Eggs are fragile. Ergo sensitive. They come in a shell, yes — but that is precisely the problem when you go strolling across them.

Treading on eggs is a crushing business.

No, it is not the eggs’ fault at all that they are so sensitive. Evolution arranged things that way: the shell cannot bear much of a load. No hen in the world would have imagined — hens rarely do imagine — that her eggs would end up as a metaphor in the world of Homo sapiens. “Walking on eggshells” has established itself in polite society as a vivid way of describing the sensitivities of those on the receiving end.

And this phrase is not only trotted out at Easter. Because sensitivities run the full year through.

Do you know the moment — before you open your mouth or hit send — of wondering how the message will land? How great is the risk that one egg or another will suffer a crack in its emotional shell? There have always been moments, and there still are, where I think carefully about how to say or write something. But only on particular occasions, or with people who react with unusual tenderness. And it is usually tremendously tedious, because I am expected to bend myself out of shape in the process. How am I supposed to tell my partner when something about her behaviour bothers me? I do not want to be having the conversation across a tray of raw eggs.

Good heavens, communication becomes quite the ordeal. I think it is fundamentally a good thing that sending a message is preceded by some reflection. Like communication scouts, as it were. Out there with their fine antennae, reconnoitring how the message will land. In the mind and understanding of the other person. So far, so cautious. But is this now simple courtesy and consideration? Or even tact, when a text is checked for crystal-clear meaning, free of possible barbs or jabs? No — it is caution born of fear. When I show consideration for someone, I choose how to equip the message accordingly. When I am tiptoeing across eggshells as I write, I have no choice.

Why is that?

Well, when the other person reacts with extreme sensitivity in communication — for whatever reason — the exchange becomes unpredictable at every turn. And the communication arranges itself around the sensitivities of the recipient. That is how rhetoric dries out. Stories wither. And in the end no one speaks anymore — everyone just nods.

Oh yes, I am all for thinking beforehand, in any communication, about how what is said or written will be received. Not only out of caution. The image of the Emperor with no clothes keeps surfacing here. No one dares tell the old ruler the truth. He might react with embarrassment, or offence, or — heaven forbid — with something closer to reality. And so the great good of exchanging information and ideas begins to erode. If the filtering becomes so clinically pure that the content says nothing at all, what on earth are we still communicating for?

Censorship is not a Roman god.

Censorship is speech and thought, prevented.

And what does all this look like in social media? Do these rules of free expression apply there too?

Counter-question: Yes — why exactly should free speech be switched off or censored in what are often considered antisocial media? There we encounter comments of the vilest sort, which are not, however, the result of free speech, but of the deficient upbringing of hatred-driven contemporaries. Or programmed, toxic bots.

Oh yes, I am worried about our collective exchange of sentences and words. Rhetoric is an art form with variations across every conceivable possibility. Manipulators and fear-mongers stand opposite those who give courage. And as with everything: it comes down to the person — to every single one.

Keep the image, but anchor it with a half-line: “Words are knives. They spread the butter or they stab. The knife can never be held to account.”

Where was I? Ah yes — the eggs. The raw ones. I am often rather fond of them before I crack them into the pan for my scrambled eggs. For all other purposes to which raw eggs might be put, I want no part of it.

The egg would do well to keep its shell out of free speech and free writing.
And for that, it can sit and sizzle in the pan.

And who invented it? No, this time the Swiss and their inventive spirit are not responsible for lobbying. The origin of all lobbying is the petition — and the right to exercise it. The idea behind it was that subjects could present a request to their ruler. It says as much in the Magna Carta of 1215 and in the English Bill of Rights. So this hierarchically defined model of a supplicant is a basic right.

Now the motivated historian naturally asks: did something like a lobby already exist eight hundred and eleven years ago? No, it did not. Or the forecourt, the waiting room, was called something else. “Laubia” — Latin for arbour. A waiting space under an open roof. The word already knows what it’s about. The term “lobby” only appeared nearly two hundred years ago in the United States. Not in Washington — that would have been too obvious. In Albany, in the capital of the state of New York, the term “lobby agent” surfaced from somewhere and from someone. And stayed.

There is an old legend about the name lobbyist. Ulysses S. Grant, former President of the United States, was supposedly besieged by petitioners in the foyer of the Willard Hotel in Washington while enjoying a cognac. Whereupon Ulysses is said to have exclaimed: “these damned lobbyists.” A fine story, but one that will only ever pass as legend.

Lobbyists as a profession are not confined to one country. They are to be found everywhere. That said, the regulations for lobbyists in Canada are considered fairly strict. The rules in Switzerland are regarded as the most lax among the western democracies.

When I worked as a designer for a Member of Parliament here in Ottawa, there was a note on her office door: “Lobbyists are not welcome here.”

Yesterday, Environmental Defence published its annual analysis of the Canadian lobbying registry. The report documents activities between May 2024 and April 2025. Several journalists noticed how many oil and gas lobbyists were moving through political circles. Representatives of the oil industry met with government officials at least five times every day, amounting to 1,318 visits. Prime Minister Carney met with oil and gas representatives 14 times. The previous Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, had admitted the same representatives only twice.

Well, these lobbyists have a right of access, because that is what the law says. The higher number of active players from oil and gas is merely somewhat noticeable. After all, we are all, in this globalised world, caught up in a climate crisis that is growing dramatically more acute.

But that is not the most troubling part in itself. According to Environmental Defence, Energy Minister Tim Hodgson met with oil industry lobbyists 83 times. Yet all requests from environmental experts were simply turned down. That, at any rate, is what Environmental Defence reports.

And that feels unsettling. Because lobbyists represent the interests of companies and institutions, and they are meant to get a hearing with the powerful in politics. When only one side is let in, lobbying is no longer a right. It is bouncer politics.

Lobby is no hobby. It stands as a right in the founding law of the land.

Besides Newmarket and Basel, there are two places on this planet where I have truly landed. The first step onto the volcanic black ground of Lanzarote: as if someone had switched planets and forgotten to tell me. Oh yes, I tried to describe it, but the impressions were too formative — too branded into me — to press what I had seen and felt into a keyboard or onto a sheet of paper. My first step in Barcelona had a similar effect on me, and produced a similar writer’s block.

My thought in both places was: “Can this really be?”

It was only later that I noticed the connection between Barcelona and Lanzarote. Two names, one master: Antoni Gaudí and César Manrique. Both artists turned to nature to learn from its variety and to shape their art from it. That is probably why you will find almost no right angles in the work of either man — nature is neither right nor angular. It is the opposite of everything a drawing board has ever thought.

