There’s a reason for the phenomenal success of Tim Horton’s cafes around
the world.
It’s the human need, now more than ever, for inclusive gathering places for
people, battered as they are by world news, wars, suffering, and bad
government, particularly in the nearby country. Citizens need a place for
conversation and exchange, small talk ,which can be laden with
consolation and meaning.
But Tim Horton’s is limited in meeting this need. It is “transactional”, as the
popular word has it, corporate and impersonal. So intense is the need to
meet up and talk things through, I see my neighbours, some 15 of them, on
the next street every morning since COVID, gathering for 45 minutes
outside, even in the winter cold ,someone coming out with mugs of coffee,
in order to keep in touch.
In style and intent, Dreams of Beans has it all over Tim’s. It is a spacious
location downtown at George and Charlotte Streets. It is not part of a chain.
It is simply furnished: some sunlit tables by the windows, some upholstered
chairs ( where longtime activist Roy Brady can often be seen}, some
longish tables and chairs where informal meetings can take place (the
Older Women’s Network and the LGBTQ communities meet up here).
Beth McKinley of Cavan takes a frequent volunteer turn at playing the
painted green piano .Anyone can do so. Young people and students come
in, bearing laptops. A back room can be booked for events, and in the case
of politicians the owner favours and non- profit organizations such as the
local Amnesty International Group 46, without charge.

I am keen to speak with the owner- manager, Andrew McGregor, who has
this philosophy of business. It is community- building and it has a name,
“social enterprise”.
McGregor has been the owner of Dreams of Beans since 2023, and in
Peterborough 19 years. He knows that a “startup” takes five years to get to
stability , but already he feels a certain success with about 800 patrons
coming in each week.
Andrew grew up in Vancouver and met his wife Erin, who is an optician, at
bible college there. Perhaps his formation as a Pentecostal pastor accounts
for his strong social conscience. That, and his involvement with feeding
people. Since coming to Peterborough, he has worked for Westclox and
for CN Rail, has been a financial planner, assisted at St John’s Anglican
church in its daily outreach programs, and volunteered with Food Not
Bombs. And he ran as a candidate for the Green Party in the last federal
election.
“My social values drive my business decisions, “ he says. He is an
opponent of tipping for service. “I pay my employees a living wage”. He
currently employs ___ people
Open seven days a week, Dream of Beans gives life to downtown which, in
many ways, has been hollowed out. And if my breakfast bagel is any
indication, some experienced cooks are at work.
Mc Gregor works about 60 hours a week, along with raising three kids with
his wife.
Talking with him links with a popular recent book I’ve borrowed from the
Public Library (I was 20th in line for it) “Moral Ambition”, by Dutchman
Rutger Bregman.
Bregman’s theory is that most of us waste our talent on unworthy things,
jobs, and self- referential ambitions, which don’t bring happiness, when
great causes are out there to be worked on.

As for a return to politics, McGregor says time will tell. He has his hands full
at the moment, but finds politics “illuminating” . “It requires you to articulate
a position” he says.
An engaging conversation partner, Andrew McGregor has already created
an unique experience that benefits Peterborough.

​The term is broadly used these days to describe a version of conservative
evangelism in the U.S. that has a powerful influence on MAGA believers.
And therefore on the state of the nation.
I have been curious to have it explained.
Then on a recent Friday, a friend at the weekly ecumenical meditation
group I often attend, showed me a book she was excited about. It is called
“Star -Spangled Jesus”, by April Ajoy. Published in 2024, it is the author’s
witty account of growing up in an evangelical family in Texas and fully
embracing its outlook and way of life. Her father was an itinerant preacher,
intent on returning the U.S to, as he saw it, its original conception as a
“Christian” country. But “Christianity” comes in many forms, and is claimed
for many causes.
Especially when combined with political views, it can turn a secular state in
to a theocracy. Such as Iran.
All the more reason the phenomenon should be the subject of critical study
at all stages in society. Only one daily newspaper in Canada has a reporter
assigned to investigate the religions: the Winnipeg Free Press. The
reporter, John Longhurst, finds it a fascinating beat. It is one of those
hidden influences for good or evil, on a society’s development and its social
cohesion.
As a child, Ajoy once sang her own song on the Jim Bakker TV show
.Among her childhood friends were those who asked, “Are you ready for
the rapture?” In the rapture, the teaching says, Jesus comes back and
brings Christians to heaven with him without their needing to die. The

