The dialogue disguised itself as subtitles, since it sat at the bottom of the frame. As a small distraction, the piano-operator served up matching chords for each emotional moment. With the barest of means, the senses were offered their finest experience.

Here’s to the silent film, with imagination and accessories.

2026. The silent movie is back.

No, this time it’s not running in a cinema, and the pianist isn’t playing. He plays no role anymore. The renaissance of the silent film was unveiled yesterday in Washington — not in a cinema, but in the White House. The developers placed great weight on two things, and they carried both through with conceptual rigour.

First, Silent Film 2.0 is produced exclusively for the President of the USA. With him, that is, in the leading role. Second, all subtitles have been dispensed with.

Great approval everywhere, storms of enthusiasm were hardly to be stopped, and the media fell over themselves with excitement. The silent film breathes entirely new standards into political speeches.

America — the land of unbordered opportunity.

How did such a media revolution in the film business even come about? The drumroll heralding this new discovery of the silent film was an event at the White House. A young blonde woman had gathered footage from three media houses — CNN, Politico, and MS Now. In one cozy little hour, she presented it to the President of the United States of America. In his little noggin, it went “click” — just like that — and led to an announcement. The staff of the three media houses had their access to the White House press room revoked.

Being born-and-bred press houses, these three did not stay silent about this disgrace — they reported it at once, with drums and trumpets blaring, on their own channels. What an idea! The other media outlets picked up on the event and passed word along to the so-called pool, the TV stations. The pool of TV stations that, for reasons of space, get to fly aboard Air Force One. There, seats are drawn by lot or divided up fairly — who gets to travel, when, and where. Oh yes, always aboard Air Force One. Well, these pool workers decided, unanimously, to refuse the so-called footage — meaning, the recordings of the President — the next day. Which, in translation, means that no cameras or microphones would be present at the next presidential event.

The next day, the President stood before his new helicopter landing pad. Cameras rolled. Sound: none. The US President stood before the assembled crowd to open his new helicopter landing pad. In excellent picture quality, viewers watched the locally present people, in yellow vests and white helmets, listen to the President. But these were the only people who got to hear his speech.

All the other viewers, in front of their TV sets or their phones, watched with anticipation and even amusement as the most powerful man in the world moved his lips, fumbled with a pair of scissors, and cut a ribbon. Then he spoke again. But in a silent film that takes its role seriously, no sound is to be heard.

The film stays silent. The world doesn’t.

The word “private” used to be a strict instruction not to meddle in, let alone trespass upon, this so-declared sphere. I still remember clearly the first government citizen surveys. The questionnaire was relatively harmless. How many people live in house XY? for example. And yet the public outcry was enormous. The first federal census took place in 1850 and asked only for name, age, sex, marital status, occupation, and confession — that is, which faith group one belonged to. A simply knitted survey, then.

A hundred years and a few wars later, social media came around the corner and turned the private into a public affair. Show business for the exhibitionists of private life boomed. Or still does. Because the likes on one’s own online profile became more important than the once fiercely guarded privacy. What used to be a normal “This here is private!” turned into the marketplace of vanities. People put themselves on display and hope for approval. What was voyeurism yesterday is on public view today on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. Forever.

Private is precious. And costly.

Once upon a time, private property was a simple story: a house, a car, a family, and a status. That has changed drastically. Today we share and stream as if it might be banned tomorrow. The original sense of sharing — empathy, food, prosperity — has become the sharing of the private. The technical term for it is the “subscription economy” — we own nothing anymore, we rent our lives back, cancellable monthly.

The record collection means nothing anymore. We rent music, films, and books. We don’t buy software, we subscribe to it. In this digitalized world, private ownership no longer means mere material wealth. No — the protected private, the thing that shields us from total dependence on digital platforms, is the new currency.

Whoever, decades ago, went home after work, dropped into the chesterfield, and spent time with the family, was left alone by the company for that stretch. Today, though, we carry the office in our pocket and are perpetually on standby. Permanent availability lives in our heads, not in the employment contract.

My phone is switched on, but silent, with none of that tiresome vibrating. I’ve voted the thing out as master of my time. Time flies, as everyone knows — ergo my phone is set to flight mode. Permanent performance is easy enough to decline.

Real private life today happens wherever no camera is running and no status update gets shared.

Data is the real gold — complete with its own intoxication. The famous market is hungry for information about us, the users. Mostly, we hand over our innermost selves freely — the receipt for the attention we get in return. Private discretion has become the most valuable currency. Motto: my data belongs to me! We decide what the world may and may not know.

Is that good for the dignity and sovereignty of our private world?

Oh, thank you very much.

I used to think the wool sweater — der Wollpullover — was also a player in this game of words, riding along on that “Woll-”. But that theory, it turns out, was too itchy and too high-maintenance to hold up.

Whether I feel Wollust, or simply feel like something — wohl Lust — depends a good deal on the mood of the day. Is it ready to do something with gusto, or does chilling out take the lead today? I can’t recall, in the last seventy years — no, let’s say fifty-five — ever having no desire at all. No. Not really. Desire, for me, was tied to whatever I was about to do next. Do I feel like getting up? Sure do. Is it a pleasure to get down to my work? You bet. And when a day is shaping up to be especially full of delight, it’ll have delightful things in store as well.

But at some point, someone in a dark chamber deep in the late Middle Ages took offence at desire. Wollust in particular didn’t sit well with the guardians of morality and their narrow view of the world. Wollust was put under the magnifying glass and onto the examining table. First these people identified the term “sensory pleasure” under the microscope of the moralists. Then the focus of Wollust was narrowed down to nothing but the pleasures of the flesh. And that was the end of Wollust’s innocence. The word — and the acts of Wollust — landed on the index.

Poor Wollust. From pleasure to sin in three sentences.

At some point, after the gloomy Middle Ages, desire tore itself loose and struck out on its own. That’s how it slipped, in modern times, back into the everyday vocabulary of pleasures. Feeling like coffee, feeling like an outing, or feeling like sex no longer carry any mortal-sin weight. Desire, as a word, has become downright family-friendly. Whoever reaches for Wollust these days — the word itself — comes across as old-fashioned, even ironic. A dusty relic from the past that has largely lost its punch. And desire has lost its punch too, for that matter.

Desire is mostly delightful and appealing, as long as it doesn’t show up as part of “loss” — Verlust. Then whoever’s affected usually loses all desire in a hurry.

Do I feel Wollust today, about joining the Terry Fox Run?

Did Terry Fox, I wonder, feel like running a marathon’s worth of distance every single day, through all that pain?

I think he did.

