Nuclear Power: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

January 6, 2022

January 2022

By Gwynne Dyer

At the stroke of midnight last Friday, half of Germany’s remaining nuclear power stations closed down. The remaining three plants (of an original seventeen) will shut down on 31 December of this year, and Germans will no longer have to live with the fear of a nuclear (power) holocaust.

What’s more, all the lost energy from the nuclear plants will be “compensated for by the expansion of renewable energies,” promised Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research. An elegant solution, but there is a catch.

Most of the wind and solar power that Germany is building will go to replace its nuclear power plants, not to eliminate the coal and gas that it is still burning in huge amounts to generate electricity. So Germany will go on burning coal until 2038 (France is out now, the UK by 2024), and it also imports big volumes of gas from Russia (at great geopolitical cost).

Fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide; nuclear power doesn’t. By shutting down nuclear power instead of coal and gas, Germany has dumped an extra 350 megatonnes (Mt) of CO₂ into the air in the past decade – plus maybe another 350 Mt yet to come before they have built enough wind and solar power to replace the fossil fuels they should have dumped first.

There’s also an estimated extra 1,100 Germans a year dying from breathing in the fossil fuel pollution in their country, but they’re dying in a good cause: all their nervous fellow-citizens will sleep better at night.

Just one day ahead of Germany, Belgium announced on 30 December that it will shut all of the country’s nuclear power plants by 2025. It too promises to replace the lost electricity with power from renewable sources eventually, but it will just burn more coal and gas in the meantime.

How long is ‘meantime’? Nobody knows, but it’s clearly a price that Belgians are willing to pay.

And when the European Commission proposed a new law last weekend that recognises nuclear power as ‘green’ (provided that the plants have strict plans for the disposal of nuclear waste), there was an outcry all across the European Union. German Environment Minister Steffi Lemke condemned the proposal as simply “wrong.”

This is the triumph of fear over common sense. To advocate abandoning nuclear power when the great threat is carbon dioxide emissions (and we are losing the race to decarbonise) is folly.

There are currently 441 commercial nuclear reactors in the world, supplying about 10% of the world’s electricity. There could have been three or four times as much nuclear power by now if the Green movement had not exploited a couple of accidents in the 1970s and 80s to cripple it.

There is reason to suspect that the original Green hostility to nuclear power was encouraged and subsidised by the US fossil fuel industry, which has always been quick to spot emerging potential rivals and sabotage them. But the hostility is self-sustaining now, fed by fantasy statistics and deliberate scare-mongering.

There have actually been just three major accidents in some sixty years of operation by hundreds of nuclear power plants, only one of which caused human casualties: Chernobyl in 1986, where 28 plant workers were killed and 15 other people subsequently died of thyroid cancer.

But nobody at all died at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011 (although 20,000 died as a result of the magnitude 9.0 sub-sea quake and the tsunami that devastated the city). Many more people die from coal pollution each and every day than have died from nuclear power accidents in the entire past half-century.

Yet a vocal minority of Europeans are terrified of the technology, and they are so well organised that most European countries have banned nuclear power or are shutting it down now. (France and the UK are the great exceptions.) What can explain this strange behaviour on the continent that was once home to the Enlightenment?

I don’t know, but I once noticed that Europe’s anti-nuclear fervour plots nicely onto the witch-hunts of the 15^th to 18^th centuries. Of the 40,000 to 60,000 alleged witches hanged or burned, German-speaking Europe alone accounted for almost half, and it’s the heartland of anti-nuclear sentiment today.

Never mind. We can forgive the Europeans for their anti-nuclear foolishness, because in most other respects they lead the world in cutting emissions. And outside Europe, the only noteworthy countries that ban nuclear power are Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and the Philippines.

There are currently new 52 nuclear reactors under construction, most of them in Asia. A new generation of compact modular reactors that can be assembled in factories and cannot melt down will be on the market in less than five years. The missing piece of the post-fossil-fuel puzzle has been found – and the Europeans can sleep in peace.