“rapture” is followed by 7 years of tribulation. There is often a biblical quote
to underly teachings.
A Christian nationalist is highly judgmental and uses the “false prophet”
phrase to denounce others. He asserts that God chose Donald Trump to
save America. The United Nations is highly suspect, full of people who
have different beliefs.
Ajoy was a faithful and conforming right- wing member, until the day,
January 6, 2021, when her world changed. She watched on television the
violent revolt at the Cap The mob was egged on by failed candidate Trump,
using war-like words. She saw with horror the hate-filled faces of his
followers, several of whom she knew.
These people wanted to take back, what they believed had started out as a
blessed Christian nation, but had changed and become false to Christianity.
Baptists, gay-positive congregations such as the United Church of Canada
,and Catholics, needed to be converted. Anybody who advocates for
abortion or same- sex relationships is evil.
For the next couple of years, Ajoy wrote of her journey away from what she
calls “Christian nationalism”. She details her personal experience in what
she terms an ideology.” We were all groomed to become warriors for the
kingdom, not citizens of this world.” she says.
Here, politics and dark theology merge. Republican ideas are closest to
godliness, and Democrats are sinister. Schools, courts and culture have
been subverted by Satan. “Too many questions lead to doubt,” said
Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, in 2016. He urged voters
to “vote Biblically”. Mega- churches, especially in the American south,
dominate the landscape.
“Prosperity preachers have stolen our more liberal faith,” writes one reader
of Ajoy’s book.
The movement is founded on firm tenets, one of which is that America is
the best in the world. It is the “city on the hill”. The church makes heavy use
of fear. Everyone is watched and monitored by heavenly account- keepers,

and all will be totted up at the end. Hell figures largely in the credo of the
Christian Nationalists, and the morality code has no room for choice,
especially in matters of sex.
Inclusion, tolerance and democracy play no part. Nor does forgiveness.I
learned a lot from reading “Star Spangled Jesus”. None of it was
reassuring.

I never, until now, learned much about farming, growing up in a
mining town in northern Ontario. But life is often long, and Canada
has offered much new learning all along the way. I have had the
one quality: curiosity.
That, combined with a growing global awareness, and hanging
out with and being taught by well- informed people and groups
who were conscientious about participating in the world and
increasing human well-being, have led me to Northcote Farm, just
north of Lakefield, and part of Lakefield College School.
In mid-winter.
Made recently famous because Canadian rock musician Neil
Young, who grew up in Omemee, played a sell-out concert on the
site outdoors in May, 2025 as a fundraiser for the rehabilitation of
the historical farmhouse. Young believes that farms and history
matter in education and in general awareness. The concert drew
2000 people.
Northcote Farm was given to the school in 2007 by a former
student and his wife, Donald and Gretchen Ross. It occupies 160
acres on the shore of Lake Katchewanooka, a 45- minute paddle
north of the main campus.