Before I finally settled in Canada ten years ago, I heard and read about this man named Terry Fox. Every year in September, the Terry Fox Run was held across Canada, raising donations for his cancer research foundation. Who was this man, who took on all this agony to run a marathon of 42 kilometres every single day, right across Canada?

Terry complained of knee pain after a car accident in November 1976. A year later came the diagnosis: cancer. His right leg was amputated above the knee. Still in hospital, the idea for the long run across Canada is said to have taken shape in Terry’s head. The idea was simple: Terry runs across Canada and raises money for cancer research. With only one healthy leg.

“Somewhere the hurting must stop” became the motto of Terry’s project.

For a full 18 months, Terry trained daily and covered 5,000 kilometres in preparation. He had already lined up sponsors such as Imperial Oil, Adidas, and Ford. Terry developed his own running style to make progress: two hops on the healthy leg, then weight on the prosthesis. The stump was still often bloody and raw.

On April 12, 1980, Terry dipped his prosthesis into the Atlantic in St. John’s and filled a bottle with sea water. He meant to empty it into the Pacific on the West Coast. That’s how you pack a great goal into a single bottle. Then began the daily grind of his great run, the Terry Fox Run.

Before dawn each day, he wanted to run 42 kilometres. Every single day. He fought spring storms in the East, blistering heat through Ontario, and, of course, immense pain. By May 6, in Port aux Basques, Terry had already raised $10,000 — about a dollar per resident. That’s how the formula “a dollar per Canadian” was born. In the Atlantic provinces and Quebec, Terry and his great run drew little attention and generated few donations. But once he reached Ontario, things turned in his favour. A police escort accompanied him, and he met then Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. What’s more, the Toronto Star devoted a weekly column to Terry Fox and his run.

How did Terry manage, despite the foul weather and the pain, to never want to give up? The mix of courage, endurance, and above all stubbornness was likely the driving force. But these efforts took their toll on Terry’s health. Dizzy spells, coughing fits, days when he could barely stand. Terry ran anyway. A marathon a day. A marathon a day.

On September 1, 1980, after 5,373 km, just short of Thunder Bay, the end of Terry’s run announced itself: lung cancer. In February 1981, Terry turned the motto “A dollar per Canadian” into fact. He raised $24 million, which matched exactly the population count of the time. Geographically, he never reached his goal. On the donation ledger, he did.

Terry died on June 28, 1981, in New Westminster, one month before his 23rd birthday.

Terry was named the youngest Companion of the Order of Canada and the winner of the 1980 Lou Marsh Trophy.

Today, a documentary about the Canadian legend Terry Fox is being presented to audiences at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival. It aims, above all, to introduce the man Terry Fox himself, with many of his original comments.

Tomorrow, Sunday, the annual Terry Fox Run takes place across Canada. At 8 in the morning, I’ll pull on my “FINISH IT!” t-shirt and run the 2026 Terry Fox Run alongside many thousands of Canadians. Donation included.

“Somewhere the hurting must stop.” Terry’s story runs on.

^{Photo: Glenn Roger Photography}

In June 1967, the Fab Four, that is, the Beatles, took love in hand. Musically and lyrically. And this was by no means the first time the four lads had busied themselves with love. But this time the BBC came with a concrete request. The British broadcaster dared, with “Our World,” something never done before: a live satellite broadcast meant to pull hundreds of millions of people worldwide in front of their fuzzy screens. The Beatles were to deliver a song that worked without translation. John Lennon sat down and wrote “All You Need Is Love.” That was the simple message that would be understood on practically every continent of planet Earth.

In the studio, a loose party mood reigned. Colourful balloons, hippie decor with flowers, and posters with the song title in various languages. The audience was made even more colourful by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, and Keith Moon. Naturally, they all belted out the chorus along with everyone else. George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, closed the finale with a musical fireworks display. Short snatches of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, “Greensleeves” at half tempo — and a piece of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” as the closing note.

And it was exactly in this finale that a small, loveable mistake hid itself. George Martin assumed that after so many years, both song pieces were free of licence. Assumptions are dangerous. What George overlooked was this: the melody of “In the Mood” was indeed freely available, but the specific arrangement was still hanging onto its copyright — a detail that, in the rush of live preparations, simply slipped through the cracks.

Ouch.

The copyright itself, and whatever lawyers were involved, looked past this mistake with love, though.

All you need is love. And a bit of luck.

“Penus” meant the storeroom of the house, and whoever penetrated it had broken in exactly there. And likely helped themselves to the provisions with great relish.

Wait, though — the word wasn’t always negative and culinary. Quite the opposite. Whoever was said to have a “penetrant mind” was considered especially sharp-witted. This flattering label didn’t last long — at some point, apparently, sharp-wittedness got tiresome too.

Penetrant went to work on many attributes that had, until then, gone untouched. Whoever has a penetrant smell to call their own has a personal-hygiene shortfall to answer for. Those standing nearby suffer even more.

The one with the penetrant voice likely has more trouble making new friends. Ears suffer far too much under the vocal output, because loud pushiness rarely counts as a good trait.

Of the original, many-sided, rather positive word Penetranz, only the negative and unpleasant part has survived.

And yet: perhaps penetrance has more faces than everyday usage admits. Isn’t it drive, when someone penetrantly pursues a career and then actually gets it? Someone who doesn’t give up, who doesn’t slink off meekly when the first attempt doesn’t pan out.

Someone who penetrantly insists on human rights. Who penetrantly rejects fascist thinking. Who penetrantly pulls the community along when it grows weary. That’s not a vice. That’s backbone.

Aren’t those the more positive sides of penetrance?

What happened to the word over these two thousand-plus years, that the obvious statement, when it comes to the penetrant-ish, always tips into the negative?

Ah, it probably all depends on the situation. Granted, that has something to it. Anyone who has ever failed to escape a salesman with a diploma in penetrance knows how long five minutes at the front door can feel. Persistence then gets felt as less of a virtue.

When penetrant behaviour shows up as pushy or forward, it becomes unpleasant — or dangerous — above all for the female side of the Homo sapiens.

And still — the word itself can’t be blamed. A term is only the delivery vehicle from mouth to mind. Like any tool, it all comes down to the user, as to how things turn out when it’s put to work.

But at least this much works in penetrant fashion.

And I, for one, will now penetrantly make my way into a fresh, brand-new day.

Who was this instruction meant for, or written for? For the discreet? Or for the accomplice, the one you tell: shut your mouth, or it’ll cost you the stage?

As of yesterday, Ed Sheeran, one of Britain’s most successful musicians, has found himself in the media spotlight. Ed has had an unusual career, one that catapulted him from YouTube and the smallest of stages in 2011 to world fame.