Phoenix Riting! – January 6th, 2022

January 6, 2022

Here we are irrevocably committed to another year, 2022, which shoved its way in the door in a fury of storm and power outages (much like last year, if memory serves). What are the odds it will be better than the previous two stinkers? To be fair, the past couple of years haven’t been all bad. We have had our triumphs, epiphanies and achievements, but as far as community goes, 2020 and 2021 have been a struggle for most of us. Gone are the large Hall events, dances and art openings where we freely mingled, unmasked and light of heart. We were innocents, only two years ago. New Year’s Eve 2020 was our last big Hall party, with a Flapper theme from last century. We welcomed the bright new decade with laughter, optimism and grace.

This decade so far resembles the Great Depression more than the Roaring 20s, sadly. We have grown accustomed to watching for danger, wary of strangers with death on their breath. Even those few who take the situation lightly are lonely, surrounded by frightened others. We have withdrawn into our bubbles, those lucky enough to have them. It’s hard on the singletons who enjoyed introverted lives before the pandemic, when one could gain an occasional necessary social infusion then withdraw again into private space. Humans need society: it’s a need, not a want. We all require physical contact and to see others’ facial expressions. These times are very hard on mental health.

Some of us find occasional spaces to have this cup filled, now and then. I was fortunate to be invited to a friend’s at the last minute for New Year’s Eve. For such a small group (fewer than 10), we did the socializing work of 50–dancing, deep talk, fresh connections found and old friendships renewed. I’d nearly forgotten what fun is like! I floated home late, in a cloud of euphoria and wine. Thank you (you know who you are), I needed that more than I knew.

We must make space for all needs, not just the need for safety. A good life includes an element of risk taking and prioritizing of needs. I trust this community and this world to return to center to live with our feet on the ground, and I pray it won’t take falling from a height to land us there. Humans have for some reason evolved this odd delusion that we are not part of a living world with limits and laws (like gravity, like balance). We have long ago stopped taking the physical world seriously, acting like the owners of the world. Does the planet belong to us, or do we belong to it? I fear a comeuppance on the horizon for the hubris of humanity. Or worse–that we continue on as we are–ending with a technological dystopia where humans are all that is left, for however long that might last (surely not long).

Here on our special island, we have always lived closer to the ground than most, but thanks to the Internet, we too can live in the cloud at least part of the time. Thank goodness for the wild world around us, which reminds us every day that we are embedded within a living matrix that feeds us and also feeds upon us. Viruses are a part of nature. It’s good to strive to live. But to strive to ensure that no human ever dies, no matter the cost to all other forms of life–strikes me as crazy. I know only one thing: this too shall pass.

Obesity

January 6, 2022

Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux – Memory, Male Menopause, and such

January 6, 2022

Introduction

Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux

Bill Engleson

www.engleson.ca

For a few years, I kept a diary of my inauguration into the Denman Community. This column, recently renamed Memoir of a Rural Sisyphus-Redux, will

extract a few of my observations from a dozen or so years ago and share them. Hopefully, they will have some modern times currency.

Memory, Male Menopause, and such

February 9, 2005

Less then two hours ago, I get a call from the Dental Bus wondering if I am going to keep my appointment this morning. I was already forty minutes late. I am shattered. I never forget appointments. When I finally get there, I blather on about this being the end of my greatest attribute as a human being, as the worker I once was. I was punctual. I was always on time. And now, with the sluggish air of the island, the lack of measurable routine, the plodding inevitability of the aging process, I have transformed into a duffer who forgets. I want to say doofus rather than duffer, but I just cannot guarantee the spelling.

To make matters worse, as I drive home from the dental appointment, which was fine, a simple cleaning, but thank you for asking, the CBC is talking about male menopause.

MALE BLOODY MENOPAUSE!!!!! The coincidence should make you think.

It certainly does me. And then, because there always should be a kicker, there is one. At least I think there is. The kicker in this instance is that a certain Kathy McClellan from Waterloo has sent a note to the CBC commenting on this whole male menopause issue. I may know her and had meant to e-mail her two years ago. About what, I can’t recall. As I arrive home, I begin to doubt if there is any synchronicity. There must be a few dozen Kathy McClellan’s in Waterloo.

Of course, while I don’t remember what I had been communicating with my Kathy McClellan about, I know for certain that it was not about male menopause. It is seriously not a subject about which I have ever cared to have a discussion.

At least not until today.

