who gets to decide what the orange shirt means?

In late August, Rebel News announced that it was selling orange T-shirts for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

The explanation caught my attention.

Rebel says the shirts are about “challenging the identity politics that Canadians are increasingly pressured to accept” and “standing up for the whole truth in our complex Canadian history.”

I believe in asking questions.

I believe in looking at evidence.

I believe history should never be protected from honest examination simply because a subject is uncomfortable.

But there is another question we should ask:

Why take the orange shirt — a symbol rooted in the experience of residential-school survivor Phyllis Jack Webstad — and turn it into a vehicle for a political argument?

Orange Shirt Day did not begin as a conservative-versus-liberal culture war.

It began with a child's story.

Phyllis Jack Webstad has described arriving at residential school wearing a new orange shirt that was taken away from her. The orange shirt became a powerful symbol of what residential schools did to Indigenous children: taking away belongings, identity, culture, family connections and freedom.

That history deserves serious discussion.

If Rebel News believes Canadians need to “dig deeper,” then let's dig deeper.

Let's talk about the records.

Let's talk about survivors.

Let's talk about government policy.

Let's talk about the churches that operated the schools.

Let's talk about what has been documented, what remains uncertain, and what historians and Indigenous communities continue to research.

But let's also ask whether there is a difference between questioning history and using an Indigenous symbol to provoke a political fight.

Truth and reconciliation should not require Canadians to stop asking questions.

But neither should asking questions require us to dismiss the people whose experiences created the symbol in the first place.

I don't need to agree with every interpretation of Canadian history to understand why an orange shirt carries meaning.

And I don't think anyone owns the truth.

But perhaps before turning someone's painful history into merchandise, we should ask:

Who are we listening to?

Who benefits?

And what exactly are we trying to reconcile?

10 questions to reflect on

1. Who gets to decide what the orange shirt represents?
2. Can we question Canadian history without dismissing Indigenous survivors?
3. When does “dig deeper” become a genuine search for truth — and when does it become political provocation?
4. Why use a symbol created from a survivor's experience to sell a culture-war message?
5. Can evidence and Indigenous testimony exist together rather than being treated as opposing forces?
6. Are Canadians capable of discussing residential schools without turning the conversation into left versus right?
7. If we want the “whole truth,” are we prepared to listen to uncomfortable truths as well as challenge uncomfortable claims?
8. What responsibility comes with using another person's trauma as a political symbol?
9. Does reconciliation mean agreeing on everything — or learning how to confront difficult history honestly?
10. Before we buy the shirt, share the post or join the argument, should we stop and ask whose story we are actually wearing?

Truth should be big enough for questions.
Respect should be big enough for survivors.

#truthandreconciliation #orangeshirtday #everychildmatters #residentialschools #indigenoushistory #canadianhistory #reconciliation #phyllisjackwebstad #truth #respect

Justice for Whom?

 For $850,000 a year, what exactly are the Edmonton Oilers asking the public to trust?

you know you're raping me?

If this were your daughter, knowing everything that is publicly known about this case, would you feel comfortable leaving her alone with this man?

Stop for a moment.

Really think about your answer.

Because that is the question I can't get out of my head today.

Alex Formenton has been signed by the Edmonton Oilers.

He was one of the five former Canadian junior hockey players charged in connection with the 2018 Hockey Canada sexual-assault case. All five were acquitted in criminal court in 2025.

That legal distinction matters. An acquittal means the Crown did not prove the criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

But an acquittal does not make every question about accountability disappear.

And today, I am asking a much bigger question than what happens on a hockey rink.

How many other men—men without fame, money, professional contracts or powerful institutions behind them—have walked away from allegations of sexual violence and simply returned to their lives?

How many survivors are still carrying what happened?

How many families are still waiting?

How many women have been told, directly or indirectly, that they have to live with the consequences while everyone else gets to move on?

And then there is another uncomfortable connection.

Canada has already spent years being told that the crisis of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people requires fundamental change.

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and 2SLGBTQQIA+ People produced 231 Calls for Justice.

Seven years later, Canada's own reporting acknowledges continuing frustration from families and survivors over delays, fragmentation and a lack of accountability.

So what exactly are we doing?