Whoever allowed themselves to fall in love with Antoni Gaudí’s buildings in Barcelona understands the inspiration he drew from nature. The Casa Batlló shines with a façade that animates the cityscape like a dragon’s back. The Casa Milà looks like a rock polished smooth by the sea, and the Park Güell, with its curved benches of ceramic shards, feels more like something from a fictional world. And the monumental Sagrada Família: Antoni Gaudí built it for 43 years before he was run over by a tram.

Gaudí was a child sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century. A child who suffered from rheumatism. Since he couldn’t play with the other children, he began to observe plants, snails, rocks, and insects. Nature’s architecture knew no right-angled construction — yet it produced load-bearing structures of breathtaking ingenuity. The tree, with its branches, is an everyday example.

Besides nature, Gaudí was drawn to the Gothic and, above all, to the religious faith of Catholics. Pablo Picasso, for that very reason, could not stand Antoni Gaudí.

César Manrique might be Gaudí’s heir. Manrique was a sculptor and painter from Arrecife on Lanzarote. In the mid-sixties he flew to New York and made a name for himself as an abstract painter supported by Nelson Rockefeller. Whenever Manrique mentioned his home island of Lanzarote, the response was either a blank look or comments along the lines of “ah, that volcanic rubbish heap.” Manrique was drawn back to that very black volcanic island, and he swore he would make it one of the most beautiful places on the planet — before the rising tide of mass tourism could spoil it entirely.

César too took nature as his model. Where Gaudí used nature as the foundation for architecture, Manrique did the opposite. He built architecture into nature and made sure that nature had the last word. His remarkable home, Taro de Tahíche, sits inside five lava bubbles from a volcanic eruption; the Jameos del Agua is a collapsed lava tube into which he placed a concert hall, a pool, and a garden; the Mirador del Río is a viewpoint so nestled into the cliff that you can barely see it from outside. He called it “Arte-Naturaleza / Naturaleza-Arte” — art and nature as a cycle. Three colours, nothing more: the black of volcanic earth, the green of plants, the white of signposts.

Both men have sharpened my way of seeing, even though I never got to meet either Gaudí or Manrique. On the trail, I don’t march to get home quickly. I shuffle along at an interval pace. Or, in good Canadian: Stop & Go. That is why I find life itself, and mine in particular, thoroughly tree-mendous. These witnesses to the cycle of the year, standing around and swaying, may lose their leaves — but not one millimetre of their fascination. Yes, I am a wanderer among trees and clouds.

To let yourself fall in love feels extraordinarily natural.

^{By MiljenkoSuljic - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=161237266}

A few days ago, surprise gave way to curiosity. American historian Steven J. Ross caught me off guard with his new book, *The Secret War Against Hate*: fascism made in the USA never went away. It simply retreated below the surface — into the underground, to be plain about it.

And in that very American underground, things were simmering hard after 1945. Ku Klux Klan membership surged sharply as veterans came home to the States from Europe. Some of those veterans felt betrayed by their government — a discarded generation, in their view — because Jewish and Black communities had supposedly been favoured during the war. The drift toward antisemitism and racism had its renaissance. The road to White Supremacy was freshly paved.

The idea of an exclusively white American population? That sort of thinking turns my stomach.

In May 1945, in Midtown Manhattan, in the offices of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee, three spies wrote almost identical memos. “We can fight each of these hate groups as long as we take them on one by one. But if these groups ever find a way to communicate and cooperate with one another, hatred will be carried from the outer fringe right into the centre of society.” The internet and social media weren’t even conceived of as science fiction back then. Another horror scenario imagined by the antifascist groups was that the Nazi outfits might found their own political parties — or burrow into one of the major parties — and eventually seize the government through the ballot box.

What an absurd idea that was.

And this in a country of my old hippie dreams — Easy Rider and Woodstock?

Who were the four godfathers of White Supremacy back then?

Jesse B. Stoner, Emory Burke, James Madole, and George Lincoln Rockwell — four extremely white gentlemen in the league of the master race. One above all, Jesse B. Stoner, stood out across generations as the most influential figure of white supremacy. His “Christian Anti-Jewish Party” had one central aim: genocide of the Jewish population — and then the redistribution of the victims’ assets to white Americans. The man was known simultaneously as one of the leading bomb-makers and as a backroom operator throughout the South. Nearly one hundred bombings of synagogues, Black churches, and clergy residences appear to be his work.

A small anecdote about the eighteen-year-old Jesse B. Stoner, who suffered from polio. Before the war, he wrote to German doctors asking whether they could fix his leg. Their reply: “Yes — as soon as we have conquered America.” A response both pitiful and ice-cold in equal measure.

The other monstrous figure was Emory Burke. He led a group called the Columbians, who made a deliberate show of wearing uniforms styled after those of the National Socialists. The members also trafficked in an expanded rhetoric built largely around extermination.

But these groups had no free pass for their fascist ambitions. There were organisations like the Anti-Nazi League, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee that had no intention of standing by and watching these movements do their worst. Or couldn’t.

One Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and the Columbians and produced weekly reports on whatever wild schemes these people were hatching.

René Fruchtenthal played with fire. He had himself hired by the Columbians as a secretary. He immediately took issue with the chaotic filing system. He proposed sorting it out. The Columbian leadership was delighted. Inside a cigarette lighter, René had a hidden camera, and over three nights he photographed around two hundred documents. The result? The leadership that had been so pleased with him was arrested on the strength of those very documents.

The resistance had teeth. And used them.

Yet a bitter taste lingers: were the United States, from the very beginning, also this — the United White Haters of America? This great land of freedoms, of immigrants from every corner of the earth, with its slogan of being the finest country on the planet?

The tactics of hatred have shifted over the past eighty years. The smoke-filled meeting halls of the forties became encrypted digital forums. But the psychological foundations of hatred have stayed the same.

Oh yes, this is still a Morgensplitter story. Meaning a story that only shares the same early-morning starting point. After waking at half past four and the first sip of hot coffee in my mouth, I wait for a word. No — I don’t wait. I let myself be surprised. This morning the word was “hatred.” Though, in my mind’s eye, I saw not just the word but a headline: “Hatred in the USA.”

Skimming through Steven J. Ross’s texts, my mood shifted into deep unease. And that feeling of powerlessness in the face of lurking, active movements of hatred is paralysing. That is why I couldn’t write a Morgensplitter story for two days. Just so you know.