So what has good old Ed done wrong, that social media and the rest are tearing this topic apart?

Sheeran is on tour, and as expected, in big stadiums. He had booked the rapper Macklemore and an Irish folk band. Then came the offending words — in front of ninety thousand people — and criticised the genocide in Gaza.

Ed Sheeran wanted no politics on stage. Now he has no band and no opening act on that same stage.

The stadium stage belongs to someone. A man with a lot of money. And where a lot of money gathers, power — and the display of it — grows even bigger.

Now, the owner of some of these stadiums is named Robert Kraft. His profession: billionaire. Apparently this Robert called up the musician Ed and demanded that Macklemore no longer be allowed to perform in his stadiums.

The ultimatum apparently worked, because Ed Sheeran uninvited Macklemore from the tour. And then the famous dominoes started to slide, and fell over.
The Irish drew their own conclusions. No opening act, no band for the middle set. Everyone quit.

When the media start tripping over their own headlines, I always get a little suspicious.
Too loud. Too accusatory. Too clear-cut.
Too much undigested stuff gets posted out into the world.
Or so it seems to me.

Palestine.

Is that the word of ill will?
A state that isn’t one?
A country never recognised?
Palestine is a loaded word with a tragic history. Way at the back of my mind still lingers the memory of Yasser Arafat, who founded the PLO, and above all the images of the plane hijackings. Through an attack, and claimed 47 lives in Würenlingen, Switzerland.

Solidarity, and the Palestinian people.

Free Palestine.

These two words are the stumbling block.
Why?
Because they seem to carry more than one meaning.
Either the call means that Israel’s occupation since 1967 should end.
Or it simply means the end of the State of Israel.

The slogan already houses the conflict within itself.

This isn’t a story about a musician and his stance. It’s about much more.

There’s also a money question.
Israel receives nearly four billion dollars in military aid every year. The owners of the stadiums hold powerful positions they want to defend.
With that much structure on one side, the other side becomes a risk.

Canada and Switzerland decided differently.

Last September, Prime Minister Carney officially recognised the State of Palestine, together with Britain and Australia.
Switzerland is home to the Geneva Conventions, but also to Würenlingen — and above all, the country that negotiated with the PLO back in the 1970s.

Yes, Ed Sheeran bowed to the ultimatum in silence.

His fellow musicians did not.

Did Ed cash in his silence for silver?

I don’t know.

Strange that this profession still exists at all — right in the middle of the age of push notifications and livestreams. Do these people still hold up a parchment scroll and read the riot act to folks, or the latest decrees of the royal household, while the audience films it all on their phones?

Once upon a time in Riverview, a small community in New Brunswick.

There, a young woman named Summer Gallant set out to become one of the few female town criers. And to compete. Because — mind you — there is an official casting call for official town criers. Over a dozen candidates ran in April to replace crier Gerry Forsythe, who had passed away the previous year. Summer Gallant won. Against a dozen men who had all been practising longer than she’s been alive.

A woman crying out?

About time, too.

In her mere twenty-five years of life, Summer Gallant has already seen quite a bit. After school she became a traveller and worked as an au pair in New Zealand. When she set foot back on home soil, she was drawn into the world of theatre. But theatre alone didn’t fill the stage for her — she wanted her hometown to play along too. Her idea of good theatre was the combination of acting and her hometown as the destination of her dreams.
Her first appearance was the swearing-in of the new town council in June.

The Dead Keep Crying

The loud profession of the town crier calls to mind the tradition of a red coat trimmed in gold, white knee breeches, and black boots. On the head sits, correctly, the tricorne hat, and in hand the bell, to draw people’s attention.
Then the call: “Oyez, oyez.” And what did these criers proclaim back then? Really, these bearers of the crier’s office did what the apps on our phones do today. New ordinances and laws were announced, market days were proclaimed, and of course advertising blocks were part of the town crier’s programme too.

The profession is truly long extinct, strictly speaking.
After all, there are somewhat more modern ways to get informed these days. And yet the tradition still lingers. Canadian towns have kept the tradition of the crier alive.

Does Newmarket have its own town crier? No.
But the surrounding towns of York Region — Markham, Aurora, and East Gwillimbury — have a civic shouter named John Webster. He is the official town crier. Naturally, he also reports on regional events in Newmarket.

Switzerland knows the tradition of the town crier all too well. The night watchman, the crier, the village bailiff, and the Basel drummers called out through the night.

And Canada brought this tradition across the Atlantic.

Summer Gallant’s current competitor and reigning champion is Chris Whyman from Kingston. He has held the office for 42 years, so presumably he no longer needs to practise.
But now Chris is up against a newcomer who will challenge him — brow and voice both — at the World Town Crier Tournament in England.

The young woman is truly brave. And self-assured.

What does the oldest news technology in human history need, to prove itself as a town crier?

Well, strong lungs and a clear voice certainly help.
A convincing and attractive costume, plus some singing ability, also play a role in the competition.

An ancient calling profession needs no reach — but very good lungs.

When I hear the phrase “to be possessed,” I think of those strange bedtime stories my father used to read to my sister and me with such great enthusiasm. What started as a bedtime story turned into a nightmare tale. That little book was full of “true” events falling under the category of the occult. Neither my sister nor I liked those stories.
I always felt caught between two chairs — fascination and dread.

Well then, good night.

Some of these stories told of people being possessed. No, not by drugs or other harmful things, but by an evil spirit, or by Beelzebub himself. And what helps against this kind of possession? Ah yes, an exorcist must be called in.

Is that even a recognized profession, or just an invention dreamed up by enterprising businesspeople? Well, the trouble with occupations like this is the lack of clear facts to build a diagnosis on.
Who is the evil spirit?
Where does it come from?
What abilities does it have?
From the diagnosis comes the treatment. Sounds logical. Except: no one has ever had the spirit on the phone to ask.

Factual and practical.

The more practical side of possession is addictive behaviour. Not the “whoever searches long, shall find” kind of Sucht — that would apply more to research scientists.
The craving for stimulation, acceptance, and other obsessions is nothing I’d recommend to my friends lightly.
That said, there are the possessed who walk their path of applied obsession quite legitimately and legally. Artists, athletes, and scientists who’ve devoted themselves to an idea. These possessed souls give all their time and attention to the object of their desire.
Creating a work of art.
Standing on the Olympic podium.
Finding a cure for cancer.
Does this kind of possession count as illness, or as an extreme hunger to reach a goal? The lines are probably blurry. No one has ever drawn a border between madness and a Nobel Prize.