Denman Green, A Sustainable Housing Project

January 6, 2022

Denman Green – A Sustainable Housing Project

Submitted by Denman Housing Association

Many of you know that the Denman Housing Association (DHA) is creating a 20-unit affordable housing project in ‘downtown’ Denman. The project is currently in the design stage. A key part of our design is the inclusion of many sustainable features that will make Denman Green a long-term asset for the Denman community.

Key Sustainability Features

Potable Water. Although the on-site well is capable of meeting the entire potable water needs of Denman Green year-round, we are electing to supply 50% of that volume from treated rainwater. The intent is to help mitigate against climate change by ensuring that our community’s water supply remains reliable. The project also incorporates water-saving devices and fixtures to minimize water usage.

Greywater. Water from showers and basins represents 25% of indoor water use in a typical household. By treating it and re-using it for toilet flushing Denman Green will save about 650,000 litres of water per year

Solar Array. A solar array is planned to meet most of our energy demand on an annual basis.

BC Energy Step Code. The building is being designed to meet the highest level of the province’s non- mandatory energy performance code. This involves well insulated walls and roofs, high performance windows, an air-tight building envelope and heat recovery ventilation.

Another key sustainable aspect of Denman Green is its location; steps from village stores, across the road from the school, a 10 minute walk to the ferry, all to minimize vehicle use.

Federation of Canadian Municipalities

Our sustainability plan is possible due to a grant from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and is a key step in making Denman Green a reality.

The Sustainable Affordable Housing initiative, an expansion of the FCM’s Green Municipal Fund, assists organizations such as ours in building affordable housing to ambitious energy-efficiency and sustainable standards.

“Municipalities are on the front lines of climate change and climate action, and communities of all sizes are showing climate leadership at a time when we need it most. GMF empowers them to get results on the ground, this is why this announcement is so important. We deliver results with our federal partners – helping cities and communities tackle affordable housing challenges, create jobs and build a greener, more sustainable country. Together, we’re on the path to net-zero.”

– Joanne Vanderheyden, President, Federation of Canadian Municipalities

For Denman Green the help of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities means we have the resources to design a sustainable high-performance project.

Memo: Community Information Meeting. Via zoom. Thursday January 13. 7 – 9 p.m.

Check-in. Find out where we are at and where we are going. Join the Q & A.

https://islandstrust.bc.ca/event/denman-ltc-electronic-special-meeting-to-hold-a-community-information- meeting/

2022 01 02 Denman Green Affordable Housing Project – Update.docx Page 1 of 1

An Unpainted Portrait, Gastrointestinal Fortitude

January 6, 2022

Gastrointestinal Fortitude.

Recruit life rapidly began to assume a pattern of hard work, more hard work, not very much relaxation and – it’s worth pointing this out – truly appalling food. The academic aspect of the course was very much our professional focus – as a colleague put it: our job at that time was “…to learn about a lot of sh*t”. Surprisingly, the discipline regime, the food and the tiny amount of time that we could realistically call our own were much greater psychological pressures. Those of us unused to living in what amounted to a military camp – we were not permitted to leave the campus until our release each weekend – experienced a kind of shock.

Food breaks became the punctuation of our working day; and the first public act of each morning was the trudge from our accommodation block to the main building, there to do battle with the first efforts of the machiavelian kitchen staff. Their goal, it became obvious, was to make us eat sh*t as well as learn about it. Anyone choosing to avoid this unpleasantness was subsequently asked to explain themselves to the authorities (they knew, you see) and warned to never repeat such outrageously reckless conduct. Almost every transgression of the rules entailed being summarily removed from post. Yes, really. Everything we did, it seemed, was observed.

The main building complex of the centre – part of which included the dining hall – was essentially unchanged since its formative days as an American army camp. Dull brown brick walls were broken up with cast-iron window frames painted in a daring institutional beige. The overall effect was of a small hospital with extraordinary security measures and a fully-fledged program of malnutrition overtly intended to starve the patients to death. It’s been suggested that this was a deliberate attempt by the Home Office to shore up our digestive resistance to eating twenty kinds of crap while working an unsympathetic shift system. Plausible, perhaps. However, I think this bestows an unrealistic level of benevolence upon the workings of that meal production facility. Generous by nature, I can no longer continue mis-using the word ‘kitchen’ in relation to that collection of misanthropes behind the counter.