But then it tips. The mood turns — from paralysis to an old, stubborn question: who pushes back? We do. The peace-minded citizens of a community of people who concern themselves with problems that already exist. Not those who generate new ones.

Yes, they’re out there everywhere. Politicians, academics, and ordinary people like us, with the idea of a democratically minded society.

The citizens of the United States of America are not a people of haters. But they contain large and ever-present traces of ideologies of hatred.

And that is the unsettling conclusion of one historian.

Democracy is not a self-sustaining experiment.

^{Arthur S. Siegel, Februar 1942. Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Collection, LC-USF34-fsa.8d13572».}

Anyone who knows about fading is either a photographer or a show-off. Quite possibly both. And the effects are unpleasant for the audience — or not. That’s really their problem.

I have always struggled with fading out. Not because it’s exhausting — practice makes perfect here too. But the idea that the mechanism might someday become routine, that unsettles me.

Why would I want to remove topics, problems, and events from my mind and from my field of view? Well yes, there are terrible, grating, and disturbing images that push themselves into my line of sight. After all, I can’t selectively pull only the positive or agreeable events from the torrent of news. There are events that exceed the imaginative capacity of a normal, average citizen of planet Earth. Perhaps my imagination is far too overheated and should be treated with medication. When reading certain news stories, it’s not only the content that forces itself into my thoughts — that would make me merely a recording device. Some stories cause tremendous uproar in the synaptic soup of my brain. The associations with my own experiences, the collisions with my own philosophy — that is too much for a fresh morning with a well-brewed cup of coffee. The clear message, however, remains: the news doesn’t care. These are real events, and they occupy the person receiving them. Namely, me.

Would now be the moment to catapult some of these stories into fade-out mode? Do I really want to know how wretchedly the people still alive in Gaza are getting by? Do I really want to watch the course of the climate catastrophe unfold with wildly blazing forests? Do I really want to stand by as fundamental human rights are rapidly dismantled? Do I want the future of my children and grandchildren burned into my mind as nothing but grim visions?

All right then, everyone get ready for a collective fade-out. And: ACTION!

I can’t do it.

I don’t want to do it.

I’m no fader-outer.

So: Fade in. Think it through. Carry on. Of course, some mornings go and sulk in a dark corner on account of this. That doesn’t bother me. I’m not the “it’s-seven-in-the-morning-and-the-world-is-still-fine” type.

Right then, what am I supposed to do instead? Well, what people everywhere in the world do or can do: face it.

Talk to each other, organise, support one another. Isn’t that the oldest trick of Homo sapiens — pulling ourselves out of the swamp together by our own hair? For those without hair, I recommend arms and shoulders. They pull quite well, and willingly enough.

Sometimes it goes only so-so, dealing with the news rather than dodging it. For that, I’ve found a reliable remedy by now — a way to keep activating those positive, hope-kindling fade-ins.

Fading out things that make me uncomfortable. Or things I can’t or won’t engage with. Fading out is ignorance for beginners.

The flamingo protests in Albania.

The ICE OUT demonstrations in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

The Mexican firefighters at the Canadian wildfires.

The reservoir of examples with approaches to solutions is enormous.

And it is a genuine pleasure to fade these stories in.

I am a self-declared fader.
In. Not out.

Oh yes, Switzerland is delightful, and in many areas it has been built to match the postcards at the train station kiosk precisely. Switzerland is committed to its image. I am enormously glad to be a citizen of two countries that fly their red and white with pride.

Exactly one month ago I looked back on Canada Day, the Canadian national holiday. Today, the first of August, a second look-back is due: Swiss National Day. In the looking back, both the Canadian and the Swiss views in the rear-view mirror have come out well. Beneath the big thick bottom line sits a conclusion that holds for both views: I am grateful.

Switzerland, or more precisely the city of Basel, shaped me. As a coin minted in 1955, I got to study and practise the balancing act between history and rhetoric. The Basel dialect is a fast, spirited, and above all witty version of ordinary Swiss German. The subtle humour often feels somewhat British, and it has made Basel’s charm into something one of a kind. Basel’s geographical tightness never bothered me, because people from Basel are border-crossers. Lörrach and Saint Louis are part of Basel, not “foreign countries.” The way of life in and around Basel always struck me as border-crossing in spirit. And I mean that in the best sense.

Yes, Basel prepared me for Canada. And neither I nor Basel had the faintest idea that there was a plan behind Basel’s openness.

The people of Newmarket often have a quiet sense of things. “You come across like a Canadian, Chris,” I hear sometimes. That impression shifts the moment I open my mouth to speak. Canada, and Newmarket especially, did not hesitate. They opened their arms and their doors and took in the old hippie.

No ifs. But with an accent.

Newmarket nurtures several things alongside the town itself and its trails, but above all: community. Slowly and daily I am learning about the characteristic way of life that Canadians take as simply self-evident. Canadians tend to feel more at home in understatement than in the loud “Hey, I’m Canadian!” mode. Hmm — that is also the motto of Basel:

«Mir blöffe nid, mir liefere statt lafere.»

Have I mentioned yet what catches up with me every day? No, not homesickness — I am home, after all — but that deep gratitude toward the two countries that regard and treat me as a citizen with full rights and responsibilities.

That is a pure luxury.

I wish all my friends and those yet to become friends in Switzerland a grateful, firework-free, but hopeful first of August 2026.

A scorching example of chain reactions are the so-called pyrocumulus clouds. These clouds are a phenomenon of the vast, extreme wildfires in Canada, the United States, and above all in Spain and France. The towering walls of fire have begun generating their own wind. The dynamics of the flames give birth to these very pyrocumulus clouds — clouds that spawn lightning and sow fire. The lightning strikes from these clouds ignite new blazes along the march of destruction.

To date, over 300,000 people have been evacuated from the places they call home. 300,000 people. Every single digit of that number is a house someone no longer walks into. Catastrophic fires have always existed, as history shows. But they were mostly local in their fury and belonged to the ordinary cycle of things. Today that has changed. The fires are now travelling the globe — and often burning simultaneously.

Climate change? Or already climate catastrophe?

Who invented this?

There are, as always, various causes to explain a development. Rural depopulation in Spain and Portugal leaves behind neglected, fire-prone landscapes. A feast for every fire source. Monocultures are economically attractive but ecologically fire-dangerous. When resources like land and water are exploited to the maximum, the consequences are waiting for their starting pistol.

Winter in parts of Europe was very wet and triggered a growth orgy of biomass — the plant world in full excess. Then spring came along as the party-wrecker and left everything that had grown to wither. The ravenous fires caught wind of this and set off on their journey into the new dry zones.