The vision and leadership needed for moving towards the
creation of a location for educational opportunities became
crucial. And it appeared.
It is full- throttle today, under the leadership of Assistant Head
,Sustainability, Janice Greenshields, and Director Bruce
McMahon, assisted by two young women, Emma Macdonald,
operations manager, who has a degree in sustainable agriculture,
and Jade OKeeffe, who is an educator and farmer known in
Peterborough for her talent as an actor and playwright, but is also
committed to increasing healthy food production for the
community. Add climate awareness and passionate concern, and
the ingredients are all there.
All three educators are part of a team employed to manage, teach
and work with youth, including the 445 year- round students, and
the summer- camp attendees, who are as young as 5 years old.
An important goal for the school is connections with the
community. McMahon, who is a retired history teacher with fond
memories of growing up rural in the eastern townships of Quebec,
though not on a farm, has been involved since 2007. He speaks
of the warm welcome to the enterprise from the neighbours, who
helped with machinery and know- how. “It is a bridge builder,” he
says” and we try to do our part by giving over half the produce to
the village food bank. About half is destined for the LCS kitchen”.
One can see philanthropic principles at work here as well as
environmental stewardship and scientific ones.
In future, Northcote hopes to work together with local high schools
in designing and providing courses in what the Ministry of
Education has deemed a compulsory area for students in order to graduate: one course in the field of forestry, horticulture or agriculture.
To date, farm programs have been extended to elementary
schools. Some 70 items, fruits, vegetables and flowers, are grown
on the farm. It also produces honey from beehives.
I ask the teachers if the administration and board of the school
has been fully behind the notion of Northcote Farm as a crucial
component of the curriculum. They were unanimous in declaring
that there has been nothing but support for their work. It fits with
the school’s plan that every student feel a deep connection to
nature.
It struck me that in terms of moderating global warming, the
notion of regenerative farming is not only being taught there but
practised. They spoke of the visionary outlook of the head of
school Ann- Marie Kee.
The spokespersons have satisfaction at its development. “If we
can engender a love and appreciation of the natural world by
showing the joys as well as the necessity for food growing, along
with a realistic dose of the hard physical work involved in it, we
will create a healthier and happier population”, Jade O’Keeffe
says.
That is something schools can and must care a lot about.

It all started in the eighties. It was the Cold War, and we in
Peterborough were consumed by nuclear dread, frightened by the
remote possibility that the Russians would nuke Darlington on the
lakeshore and we would suffer unnamed damage from fallout.
At the time, a filmmaker named Bonnie Sherr Klein had made a
30- minute documentary for the NFB entitled “If You Love This
Planet”. which everyone was watching. Not only that, but four
bright teenagers, two boys and two girls, from Montreal, in a
group called
“ Students Against Global Extermination” (SAGE) got an old van
and undertook to drive across the country showing the film and
speaking at town halls and in school gyms.
The peace movement in town put out a call for billeting families.
So John and I volunteered our top floor. One of the boys was the
filmmaker’s son, Seth Klein, the brother of eminent writer, Naomi
Klein (of “The Shock Doctrine”, “No Logo” and “This Changes
Everything: Capitalism and the Climate Crisis”.)
I remember one of the girls of SAGE, Alison Carpenter, only 17,
took sick. John took her to PRHC, where she was very well
treated.

The exciting thing was the morning after their presentation, when
the youth woke up at our home in Peterborough, the Globe and
Mail newspaper carried a front- page story and picture of the
SAGE Tour. They were delighted,and left our city happy.
The connection with this column today is that NDP national
leadership candidate, Avi Lewis, who gave a barn- burner of a
speech at the standing- room-only Lions Centre on March 6, is
that Mr Lewis is married to Naomi Klein, brother of our billet, Seth.
There are five candidates running for that leadership and the vote
is to be March 29 in Winnipeg.
I met Avi Lewis at the Lions Centre on March 6 but didn’t take the
time to tell him this story. I did however tale him how greatly I
admired his whole family, having marched with his mother,
Michele Landsberg, in Toronto at women’s rights demonstrations,
and having been inspired to write columns by her 25-year work at
the Toronto STAR.
Avi Lewis, who lives in Vancouver, told me with some delight that
he’d be seeing his mother in Toronto next day and would tell her
about our meeting. It is a remarkable family of patriots and
political leaders, now in its third generation. I wrote about father,
Stephen Lewis who was the leader of the NDP, and then our
ambassador to the United Nations, in this space in December,
2019.He has been declared Canada’s best orator. The son
follows in his footsteps.
The room was covered in signs outlining NDP policies: “Renters
Over Landlord- Profits”, “Green New Deal”” National Rent Cap”
and “Public Option for Groceries”. The crowd, first entertained by

