Saturday night fun

Now that all my friends are in relationships, my Saturdays are starting to consist of reading or watching documentaries or opinion pieces about various issues in Canada, North America, or the world, followed by writing letters to politicians.

Yesterday night was spent watching a documentary Dewey posted, called “The World According to Monsanto”. I didn’t get very far because every 5 minutes I would pause the documentary. with different questions popping into my head, and want to look up an answer to it. I wrote a letter to a few MPs and our Prime Minister indicating my support for Bill C-353, which would ban Terminator Technology in Canada. I’ve also made the decision to eliminate, as much as possible, corn, soy, and canola from my diet, as they make up the majority of GMO crops in North America. Not only that, I’m sure my body will thank me, as they’re not exactly the food of champions. Cotton, another major GMO crop in North America, is a difficult one to eliminate from my wardrobe, though I would think most of my clothing isn’t North American produced anyway. (Link: How to avoid GMO foods in Canada.)

I am alarmed at how we’ve allowed ourselves to get to this point – the proliferation of low nutrition foods and money driven culture leading to our obesity and poor health, the irreversible pollution which is slowly poisoning and killing us, of letting corporations dictate our laws, and the general apathy of Canadians towards all of this. The more I read, the more pissed off I got.

The labelling of GMO (genetically modified organisms) in foods is mandatory in the European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand… and China?! (Side note: a bit skeptical about how effective China’s labelling is, given the amount of counterfeit products there.)  I wondered about GMO labelling in Canada, and found that a Bill was presented last year about mandatory GMO labelling, and guess what? My MP, all of Alberta (100% Conservative seats), and practically all of the Conservatives voted “No”. No?!? What do you mean “No”?!? I have a serious beef against “my” MP (that I didn’t vote for), and wonder what was his reasoning? (Aside from always voting with his Party…) Now I seriously want to question Laurie Hawn and find out why he voted the way he did. If he saw two identical foods in the grocery store, one labelled GMO and one not, which one would he purchase? I have an extremely difficult time seeing how anyone could think any differently than I do. I can’t fathom what runs through the minds of Conservatives. I want to – so that maybe there is some way to reason with them. But then my head blows up.

I don’t understand the apathy and even backlash held by Canadians to caring about anything outside of money, judging by even the people around me, who are more educated than the norm. Again, I repeat myself by agreeing with Dewey that social studies in school did a horrible job of making politics and the world seem relevant and interesting. But now, I feel extremely lacking in knowledge that I wish I knew more about. Is it a conspiracy – the dumbing down of Canadians? In some ways, I almost feel that it’s too late – I’m sure a huge proportion of my body is made up of plastics and chemicals, from the food we eat, the chemicals that we use, the water that we drink… But doing something feels a lot better than doing nothing.

Per’s first day

I have a pretty unbelievable story about how Per spent his first day (while I was at work)! He asked why I didn’t ride my bike to university(!!!) Like I ever would!! I said “the hill on the highway (Whitemud) to school is impossible!” So of course Per decided he would go run this impossible hill during a 1.5 hr run. Somewhere in the river valley, he saw 2 people standing on the trail, one woman holding 7 dogs on a leash. And one dog in the North Saskatchewan. The woman was on the phone trying to call for help while the man looked on doing nothing.

Per looked at the drowning dog in the river, assessed that the dog probably jumped into the water (as the ice didn’t look broken), and decided he was going to try to save it (!!!!). Thought in case he did fall in that he could use 2 sharp sticks to use as spikes on the snow/ice to pull himself out. He asked the 2 people – “do you have a screwdriver or a knife?” They looked blankly at him, and didn’t say anything. (I would have reacted the same way – like, what is this guy going on about?) He grabbed two tree branches and tried to break them into sharp points. Then crawled out onto the ice lying flat to the ground. Reached out a stick to the dog to try to get it to bite onto the stick, but the dog didn’t figure that out. So Per crawled even closer, grabbed him by the paw and pulled him out. The dog ran to safety, while Per tried to maneuver himself back safely to the bank. The woman was in complete shock. The dogs were pretty happy. Per felt awkward standing around so he continued on running. A few moments later, the man was running behind him, saying “That was awesome!!” Per just waved his hand as in to say, all in a day’s work.

Geez!!!! Not to take away from how amazing and incredible that was, but I’m really glad nothing bad happened to Per!

Then Per ran back home (2 hours total), had lunch, then biked out to MEC and toured the downtown area (another 4 hours). My bike is more of a “leisure” bike (i.e. used twice in the 3 years I’ve owned it and covered in dust) and isn’t fitted up with splash guards for actual commuting, so Per got pretty filthy. But now, Per installed splash guards so I can actually use it to ride to work… (Don’t have many excuses now not to.) And when I got home at the end of the day after my art class, he had prepared the Swedish cheesecake he brought all the way over the Atlantic along with fresh cream and strawberries. And had another surprise gift for me on top of the many presents he’s given me already! I’m getting completely spoiled.