And just like that, the buffet of wildfires is served.

Fortunately, the political class is wide awake and actively working on new concepts. Across party lines and national borders, politicians are collaborating with scientists, engineers, environmental experts, and climate researchers to plan and test promising alternative systems. A worldwide coming-together against runaway climate change is reassuring and hopeful for the family of the world’s population.

Oops — wrong script. Sorry.

It is remarkable to watch how the fossil fuel industry, through its lobbyists, fights against exactly these kinds of joint projects. There are hardly any good reasons why coal and gas should be used any longer. Countries that have long been running on nearly one hundred percent renewables exist. No theory — practice.

A dystopia for coming generations — yes. But what frightens me more: politicians who still don’t wake up when they hear “saving money.” Why don’t politicians snap to attention the moment they hear the words “could save money”? Whoever invests now in systems of renewable and far cheaper energy production will need to spend less on the damage later. And as a side effect, save thousands of human lives.

Not lucrative enough?
Come on!

Ice fishing is a popular sport in Canada. Especially on real lakes with a thick layer of ice. Sometimes you’ll find parked vans and a few tents right in the middle of a lake, where people are drilling and fishing away with great enthusiasm. The Canadian climate obliges this icy pastime with solidly frozen ice well into March, or even April.

In Minnesota, in the United States of America, a few citizens took up a similar kind of pastime. People with no genetic connection to Latin America began decorating their vehicles with Mexican flags and stickers. Then they drove back and forth through Minneapolis — to lead ICE agents on false trails. The story spread like wildfire on social media. I jumped on it immediately, of course. Läppli, Švejk — the little man who drives the powerful to the brink with feigned stupidity. Too tempting not to believe.

If only it were true. It isn’t.

By then, Minneapolis was already the epicentre of a massive anti-ICE movement — “ICE Out” demonstrations with tens of thousands in the streets. Documented reports show the opposite: it was ICE itself that deceived the public. Agents appeared in construction vests and helmets — in vehicles with phantom licence plates — so as not to alert citizens.

The operation was called “Operation Metro Surge.”

Two people were shot by ICE agents. One died in custody.

Renée Nicole Macklin Good — January 7, 2026, Minneapolis

37 years old, U.S. citizen, writer and poet, mother of a six-year-old child. Not an activist. Her Honda Pilot was sitting crosswise on Portland Avenue during a large-scale raid; agents reached through the open window, she put the car in gear, ICE officer Jonathan Ross — Iraq veteran, SWAT member, firearms instructor — fired three shots. She died at Hennepin County Medical Centre.

Alex Jeffrey Pretti — January 24, 2026, Minneapolis

37, intensive care nurse at the Department of Veterans Affairs, licensed to carry a firearm, no prior convictions. He was filming agents at the corner of 26th and Nicollet and helping protesters. He was pepper-sprayed, knocked to the ground, surrounded by around six agents. Then more shots were fired — while he was already motionless on the ground. Two Border Patrol officers fired.

Victor Manuel Diaz — January 14/15, 2026, Camp East Montana, El Paso

36, Nicaraguan, arrested by ICE in Minneapolis on January 6th, transferred to Texas, found dead in his cell. ICE called it a suicide; the family disputes this. The official cause of death had not been finalised at the time of writing.

The “ICE Out” day on January 23rd brought around 50,000 people into downtown Minneapolis — in a bracing minus 29 degrees. On January 30th, the “National Shutdown” following Alex Pretti’s death, tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators again filled the city. Minneapolis police reported for that day: no arrests, no injuries, no property damage. One participant put it plainly: “We’ve learned so much from the Floyd protests — now people know you speak up and act peacefully.”

On January 23rd, more than 100 clergy were arrested — at a prayer action at Minneapolis–Saint Paul Airport. That, too, was planned civil disobedience. Not the slightest trace of violence.

When citizens begin to organise and protest peacefully against injustice, that is on the one hand pure democracy, and on the other the spirit of passive resistance. As a former Basler, I have a genuine soft spot for that perennial favourite, HD Soldat Läppli. When humour and childlike open questioning meet in the thousands on the streets, some of the powerful start to sweat.

What a shame the ICE fishing story is made up.

^{File:Village sur glace de Saint-Fulgence3.JPG}

Why did this very Orient sneak its way into the word orientation? Was it a slip of the pen, or simply a lack of imagination when it came to coining a word like this? Oh no — the ancient Romans had a perfectly good reason for choosing the word oriens, because it points east, towards the place where the sun rises. And back then, the compass hadn’t even been dreamt of.

The Homo Sapiens women had to orientate themselves in the world first, and only then get around to inventing things.

How difficult is it, really, to find one’s bearings in the turbulences of the world today — in this smoke-hazed year of 2026? Yes, it is difficult. Despite GPS and artificial intelligence.

This applies above all to the male participants … — they never orientate themselves. Why? Well, we never ask for directions. Never, not ever. We wander and odyssey our way through the landscape until we bump into land. In all likelihood, it was precisely this wandering-about that led to the invention of the map and the compass.

Why should people orientate themselves at all? Surely it’s far more important to ask “Who am I?” than “Where am I?” For the where, I can buy a postcard at a news stand.

On the other hand, in one’s curious phase one does want to know which part of life one is currently in. I, for instance, am on the downward arc of what is usually called the life cycle. That much, at least, I have managed to find out. More pressing than ever, though, is the question of where humanity as a whole is drifting. Finding one’s bearings is growing more complex by the day.

A kingdom for a compass, when you actually need one.

Reading the morning news, what I recognise above all is a flood of outrages quietly becoming normal. And that sends my sense of human orientation into a skid. Things that were once taboo are now routine.

Reports and videos of children shot on purpose are part of breakfast.

And the creeping fascism no longer even makes the coffee taste bitter.

How does one recognise the loss of orientation?

When universal human rights no longer play any role. For instance.

For me, an ageing hippie, those human rights were always the measuring stick.

An orientation as standard.

Until recently.
Until recently?

Oh no — the orientation hasn’t been fogged over or disappeared. There are just a few indigestible chunks of news lying in the way, blocking the view of what is essential in the story of Homo Sapiens.

Good grief, why on earth did I choose this word for my morning splinter? I had no idea where this concept would end up taking me. Have I lost the orientation of the word itself? It seems so.

No, that’s not right either. I’m simply a little surprised at how a single word can lead to a story that is unplanned, spontaneous, and often irrelevant or misleading. The head, along with its cauliflower, needs to be able to orientate itself first.

