The last five months have been very heavy, with two big, continuing wars, and many elections, including the last, very serious one in the U.S.A. which rocked almost all Canadians. It is long past time for something lighter and completely different.

This writer sometimes draws amusement and diversion from things in the natural world, many of them that I see out my workroom window. With the fall weather and the leaves almost all down, our feathered friends and animals keep going full tilt preparing for winter.

The crow, with its jet-black plumage, is one of my fine feathered friends which people could easily dismiss as dreary and uninteresting but is one of the most intelligent birds in the sky.

For instance, the other morning when just a few apples were left hanging on a nearby tree, I spotted a big crow spearing some apples with her dagger-like beak. Shuffling her feet down to a crook in the branch, she wedged the apple there, to better enjoy her breakfast.

When he had completed the work of the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Murray Sinclair said: “We have described for you a mountain. We have shown for you the way to the top. We call on you to do the climbing.”
 
This was Murray Sinclair’s challenge for the country. After the commission had listened to the difficult stories of the survivors of the Residential Schools and their families, he set out in simple, and non-vindicative terms what this country should continue to work hard to achieve, in a word “respect.”
 
This week the late Sinclair was honored at a commemorative ceremony that would not have been likely in two other wealthy countries with large indigenous populations, Australia and the U.S.A. Those two nations have been at best aggressive or at worst genocidal to their First Peoples. On the other hand, one other country, New Zealand, has done as much or more than Canada in reconciling with its First Peoples. And Murray Sinclair has done more than any other Canadian in helping this country improve its record.

Donald Trump’s huge victory in the U.S. Elections has major implications for Canada. When this writer stayed up to see that Trump had won key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, I felt sick to my stomach, turned the television off, and went to bed.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris took much of the criticism for the defeat, but overall, she did her job very well. The explanation lies in much deeper problems in the Democratic Party, problems which parallel those in recent years with the national Liberal Party in Canada.

In my last blog column before the American election, I set out Trump’s horrific record with his 34 felony convictions, sexual assaults, hush money payments, over $500 million in civil liability judgments etc. Then there is his threat to mobilize the U.S. National Guard and American troops against those he calls “the enemy within.”  His encouragement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill following his refusal to accept his 2020 election defeat is further evidence of his terrible record. Of course, Trumps most frightening current promise is the massive deportation of illegal immigrants from the U.S.