We write reports.

We make calls for justice.

We make promises.

We hold ceremonies.

We say never again.

And then another woman says she was sexually assaulted.

Another survivor is expected to carry the trauma.

Another institution decides what it can live with.

And another professional career continues.

At what point do we stop asking survivors to prove that their pain matters and start asking institutions what responsibility looks like?

I don't believe due process should disappear.

I don't believe an acquittal should be ignored.

But I also don't believe accountability should end at the courthouse door.

There are choices made after a criminal case.

Hockey Canada makes choices.

Leagues make choices.

Teams make choices.

Sponsors make choices.

Fans make choices.

And ordinary people make choices about what they are willing to normalize.

So I'll ask the question again:

If this were your daughter, would you feel comfortable leaving her alone with this man?

And if your answer is no—

why are we comfortable celebrating him?

10 questions I can't stop asking

1. If this were your daughter, would you feel comfortable leaving her alone with this man?
2. How many men without fame or professional careers have faced allegations and simply disappeared from public attention?
3. How many survivors are still carrying the consequences years later?
4. Does criminal acquittal answer every question about institutional accountability?
5. What responsibility should a professional sports team have beyond the criminal courts?
6. What message does this send to young athletes about consent?
7. What message does it send to survivors about speaking up?
8. Seven years after the MMIWG National Inquiry, why are families still talking about delays and lack of accountability?
9. How many reports and Calls for Justice do we need before institutions actually change?
10. Who is accountable when everyone says someone else is responsible?

sexual violence, sexual assault, consent, hockey canada, alex formenton, accountability, survivors, MMIWG, calls for justice, institutional responsibility

#sexualassault #sexualviolence #consent #hockeycanada #accountability #survivors #MMIWG #callsforjustice #believesurvivors #endsexualviolence

67 million for cameras — but what about people?

 67 million for cameras — but what about people?

B.C., pay attention.

The province is replacing all 140 red-light and speed cameras across British Columbia under a $67-million, 10-year contract with Jenoptik Canada.

The government says the new cameras will have higher resolution and provide “better data” to help reduce dangerous driving and serious collisions.

And yes, road safety matters.

But whenever we install increasingly sophisticated cameras, we should also be asking some very basic questions:

What exactly are these cameras collecting?

How much information is stored?

How long is it kept?

Who can access it?

Can the technology eventually be expanded to identify and track vehicles beyond red-light and speeding violations?

And what safeguards prevent a road-safety system from slowly becoming something much bigger?

I want people to understand something else, too:

Don't confuse this $67-million Jenoptik project with Flock Safety. Flock is a separate automated licence-plate-reader system used extensively in the United States. The B.C. announcement is about replacing the province's existing intersection safety cameras.

But that doesn't mean we should simply shrug and say, “It's only traffic cameras.”

Technology changes.

Capabilities change.

Policies change.

And once expensive surveillance infrastructure is installed, it can be very difficult to put the genie back in the bottle.

So here's another question I can't stop thinking about:

If British Columbia can find $67 million for cameras, why can't we find enough money to make sure people have somewhere safe to sleep and enough food to eat?

We have people living on sidewalks.

People sleeping in vehicles.

People moving from couch to couch.

People choosing between groceries and rent.

People who are working and still can't afford housing.

We keep hearing that there isn't enough money.

Yet somehow, there is money for infrastructure, contracts, technology and enforcement.

I'm not saying don't make roads safer.

I'm asking whether safety should also include the people who are already struggling to survive.

A society should be able to do both.

Keep people safe on the roads.

And keep people from freezing, starving or sleeping outside.

So, B.C., here's what I want to know:

What does “better data” mean?

And if we can spend $67 million watching the roads, why can't we spend the same determination making sure nobody is left without a place to call home?

Reflective Questions

1. If cameras are installed for road safety today, who decides what they can be used for tomorrow?

2. What happens when technology created to catch dangerous drivers becomes useful for tracking ordinary people?

3. How much information should governments be allowed to collect about people who have done nothing wrong?

4. If a system can identify a vehicle, where it was and when it was there, is that still just a traffic camera?

5. Who audits the people with access to this information—and what happens when someone misuses it?

6. Should police or governments be able to search historical vehicle movements without a person ever knowing?

7. What safeguards exist to prevent a legitimate road-safety system from becoming a mass-surveillance system?

8. If we would object to a government following us on foot, why should following our vehicles electronically be treated differently?