And that can take a while.

I orientate myself again by looking to the news — and to the people mentioned in it who are holding fast to those universal human rights and acting accordingly.

Those people are still there. Beside all the loudmouths, barely audible.

But they are there. And there are more of them every day.

These people are my hopeful compass.

Who invented it?

The word “climate,” that is. Taken from its Greek roots, climate means inclination — the angle at which the earth’s surface bows towards the sun. Over the millennia, the word “climate” has shifted not just in meaning but in reach. Climate itself could never have dreamed it would spill over from the purely meteorological into the world of economics. When people talk about workplace climate, they mean the employees and the felt reality of working life. When someone worries about the investment climate or the consumer climate, they’ll more likely mean the longer-term average of money changing hands. Some economists even believe they can bottle moods into numbers with a “business climate index.” Whether that holds up is itself a question of climate.

And how is climate doing in the private sphere? When a conversation about life, the universe, and everything flows along nicely, the conversational climate is in good shape. When a climate of trust settles over friends and family, there’s no tilt in sight. When a climate of love has grown over the decades, the everyday problems melt into small, manageable portions.

How does climate actually form?

Remarkably, the factors at play in forming climate are similar in the meteorological and the human versions of the story. If everything good comes from above, then the sun was probably the first boss any of us ever had. The same goes for management, for parents, for teachers — who are, as is well known, regarded as role models. Or would like to be. Air currents shape the weather and, over time, the climate. Trends are the Gulf Stream of society: what circulates makes itself felt. Loudly or quietly. Warmly or coldly. Emotionally or matter-of-factly.

Climate in its most essential form is simply the result of many events, and it fits into this formula:

Climate = Sum of all weather ÷ 30 years

That’s the official formula for calculating climate, more or less. I don’t generally go in for formulas, but this one makes sense. Even to me. So: if that works — why not for human climate?

C = (T + G + R) × W ÷ T

T = Tone from above — the quiet or loud sunshine from bosses, parents, and politicians.

G = Gestures, small ones — kind words expressed, spontaneous help, honest compliments.

R = Rumours in circulation. What gets whispered carries no return address — and yet it changes the temperature.

W = Repetition is the decisive multiplier — nothing becomes climate without repetition. Once is weather. A hundred times is climate.

T = Trust is the denominator that weathers the weathering. The greater the trust, the smaller the storm’s impact.

I have no idea whether this is actually a workable formula. But I like the idea that people — you and I — appear in every variable. We can influence or shape the events, and then hope that the climate comes out humanly liveable, and not merely average.

Right, I think I’ve got it in short form now:

Human Climate = Weather × Repetition ÷ Trust.

Climate is innocent.

Basel is the city of philanthropists.

And that can be backed up with numbers. Numbers with something to back them up are very popular with enlightened readers. In Switzerland, the number of foundations per 20,000 inhabitants stands at 15.1. In Basel, that figure reads an impressive 42.9 foundations. Basel beats the average three times over. Even more striking is the absolute number: 900 charitable foundations in the city of Basel alone. Alongside Christoph Merian and his foundation, several families have set about enriching life in Basel — cultural life above all. The Oeri and Hoffmann families are just two examples. Then there’s Peter Staechelin, and his Globe Air crash of 1967. The man ran into financial trouble, so he offered the city of Basel two Picasso paintings for 8.4 million francs. Ideas for fundraising formed almost immediately. The city organised “beggar festivals,” shoes were polished in exchange for donations, meals were offered, wine cellars were emptied, and on the tram ticket, passengers voluntarily paid a Picasso surcharge. Basel’s chemical industry rounded the amount up by 2.4 million francs. Fair enough — but six million francs were still missing and would have to come from public funds. A referendum was called, and lo and behold: on the 17th of December 1967, 54.2 out of every hundred Baslers said yes, that seemed perfectly fine. Pablo Picasso followed all of this from far away in Mougins. He invited the then museum director Franz Meyer to his home and gifted Basel four additional works. Yes, as a gift. The seventh Picasso in its new home of Basel was a gift from the patron Maja Sacher.

Basel, 1967. The world, 2026. Different scale, same question. What Basel has built over its history in terms of foundations and patronage ought to be a compelling draw for billionaires. The Bezoses, Musks, Zuckerbergs, Thiels, and Gateses of this world surely have large departments full of industrious people working on the problems that money could solve. Famine, investment in the climate emergency, in healthcare, in culture, in the reduction of poverty as such. How proud they must be — the men who, with the money left over, are reshaping the world they’ve helped to shape with their financial largesse.

The headline writes itself:

1% of the population looks after the remaining 99%.

The financial commitment is nowhere near as large as assumed. For the one-percenters among billionaires, this is already heading into postage-stamp territory. With just 170 billion dollars a year, poverty could be reduced to one percent of the world’s population. With 114 billion a year, the infrastructure for clean water could be secured.

These are just a few examples of how dear old money could make for a better world. If it were made available.

Yes, I’m a dreamer, and I’d love to be a philanthropist. But I’m not alone.

Right. Hardly anyone.

Abbreviations have become a habit of life. “Etc.” or “LOL” stand entirely on their own, no questions asked. Why are abbreviations used in language at all? Ah yes — to save time, and back in the SMS era, to squeeze more out of a limited character count. Fair enough.

But what does this R.U.P.T. in the title stand for? I’ve never come across this one before. “Ruthless Unhinged Plutocrats with Totalitarian ambitions”? No, thank goodness we haven’t quite arrived there. Not yet.

Well, it isn’t actually an abbreviation for anything — but those four letters, “rupt,” keep making themselves felt in rather unpleasant ways. In news language and in everyday conversation, they flash up quite clearly in the word salad. Most of the time they show up rather abruptly and leap straight at me. Into the left eye. And then they attach themselves to the end of words and shift their meaning entirely. A sentence experiences an interrupt — a rupture in what was otherwise a pleasant flow of words. Annoying, but there it is. Most often, though, “rupt” turns up in the word “corrupt.” Quite frequently, in fact.

C.O.R.R.U.P.T.

And once again a word like this has a Latin past. That quietly departed language still carries a long, lasting reach. Medicine and science would be unthinkable without it. The Romans called something or someone “corrumpere” when bribery was involved. Oh — knife-sharpening? Or did they simply mean the regular, power-abusing kind of bribery?