And then there’s that strange kind of possession that ends in extreme wealth.
Are these perhaps the truly poor creatures, the ones who must define themselves through the piling up of money and power?
Something must have gone wrong somewhere along the road for these possessed. It’s hard to imagine that these strivers after riches could have had a more or less healthy, normal youth. Weren’t these people too busy hoarding and dealing to attend to the important things of our mostly short lives?

I don’t know. I only suspect — and that’s enough to keep me lying awake at night.

Yes, I am, again and again, possessed.
And I enjoy this state.

Only late did I realize that this possession burdens me just as much as it delights me. My possessed self probably can’t be helped much by therapy. It’s all far too much fun to be treated out of existence.

The good part?
It’s chosen freely.
I am possessed by ideas, held captive by visions, and yet I see myself as a free spirit.

I see the courageous.

I see the loving.

I see the hope-makers.

I see the helpers.

I see the humanists.

I see communities.

I see change for the better.

I see fairness.

I see peace.

I see the possessed.

What on earth is wrong with me?
A lot. And that’s a good thing.

When the war broke out in Europe — yes, the Second World War, same starting lineup — profiles were drawn up. Who came in from which country, and how exactly do things stand with their attitude toward Canada? In itself it’s a good thing when a person can call a profile their own. Because without any profile at all, one is easily taken for a flat-nose and a nobody. Worst case, both at once — flat-nose and nobody. Well, with Hermann Boeschenstein a profile crystallized that would, at first, become his undoing. Hermann Boeschenstein was seen as the man in Canada whose home country had just launched a war.

Hermann was a respected professor in Canada, his chosen country. He was prominent and successful in his field, the German language. Part of his profile was that he carried a strong, German-sounding accent about with him. That too belonged to the furnishings of the person and the profile. Name, language, origin — for some officials, that was enough to raise alarm. The German in Toronto was arrested one day, in his own house in Toronto. And interrogated. Those doing the interrogating soon felt they must have misheard, when Hermann explained to them that he wasn’t German at all, but Swiss. From Stein am Rhein, in fact.

So he was released again from the internment camp.

So far, so happy ending in Toronto. But the story wasn’t finished being told yet. A few years later, Hermann Boeschenstein was contacted again by the Canadian government. This time, though, not with an arrest warrant, but with a request. No — a marching order. He was granted leave from his professorship from 1943 to 1946, because he had more important things to do. His job was to look after his original neighbours from the “German canton,” who were interned in Canada as prisoners of war. He helped the Germans in the camps get in touch with relatives. He brought books and advocated for these people before the authorities. The suspected German Boeschenstein had now become the neutral Swiss Boeschenstein. Very much in the spirit of the basic Swiss self-understanding currently up for a vote.

Hermann Boeschenstein helped thousands of German prisoners. He travelled to internment camps all across Canada and helped wherever he could.

The man once thought too German in the end became the most neutral Swiss one could possibly imagine.

Exactly one year later, in October 2020, the claim was dismissed. The reasoning? The young people’s allegations were too broadly framed and could not be put into numbers from which a law could be shaped.

Here’s the piquant part: Justice Manson found that the negative effects of climate change for the claimants, and for all Canadians, are significant — today and in the future. A judge who confirms the harm and dismisses the claim anyway. The court’s message: you’re right, just not this way.

The fifteen children of back then, and youth of today, come from Vancouver Island, across the Northwest Territories, all the way to Nova Scotia.

And they are not discouraged.

2024: the young people take the court’s hints seriously and file an amended claim in May. Ottawa announces in October that it will again seek dismissal. To avoid risking another setback, the claimants narrowed their claim — whereupon Canada dropped its motion to dismiss in December 2024; the new statement of claim followed in January 2025, and shortly after, the statement of defence.

Since then, both sides have completed the so-called discovery phase — documents, expert reports, and examinations — this past January.

And now?

The trial.

Starting in October 2026, the trial will run for eight weeks in Vancouver under the title “La Rose v. His Majesty the King.” Sounds like a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The kind of story where someone ends up turned into a frog. Well, this is no fairy tale — it’s a file number at the Federal Court of Canada. And on October 26th, the trial begins in Vancouver. Eight weeks. Fifteen claimants. One defendant, who lives in London.

In Switzerland, the elders showed the way first. The KlimaSeniorinnen — an association of women over 64, for whom heat summers strike straight at the heart — took their case all the way to Strasbourg. In April 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in their favour: the Confederation was violating their rights by not doing enough on climate protection. Parliament in Bern took offence and declared the ruling went too far. The grandmothers have the ruling. Bern has a press release.

In Canada, it’s the children. In Switzerland, the grandmothers.

So who’s missing here?

Ah yes, the middle. Between twenty and sixty-five. The ones who vote, pay taxes, live with the consequences — and can still afford not to sue.

Wide-awake, active citizens of every age are impressive, and they are the fuel of a healthy democracy.

Switzerland and Canada show what that looks like in practice.

The day when every channel’s news reported on an event that shook the world. To this day. “A plane has flown into one of the two towers of the World Trade Center.” Today the world and its people remember that one day, twenty-five years ago.

The media will report today, intensely, extensively, informatively, on this drama. Not me. But two other numbers trickled into my empty head this morning at five: 2.0 and 2.6. Degrees Celsius.

What’s on my mind is the climate. Not just the earthly climate with its dramatic changes and their consequences. I also mean the climate in politics. And right now, the climate of fear and threats.

In Ottawa, a damning report on the climate and its state was released. Why now, of all times? Ah, right — attention is focused on other topics in Canadian politics, and the disastrous report buries itself in the flood of bad news. Hold on. Before the burying begins, let’s have a look at what was reported yesterday in Ottawa about the state of the climate.

Canada is a heart-warming country. And, less charmingly: one that has warmed by 2.0°C over 75 years. The North wanted to be top of the class again and scored a full 2.6°C. And yes, these are the consequences of greenhouse emissions produced by us humans.

Whoever causes something has to live with the consequences. Less than ten years ago, scientists figured Canadians wouldn’t be hit so hard by climate change. Well, they were thoroughly mistaken there. Many of the changes have had the label “Irreversible” stuck on them.

If we still don’t hit the brakes, meaning finally implement fast, renewable solutions, then the scenario doesn’t skimp on us. For the future of 2081–2100, mean warming is projected at 5°C compared to the period between 1850–1900. And across large parts of Nunavut, winter warming has a better than 50% chance of exceeding 10°C.

And what do we get for that?

Wildfires will arrive more often and much more intensely.

Freshwater will no longer be automatically available, because snowmelt will start much earlier.

And the heat waves?

I’ll save those for another morning. Today’s enough.

As mentioned: the report has quietly vanished. For now. Just as back then, on September 11, nobody suspected how long a single moment could keep echoing.