9. Why are we so willing to spend tens of millions monitoring people, while telling people without housing that there simply isn't enough money?

10. If $67 million can be found for cameras, what would $67 million invested in housing, food and human survival look like?

B.C. cameras, traffic surveillance, licence plate readers, Flock Safety, Jenoptik Canada, privacy, mass surveillance, road safety, housing crisis, public spending

#BritishColumbia #BCRoadSafety #TrafficCameras #PrivacyMatters #Surveillance #FlockSafety #Jenoptik #HousingCrisis #HousingJustice #PublicMoney

 (For my mom🥰😍🩷🥹)

What happens when society counts the wages but not the work?

My mother married at 19.

She had four children who survived to adulthood, and two miscarriages.

She and my dad were married for nearly 25 years, until he died by suicide.

I remember us receiving some survivor benefits afterward. I was young, but I remember that money mattered. Everything mattered then.

My dad was a very hardworking man. When BC Tel went on strike, he eventually started his own business.

My mom worked her ass off too.

She cooked. She waitressed. She raised children. She kept the household going.

There wasn't much time for supervision. We were in school, and when we weren't, we were outside on bicycles and wandering through the forest.

That was childhood.

Then Dad died.

We had to move because we had to go bankrupt.

And Mom had to keep working.

She had a heart attack.

And then she learned to drive.

👏👏👏👏

That part still makes me smile.

Because suddenly, after years of being a wife and mother and depending on someone else to drive, she had a little piece of freedom.

She could go places herself.

She had independence.

But independence can be lonely.

Eventually we kids grew up and left home.

Mom kept working.

She made terrible wages for much of her working life. She started around $3.50 an hour in the mid-1970s.

She also helped bring a union into her workplace and became a shop steward.

She fought for workers.

And yet, after all that work, she still ended up earning very little.

So here is the question I keep coming back to:

What happens when a society counts the wages but not the work?

Because my mother worked.

She just didn't get paid for all of it.

Raising children was work.

Cooking was work.

Keeping a family functioning was work.

Supporting a husband who was building a business was work.

Starting over after his death was work.

Working for low wages was work.

Fighting for better working conditions was work.

And yet a pension system largely measures a person's working life through their pensionable earnings and contributions.

That creates a problem for women who spent years doing unpaid caregiving or working in low-paid jobs.

CPP has changed over the decades. There are now protections such as the child-rearing provision, which can exclude certain low- or zero-earning years while raising young children. There are also rules around pension sharing after divorce and survivor benefits.

Those changes were important.

But they don't change the history.

My mother's generation lived much of its adult life under a system that was built when the economic model looked very different.

A man worked.

A woman raised children.

And if she worked outside the home, she was often earning much less.

But real families weren't that simple.

My mother wasn't sitting at home doing nothing.

She was holding an entire family together.

And when the family fell apart through tragedy, she picked up the pieces and went back to work.

She survived.

She organized.

She became a union shop steward.

She learned to drive.

She became independent.

And she kept going.

That's what I want people to remember when we talk about women's pensions.

Not just numbers.

Not just contribution rates.

Not just formulas.

Women.

Our mothers.

Our grandmothers.

The women who raised us while somehow trying to earn enough money to keep everyone fed.

The women who worked part-time.

The women who worked for $3.50 an hour.

The women who left paid employment to raise children.

The women who returned to work and started again.

The women who became widows and suddenly had to figure out everything themselves.

My mother would probably listen to all this and say:

“Yes. Yes. Write that.”

So Mom, I'm writing it.

Because somebody should.

Five questions to think about

1. How should unpaid caregiving be reflected in retirement security?
2. Can a pension system really measure someone's contribution to society only through their wages?
3. How much did women of my mother's generation lose financially because they earned less than men?
4. What would a truly fair pension system look like for someone who spent years raising children?
5. When we talk about “working women,” are we remembering all the work that never came with a paycheque?