What it actually points to is the old and supposedly extinct custom of barter. Before the invention of money — and of the urge to flaunt it — exchanging goods and services was the only way to keep trade moving. The basic principle of exchange is still very much part of our culture. The only difference between ancient barter and today is that the exchange now happens under the table and in the back room. The public, you see, doesn’t much care for watching politicians being handed thick, well-stuffed envelopes. Yes, that works for well-stuffed politicians too, who receive thick envelopes… And then the building permit goes through just fine.

Well now — the old Roman pipes up again. He points out that “corrumpere” carries even richer meanings in its little bag. Things like “depravity” and “decay.” Bribery is the symptom. Decay is the disease.

No, corruption is not a minor offence. It can very well become a verdict. And then the world is once again incorruptibly in order by seven in the morning.

R.U.P.T.

In Basel this was part of my work. For my Neubad Magazine I conducted conversations, the kind one generally calls interviews. People with interesting stories sat across from me and were meant to answer my questions. Fortunately, most of them talked willingly and at length. About a project, about their lives, their visions, their dreams. Exactly that: raw material. Unhewn, sometimes stubborn.

These were always extraordinary moments: listening to someone and drawing out the red thread, the unexpected thing, from the conversation. I remember my very first interview, sitting across from pharmacist Geni Meyer. I noted down every word, every comma, determined not to miss or overlook a thing. And this while recording the conversation. Writing the story afterwards was correspondingly laborious. Too much information — the text dams up behind the facts, goes nowhere.

In the next conversation I wrote nothing down at all. I leaned back, listened, asked the odd question in a relaxed sort of way, and watched. And there it was: the story grew from an image, not only from the gathered facts. The man gestured as he spoke, to colour his story. His hands told it along with him. Louder than the words.

With all that experience behind me — no problem, right? Wrong. This first interview for my CANARTA project was the première for the book, for canarta.net. Now or never. All or nothing. The thoughts circled before I met Bob, before I met Bob to talk.

Canarta — my project for Canada’s creatives who don’t yet have a stage. Just briefly. Back to Bob.

Bob was the première.

Camera rolling. Sound too. Action!

The moment Bob began answering my first question, I heard that soft click in my head. My nerves lay down quietly and listened as well. Bob spoke honestly, thoroughly, and with passion about his painting, his doubts, his visions and wishes. The clicking in my head grew stronger and I grew calmer. I would never have expected the conversation to be so charged.

A painter who cannot recognise certain colours. And carries on regardless.

The rush of the moment lingers. I left the scene of the story with a wide smile. Bob’s story had taken shape. The person, the painter, the doubt — all there.

A few images won’t let go of me. Not yet.

Canarta has its first interview behind it. And I know now: this is only the beginning.

No, you won’t be able to read the story publicly for quite some time. It will be available on the 1st of December 2027 in the Annual Book of CANARTA, alongside stories of further Canadian artists from music, painting, storytelling, acting, and photography.

Every art deserves a story.

Mind you, I had heard the word before — I just couldn’t picture what it meant. Naturally, I went straight home and told my parents about the terrible rhetorical assault I had suffered at school. My mother’s explanation was simple: “We own a house and people think we’re rich.” People who own capital. Wealth.

Aha.

And what exactly is wrong with that — why does “Your parents are capitalists” sound like an accusation? The experience of not knowing, of being caught in some vague indictment, never quite let me go. There was something threatening about being assigned to a group that seemed to stand for something bad.

There was only one remedy, and it happened to be one of my favourite pastimes: reading books. Oh là là — the library did the rest. I went looking for “capitalist” and found an entire world. From asking “what is a capitalist?” there emerged the most varied economic models, competing political ideologies, and different versions of how a prospering society might look. Purely by capitalist accident, I had opened Pandora’s box. Though that image doesn’t quite fit. I wasn’t only reading about evil and misery, or about hope locked in a jar — I was discovering a whole spread of possibilities. A confusing and inspiring experience, once the range becomes too wide to take in at a glance. But back to capita. Or better yet, per capita. To what each head in a population might have, and what their way of life might look like. The range of ways to shape a nation and its possibilities is staggering. Many heads began to smoke as they tried to feel out workable models for the state. From dictatorship to democracy, from monarchy to welfare state, from Woodstock to Silicon Valley — and none of them fully thought through.

During my apprenticeship as a commercial clerk — not as a merchant or entrepreneur as such — the methods of business life became clear to me in rather a bitter way. In the eyes of a sixteen-year-old who secretly considered himself a hippie, the whole business of business was suspicious from the start. Apprentices in the workshop, hands greasy with oil, were paid less than those in the clean, air-conditioned offices. Why? One day I asked the director of the crane factory responsible for my training. The man looked at me with some amusement and said: “You’re right, Christian. From now on you’ll receive the same wage as the apprentices in the workshop.”

The director wasn’t just having a laugh. He was crafty. And there I stood: fifty francs less a month, mouth open.

Per Capita List.

Since I’m already at it, I’ll keep sharing from the business toybox. After my apprenticeship, I wanted to open a vinyl record shop. I floated the idea to my parents. My mother was appalled: “Now you want to become one of those shady businessmen and fleece people, Christian?”

“Umm… no, Mama.”

That brief conversation has quietly shaped my entire career as an entrepreneur. Businessman, yes. Scheming? No. That worked out better some times than others. But the thought of a fairer world — for people, animals, and the world we share — never quite let me go either.

“Always Woodstock, damn it.”

And now, in what one might call the Spanish-feeling age of a senior, the urge to improve things grows more insistent. Not the great wide world, but the small, manageable world of my friends, my neighbours, my family — how does one improve that without turning into a know-it-all?

Lively conversations about ideas, visions, experiences, and life itself are a good start. Or about people, capital, and the craftiness of life.

Per Capita List.

What in the world is that supposed to mean?

Transparency? Well, of course. That’s an active state we citizens expect from our government. After all, they were elected by us, should speak accordingly, but above all make their actions and plans public. In other words, to practise transparency — again and again and again.

A worthy aim, simply stated, yet apparently difficult for certain temporary holders of political power to grasp or put into practice. In the orange south of Canada, there is a fine example of what lived political transparency looks like in practice. Barely had the new administration taken office, a little over a year ago, when they made their plans public in a document. Well, credit where credit is due. The paper is called “Project 2025” and can hardly escape a certain logic in its choice of name.

Across more than 900 pages, the goals of Project 2025 were set out in full. No, very little was softened, watered down, or sugar-coated. All the goals stand clearly in black and white on the pages of transparency. I took the trouble — I took the liberty — of defining all 320 goals of Government Orange as a task list. Of those announced tasks, 138 have been completed to date. A full seventy are currently in progress.