songs from Faith Nolan and Benj Rowland was enthusiastic. And
it was mainly youthful.
For the NDP leadership race, supporters now have five choices. I
met a woman at the YMCA who told me she favoured Heather
MacPherson of Edmonton, “because we need a person who
already has a seat in the House of Commons”. The NDP was
reduced in the last federal election to seven seats, and just today
lost a member to the Liberals.
But Avi Lewis is undaunted. He is crossing the country and finding
enthusiasm, which he says the press is not noticing. He has 1000
volunteers. He points to the fact that Canada is run by five big
banks, 3 telecommunications companies and five oil companies.
His is a battle against the excesses of capitalism, a military
budget of 5%, and a top-down method of decision- making.
“Meanwhile”, he says, “the climate is still unravelling”.
He continues “The cult of leadership age is over; the base is our
source of power”.
Our politics needs and values this third-party presence and
thinking. Perhaps Avi Lewis can channel Jack Layton to
everyone’s benefit.

​Many of my trusted advisors in all things political have been
raving about this woman’s work, writing and speaking daily about
the Trump phenomenon in America, for some time.
My inbox receives her Substack post every weekday. Recently I
heard one of her calm, thorough and convincing presentations,
when a son sent me a You-tube of her hour- long talk on February
24, her own “state of the union” address, that mercifully took me
away from watching the Mad King uttering his lies on broadcast
tv.
The author of seven books on such topics as the American civil
war and the history of the Plains Indians, she demonstrates the
scale, scope and volume of her writing output. It is prodigious. As
the scribbler of a mere 650 words a week, I can only gasp in
admiration.
It was, as she noted that day, both the 4 th anniversary of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine and a day during the year of the
250 th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence,
that foundational document written by Thomas Jefferson and
approved by 56 delegates from 13 colonies (the “founding
fathers”.)
The big day was of course, July 1, 1776, that ushered in many
glory days of America, now in such sharp and dangerous decline.

What are we to make of America today? We shocked Canadians,
having been abused and confused by the regime in place there
now?
Born in Chicago in 1962 and raised in Maine where she still lives,
Cox Richardson, who has three daughters, teaches political
science and history at Boston College, having earned her Ph.D at
Harvard.
I took a course at BC myself in the summer of 1992, under the
leadership of an Australian nun who was given to showing
cartoons as a way of making a point. Something like Stephen
Colbert does. I enjoyed the experience, which included going with
classmates to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park.
Cox Richardson’s talks are quietly competent, given in plain
language without notes, in an unadorned setting without
gimmicks. She is down- to- earth. “I am embarrassed he is
president, or even a citizen”, she says, as she outlines the
offences Trump has piled up, especially during this second term.
He has been in office a year. My favorite CBC TV host, smart and
affable Newfoundlander David Cochrane, has the remaining days
and even hours counted. What permanent damage Trump and his
cronies have done is yet to be measured.
“I can feel myself getting smarter the more I listen to you,” writes
one admirer of Cox Richardson. She has 2.6 million followers on
Substack. These are the serious and conscientious Americans
who have staying power and clear- sightedness. I keep company

with them a lot. They know what has been lost and what is at
stake for their own country and for the world.
Cox Richardson says that America was founded on two
contradictory ideas: liberty and equality versus slavery and
hierarchy. The gap has never been closed.
“The U.S.has fallen off as a democracy since he took office”, she
says.” And we have seen an extraordinary amount of corruption.
For- profit prisons; for- profit health care. Meddling in other
countries’ business, even to the extent of invading them. An
overweening sense of entitlement; a” we- run- things” mentality.
Globally”.
The president’s neurotic and limitless need for praise and
affirmation has him filling his public speeches with hollow self-
congratulations, a tiresome repetition that has a very great
number of people tuning him out entirely.
But self- delusion is not leadership. One also has to look at the
enablers, who stand to benefit from their loyalty, the JD Vances
and Robert Kennedys and Kristi Noems and Kash Patels.
Cox Richardson sees all this and calls it out. The Guardian
newspaper calls her “the most important progressive pundit”. She
has 3.2 million Facebook followers worldwide.

