Calgary Herald alive and well but for how long?

At a gas station in Bragg Creek, I bought a copy of the Calgary Herald and threw it on the front seat of the car before heading into the Rockies. The first incarnation of that paper came out as a weekly in 1883. Of course, today it is also available in digital format.

Several hours later, when I flopped exhausted on a motel bed in Revelstoke after driving through two high Rocky Mountain passes, I was delighted to note the healthy condition of this historic paper. Along with news, it has lots of comics, crosswords, and book reviews.

The Calgary Herald is a survivor, as traditional newspapers fade into the past in our era of ubiquitous internet access and burgeoning numbers of smart phones. Propping myself on my pillows with the Herald spread out before me felt good. It was part of a long and comfortable tradition.

The Vancouver Sun is the hometown paper, and we still subscribe, even though it has grown thin, and even though as I travel to work, there are people in the train stations trying to give away both the Sun and the Province. Continuing to take the paper by subscription is our vote of support for professional journalists -- a dying breed, we sometimes fear. It's also a continuation of a long-held ritual: the morning paper and coffee.

The newspapers of Canadian cities have long histories, but their lives are increasingly threatened. While visiting Edmonton, I learned that The Edmonton Journal has just gone through another round of layoffs and is down to a tiny staff. In fact, some of their writing is now done in the Philippines. This helps the publication to stay alive as the paper experiences ever smaller profit margins.

What will happen to Canada's historic papers when the baby boomers die out? Will long-established papers like The Montreal Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail and the Regina Leader-Post  continue to publish paper editions?

Will The Telegram (St. John's) still be with us? This paper is very old: it began as the Evening Telegram in 1879 when Canada was only 12 years old and Newfoundland was still 70 years away from joining Confederation.

What will happen to Le Devoir, begun in 1910 by Henri Bourassa in Montreal? And what will be the future of The Winnipeg Free Press, established 1872, now that the meaning of free in its title has taken on a new shade?

Not so very long ago, there were hundreds of small newspapers in Canada, and almost as many owners. Now newspapers are owned by large conglomerates, and share a certain homogeneity. But that's already an old challenge. The current one is even more enormous.

When people no longer pay for papers, and advertisers turn to the internet, what will happen to journalists? Will aspiring writers still train in this field? Who will be the journalists of the future? Will they attempt to report the news in a balanced way? Will they follow a code of journalistic ethics? These are important questions.

Justified in my philosphy of anti-ismism

On Sunday while listening to Tapestry on CBC Radio, I was struck by the notion that atrocities done to others arise from and absolutely rely on a sense of moral certainty. So said Bertrand Russell. Producer Frank Faulk began the show with this idea that accounts for so much.

For instance, explains York University Professor of Moral Philosophy Susan Dimock, it tells us why in Canada's past native children were collected in residential schools and treated so badly. This was done not out of a monstrous desire to hurt and punish these children, but with a misguided sense of moral certainty that they must be reformed to the ways of church (and state) for their own good.

Humans commit atrocities only in seeking to ensure their own safety or to secure what they believe are the best interests of others who do not know what is good for them.

Economic or territorial ambitions, explains Professor Dimock, are insufficient causes for people to overcome their natural rapport and sympathy with others enough to allow them to commit atrocities. Those others must be dehumanized or demonized, and that takes moral certainty.

This idea has fascinating implications. For me personally, it reframes my own stance toward my longstanding lack of moral certainty. Far from marking me out as a wimpy waffler who refuses to commit fully to a single religion or set of principles, my openness and flexibility are positive traits.

The fact that I am unprepared to judge behaviour and people with a categorical certainty is a healthy indication that I make no hubristic claim of being in possession of the only truth. Anti-ismism. I support nothing that ends in ism. Ironically, I call myself an anti-ismist.

Viking ribstones re-visited

Photos: CT 2012

On my first visit in the summer of 2010, the Viking Ribstones lay quite undisturbed among the grass, as they had long lain.

A recent visit revealed the sad fact of vandalism. As well as removing the informational plaque from its stand, someone had tipped one of the stones out of its resting place and it lay exposed on the ground.

On the other hand, there was evidence of recent ceremonies: decorated bones and feathers lay near the stones, and coloured banners had been tied to the surrounding fence.

For many generations, these carved stones have been a place of pilgrimage, representing the Spirit of Old Man Buffalo.

Cree people and others come here to express their reverence and gratitude for the gifts of the natural world that sustains us all. As before, I saw offerings of small change and tobacco scattered around the place. When I put my hand in my pocket as protection against a bitter cold wind, I found a quarter. Pulling it out, I noticed the caribou image on its face, and added it to the other coins at the ribstones.

On this occasion, after a visit to Elk Island Park, I knew exactly what a bison looked like close up.

