We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

- John McCrae

“I will never forget standing outside the chemo treatment room knowing that the medication needed to save my life was only a few feet away, but that because I had private insurance it wasn’t available to me,” Linda wrote. “I read a comment from someone saying that they didn’t want a faceless government bureaucrat deciding if they would or would not get treatment. Well, a faceless bureaucrat from my private insurance made the decision that I wouldn’t get treatment and that I wasn’t worth saving.”

Likewise, Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take, McKinsey said.

Remind me again why people don’t want to change American health care?

Op-Ed Columnist – Unhealthy America – NYTimes.com

(Via .)

It’s for an immigration lawyer firm in Nova Scotia. Still – interesting they might be praying on American’s dislike of laws here.

This September I will be returning to Canada to participate in a walk on the 12th to raise funds for Parkinson’s research. My family in Canada (pictured above) have been doing it for years now, to support my father, who has had Parkinson’s for over 10 years now.

Click on this link: http://my.e2rm.com/personalPage.aspx?SID=2308262 to go to the donation page and click on the Sponsor me button at the bottom of the page.

If you live in the US, yes you still can donate funds – they will be in Canadian dollars, and you will get a tax receipt emailed to you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

“You can avoid reality but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality!”

I’ve asked him who said it – I’m presuming it wasn’t him. If it was, I have even more respect for the young man.

cotton, originally uploaded by D’Arcy Norman.

I miss living in Calgary… breathtaking!

Reconfiguring the American banking structure to look more like the Canadian model would help restore much-needed confidence in a beleaguered financial system.

Score another vote of confidence for Canada.

Looks as those President Bush has chosen Calgary as the first place he’s going to give a post-president speech. I wonder what the reception is going to be like?

Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it’s Canada. In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world. America’s ranked 40th, Britain’s 44th.

I am proud to be a Canadian! Well worth the read if you are wondering how Canada didn’t fall into the traps that the US and Britain fell into.

A brave man just deletes his Twitter account.. I often wonder how many great blog posts and discussions we’ve missed since the rise of Twitter. Worth clicking through and reading in it’s entirety.

(Via EcoGeek.org.)

Nice to see my home country and home province doing some really advanced stuff in being green.. I like this little bit:

Even with sunny Alberta weather, it will take approximately three years to fully charge the BTES field. In the first years of operation, the field will operate at relatively low temperatures, and the recoverable energy will be largely depleted before the end of the heating season. However, after a few years of operation, the core temperature of the BTES field will approach 80°C by the end of summer, with sufficient heat for almost an entire heating season.

Check it out: Drakes Landing Solar Community.

Go Vancouver Go!

City of Calgary
9:35 PM MST Tuesday 26 December 2006
Snowfall warning for
City of Calgary continued

10 to 20 centimetres of snow expected Wednesday.

An intense low pressure system from the pacific is forecast to track inland along the U.S. border overnight bringing snow to southern Alberta. Snow is expected to start overnight and fall throughout Wednesday bringing 10 to 20 centimetres of snow. A few flurries may linger Thursday as the system moves eastward.

Here’s Team Lou, decked out in their shirts that my sister Michelle made:

And here’s the back of my brother’s shirt, with a few extra additions to the back:

It’s down to one game, Monday night on NBC, 5pm pacific. Watch it. If you are in portland and want to drop by, leave a comment.

Update: Ya, great game, but Edmonton lost. The awesome reaction by the Carolina players made up for the loss though, I was happy Carolina won after seeing that.

My current class is International Business, and tonight part of the class we talked about peoples opinions of one another, and how that could affect international business.

The professor, who is the director of emergency response at Northwest Medical Teams, asked me, as a Canadian, what my thoughts on Americans overseas were. And I expect I had the typical response that people have heard, that there is the stereotypical view of an American as a very loud, arrogant person who wants other cultures to bend to their view and beliefs, vs trying to fit in to a particular place or culture.

Another student also related an experience of being in the Louvre, very quietly viewing paintings with other art lovers. And he came upon 4 guys, drinking beer and being loud.. and they were Americans.

I think the problem is that all it takes is one poor experience to reinforce that view of Americans. There are a lot of people in America who are calm, quiet and respectful when the travel overseas. One can only hope that those people will help change that perception at some point in the future.

PS: Can you believe with a title like “One Canadian’s Comments On Life” that I didn’t have a “Canada” category? Sad.. just sad.

CBC Calgary – Retailers bracing for staffing crunch over holidays: ”
Retailers bracing for staffing crunch over holidays
Last updated Nov 15 2005 03:00 PM MST
CBC News
Holiday shopping may take longer this year, as retailers scramble to find staff for the busy Christmas season.
And that has some business consultants advocating the hiring of more seniors, calling the retired set an untapped labour pool that can ride to the rescue.
‘Every field is experiencing a shortage of labour,’ retail analyst Phillip Jones said. ‘Where that crunch is going to be felt most keenly is at the bottom of the pay scale.’
Statistics Canada says participation in the labour force in Alberta is decreasing, despite thousands of new people moving to the province every year – the drop is largest for teenagers and women between the ages of 35 and 45, in part because higher household incomes may be reducing the need for more than one income.
Retail businesses are feeling that shortage, with most malls sporting ‘hiring’ signs in many of their stores.
Jackie Edd”

(Via CBC Calgary.)