These are signs of hope that the tide of history is turning. May it
be so.

I never was much of a fashionista, but I have always liked original
necklaces from countries I visited. Just last summer at a family reunion in
B.C, I gave five of my treasures to five granddaughters.
They were a ceramic Celtic cross from Ireland , a circular, stainless-steel
chain enlivened with poinciana- tree pods from Zambia, a large shiny shell
dangling from a black cord from a Jamaican beach, a string of ivory beads
(all legally catalogued and exported) cut from a Tanzanian elephant tusk
and finally, a polished piece of pale-green marble from the island of Iona,
off Scotland.
Imagine then, my delight to learn that a talented artist and craftsman ,
Donald A Stuart, who has a degree from the Ontario College of Art, and
has been a recipient of an Order of Canada ,was coming to Peterborough
to speak about his signature collection of 41 necklaces honouring 41
eminent Canadian women, some living ,some dead, to mark International
Women’s Day, March 8.
All of this is being arranged by our small, modest but important historical
museum, Hutchison House. It is highlighted by a talk by Mr Stuart at 1 pm
on Sunday, March 8 at the Knights of Columbus Hall, followed by an
opportunity to admire the exhibit that same afternoon a few doors away at
Hutchison House on Brock Street.
The exhibit is dazzling in its beauty and originality. It is at present mounted
for viewing now at Hutchison House and will be there until the end of
March. Hutchison House staff just ask for a donation from any member of
the public who comes to view the exhibit.

The museum is to be congratulated on its vision and timing. Each necklace
is mounted in a glass frame. Nearby is information about the achievements
of the woman for whom the piece is designed.
I’m longing to ask the artist if any of the living women so honoured have
seen or even worn his creations.
Stuart’s choices of important Canadian women include historical heroine
Laura Secord, dancer Karen Kain, hockey star Hayley Wickenheiser,
painter Emily Carr ,jazz singer Diana Krall, Olympic medallist Catriona
Lemay Doan ,noted opera singer Measha Brueggergosman , writer of 50
books, Margaret Atwood, political leader and prime minister Kim Campbell,
Canada’s songbird Anne Murray, African- Canadian activist Viola Desmond
, Terry Fox’s mother, Betty Fox, astronaut Roberta Bondar, Governor
General Mary Simon, Supreme Court Justice Bertha Wilson and Mohawk
poet and performer from near Brantford, Pauline Johnson.
It’s a test of one’s feminist knowledge to find out how many of these
inspirational stories one knows.
Artist Stuart has used a wide variety of materials in his craftmanship: wood,
wool, gold, pearl ,silver, onyx, amethyst, coral, driftwood, leather, jade,
stainless steel ,diamonds and ebony.
He has published a beautiful catalogue showing the works, which is
available for purchase.
Katen Kain’ s necklace suggests an Elizabethan ruff. Hayley Wickeheiser’s
is made out of a hockey stick; actor Mary Pickford’s from celluloid, and
Diana Krall’s from antique piano keys. The Governor General’s necklace
features sealskin, and Viola Desmond’s has an “Admit One” ticket. One of
my heroines, Mme Justice Bertha Wilson, who led the Supreme Court in
acquitting Dr Heny Morgetaler in 1988, has a necklace resembling a jurist’s
collar.
It is a fresh feminist tribute to history and the Canadian women who have
shaped the present . High school and college-age girls (and boys) are
especially welcome.