Chief Poundmaker

Photo: The Canada Site

Pitkwahanapiwiyin, also known as Poundmaker, was born in the Battleford area of Saskatchewan around  1842. His father was a Stoney shaman and his mother Metis. In 1873, he was adopted by Chief Crowfoot of the Blackfoot. He became a head man and spoke at the Treaty 6 negotiations at Fort Carlton, and later when the government failed to honour treaty promises.

The Blackfoot people sold rights to collect firewood, travel through, and even build forts on their territory. Yet for them, like for other first nations peoples, private land ownership made no sense. Given by the creator, the land was meant to be shared.

At Cut Knife in 1882, Poundmaker and his band routed the Canadian militia. Yet this chief urged restraint upon his young warriors, and avoided a massacre like that of the Little Big Horn in the Montana territory in 1776.

Right: Painting of Chief Poundmaker by Edmund Morris, 1910, First Peoples of Canada

Poundmaker was one of the chiefs who negotiated Treaty 7 and eventually signed it, along with leaders of the Peigan, Blood, Sarcee and Stoney nations. According to First Peoples treaties, their willingness to make this treaty arose in part out of a sense of trust for the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, who, led by James McLeod, had kicked the American whiskey traders out of southern Alberta. The famine that followed the widespread slaughter of the buffalo and the fencing of the plains for settlers were additional motivators.

Like Big Bear, Chief Poundmaker was put on trial and sentenced after the Riel Rebellion and spent time in prison. He died in 1885 from a lung haemorrhage at age 45.

His name lives on in the Poundmaker Trail, now known as Highway 14.  In Saskatchewan, a Cree first nation and reserve bear his name. A film called The Trial of Poundmaker was made in 2002 by Gil Cardinal and the National Film Board of Canada.

Turnips and gingersnaps

 Photo: CT 2012

Along with the season of Thanksgiving, there is something about the light, or the smell in the air at this time of year that makes me want to cook and eat turnips. They can be a great addition to a nice turkey barley stew, or they can be boiled and prepared as a simple mash, either with butter, salt and pepper, or boiled with green apples and garnished with a touch of maple syrup. What could be more redolent of traditional Canadian fall fare?

Autumnal weather also urges me to bake. It's a bit early in the season for gingersnaps, which tend to appear closer to Christmas, or at least closer to Halloween, but when I saw my daughter's moose, bear and hedgehog cookie cutters, I was a goner. This year, my usual gingerbread dogs with sugar bead collars get a rest. We stopped making gingerbread men years ago -- eating them felt too cannibalistic.

Bison sanctuaries: Elk Island and Wood Buffalo National Parks

Photo by Chris Perkins

Elk Island Park began when five friends pooled their money to ensure a home for Alberta's elk.
Today, this sanctuary is home to two buffalo herds. The Plains Bison live on the north side of the highway and Wood Bison on the south. Like the Plains bull in the picture, bison forage along the park's roadways, unconcerned about who may be watching. Periodically, the herd outgrows the range. Then the Park makes animals available to establish herds elsewhere.

There are plenty of hiking trails for visitors, who can see animals, beaver dams and views of the park's many lakes. Several hundred moose also call the park home, along with numerous beavers. The descendants of the original elk are shy of humans and rarely show themselves.

Wood Buffalo National Park sustains a herd of 5000 wood bison. These are the largest mammals of North America, and the park is also Canada's largest. Totalling 44,807 square kilometers, it is bigger than Switzerland. Straddling northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories, and including the huge Peace-Athabasca delta, it is also home to a huge flock of whooping cranes and the world's largest beaver dam, which took forty years to build and is visible from outer space. Unsurprisingly, Wood Buffalo Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Before Europeans came to North America, the prairie was thick with bison. According to Dale S. Lott et al, they probably numbered in the millions before the "Great Slaughter" that culminated in the late nineteenth century.

Ancient symbols with us still

Photo: MobilLubeExpress

This ram's horned head is ubiquitous as the logo of the Dodge pickup truck. This symbol is not new. At the ancient Egyptian temple of Karnak, the Ram-headed Sphinx symbolizes the god Atun, as shown below (eyelid.co.uk).

According to Herodotus, the Scythian culture also held the ram in high esteem. As shown in the teaspoon below, it was supposed to symbolize prosperity and protection for its owners. (Bottom photo hermitageshop.org).

The Scandinavian god Thor had rams to pull his chariot, and the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians also attributed symbolic meaning to the ram.This animal was represented in ancient Minoan and Mycenian art. Today replicas of a Minoan ram sculpture (original dated circa 1500 BCE) are sold in the National Archeological Museum of Athens.

On the north door of the French Cathedral at Chartres, begun in the 1100s, the ram appears as a Christian symbol. A ram appeared in the thicket, caught by its horns, and thus provided a handy sacrifice after God had tested the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac when so commanded.