How impressive is that?

Hold on — let’s not fling judgements around quite so fast. The devil tends to lurk somewhere, or as in this case, in the famous detail. That’s where he feels most at home.

Ouch.

That is far more transparency than I would ever wish for. I can only hope democracy isn’t reading along — otherwise it might faint on the spot.

Closing your eyes doesn’t help anymore either. George Orwell would agree.

So. Let’s take a look inside.

When Zen turns sour, you can bet it’s the sourness doing the turning. The Zen of free speech, free thought, free action — it’s under threat. From whom, you ask?

Well, here’s the irony: from censorship itself.

The word “censorship” always reminds me of one of the many gods in the Roman Empire a few thousand years ago. The god of crossing out or correcting things — a handy fellow for the writing trade, I thought. Because proofreading newspaper articles, essays, or political speeches is rarely called censorship. That would set alarm bells clanging in competition with each other. It’s merely corrections for grammatical offences, structural issues, and the basic message of a text. To soften the word’s punch, it was renamed “pre-censorship.” So the action before the actual censorship? No — this is still the innocent version, the warm-up act before a text steps out in public.

Now, to demonise censorship outright would be too simple.

Before I publish a text — this one, for instance — I pre-censor this early-morning outpouring of words a little myself. I don’t want to come across as a grammar thug or stumble into the day completely incomprehensible. The danger lurks around every corner when, before the first proper thought has arrived, I sidle up to a word and fabricate a story from it that was never planned. It came into being on the basis of pure spontaneity. So am I practising self-censorship?

No. Not necessarily. I’m practising grammar and storytelling without any censorial ulterior motives. That is, without thoughts like: “Do I need to worry about consequences once this story goes public?” That would be real censorship — reaching for the red pen out of fear of reader reactions.

Censorship, then, that fearsome instrument of pruning. The word itself was no Roman god, but it did have a Latin cousin: “censura.” Back then, the Romans didn’t understand censorship as the suppression of texts, but simply as the judging or assessing of them. Only later did it curdle into the bitter version we know — the official control of writings, media, and public expression.

Oh dear. Creativity has just broken out in a cold sweat. It’s wondering whether its job is at risk when every thought, every vision, every idea falls under the guillotine of the state apparatus the moment it’s spoken aloud. Will creativity become a purely private pleasure, never allowed out the door? Probably.

Now, to demonise censorship outright would be too simple. Because a certain degree of control over the effects of publicly released information strikes me as entirely reasonable. I’m rather in favour of incitement to violence being a criminal offence. Likewise, racist or sexist incitement has no place — and no business — in a humane society. The same goes for people and bots spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories.

Censorship turns sour when it tries to silence criticism. That’s when I turn sour too. Criticism is a duty, not merely an exercise. Because criticism isn’t the dismissal of ideas — it’s their improvement. Critical thinking and writing — above all by the media — directed at elected politicians: that’s what makes up the fourth estate. Not only in Denmark.

And that fourth estate isn’t crumbling quietly. It’s crumbling rather loudly. When a state controls the media, who controls the people temporarily holding power? That makes me nervous and sour — the way this spread of censorship is moving.

Fortunately, there are journalists who follow their ethos of reporting and critical commentary. They can afford to, because they’re independent. Every morning I used to search for and subscribe to such free and critical journalists — just to get at least some overview of the world I’d rather like to go on living in.

The collecting became work. So I stopped collecting — and started curating.

Now and today that’s much easier to manage, since I’ve automated the collecting: www.infacted.ca

That’s my personal list of independent journalists and media, to quench my thirst for fact-filled news.

So the fourth estate doesn’t go quiet.

Right then. Now we both know what I get up to after writing the morning splinter.

So the axis is something good, something to orient yourself by. Yes? Well, I can’t pull an X or a Y over on you. That equation you’ll have to work out yourself. Many axes feel right at home in mathematics. And because axes are so shamelessly comfortable there, they put ordinary people in situations that make both the head and the cerebellum smoke. Numbers get replaced by a Y or even an X, interrupted by brackets, just to hold the whole thing together. Mathematicians call this strange contraption of letters and numbers simply: the formula.

Formula 1, Formula 2, a formula for everything. Counting helps.

Ever since mathematics — and algebra in particular — confronted me with formulas, I’ve had a strange relationship with the axis. And with formulas. Yes, I could make things easier for myself and start with the coordinating.

I beg your pardon? Easier? My life WAS easier, before I met an axis that introduced itself as part of a coordinate system. I could imagine nothing — absolutely nothing — of what that meant. Or perhaps I simply didn’t want to. Oh, how I longed for real problems — the schoolyard, lunch, rain. All of it better than formulas. Those things can jolly well sort themselves out. Without me!

Mathematicians aren’t the only ones who cast a crooked light on the axis for me. Politicians are quite fond of a skewed axis, too.

What on earth possessed George W. Bush to work a phrase like “the Axis of Evil” into his speech? With that, he showed the world where “evil” was crouching. The speech after 9/11, in January 2002. His axis points an imaginary middle finger at Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. That was probably the beginning of the formula for stirring up the world in the Middle East. But Bush isn’t the whole story.

When a topic revolves around an axis, or even lies along the same axis — well, suddenly the debate has structure. The axis is connecting, after all, when it runs between two points. It’s easy to find your bearings along an axis. And when the axis links two opposing forces, tension builds.

And right after that, another formula.

Where exactly is my own axis of life? First of all, my axis doesn’t lie still — it moves. Mostly along with me. My personal imagined axis is loaded with thousands of stories. I call it “the axis of experience.” And in its essential points, my axis is somewhat more positive. On my axis, people are milling about — some looking in the same direction, and some wanting exactly the opposite.

And this axis needs no formula. No brackets, no X, no Y.
Just two points — and the path between them.

The morning sky tipped into unhealthy shades of orange and yellow. The sun knocked against a murky broth. In vain.

Well-advised is anyone who owns a door and a few windows they can close. Harder hit are the people who currently have no house, no home to retreat to. They want to breathe without getting sick.

How do you wake up when you’re sleeping under a bridge and the air is yellow — and nobody has told you why? No phone, no explanation — just yellow air and eyes that burn. The eyes begin to water, breathing becomes a fight for clean, fresh air. There are shelters — temporary sleeping spots that promise warmth or clean air. These people hope a room will stay open during the day, too. For the people without a roof and without windows.

Staying outside makes you sick.