​For months now, I haven’t spoken up in defence of Mayor Jeff Leal, as he
has faced relentless and unreasonable charges of racism. These are
deep and serious charges against one’s character and outlook. They
constitute an assault on one’s reputation than can last a lifetime.
I have been nudged by my conscience to express this point of view in the
interest of fairness. The occasion in question happened at a business class
at Trent University last March 19.
The context is important and the university must, even if late, issue an
explanation. Such an action would benefit educationally the whole
community, something I know Trent aspires to do.
Certainly at the level of post-secondary education it is acceptable and
appropriate to quote and point to, as the Mayor did, certain odious and
pejorative expressions from public leaders at some past stage of their time
in office, A teacher does this in order to demonstrate the quality of the
speaker’s thinking, in order that students may judge and perhaps recoil
from, the accuracy or lack of it. It’s part of the teaching of critical thinking.
Otherwise, how are we to examine the writing of Adolph Hitler in Mein
Kampf ? Or for that matter of Donald Trump in his National Security
Paper.? If one can’t quote directly, for fear of being called a Nazi or a
Communist or a MAGA supporter, how is the evidence to be provided?

In this case, Mr. Leal, a well-informed reader of political history, as befits a
longtime politician, quoted the words of Texas Democratic politician,
Lyndon B Johnson fifty years ago. Johnson was, in the fifties and sixties, by
widespread agreement, a racist, as were most of his southern white
compatriots. He uttered the “N word” frequently, often with different
pronunciations. His own African- American chauffeur, Robert Parker, has
said, “At different times I liked LBJ, and at others, despised him”.
It was in this teaching context that Mayor Leal made reference to the “N
word,” in showing that a biased leader can change for the better. Johnson,
when he ascended to the White House in the sixties, fought successfully for
the passage in Congress of the Civil Rights Act and then in 1965, for the
Voting Rights Act. He acted effectively for racial justice. He also urged FBI
director J Edgar Hoover to prosecute the infamous Ku Klux Klan.
A personal story. After six years of thriving in two black -majority countries,
my husband John and I returned to Peterborough to set up an international
development organization, Jamaican Self Help. We knew both societies
would benefit.
We were determined to show Peterborough the talent and beauty of
Jamaicans, as well as the great needs they laboured under. To do this, we
brought children’s choirs to town for interaction and concerts, and we
needed billeting families. The Leal family of four stepped forward. With
grace and perceptiveness, they welcomed two Jamaican children into their
home for several days. We briefed the billeting families that the visiting
children came from deprived circumstances, and might be unfamiliar with
Canadian homes, including running water and indoor washrooms.
At the end of the experience, Jeff and Karan Leal thanked us for the
opportunity they had all had to grow.
Peterborough has over the years, made enormous strides is stopping
prejudicial name-calling.
This one should stop also.

​The evidence is all over. Our society at every level is dependent upon,
maybe addicted to, cell phones.
I hear the arguing among friends and family with their young people, on
the subject of cell phone use. There’s little eye contact on our streets, with
everyone’s head over their phone. My teacher friends have adopted a box
at the door in which arriving students are trained to deposit their phone, so
that real conversation can take place. Real listening and learning.
A prominent Caribbean feminist lecturer I know no longer accepts
invitations to speak with university classes, so preoccupied are the
students, not in taking notes, but in playing computer games. On another
front, distracted driving has become a dangerous thing as drivers attempt
to multi-task.
This age of hyper-fascination with communication gadgets has snuck up on
us. And no one is immune. It has ensnared many people of every age into
an unwilling addiction. Social scientists and mental health professionals are
sounding the alarm. We are becoming not more connected, as promised,
but further apart, caught up in self absorption.
One hears of people who are resolved to withdraw from their habit, and
they use language such as that heard in Stop Smoking clinics and
Alcoholics Anonymous. “I have no control over this habit. I switch on my
cell phone as soon as I wake. Or I have it set to wake me”.
Then the technology is close at hand all day. No one is far from her phone.
I call it “tethered”. All over the world: information overload. Misinformation
too. Alerts, messages, pinging and sirens, bells and whistles. All anxiety-