The food hall had a ‘Tardis’-like quality; a large and austere room opening out from an innocuous entrance and a truly tiny cloakroom which was entirely incapable of dealing with the numbers of coats, helmets and caps requiring storage while their owners suffered unspeakable torture within at the hands of a ‘coconut sponge’. As many as two hundred helmets and caps were left hanging in the cloakroom, a practice which over the following fourteen weeks would result in many unintentional and perhaps unavoidable helmet-swapping episodes. I was fortunate to avoid this irritation; having a kidney bean-shaped noggin to which my helmet had conformed meant that nobody walked more than half a dozen paces wearing my helmet before returning to find their own headgear.

At strategic points on the walls of the dining hall hung diverting items designed to entertain the waiting customers. Between things such as peeling flakes of pale blue paint or an occasional mysterious blood-coloured stain, hung force crests looking for all the world like mediaeval ceiling bosses. To distract us from our gag reflexes, we had merely to look upto find framed photos of fierce-looking former commandants. In pride of place where everyone had a view of it, sat a rather incongruous, out-of-date portrait of the monarch. It all felt very archaic and out of touch with what I considered to be modern Britain. Nevertheless, I doubt that the countenance of Her Majesty had ever looked down upon a more unhappy group of new public servants. Mealtimes – and I’m using the word ‘meal’ generously – were not parts of our day that anyone anticipated with relish. As we queued around the walls of the large room, not a single soul expected to find the smallest amount of comfort or succour at the serving counter.

Sweaty, unwashed constables were most definitely not welcome inside the dining hall. Anyone engaged in PT or sport before a meal break was obliged to shower and change into a hot, itchy uniform before eating. In the heat of that summer, this was a less than attractive proposition. However, rules were rules. Besides, itchy pants were a distraction from whatever was on our plates. Anyone caught missing a meal was hauled over the coals for – without any obvious sense of irony – risking their health and wasting Home Office cooking talent (an oxymoron if ever there was one) and/or public resources.

After a frustrating wait in the long queue, the malnourished recruit would shuffle into position at the dolloping counter, tray trembling in hand. Invariably, he or she would be grimly presented with a dispiriting choice of boiled everything. Even the grilled or fried food was boiled for good measure to make sure that no calorific value or colour remained. Credit where it’s due: their success rate was one hundred per cent. I had never before seen beef which was the same colour – and a remarkably similar texture, come to think of it – as my potatoes. This was, I told myself, just another new experience to endure, courtesy of my training. The trick was to bear up under this kind of treatment, and press on regardless, in the Blitz spirit. It was, nevertheless, apparent to everyone that our worst memories of school dinners were nothing compared to the horrors that would live with us after eating at the Home Office counter.

It really was, without a doubt, the worst food I had ever been expected to eat and was obviously the product of many years of practice of steadfastly removing any lingering nutritional value from all the basic food groups. It felt not altogether unlike being sick backwards. The only reason that anything was consumed at all was that being engaged in hard physical training each day, we needed something – anything – to fill our growling bellies. Even that strange ‘tart’ creation with the dried coconut shavings on the top of it…boiled, of course. Only in the last few years of my life did I find this appalling cuisine’s equal, within the mis-named ‘diabetic menu’ of Vancouver General Hospital. A mighty achievement indeed.

The vast majority of us facilitated our survival using another food group entirely – that which was supplied by a purveyor of hot vittles situated in the centre’s dimly-lit, grim bar. A fun palace it was not. A jacket and tie were required for the men to attend. Pants, as well, thankfully…Women were simply expected to dress ‘smartly’. Oh, how we laughed hysterically each night as we crawled over there, nursing stomach cramps. This sanctuary of hot, non-boiled grub catered to our cravings for that great British staple: grease. Thanks to generous helpings of sausages and chips, egg and chips, hamburger – we were big on the hamburgers because it included a bread roll, too – and chips, chips and gravy and chips and curry sauce, we at least kept our net calorific intake slightly above fainting level. I think we also kept the local potato industry on its feet. The fats and cholesterol levels were off the scale of course, but we were young and felt quite indestructible, and if it meant that we survived another day of boiled something(s), we really couldn’t give a hoot about the distant future. Twits.

Green Wizardries, Going the Full Canadian

January 6, 2022

Green Wizardries, Going the Full Canadian, by Maxine Rogers

It is early morning as I write this and I am seated in front of a blazing-wood fire in a cool house in the snow. Soon, the house will be warm.