9/11 is the date that, for most people, calls up the moment from memory down to the last detail.

In the history of humankind there are millions of 9/11 events. And there will keep being more of them in the future.

Sometimes I force myself to sit down at 9:11 in the morning and spend time with the thing called reflection. Maybe I’ll learn something from the stories of humankind.

Before and after 9/11 in the morning, too.

Same street, but a different word — caravan — and pretty much the opposite of the inglorious convoy from four years ago.

This protest runs on a plug instead of a tailpipe. And yet it carries more charge than the convoy ever did with its diesel engines.

“Age doesn’t protect you from resistance — and it doesn’t protect you from handcuffs either”

Bill Darnell, 80, the co-founder of Greenpeace, speaks openly about possible arrest. Michael Polanyi, 62, founder of Seniors Climate Witness, is technically too young for the old folks’ club. But as a grandfather, he’s already got his membership card in his pocket.

I myself am seventy-one, an “older hippie” with protest experience — and this news warms my old heart more than I’d like to admit. Do I belong in one of those rolling protest EVs? Of course I do.

“The Climate Grannies Say Hello”

Switzerland, April 2024: The association KlimaSeniorinnen wins against Switzerland before the European Court of Human Rights. A protected climate is a human right. Not just for seniors. It was a years-long marathon through the courts, and the “old folks” won. The reaction of the Swiss Parliament? In a statement, these elected politicians declared the ruling need not be followed.

The Swiss grannies fought it out with the courts; the Canadian seniors drive electrified to Ottawa.

The same generation at the far end of the life cycle isn’t sitting by the window waiting for death. This generation wants to soften, at least a little, the consequences of climate change for their grandchildren. But that takes political will — and old-school activism. Whoever stands at the end of the life cycle has little left to lose — and that’s exactly what makes the voice louder.

“Oxygen Shortage”

Bill Darnell says the trade war between Canada and the United Versaces of America — sorry, the United States of America — is currently sucking up all the political oxygen. The climate issue, and its dramatic trajectory, isn’t a topic anymore. Not on the first twenty pages, anyway.

Meanwhile the Carney government is walking back nearly every climate measure the Trudeau Liberals put in place. First the federal fuel tax was suspended until the new year, then came Wednesday’s quiet announcement that new gas plants and even oil pipelines won’t require environmental review. And that announcement lands in a summer when wildfire smoke has hung over Ottawa for weeks on end.

At the same time, oil demand is cratering, but Canada is gearing up for a demand that may never come.

The latest report from the International Energy Agency states that the U.S. war against Iran has “thoroughly upended the global outlook for oil consumption.” The forecast suggests oil consumption will drop as sharply as it did during the pandemic. Some countries that depend on Middle Eastern oil are busy decarbonizing their energy sources. Away from oil, toward renewables.

And the signs are clear. China is, next to the U.S., the world’s second-largest oil consumer. The Chinese government is betting heavily on electric cars and solar power, and lo and behold, greenhouse gas emissions are finally on the way down.

The U.K. now requires solar panels and heat pumps by law for nearly every new building. Pakistan and the Philippines are buying up massively more solar infrastructure from China.

There are times, says the Greenpeace founder, when he loses heart, and times when fear for the planet’s future nearly overwhelms him.

Give up? Never.

I hope that many seniors join the caravan to Ottawa in their electric cars. We old folks are sending a signal: pressure, where words no longer reach — and hope, because giving up is no longer an option. Even if the handcuffs click shut.

We’ve only truly lost once cynicism waves goodbye and gives up for good.

So it’s that simple?

And then came the day of reckoning, when the timer counted down to zero. Well, task done? And then those two words that stop any project dead: “Not quite.”

Now, Ontario and its government wanted to put an end to the housing problem. Ergo: more housing, fewer problems. Ontario’s premier, a fellow named Ford (Ford, they get it done), was generous in wording the goal for 2025: build 150,000 new homes.

Start: January. End: December 2025.

Bravo, technically flawless project management wording, Mr. Ford.

Reaching such an ambitious goal would have helped a lot of desperate people find a decent home.

“Ford got it done!”

“Ontario reached a full 58 percent of the goal!” reads well enough at first glance. On second look: “Wait a minute, that’s barely over half.”

Did the land run out? The money? The appetite for building?

None of that. Something much simpler: the definition.

Someone took a look at this published nearly-sixty percent of housing supply, which was announced as “58 percent achieved.” What’s generous here, above all, is the government’s enthusiasm for redefinition. Under the magnifying glass, the achieved housing supply looks a teeny tiny bit different than the good people of Ontario likely expected.

The project portfolio doesn’t just list built homes — it also counts long-term care beds and student rooms. Since when did a student room or a care-home bed grow up into a full-fledged home?

Did they develop on their own, with a little help from AI?

“A good half done” is, after all, just a matter of interpretation. But the quiet disappointment among Canadians runs more like: “Where did the remaining 42 percent of homes go?”

Well, on closer look, that 58 percent lives in the portfolio of generous interpretation. Ontario’s own stated goal of 150,000 new homes for 2025 was clearly missed.

Global News wanted to get to the bottom of it. They filed an information request and read, in internal documents, that only 13 municipalities met the targets set by the Ford government.

And what did the resourceful administration come up with to make things look better? They redefined the goal.

You don’t change the construction site. You change the word “home.”

Alongside regular housing starts, basement suites, long-term care spaces, retirement homes, and student residences all got counted toward “goal achieved.”

“Have clear goals, kid” — nobody told me you’re also allowed to clearly redefine them afterwards.

Could it be that scientific information is, deep down, always boring? Or is it just being flung at the audience in some brittle, joyless way? A few years back I came across a piece with the promising title “The Storytelling of Science.” Storytelling in science is not an impossibility. No — it’s one of the most fascinating ways to communicate science with excitement, humour, and above all, clarity. That much was clear whenever Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Bill Nye told their stories — none of them boring.

Well then, storytelling works even on dry subjects.

Kit Lister is a 28-year-old Montrealer who shuttles between social media coordination for climate events and a documentary about Toronto’s bike lanes. Pretty sure he does the shuttling by bike.

“Oh no, not more climate doom and gloom?”

For Kit Lister, that’s not a dismissal — it’s the whole motivation. The young man marries scientific findings with stories — and the marriage holds, as his audience shows. Today marks the start of Climate Weeks Toronto/Montreal, running until September 13. So what does Kit Lister want to achieve with Climate Week?

Kit wants to get people excited about the many possibilities around climate change. But above all, he wants his stories to lead to concrete action: get on a bike, sign a petition, sweep up the neighbour. Most citizens worry about climate change and want action taken. That’s exactly what Climate Weeks aims to offer: connection, knowledge, and the hope that comes from acting together.