producing. “But I use my phone to play soothing music”, a friend says.
Perhaps a walk in the woods?
Technically, I am mostly puzzled and out of step. Heavens, TV didn’t even
come to Kirkland Lake till 1963. And I have little aptitude. Don’t understand
the QR code at all. Prefer paper tickets for all occasions. Yet I’m glad to live
in modern times in many ways. The Canada of 2026 is a proud, not perfect,
place. The freedom to think, read, travel and express opinions is second to
none in the world. At the same time, we are under threat and we need to
know the situation.
Trusted sources to be consulted include the national broadcaster in all
forms. I am particularly partial to the afternoon two- hour TV show “Power
and Politics “on Newsworld, with the well -informed host, David Cochrane,
a balanced and friendly commentator. He’s from Newfoundland. A national
newspaper, except perhaps, for The Post, is a good bet for reliability. The
Star for me. The Examiner holds its own. Facebook and Tik Tok, CNN and
the Wall Steer Journal not so much.
This city is rich is affordable opportunities to learn. I have just come from
immersion in Reframe Film Festival. As a member of Amnesty International
Group 46, I was asked to introduce both our work and the stunning 73-
minute documentary we were sponsoring about the suffering inflicted on
Ukraine by Russia. It was “The Longer You Bleed”, fresh from Hot Docs,
the famous Toronto film festival.
The questions it raised were provocative and stirring, and begged for a
nearby setting where the audience could discuss them. Ewan Waddell, a
young British filmmaker, went to live in Berlin. Germany has had a
generous program of welcome to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war. These
Ukrainian young people, in their second language, are honest in describing
their feelings after a constant barrage of cell phone footage documenting
the carnage at home. One girl says, “I feel dead inside”. Waddell himself
uses the phrase “the pornography of war”. As an artist, he is concerned
with the advance of desensitization. Of dehumanization by too much
viewing.

I think we should all be concerned.
Thanks to Kait Dueck and Eryn Lidster, and the Reframe board headed by
Melanie Buddle for this cultural tour de force.

​One of my granddaughters is 16 and attends an arts high school in the Toronto area.
Singing is her specialty, and she sings show tunes and pop songs around the house all
day. That is a genuine pleasure.
She is thinking about applying to Trent for 2028, so, without applying any pressure, I
decided to look into the various arts courses and extracurricular activities created by
students there. Indeed, there is a student- led theatre company called “Anne Shirley”,
named after the main character in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Canadian classic, “Anne of
Green Gables”.
I met with Helen Whalen ,a twenty year- old student who grew up in Elgin, Ontario and
is president of the Anne Shirley Theatre Company at Trent .
“I do the planning and the prodding,” she says.” I supervise and support”, as she pays
tribute to musical director Justin Hiscox and director-choreographer Braden Ellis.
The company has existed here since their first production in 2003, which was of course,
“Anne of Green Gables”. It started out with 4 students, a small grant from Trent, and
faculty help from Professor Steven Brown. Now 23 years later, it attracts 100 students,
offering two productions in a school year. One, soon to play at Sadleir House, is a
comedy called “Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche.”
Helen, who lives near campus, is a frequent Trent bus- user, as she studies history and
plans on teacher education later, and a career in teaching.
The musical this spring will be Disney’s” Frozen”, running at Showplace from March 13-
21. It has been the practice of the ASTC to mount two plays every year; one a drama
and the other a musical. Other musicals that have been produced over the years by the
ASTC have been “Mama Mia”, ”Annie, ”Catch Me if You Can”” and ‘Charley and the
Chocolate Factory.”
The students have found great cooperation among artists in town in venues and props,
costumes, encouragement and advice.

