calmly sweeping his gaze over to me the pilot without as much as a by-your-leave said; "okay, you can now open your door and step out onto the float to scoop up your water sample".

We sat in the plane, the propeller rotating slowly. The pilot glanced absentmindedly over both his gloved hands, blew his nose and politely waited. After about 5 minutes had transpired and I still remained comatose, he matter-of-factly stated; "perhaps you would rather go back to the dock and we can do this again when you are feeling better". Thus ended our experiment with courtesy visits to companies we were about to investigate.

Despite my initial aviation disaster, we finished our first stint of sampling after the snow had melted using the truck for the job as originally envisaged. Samplings were scheduled for 3 times a year over a 2 year period. The next incident of interest in this research study occurred the following June.

The previous year's experience suggested that May weather was too unpredictable and thus our next year's first season sampling session was scheduled for mid June. Typical weather then was hot days and cool nights. These were accompanied in the day time by a persistent attack of Black flies, followed by Mosquito filled evenings. To stay well clear of the mine and smelter property, we rented a cabin belonging to a Moose and Deer Hunt Club 30 km away, but still well within the area of investigation. Our cabin, replete with an interior covered in mouse poop, was on a beautiful lake that included a dock. Last season's work already having determined that the fish population had deteriorated disastrously due to acid and metal emissions from the smelter, the presence of a fishing dock was a bit of a conundrum.

After a long day's sampling in temperatures reaching the high 30's, we would return to the cabin hot and sweaty and covered with bug bites. We would then immediately crash near the icebox and slake our thirst with a few cold ones. Once we'd had a chance to recuperate, we'd flip beer bottle caps to ordain the fall guy to clean up the perpetually renewed mouse poop in the kitchen. One particularly oppressive evening when my erstwhile colleague fell to this task, I took the occasion to walk out on the dock.

The lake water was crystal clear and the water at the end of the dock was deep and unimpeded by dangerous rocks. Checking the temperature with my hand, I encountered refreshing water in the low 20's. The Mosquito onslaught was beginning to take hold, so without further cogitation I walked quickly to the shore end of the dock. Then with a run at top speed, I traversed to the end of the dock and still fully clothed, dove as far out from the dock as was possible heading straight towards the lake bottom.

Suddenly a shocking reality struck. The lake was thermally layered with the top 20cm having the 20 degrees C temperature. Within a fraction of a second I found myself knifing down through the layer below that was still at the winter temperature of 4 degrees C. My perception of this catastrophe set in somewhat gradually due to the waters slow permeation of my relatively heavy bush clothing. When full exposure to this thermal disaster occurred I managed to surface almost instantaneously. This was followed by what appeared to my colleague, now standing on the dock, the best imitation of walking on water that had been rendered since biblical times.

Having survived this potential disaster I assumed the remainder of our sampling project could be finished without any serious hitches and indeed this turned out to be the case. On the evening of the final day we packed our gear, gassed up the truck from the barrel on board, banged the door shut on our residential mouse warren and hit the road, seat belts firmly fastened. The roads being hard packed and dry, we were making speedy progress in the twilight, west toward the main north-south highway. We appeared the picture of success, men who had finished a tough job and could not travel quickly enough back to civilization and our families. I was at the wheel and we were joking and laughing, attentions diverted by this delightful palaver when the truck suddenly stuck what resembled an impact with a brick wall. An eerie silence ensued. Our vehicle was at a dead stop the wind screen had shattered, the engine ground to stillness and we were both stunned into speechlessness. Strange and unusual smells began assaulting our slowly recovering sensibilities. We were in the center of a clear road and we stepped from the truck onto the road stumbling to the front of the vehicle where a sorry sight began to emerge. The heavy protective pipe caging was missing; the trucks front end was in tatters with smelly antifreeze lying in puddles beneath. Worst of all blood and skin fragments were hanging here and there amongst the wreckage, but the object that had been hit was conspicuously absent. Suddenly I heard the ominous sound of retching as my colleague reached the victim first. Rounding to the passenger side of the truck I encountered a horrid sight. In the ditch illuminated by the light of a flashlight, were the mangled and torn body parts of an immense black bear.