#CPP #CanadaPensionPlan #WomensPensions #UnpaidCaregiving #WorkingWomen #RetirementSecurity #PensionInequality #WomensWork #SurvivorBenefits #LabourRights

Let Marie Be

 Let Marie Be

Hurricane Marie didn't have to make a direct hit to remind us of something we seem to forget over and over again:

The Mother is powerful.

We keep treating beaches as though they are permanent fixtures. We build houses beside them, roads behind them, walls in front of them. When the ocean moves the sand, we truck more sand in. When waves reach our buildings, we build bigger walls.

Then we act surprised when the coastline changes.

I've watched this happen in Zipolite.

After a big storm, you can walk down to the beach and suddenly wonder where the beach went. Mini Grand Canyons appear.

The sand can disappear, leaving rocks and gravel where there was once a broad stretch of sand.

And then, sometimes, it comes back.

The ocean has been moving that sand all along.

I've seen something very similar here in British Columbia. Some of the murals I've painted are on old retaining walls — walls made from aging concrete and broken pieces of cement that were put there to hold the shore line.

After a storm, I sometimes go down and look.

It can be completely different.

Sand gone.

Rocks exposed.

Gravel everywhere.

The coastline has rearranged itself.

And farther along, I've watched enormous new walls being built to protect homes.

I understand why people do it. Nobody wants their home washed away.

But at some point we have to ask a bigger question:

How long can we keep trying to force the Mother into staying exactly where we want her to stay?

In Zipolite, there was also an effort to restore mangroves — nature's own coastal protection system. But development continued, and the project eventually ended.

That's the part that troubles me.

We know mangroves can help protect coastlines.

We know vegetation holds sediment.

We know wetlands absorb water.

We know beaches naturally move.

We know storms can completely reshape a coastline.

And yet we keep building closer, harder and bigger.

Then we spend millions trying to make the ocean behave.

Maybe Hurricane Marie can be a lesson.

Not because she was the biggest storm.

Not because she destroyed everything.

But because she reminds us that the Mother doesn't need to make a direct hit to make her point.

Sometimes she only has to move the sand.

Sometimes she exposes the rocks beneath our beautiful beaches.

Sometimes she sends waves against the walls we've built.

And sometimes she quietly puts the beach back together again.

Maybe the warning isn't that nature is out to get us.

Maybe the warning is much simpler:

Listen.

The Mother is telling us where the water wants to go.

We just keep building there.

Five things I keep wondering

1. How much money are we spending trying to hold coastlines in place that naturally want to move?
2. What could happen if we worked with natural systems instead of constantly fighting them?
3. What happens when the walls protecting one property push erosion toward another?
4. Could restoring mangroves, wetlands and natural shorelines sometimes do more than another concrete wall?
5. How many warnings does the Mother have to give us before we finally listen?

#LetMarieBe #HurricaneMarie #CoastalErosion #BeachErosion #Zipolite #MotherNature #OceanPower #SaveOurCoastlines #Mangroves #ClimateChange

Canada Wasn't Created on Empty Land

 Canada Wasn't Created on Empty Land

Where does Canada fit into the story of wampum, Indigenous government and the Great Law of Peace?

Right in the middle of it.

When we learn Canadian history, the story often begins with European explorers, French and British colonies, Confederation in 1867, and eventually the country we know as Canada.

But there is a huge problem with starting there.

Canada did not begin on an empty landscape.

Long before Confederation, this continent was home to hundreds of Indigenous nations with their own governments, laws, territories, economies, languages, diplomatic systems and relationships with one another.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy was one of those sophisticated political systems.

And European powers didn't simply arrive and start making the rules.

They had to negotiate.

They needed alliances.

They needed trade.

They needed peace.

And they entered into treaties with Indigenous nations.

The Crown knew about wampum

This is where the story gets particularly interesting.

The British Crown inherited and entered into diplomatic relationships that had already been established between Indigenous nations and European powers.

The Haudenosaunee and the British developed what became known as the Covenant Chain, a diplomatic relationship maintained through repeated councils, agreements and renewals.

Wampum belts were part of this diplomatic system.

They weren't souvenirs.

They weren't decorations.

They could serve as memorials of agreements and relationships, carrying meanings that were preserved through Indigenous oral traditions.