As a former English literature teacher, I pride myself on keeping up with the arts in
Peterborough. I attend the work of New Stages, Fourth Line, the Verandah Society, the
Theatre Guild including “staged readings”, anything written by Beth McMaster or
directed by Jerry Allen, and various high school productions, including Lakefield College
School. But it was not until introduced by David Goyette, a philanthropist and the main
patron of The Anne Shirley Theatre Company, that I took note of it.
I have a theory that in these fraught and tense times, when one’s head is actually
entertaining dire thoughts of invasion, civil war, economic depression and a loss of
meaning, we should all have an “art”. Even if it is only as an appreciator, a donor, or a
follower, that choice, to experience humanity in its fullness, or to develop a skill or
avocation that is pro-social , will restore balance to life, and refuse any space to tyrants
and evildoers to have the last word.
I hail these people who toil in the arts: write ,paint, sculpt, compose, create buildings,
and gardens, and those who take joy in knowing something about the work and will
spread the word. Then, there is film-making that changes the world . See “Reframe Film
Festival, January 30-February 1 at Showplace and Market Hall.
When I was growing up in Kirkland Lake, my mother intuited this truth. I was marched
down the street to piano lessons, taught for 75 cents a half- hour, by Miss Rice.
Together they gave me a pearl of great price.
I have never needed the arts more.

The breathtaking arrogance of Donald Trump and his henchmen (and women), Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, has shocked us anew.
Breaking all rules of international law — let alone their own constitution, NATO and the U.N. Charter — the U.S. swooped into the hiding place of Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro in the dead of night, caused 40 casualties, kidnapped the president and his wife, Cilia Flores, spirited them out of the country to New York state, and charged them with narco-trafficking and other crimes.
Might makes right, the crudest and lowest of ideas to guide behaviour, is shown in this latest demonstration of immorality in U.S. actions. Committed by a Trumpian regime that Charlie Angus calls “gangster,” it has been followed up by threats to annex Greenland, whose 57,000 souls go about farming and fishing, and have allowed the U.S. to have a base there.
Could Canada be in its crosshairs? That chilling thought must be in the nightmares of our leaders. It is in the heads of everyone I know, weighing heavily on the crowd at the seasonal Liberal gathering in Peterborough on Jan. 7.
In the case of Maduro, no observer makes a case for his honesty or human rights record. Our prime minister, well-informed, made mention of this deposed but democratically-elected president in his remarks about the future of Venezuela.
Then there is Maria Corina Machado — Venezuelan politician and the 2025 winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. The award was something for which Trump actively campaigned. Inexplicably, she has given it to him.
Many Venezuelans celebrated Maduro’s end. But slash and grab is the law of the jungle (perhaps insulting to the jungle), not that of serious states seeking global law and peace. Astute observers suspect the falsity of the reasons advanced for the kidnapping versus the true desire of the United States for Venezuelan oil.
Trump declared it openly. So shrivelled is his conscience, he has no capacity to understand, much less abide by, Article 2 (4) of the United Nations Charter: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of another state.”
“The time is out of joint,” said Shakespeare’s Hamlet about his father’s murder and his mother’s hasty remarriage. We can use this worrying time to learn some lessons about the rapid and frightening American descent into oppression and banditry.
James Monroe was the U.S. president who, in 1823, first articulated the odious foreign policy position that any foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere constituted a hostile act against the U.S. “It is our sphere of influence,” he said. Trump is telling the world by his actions in Venezuela that he is updating the Monroe Doctrine to the equally repulsive “Don-roe” Doctrine.
He gives other totalitarian states, such as Russia and China, permission to do the same. Thus is the world order shattered and aggressors celebrated. America, which since the Second World War created the world order, is now busy destroying it.
This will not make America great again. When we are not terrified, we are laughing. The U.S. is not respected or liked. Or to be imitated. Or to be visited, until the rot is removed. The use we will make of American perfidy is only as a case study of how great empires in the hands of evil men can come to no good, not for their own members nor for humanity as a whole.
We must deepen our own grasp of damaging historical movements, disabuse ourselves of any belief that America is somehow immune to them, and get busy defining and living in a Canada that is deeply democratic and fair.
America seems powerless to stop him. I am donating to Avi Lewis’s campaign for NDP leadership. As a start, we need three strong political parties.