We have had a great snowfall, the likes of which I have never seen in over ten years on this island. I feel very lucky and a bit surprised that we still have electrical power. At the beginning of this snowstorm, we did lose power for a day but the heroic BC Hydro crews came out and set the island to rights, coming out on Christmas Day no less! But, I ask you, what would have happened if the ferry had not been able to run?

Sometimes bad luck arrives all at once in the form of heavy, wet snow, power lines down all over, the ferry can’t run due to high winds, the temperature drops, the roads turn to skating rinks and an important piece of safety equipment freezes solid on the ferry and they cannot legally put to sea without it being operational. By the way, this latter problem did happen this week and several sailings were cancelled before the crew was able to thaw out the mechanism. Well done that crew!

This scenario is possible but others are also possible on a more personal level. What happens if a person can no longer pay for hydro? What if they can no longer pay for or source propane? Hydro doesn’t have to go up so far to be unaffordable. Steady inflation is eating the value out of our dollar. People may have to decide between heating and eating. This is now happening in Western Europe due to the high price of natural gas.

I was talking to an older Denman resident about my story on Hay Boxes. He said most people here used to have them. People would put a stew to boil on the wood stove before they left for work off island. He said they would also heat a flat rock on the stove and put that in the haybox to warm the box up. I guess they left the rock in the box for extra thermal mass which is pretty clever,

They would put the boiling stew pot in the hay box and when they came back nine hours later, their supper was hot and perfectly cooked. I was joking with him that he could still do that in a power outage. He admitted that he had no wood stove and no backup heating system of any kind. I find this troubling.

I believe a wood stove is an excellent piece of emergency equipment even if you do not use it for primary heating and cooking as I do. Mine is a Nectre 550 stove built in Australia. It has a cook top and a baking oven. I just love it and recommend it highly. I don’t get kickbacks for this opinion either.

Having a wood stove and a supply of dry fire wood for emergencies is a really good idea. However, wood stoves are very expensive to have installed and not everyone owns their own home so how could they prepare for winter troubles?

We have an ancient Coleman white-gas stove which is suitable for boiling some water or even getting a stew up to the boiling point. This sort of stove has to be used out of doors but is very convenient for power outages that happen in the summer and people still need to boil a pot of coffee in the morning without heating the whole house with the wood stove. Such a stove could make life much easier in the winter power outages too.

One thing I hope becomes popular again is Stanfield’s long johns! I bought a pair of Stanfield’s under trousers this autumn and I love them! They are just the thing for working out of doors in the winter. They are also really comfortable to wear around the house with a wool sweater.

We are using substantially less firewood because of this. Burning wood contributes to carbon emissions so we want to burn as little as we can. The Stanfield’s long johns also make a great under layer for use with wet weather gear. I got the 80% wool really heavy grey ones. There are other sorts of long johns with an inner layer of cotton for people who don’t like wool next to their skin.

Before the really decadent portion of the twentieth century got going, everyone in the northern latitudes used to wear long underwear as a matter of course. This was indoor wear and, for men, used to be topped by wool trousers, a shirt, a wool waist coat, a wool jacket and if the person had to go out in inclement weather, a wool greatcoat would be thrown over the ensemble. The person wearing all that wool would be perfectly warm even in the, largely, unheated houses, in Britain. Exactly this style will not come back but a new style will develop as the cost of heating rises out of the reach of many.

I was talking to a young person about home heating and her house is largely unheated. She has indoor toques and outdoor toques. Indeed, she has light toques and heavy toques for both indoor wear and outdoor wear. I think having a good selection of toques, tams or berets is one of the best ways of staying comfortable in lower temperatures. She also has a collection of throws and lap blankets so she is ahead of the curve.

My husband and I always use sheepskin slippers inside and we have lovely wool blankets from Nova Scotia. They are so warm and cozy. We also use an old-style hot water bottle on cold nights. All of this is low tech and useful in a power outage or just to reduce ones consumption of heating fuels.

We visited friends recently and found them to be wearing the most beautiful fairisle sweaters with metal clasps on the collars. I asked if the sweaters were Norwegian and was told they had been bought used on Etsy and the couple is only buying previously-owned articles to combat the mountains of material goods being chucked away and wasted.