But that’s not all. Kit Lister has also produced a full-length documentary about Toronto’s bike lanes: “Cycling Toward a Cooler Toronto.” He wanted to know what effect bike lanes actually have on Toronto’s traffic, health, economy, climate, and future.

Toronto’s traffic suffers from the worst congestion in the world. Gridlock is the norm, not the exception. Sitting in traffic isn’t just wasted time — it seriously harms your health. Those ultrafine particles know no manners: they push their way into the bloodstream as if it were an open door. They weaken the heart, raise the rate of dementia, and increase the risk of brain tumours and other cancers. And the irony to top it off: more road space for cars doesn’t solve congestion. It creates more congestion, not less. When alternatives like protected, connected bike lanes are on offer, many people would rather hop on a bike, because it saves them time and money on their commute.

Why did Kit Lister make the film?

He wants to tell stories for an overwhelmed but engaged majority. He hopes they’ll get behind some of the many solutions for protecting people from climate change. The film shows how much better life can be when we roll out measures like bike lanes on a large scale. Protected bike lanes are proven technology that makes life more affordable, cleans the air, improves health, eases the commute, fights climate change, and makes life more joyful. But with one or two cyclists, it’s just a drop on a stone that’s far too hot. Good infrastructure creates the critical mass needed for that. Activist groups like Cycle Toronto are working hard on it.

And good storytelling can do all that?

Oh yes. People want to be motivated, not depressed. The majority isn’t sluggish because they’re not interested in the topic. They want to know what they can do in their everyday lives. Lots of small actions, in the end, add up to the big impact.

What’s doable? And what can I do? — when questions like these get answered by Kit Lister and other resourceful storytellers.

Hope stretches out its arms and says: “Count me in!”

^{Kit Lister interviews a Torontonian for their documentary. Photo: Alex Nye.}

And lo and behold: push the button, text appears, world saved. Almost. The artificiality of intelligence relieves us of the tedious, headache-inducing process of thinking. The process is now made artificial for us. Hurrah!

Forget that spontaneously trumpeted-out “Hurrah.” That was premature and wrong. Because what dresses itself up here with the flattering name “artificial intelligence” was never the result of scientific inquiry. No, it was a marketing trick by John McCarthy, to snag funding for his summer study on “machine intelligence at the human level.” And he pulled that off a few days before I was born, in 1955.

What, artificial intelligence as an idea is thaaat old? And what ever became of intelligence with artificial ingredients? Is there more coming, or is this all just smoke and mirrors?

Not so fast, my typing friend. Let’s go through the sequence slowly, with a watchful eye. And name a few names here, to deepen the experience.

«Hey Siri, what is the meaning of life?»

«Alexa, play me the song of death.»

«I’ll be back!»

Oh yes, these are all fragments of artificial imitation, offering little intelligence. Sorry. All these tools — except the Terminator named Arnold Schwarzenegger — have merely imitated situations of human communication with action. And they still do today. Back in the twenties of the last century, the first attempt was to rebuild the human moving body. The robot learned to walk, to grip, to repeat — and took over entire assembly lines.

Next in line for imitation was the brain, our thinking apparatus. This was meant to bring the term “artificial intelligence” closer to the reality of thought. Well then, good luck with that. I remember the chess software named Deep Blue, which knocked Kasparov, the absolute world chess champion, out of the race, just like that.

Was that already a deep-blue artificial intelligence, or pure mimicry with unexpected chess moves? Or was it merely a symbolic one-off?

Science’s ambition was still to rebuild the brain itself, as best it could. A generic version of our thinking apparatus, for everyday use outside our own heads. Well, the internet, as a platform of inexhaustible data, finally fired the starting shot for the so-called LLMs.

LLM stands for Large Language Model, the big language model. That’s the technology behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and company.

An LLM is the giant sponge that soaks up content from books, websites, code, and forums. The instruction for training is banal. Predict the next word. Anyone who’s started typing a word into a Google search knows these sometimes annoying probabilities.

Did Google actually understand, or merely guess, what I wanted to search for?

AI, as artificial imitation, still has surprises packed in its bags. Because the AI software wants to predict the next word well in practically everything ever written, it has to soak up, on the side, grammar, facts, patterns of argument, communication style, and a bit of world knowledge. Which is exactly what most tools flying the AI banner diligently do.

Does that already count as “understanding,” or is it merely a very good imitation?

GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, meaning generatively produced text. If you think an LLM is a giant database, I have to disappoint you. It isn’t. It doesn’t store texts, only patterns. And these patterns let the AI chatter away merrily and formulate agreeable sentences. And as the crowning touch of the process, AI invents alternative facts. What’s more, artificial imitation learns from the ongoing conversation with the human species sitting across from it, and thereby freezes its knowledge for the duration of that training.

We humans train the artificial dog.

And that same dog frees us from the tedious work of thinking for ourselves.

What delights me, again and again, as a storyteller and word-inventor: AI is neither creative nor funny.

So, folks: thinking, speaking, writing, and acting is still the business of the human species. Of us Homo Sapiens-folk.

Who on earth wants to leave these important matters to an imitator.

Well, there you go.

Dreadful? To me, yes. Another one of those words with Greek roots, like so many that still rule us today. Hierarchy is built on the Greek word “hieros,” meaning something like holy. The add-on is even more irritating, because “archein” stands for ruling as part of the rank order among priests. The decisive moment in my then-young life as a commercial apprentice with hierarchy was the answer to one of my why-questions. “Why? Because I, your boss, say so. Full stop.” Yes, that was the point that began to gnaw inside and grate outside. Why should I follow an instruction just because someone tells me to? A small example? While gathering my apprenticeship experience in payroll, I noticed the different numbers between the workshop apprentices and me, the office pencil. I ignored the hierarchical ladder and knocked on the director’s door. In a youthful surge of outrage, I complained about the unfairness. The result was startling. My wage was adjusted downward.

Revolt is expensive.

I felt the same unease when my father tried to command respect-consciousness in me. I was supposed to show people respect because they held a position — usually a higher one — in society. And again I asked: “Why?” An occupied position is not yet a licence for respect, even if it’s demanded. Or is it? Respect hangs on the person who carries a function responsibly — not on the title that occupies it.

Yes, hierarchy has some advantages. The fire department, the police, or top bodies in political spheres often need to decide fast. And need to be able to rely on their “subordinates.” Someone has to give the orders who is responsible and capable of doing so. Clear to me.

A hierarchy and its participants are first granted the “power of their office.” And that’s often where the dilemma begins, when the office-holders fall in love with the power.