Paediatric lung specialist Kevan Mehta from McMaster Children’s Hospital describes the health risks in the currently smoke-laden air from the wildfires. When people already suffer from illness — which is common among the temporarily homeless — the burden of smoke in the air makes things considerably worse.

“Many health issues are tied to socioeconomic status and to what people have access to. Even now, we essentially regard clean air as a privilege,” he said.

Around 15,400 people in Toronto currently have little or no access to the privilege of clean air. Many of these people are homeless right now — a number that has more than doubled since 2021. That’s what the City of Toronto’s Street Needs Assessment survey, conducted in October 2024, shows. In Newmarket, too, the number has now nearly doubled, to close to 900 people.

“Clean air is a privilege!”

Climate change is placing new demands on those responsible for policy. More cooling spaces, N95 masks, high-performance air filters in emergency shelters — these bring immediate relief. Social workers going directly to encampments, too. But extreme weather events like these make a larger need plainly visible: social housing as core health infrastructure, for one.

Municipalities have established emergency plans for extreme cold and extreme heat, cushioning extreme temperatures — or poor air quality — with additional shelter spaces. In Toronto, a support plan for people is triggered when wildfire smoke and an air quality advisory are issued. The City of Kingston has a summer plan with protocols for supporting particularly vulnerable populations — including people experiencing homelessness — during extreme weather events. Air quality included.

Canada has known about extreme conditions with and from the weather for some time. But the response to the changing climate remains makeshift. The children and their children’s children are the groups who will live — and have to live — with the increasingly severe consequences.

I had long considered these scenarios as isolated cases or extreme situations. That’s yesterday’s story. The climatic changes no longer act alone — they interlock. Where it gets hot, the water disappears. Elsewhere, cities stand knee-deep in it. Yes, I worry about the children and their children.

The challenges are no longer exceptions. They are the new normal. How helpful would concrete and swift investments in climate protection be, for example? While we wait, the total cost of all the damage becomes enormously more expensive. And for many people, more deadly.

Yet the current frantic clamour for oil and gas pipelines seems to be part of the solution.
Appearances deceive — or sanctify the means of the lobbyists.

He seems likeable.

So does she.

And all of that is decided in three seconds — how a person is put together, what they project? Well, look at that — speed dating is an ancient model.

When I meet people for the first time, I start an internal stopwatch. Three seconds is a ridiculously short time to sort someone out. The impression drifts quickly in one direction — but does it hold?
Yes. An impression. Made once. Barely correctable after that.

This flimsy three-second moment gives me a picture of a whole human being?
Hold on — the impression game is no one-way street. The person across from me is doing exactly the same thing. No, not consciously. It runs entirely without awareness — evolution on autopilot.

Do I want to know what impression I made on them in those three seconds?

No.

I’m quite busy enough with my own impressions. They need sorting, after all, before they can count as a verdict.

What do you mean, verdict?
My lower or upper consciousness is judging a person in three flimsy seconds?

Exactly.

Then I’d very much like to know what’s feeding that hard-nosed verdict. What does the factual picture look like?
Oh, I do love that short little phrase when I’m confronted with a claim — yes, from the person across from me.

So, the facts on the ground for the three-second act? Well, they stand on thin legs. Probably. Because those legs are one’s own experiences up to this point in life, which will go ahead and declare what type of person this is.

Come again? That’s all the brain has to offer?

Yes. Apparently. And at lightning speed.

Getting to know someone — with verdict attached — is TikTok on ecstasy. Everything at once, judgment after two or three seconds of scrolling.
The person steps forward, holds their body in some particular position to form the corresponding body language, shows their face, gesticulates with their limbs.
Or doesn’t. And yes, then the person opens their mouth, says something or other, and thereby also becomes a plaything of the inner jury.

What kind of shoes is he wearing? Her blouse is quite colourful. But well put-together.

Three seconds. And still: shoes. Blouse. Posture. Verdict — and then a judgment is passed? Yes, but only internally, of course.

In recent years I sometimes try to dissect the impression. Or better yet, lay it out on the table of understanding. Why did my impression of person X or Y turn out this way and not another?

And then something creeps in that bothers me.
Often I simply don’t know what led to that inner verdict.
Why do I find this person so likeable?
And that other one not.
Does a person’s social standing also contribute to the impression?
Probably, but unfairly.

Yes, I’m biased. And with that, I’m out of the game of objectivities.
I can’t help wanting to come away with a good — no — a curious and open-minded impression. I want to find out more about the person who crosses my path or steps on my toes in those first three seconds.
That’s what makes getting to know someone so extraordinarily interesting.

Yes, I trust, initially, that a person has something to tell me — consciously or unconsciously — and that they’re not a serial killer.
So far this approach has served me well.

I’m still here. And I’m still writing.
I like people very much. Even after the first impression.

The residents of Collins First Nation lived in a remote community with no road access, more than 200 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. Earlier this week, they had to get themselves to safety — the only way out was over water.

Then the survivors of the Collins First Nation community began to wonder. Canadian authorities have so far sent no help and offered no support. The problem has an almost absurd, farcical quality. The Indian Act recognises individual residents as First Nation People. But the community itself — Namaygoosisagagun as a collective — it does not. A distinction that looks like a footnote on paper. And in real life is a catastrophe. And so it fell through the cracks of the funding system.

Linda Debassige, Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation, told The Canadian Press that community members had barely escaped the disaster. They received no warning about the fire, and neither the province nor the federal government offered any support during the evacuation.

Thirty-nine First Nations carry the name Namaygoosisagagun — and are acting where province and federal government hesitate. The council is supporting their members with hotel stays and basic necessities like food and clothing.

“We don’t know if we’ll be reimbursed, but that doesn’t matter,” said Linda Debassige.

“Our concern is to support this community after the federal and provincial governments have failed them.”

Several other First Nations in the province, including the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nation, are also collecting donations for the community at their powwow this weekend.

Helen Paavola, Chief of Collins First Nation, told The Canadian Press that she had heard from Gull-Masty for the first time since the fire broke out, on Friday afternoon. Mandy Gull-Masty has been Minister of Indigenous Services since May 2025 — the first Indigenous person to hold that office.

“I’m not defending anyone anymore, because I am angry, and with every day that passes I get angrier, because I am suffering, my people are suffering, and we have nowhere to go,” she said.

If Namaygoosisagagun does not receive emergency and reconstruction assistance — the kind that recognised First Nations are entitled to — a community like this one may never be rebuilt. Its members have spent decades building up the Collins community.

“We don’t belong here. We belong back home, in the bush.”

^{Photo: Wade Wastaken}