As Canadians, we used to be good at living in the cold. Come on, let’s go the full Canadian!

Unicorns

December 30, 2021

As in the cartoon, most of us really want to have a Unicorn to look after and to emulate. After all, Unicorns have always escaped captivity, choosing to fling themselves off of tall mountains to avoid domestication. The only time a Unicorn was seen getting close to a human was, according to Judeo-Christian mythology, when the young Virgin Mary quietly sat under a tree, praying. The Unicorn sniffed her reverence for life and slowly came to lie down with her and rested it’s head on her lap. From the magnetic presence of the Unicorn, she conceived a child we call Jesus, or Yeshua, from the soul of Yahweh. So this proves that when humans realize their oneness with nature, miracles happen!!!

How can we expect cold-hearted, greedy, mega-billionares to want to lie down on the earth and stop their addiction to playing Monopoly with this depleted, desperate planet? We cannot. But we can remember that the Trudeau and Horgan’s governments have given us another year of flake news, full of green-washed commitments to UNDRIP, climate change and environmental conservation. Yes, some social policies have been improved. However, long-term human health and happiness depend on The Unicorns of healthy oceans, clean water, clean air, local food security systems, intact multi-generational communities, ancient forests to store carbon and most of all, the shut-down of industrial capitalism. I realize that political puppets of profit are easy targets for our disdain and merely reflect the false promises and lies fed to us by the faceless kings of multinational corporations. The bedrock of this global systemic delusion is hard to dismantle. The pick-axes of Indigenous allyship actions, forest blockades, pipeline protests, bank occupations and flooding politicians’ phone lines with angry agitations seem to barely remove the smallest of stones from it’s walls. The endless wealth paradigm pretends to exist in a vacuum but most of us know otherwise. Endless consumption depends on endless resource extraction; all taking place on stolen Indigenous lands. The Unicorns of traditional ways of living on the land, lush ecosystems and the last fragments of biodiversity need our help.

Human arrogance ignores our ultimate interdependency with the natural world. Humans who busily run around telling lies, try to capture innocent Unicorns, to avoid feeling vulnerable. Limitless plunder of the natural world capitalizes on the human tendency for laziness, addiction, fear of sacrifice and fear of intimacy with the unknown. Unicorns live in the wide open spaces of courage, wisdom, compassion, joy and skillful action. I think Desmond Tutu, who died on December 26, this year, was a Unicorn. He once said: “It is through vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our souls.” He also said: “True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the truth…. only an honest confrontation with REALITY can bring real healing.” What can each of us do this new year to bring back the Age of Unicorns?

Phoenix Riting! – December 30th, 2021

December 30, 2021

Dear community:

Once again, what a year it’s been. At the end of every year for the last few, we release our collective breath and say, “What a terrible, no good, very bad year! Next year will be better, it has to be!”

Hahaha! Remember when we used to believe that? Those were the days. I do wish I could feel optimistic, but all I’ve got is hope. In the background looms a sense of doom, or transformation, which sounds great, but can mean literally anything.

In these dark times, I don’t believe everything will be fine. I don’t believe we are doomed, either. I don’t believe, period. I fear, and I hope, with all my might. Pressures are mounting. We are headed for a shattering, but what will break and how it will heal, I can’t say. Something must change; perhaps everything. Some things must endure, and some we thought lost return, before we can reverse our course of destruction. There is little doubt left about the stakes now.

It’s not Covid-19, the government nor the elites we need to worry about most. It is the air we breathe, the world we share, the fires, the floods, the mass extinctions. What we view to be Big Problems are mostly symptoms. The real fix starts here, inside each bag of skin, in our choices to be authentic, to face and own reality, or to jump into a hole and pull it in after ourselves, like Wile E. Coyote (I notice that never worked well for him).

On our tiny island, it seems our community’s choices, collective or individuals, have no impact upon the fate of the whole, but we matter. This is our sphere. Our changes may be small, but ripple out, spreading around the globe via mysterious pathways of the psyche, or the internet, whatever. We need to take care to ask, what kind of world do we want to live in? What are my core values? What are yours? Where do we agree, what are our differences? The kind of community we need to create takes participation.