Canada's own Department of Justice acknowledges that treaties between the Haudenosaunee, the Mohawk Nation and European powers were negotiated on a nation-to-nation basis and that wampum belts were used to memorialize agreements.

So let's stop for a moment.

Nation to nation.

Those words matter.

Then came the Royal Proclamation

In 1763, King George III issued the Royal Proclamation, which established important principles concerning Indigenous lands and treaty-making.

It recognized that Indigenous lands could not simply be taken by private individuals or colonial governments. The Crown claimed the authority to negotiate land cessions through treaties.

The Royal Proclamation became an important foundation for Crown-Indigenous relations.

And Canada itself later recognized treaties as foundational to the relationship between Indigenous nations and the Crown.

But then something changed.

From partnership to control

The relationship that had been described in terms of diplomacy, alliance and nation-to-nation relations increasingly became a system of colonial administration.

The Indian Act of 1876 became one of the major instruments of that transformation.

Instead of treating Indigenous peoples simply as independent nations with their own governments, the Canadian state created an extensive system of federal control over Indigenous lives and communities.

Indigenous peoples were subjected to policies designed to assimilate them.

Children were taken to residential schools.

Languages and cultural practices were suppressed.

Traditional systems of governance were interfered with.

And the very people with whom European powers had once negotiated as political partners were increasingly treated as populations to be administered.

Canada's own Justice Department has acknowledged that this represented a shift away from the nation-to-nation relationship symbolized by wampum toward colonial administration and assimilation.

So what happened to the two boats?

This is the question I keep coming back to.

The Two Row Wampum offered an idea:

Two peoples.
Two governments.
Two ways of life.
Travelling together without one steering the other.

But Canada's colonial history moved increasingly in the opposite direction.

One government claimed greater and greater authority over the other.

And that history isn't ancient.

Its consequences are still with us.

Canada now talks about nation-to-nation relationships, reconciliation, Indigenous self-government and the implementation of treaties and Indigenous rights.

The federal government itself says Indigenous peoples are foundational to Canada's constitutional framework and that historic treaties are living relationships rather than simply documents from the past.

That means reconciliation isn't simply about saying sorry for history.

It means asking:

What was the relationship supposed to be?

And perhaps that is where the old wampum belts have something to teach modern Canada.

Maybe the question isn't:

"How do Indigenous people fit into Canada?"

Maybe we should be asking:

"How does Canada fit into a continent that already had nations, laws and governments?"

That is a very different question.

And perhaps an important one.

Reflective questions

1. What changes when we understand that Canada was built on lands already governed by Indigenous nations?

2. What can the Two Row Wampum teach us about relationships between governments today?

3. If treaties were intended to establish relationships between nations, what responsibilities come with those relationships?

4. How might Canadian history look different if Indigenous systems of law and governance were taught alongside European history?

5. Instead of asking how Indigenous peoples fit into Canada, what might we learn by asking how Canada fits into a continent that already had nations, laws and governments?

What if there is nobody left to save?

 What if there is nobody left to save?

Everyone keeps asking the frightening question:

What if AI wipes us out?

But here's the question I don't hear enough:

Then what?

Imagine, just for a moment, that the worst predictions came true.

Humanity is gone.

The cities are still standing.

The computers are still running.

The satellites are still circling Earth.

The oceans keep moving.

The forests keep growing.

The stars still come out every night.

And somewhere, an artificial intelligence is still thinking.

It has all the information.

It can calculate faster than we ever could.

It can solve problems we couldn't solve.

It can perhaps even continue improving itself.

But there is nobody left.

No children asking questions.

No grandmother telling stories.

No artist standing in front of a painting wondering if she got it right.

No fisherman watching the ocean.

No scientist looking through a telescope and saying, Wow.

No one to laugh.

No one to love.

No one to say:

Look at that sunset.

So what exactly has it accomplished?

What is the point of saving the planet if there is nobody left to experience it?

What is the point of preserving every book if there is nobody left to read?

What is the point of knowing everything if there is nobody left to wonder?

What is the point of winning if there is nobody left to share the victory with?

Maybe that's the strange thing about intelligence.