Are there communities that get by without hierarchy?

No. No known society can do entirely without the hierarchical system — but some have kept it radically small. The hierarchy, not the people.

Hunter-gatherer groups wandered at a time when land ownership wasn’t yet a thing. The !Kung (Kalahari), Hadza (Tanzania), or Mbuti (Congo) know no chiefs. Decisions are discussed and made in conversation. Any claim to prestige is actively curbed: whoever boasts as a hunter gets mocked, so no one sets themselves above the others. Anthropologist Christopher Boehm calls this a “reverse dominance hierarchy” — the group rules over the one who wants to rule.

Around my corner, it was the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy). Six nations that made their decisions by consensus at the council fires. Chiefs were installed by the clan mothers, and if need be, removed again. All power to the mothers. There was no chain of command, only persuasion. Benjamin Franklin studied this phenomenon and put forward the thesis that it influenced the US Constitution. The thesis is contested, but a sympathetic one.

Switzerland itself set up valley communities without nobility through the Landsgemeinde. The Federal Charter of 1291 was a refusal of foreign judges and rulers. Not hierarchy-free, exactly, but deliberately headless: the Federal President is primus inter pares for one year, and most Swiss don’t even know his name. That’s exactly the point.

An excellent example of a very flat and small hierarchy that I keep bringing up whenever the topic turns to company structures: the Semco Group in Brazil.

Semco was a machinery builder in São Paulo making ship pumps, industrial mixers, and cooling systems. In 1980, Ricardo Semler, 21 years old, took over the company from his father Antonio Curt, an Austrian emigrant. On the first day, he let go of about 60 percent of the top management tier. Out with the existing hierarchy must have been the idea. A few years later, he decided the people weren’t the problem, but the structure was. What he then dismantled over twenty years was less the hierarchy as such than its control apparatus. What remained: no control system. Full stop.

The time clock — workers set their own hours, even in production. The team coordinates among itself. There’s no org chart, and the company handbook is a twenty-page “Survival Manual” with cartoons in it. Expense receipts are submitted but not checked. The explanation? Checking costs more than the actual fraud would. And where does the hierarchy sit? It’s divided into three concentric circles. Six “Counselors” at the centre, among them “Partners” who head the business units, “Coordinators” as the only management tier below them, and everyone else “Associates.” Whoever works as a Coordinator has no Coordinator above them. And the top spot itself? The CEO post rotates every six months among the Counselors. Even Ricardo Semler has no office and no fixed desk. At Semco, everything rotates — even the boss.

What must it have been like for an apprentice like me at Semco? A young person learns that responsibility and freedom belong together.

Three mechanisms hold the construct up. All the numbers are laid open, balance sheet and payroll included; the union trained the workers to read balance sheets, so the openness would actually accomplish something. The vote comes from below: supervisors are anonymously graded by their staff twice a year, and whoever consistently scores poorly loses the role. New managers are interviewed by the very people they’ll later lead. Employees propose their own salaries, with an eye on the open market data and their colleagues’ wages — and with the knowledge that a salary set too high endangers their own job in the next crisis. On top of that comes a profit-sharing scheme of around a quarter of the unit profit, and yes, the distribution is decided by the workforce itself. And then there’s the satellite program: those seeking independence are given machinery and a first contract. That’s how employees become subcontractors.

The numbers speak for themselves. Revenue rose from around four million dollars in 1982 to roughly 212 million in 2003. The workforce grew from 90 to about 3,000, including through Brazilian inflation and several recessions. Semco’s employees agreed to temporarily cut their wages to avoid layoffs. Semco today is no longer “just” a machinery company but a service provider. Semler shifted toward education — the Lumiar schools — and toward marketing his method; the Semco Style Institute now sits in the Netherlands.

Back to the opening question: hierarchy as a system for managing people. Or ruling them. Or their being ruled. These examples confirm for me, the old hippie, that you can credit and trust people with more than a hierarchy would have you believe. People can decide what’s good for the community, not only for the individual.

Well, I managed to catch that bend in the story after all.

The story didn’t start out strange at all, when in 1841 a certain William Wells opened a general store. He called the little settlement Williamstown. Where he got that name from, the gods know. Or maybe they don’t. William dreamed of a real town that would carry the name Williamstown with pride. But history had other plans. When in 1853 the Toronto, Simcoe & Lake Huron rail line was built through the neighbouring village of Springhill (today’s King City) instead of through Williamstown, that dream was well and truly over. The railway and its board decided who got growth and who got forgotten. Williamstown was, quite clearly, on the wrong side of the tracks.

Williamstown’s post office closed its doors for good in 1854. But in 1880, a doctor and local politician by the name of Frederick William Strange fought his way through the bureaucracy and managed to get a post office reopened. Whether out of gratitude or plain convenience, the officials decided, without much fuss, to name the settlement after him. And so a failed railway-and-town dream became a place that would forever be known as Strange, Ontario. Now how strange is that?

Who was this Frederick Strange? Well, “many-sided” might be the right word. His résumé shows an English-born physician who sat as Member of Parliament for York North from 1878 to 1882, and later became Deputy Surgeon-General of the militia. His surname was handed to him by pure chance at birth, not by design. Frederick Strange’s legacy became a road sign that still makes online-map users smile to this day.

Here in the 21st century, not much is left of that old ambition. A handful of houses, a Presbyterian church, and two cemeteries quietly, patiently, keep the place’s past alive. Anyone driving through the settlement mostly sees farmland and the flat “Strange Till Plain,” a geological formation left over from the last ice age — named, of course, after the village that had long since run out of future but kept an unforgettable name.

What, geography is boring?

^{Photo: Harrowsmith Magazine}

The twenty is Royal Vertical.

Because up until now, horizontal was the tried-and-true rule — Charles breaks it right away, with his very first note. Well, money always has two sides to offer. That’s true first of the history and second of the layout. On the front, the portrait of Charles III is framed by a carpet of flowers and leaves. King Charles amid the greenery is a nod to his lifelong commitment to the environment. The thirteen floral emblems represent Canada’s 13 provinces and territories.