A whole requires all of its parts. A bird needs two wings to fly with, a heart needs a left and a right ventricle. We need both arteries and veins, both sides of our brains, and so on. This is not a war between right and wrong. It’s a struggle to balance our differences, to live in a good way with respect for all, and not just people. We are only one of Earth’s creatures. Our species has become a scourge, but we needn’t participate in destructive games of progress and increase. We can abdicate from the matrix and live our lives as best we can with the people who share this island with us.

Probably we will continue to behave as a sometimes-squabbling microcosm of the whole, because after all, we are humans. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a break from it all? Turn off the screens and show up smiling to a party or a dance, to release our cares into the collective arms of our community, to know we belong just because we are here, and together? Remember how that felt? It seems so long ago now.

I pray for an end to division and suspicion, and an opening into greater love and connectedness. I long for belonging, a sense of purpose and a context that includes all shades and sorts. On this sacred Earth, holy for its wholeness, great round heaving body breathing with our own breath, may we land on solid ground and real-eyes what and who we are, together with the rest.

Blessed New Year to all, and may this next year truly be better. Maybe it will. Weird things happen. With love, hope and trepidation, we begin another adventure around the sun, and for sure, some of it will be fun. I shall see you there.

Next year, as before, I want to hear from you! Please send feedback, invitations, suggestions and more to phoenixonhornby@gmail.com

A message from Dr. Ron

December 30, 2021

You may be wondering what is happening at the Denman Island Medical Clinic in 2022. The following information is intended to bring you up to date.

For regular users of the Clinic you will know that Dr. Stephen Fox took over the lease of the Clinic space at the beginning of 2020. This space is maintained by the Denman Health Centre Society (DHCS). Dr. Wilson who has worked on Denman since 2013, continued working on Thursdays and Fridays, Dr. Alsoon Brine who lives on Hornby came over to work every Tuesday and Wednesday, and Dr. Fox who also had a clinic in Cumberland came over on Mondays. For reasons unbeknown to us, Dr. Fox decided he was no longer working here or in Cumberland and left abruptly at the beginning of July this year. Drs. Wilson and Brine continued working on Denman and have been able to provide ongoing health care for Denman Residents. It should be noted that we see anyone who lives on Denman and will see any emergencies otherwise.

We will be very sad to see Dr. Brine go as she has decided she will finally retire at this time. She has been putting her retirement off for at least a couple of years. She will be greatly missed as she has provided exceptional care over these past 2 years. As of yet, we have not found a permanent replacement for Dr. Brine. So what will 2022 be like at the clinic?

Dr. Wilson who plans to fully retire at the end of 2022 will continue to work on Thursdays and Fridays. One of the doctors who works on Hornby (Dr. Froehner) has agreed to help when she can. She will work for two days a week for two weeks out of each month. Currently we have placed adds for locum doctors to help us on the other weeks. As of now, we have no definite replies to our adds. Adds have also been placed in the appropriate medical journals looking for doctors who may wish to relocate to Denman and provide ongoing care in the future to our residents. There has been some interest in this but so far, we have nothing definite to report.

We may have some gaps in care this year. Dr. Wilson will do his best to cover the necessities of patient care on the weeks when there are no other doctors working. If you have prescription renewals we would ask that you get them into the clinic or requested through your pharmacy early in the week in order for them to be filled in a timely manner.

The Denman clinic is also part of the Comox Valley Primary Care Network. Because of this association we are fortunate to have a pharmacist, a social worker, a mental health/substance use worker and a Registered Nurse (whose focus will be management of chronic disease) coming to the clinic once a week or every other week. Also Carmen Bedard, our physiotherapist is returning from Maternity leave and will be starting up again on Mondays and expanding to a second day per week if the demand is there for her services. So there will be a lot of activity happening at the clinic that residents can take advantage of.

The receptionists will be at the clinic every day during clinic hours (9:30 to 4:30). On the days when there is no doctor they will work from 9:30 to 2:00 pm. Because there may be changes on a weekly basis, there will always be an updated voice message with current information about doctor availability and working hours. Messages can be left and will be responded to as soon as possible. We appreciate your patience during these times.

We are grateful to the DHCS who continue to maintain the facility for Denman. There are also some exciting plans ahead to enhance the health and wellness of our residents. So stay tuned for updates on these.

I hope that as we move into 2022, Denmanites will continue to support and care for one another as they have done so well over the years.

Dr. Ron