We decided it would be suicide to remain in the truck until first light in case another negligent driver might crash into our wreck. This was before cell phones, so we opted to walk what we estimated to be about 8 km to the main road to obtain help. It seemed like the longest 8 km that we had ever traversed.

The short version of this experience was that I avoided being charged with a driving offense, but not without an embarrassing dressing down from the local constabulary. A kindly local prospector drove us to a town with a bus station and the truck was towed to the city with our samples that had been stored in the rear of the vehicle, fully recoverable and undamaged.

Revenge, although not a scientific emotion, was sweet. Based on our work, this mining and smelting company was charged with a variety of environmental offences. The main antecedent of the charges was their blatant nose thumbing at well established environmental edicts. Thus especially given the torturous fiascos implicit in achieving this goal, I was never happier with a scientifically presaged outcome!

Typical Car Problem before Microelectronic Devices

Living on only half pay and half way around the world, called for a variety of creative living strategies, all of which placed us in completely new territory. The salary constraint was one of the conditions of a full year's sabbatical, which was taken from the University of Toronto during my 1975 tenure in Australia.

Peter Pyper Motors, a well established Melbourne Ford Dealer, had been vetted for square dealing by a knowledgeable friend prior to our attendance at the lot. In short order, we discovered a six year old, family size Ford that seemed to fit our needs. The price was within our allotted figure and the deal was consummated.

Upon taking possession of this vehicle, I was pleasantly surprised to note that the gas gauge read full, a perk I had thought would be doubtful in a used car. The family had all come to have an initial drive, a sort of trial run to practice my skills in coping with left hand drive, something I had tried only once previously, on a trip to London. Being learning disabled (poor visual memory and some spatial quirks), can have its rewards and one in my case, was that it didn't seem to matter which side of the road I was on, after a short distance it just seemed to be natural. Thus I found whilst in Australia that I easily dismissed my previous lifelong predilection for the right.

To my surprise an Ontario driver's license made the acquisition of a local version unnecessary. As a result I had not bothered to read the rules of the road, relying instead on advice from my mentor, Sir Alan Walsh. His only comment was "there is only one rule, give way to lorries (large trucks)". Armed with this sage advice I was ready to hit the road.

Melbourne is blessed with a variety of fascinating biospheres, all of which were worthy of visitor attention. A particular draw was Ferntree Gully, an area replete with large Fern Trees, some of which were up to 3 meters in height. These I had thought, would have been more expected in the wet climate of New Zealand than Australia. Thus, this became our first destination to explore.

Along the route the first unsettling experience was in the center of the suburb of St Kilda. Here a junction of five roads all spilled into the same intersection, like spokes of a wheel, without the benefit of traffic lights or stop signs. Applying Sir Alan's rule we found ourselves careening through this labyrinth, with several near misses involving cars but nothing larger.

Back at this time, Ferntree Gully was located in a sparsely travelled deep hollow and was bereft of commercial development. We were all enjoying the unique views when about three quarters of the way through this impressive scene, the car gave some sputters and the engine came to a complete stop. A serviced car, just purchased from the lot with a full tank of gas, what could be wrong? After a short period considering this unexpected dilemma, I knew my only remedy was to trek to a gas station. Since we had not passed one for several kilometers, I decided to go in the direction we were headed, which involved walking up a steep hill. Fortunately this was a wise decision, as a Texaco station lurked around the corner at the top. An obliging young man there kindly suggested that he would fill a big jerry can with gasoline and drive me back to the scene of the trouble. I insisted that we had plenty of gas since the gauge was still registering full. My helper was no to be dissuaded from taking the gas and we returned in his tow truck, with the unnecessary cargo. Without any examination of the situation, the attendant immediately began discharging gasoline into the tank. I waited frightfully, expecting gas to overflow onto his clothing, but no, he was able to empty the complete contents into the tank. Then suppressing a smile, he turned the key in the ignition and after a few revolutions the car sprung to life! The car had a defective linkage in the gas tank float mechanism that had jammed the needle to the full mark on the gauge. With much embarrassment I paid for the gas and for his time and we were on our way.

Of course I took the car back to Peter Pyper Motors, discharged a few choice comments, after which the repair was completed for free.