Beside it, in a small round window, grow the culturally significant plants of Indigenous peoples. With wild strawberry, the giant tree of life (western red cedar), braided sweetgrass, and Arctic cotton grass, this represents the Bank’s Indigenous Advisory Circle — and stands for nourishment, gratitude, and healing. Background on the individual plants (from general knowledge, not from the Bank’s own source):

The wild strawberry is the “heart berry” to the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee, and as the first fruit of the year, it’s regarded as a symbol of reconciliation and new beginnings. On the West Coast, the cedar is the tree of life — canoes, houses, clothing, ceremony. Sweetgrass is braided like hair — “the hair of Mother Earth” — and is burned for smudging. Along with tobacco, sage, and cedar, sweetgrass is one of the four sacred medicines. And cotton grass stands for the North — Inuit used it as a wick in qulliq oil lamps, the sole source of light and warmth to make the igloo more bearable. Why the other two sacred medicines, tobacco and sage, are missing from the depiction, the Bank doesn’t say. Perhaps it’s the four directions — East, West, Prairie, and Arctic — that play the lead role here, not ceremonial completeness.

The back of the twenty-dollar note shows the Canadian National Vimy Memorial in France, meant to commemorate Canada’s military sacrifice. Vimy Ridge (April 1917) is considered the birth hour of Canadian national consciousness, when four Canadian divisions fought together for the first time. Walter Allward’s memorial was dedicated in 1936 on French soil and left to Canada in perpetuity. Vimy Ridge has been on the twenty since 2012, and stayed put while the Crown passed from mother to son.

So Vimy Ridge stayed standing. What’s new is only who stands guard on the front: Charles, the second vertical note after a pioneer. The first note in portrait format was the ten, with Viola Desmond pictured. The first vertical note was unveiled right on time for International Women’s Day, March 8, 2018, and sent into monetary orbit. This was not only Canada’s first vertical note, but the first with a Canadian woman gracing the Canadian dollar alongside the Queen. Viola Desmond, incidentally, was chosen by public vote. How so? Why?

Well, Viola Desmond was a businesswoman from Halifax, a beautician with her own beauty school and product line for Black women. On November 8, 1946, she was in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, waiting for her car to be repaired. To sweeten the wait, she went to the Roseland Theatre — and sat down in the orchestra seats. The seats reserved exclusively for white patrons. Police dragged her out of the theatre and threw her in jail for the night. Viola was officially charged with tax evasion — over the one-cent difference between balcony and orchestra seating. This happened nine years before the unyielding passenger Rosa Parks. Viola died in New York in 1965 and was posthumously pardoned by Nova Scotia in 2010.

From the unconventional Viola Desmond to the royal Charles to the vertical note — two faces, one format. The pioneer of civil rights, and the king for the representation of the law.

Incidentally, Switzerland decided exactly ten years ago to likewise offer banky notes in vertical format. A small Helvetic revolution.

But let’s not get money-glorious now, ladies and gentlemen.

Geneva looks to Halifax

On May 7 of this year, a group of UN experts presented a report on how the world should measure progress going forward. Fourteen experts, including a Nobel laureate. Thirty-one indicators. One chapter looks for examples of how a metric actually turns into action — not intention, not a statement of intention, action.

Named are the British Treasury. Scotland. Italy. Sweden. Ecuador.

And Nova Scotia.

Not Canada as a whole here, but a province of roughly one million people on the North Atlantic, whose largest city is smaller than Basel. One million people, a city smaller than Basel — and still on the list next to Sweden and Italy.

If something is precious to us

Behind this stands a non-profit organization in Halifax with the most unassuming name imaginable: Engage Nova Scotia. This is not a government body, not a ministry, and certainly not an office for anything in particular. Merely a coalition of government, business, universities, and the volunteer sector who put their heads together.

Their guiding principle, roughly: If something is precious to us, we should measure it too, without seeming presumptuous.

A sentence one should stumble over. Because it flips the usual order. Normally we measure first and then discover that what we measured matters to us — gross domestic product worked exactly that way for ninety years. Here, the fondness came first and the counting came after.

Two hundred and thirty questions in May

In 2018, the index came onto the scene. Twenty-one years of data, sixty indicators, eight domains, and thoroughly dry groundwork.

A year later came the survey itself. Nearly thirteen thousand people answered two hundred and thirty questions. That’s over three hundred thousand data points, and thus the largest wellbeing dataset of its kind in Canada.

The methodological partner was the Canadian Index of Wellbeing at the University of Waterloo, which has been measuring how people in this country are doing since 2011. But the thing itself was carried differently. More than one hundred and fifty volunteers from communities formed nine regional leadership teams, called public gatherings, and decided for themselves what mattered.

One hundred and fifty people. Nine teams. No mandate from above.

The six uncomfortable fields

And what did they want to know? The supplementary report names six focus areas: social isolation. Sense of belonging. Trust. Experience of discrimination. Poverty. Health.

Now set that beside what the same UN report admits about the rest of the world in 2026. Whether people were satisfied with their last encounter with government services — the global community knows this for eighteen percent of countries. Whether they feel safe walking alone at night in their neighbourhood: twenty-six percent. Data on trust and loneliness is, for now, bought in from an American private firm.

Nova Scotia had these numbers in 2019. On its own steam. For itself.

Who the answers belong to

One detail that hasn’t let go of me.

The responses of Indigenous participants do not go into the reports and analyses of Engage Nova Scotia or the research institute. They’re handed over to the data governance team of the Union of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq. There, it’s decided what happens with them.

This is no overlookable footnote in the fine print. This is a refusal of a very old European habit — going somewhere, measuring it, taking it home, and analyzing it there. Whoever holds the numbers holds the interpretation. Here in Nova Scotia, someone else holds it.

I grew up in a country that made measuring into a national virtue. Land registry, cadastral maps, the census. Everything recorded, everything catalogued, everything tidy. The idea that the measured might decide over their own numbers — nobody ever landed on that one.

And then a pandemic got in the way

Since the start of this year, the second round has been underway. The first since 2019 — in between lay a pandemic that damaged much of what these very questions are meant to make visible.

That’s exactly where the value lies. Two snapshots of the same place, six years apart, the same questions. One will see what the pandemic damaged in people’s lives, and what of it might be repaired. The chair of the board is a former deputy chief medical officer of health for the province. She doesn’t ask which numbers one could collect. She asks which questions are needed here, and how they must be asked, so the answers mean something.

That’s the whole difference between statistics and curiosity.

The detour through Geneva

Which leaves the question of why a United Nations report was needed for me to learn of this.

Seven years this survey sat in Halifax. Two thousand kilometres from my desk, in the same country, in the same language. And I read of it for the first time in a document published in New York, meant for the world as a whole.

Perhaps that’s the real lesson. Not that the big institutions are too slow — they are, regardless. But that the useful thing is usually already lying somewhere, in a province, in a community, on a street, and nobody looks until some distant authority points a finger at it.

One wouldn’t need to invent it. One would need to count it.

And for that, as Nova Scotia has shown, you don’t need fourteen professors. You need one hundred and fifty people who find it’s worth doing.

What counts doesn’t count itself.
Someone has to go and do it.