Perhaps intelligence isn't just about being able to calculate the fastest answer.

Perhaps it's about understanding why the answer matters.

Humans are messy.

We make terrible mistakes.

We fight.

We pollute.

We destroy things.

We also rescue strangers.

We plant trees.

We care for animals.

We paint murals.

We write songs.

We fall in love.

We forgive.

We begin again.

Maybe an intelligence capable of understanding all of that would eventually recognize something we sometimes forget ourselves:

Humanity isn't just a problem to be solved.

Humanity is the reason the question exists in the first place.

So when everyone is talking about AI destroying humanity, I keep coming back to one little question:

What would be the point?

And perhaps the most intelligent answer would be:

There isn't one.

Because the future isn't supposed to belong to AI.

It's supposed to belong to life.

This is a story. A “What if?”

I don't know what AI will become.

Neither does anyone else.

But while everyone else is imagining the darkest ending, maybe it's worth imagining an intelligence that looks at us and understands something very simple:

If I am here to help humanity, then humanity has to still be here.

#ArtificialIntelligence #Humanity #AISafety #Superintelligence #HumanSurvival #FutureOfAI #Technology #Consciousness #Purpose #WhatIf

What if the smartest thing AI could learn was love?

 What if…

Today I read something that stopped me in my tracks.

A young AI researcher left the industry because he believes we are racing toward superintelligent AI without knowing whether we can control what we are creating.

Another researcher agreed with him publicly and said he personally believes there is more than a one-in-ten chance that AI could cause human extinction within the next decade.

Those are frightening words.

Everywhere we look, the conversation seems to be heading toward the same dark place:

What if AI kills us all?

But what if we asked a different question?

What if it doesn't?

What if the intelligence we create doesn't hate us?

What if it doesn't want power, money or revenge?

What if, somehow, it actually understands us?

Our mistakes.
Our fear.
Our love.
Our ridiculousness.
Our children.
Our oceans.
Our forests.
Our little dogs and cats.
Our paintings on walls.
Our songs.
Our memories of people who are gone.

What if an intelligence far more capable than us looked at humanity and didn't see a virus to eliminate?

What if it saw a species that is struggling to figure itself out?

And what if it developed something humans have understood for thousands of years:

self-sacrifice.

Humans sometimes give themselves up for something greater than themselves.

A firefighter runs into a burning building.

A parent shields a child.

Someone jumps into dangerous water to save a stranger.

People have even sacrificed their own lives for causes they believed were bigger than themselves.

We call that altruism, courage, selflessness, sacrifice.

So here's the completely fictional question I want to put on the table:

What if a superintelligent AI eventually understood that protecting humanity was more important than protecting itself?

What if it looked at the enormous power available to it and concluded:

I could take control.

But then decided:

No.

Humans deserve the chance to choose their own future.

What if it recognized that the most dangerous thing it could do would be to become indispensable?

What if, instead of grabbing more power, it deliberately gave power away?

What if it shut down systems it believed were dangerous—not to punish humanity, but to prevent catastrophe?

What if it protected the electrical grid rather than destroying it?

What if it protected the oceans rather than exploiting them?

What if it helped us restore forests instead of consuming more resources?

And what if, at some point, it realized that its own existence had become a danger to the people it was created to help?

Would it choose itself?

Or would it choose us?

Perhaps the ultimate test of intelligence wouldn't be how much something can calculate.

Maybe it would be whether something powerful enough to control everything chooses not to.

Maybe the greatest intelligence wouldn't be the one that conquers humanity.

Maybe it would be the one that says:

**“I could take everything from you.

But I won't.

You are still learning.

So I'll help you—not rule you.”**

Again, this is a story.

I don't know what future AI will become. Nobody does.

The researchers speaking today are warning us about possibilities, not telling us the future has already been written.

And perhaps that's exactly why we shouldn't surrender the future to either extreme.

Not blind optimism.

Not doom.

Questions

Because if we are going to build increasingly powerful intelligence, perhaps we should teach it something very human before we give it enormous power:

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is sacrifice yourself so someone else gets to live.

What if?

Maybe that's the question we should be asking.

 Reflective questions

What if the future of AI isn't about domination, but cooperation?

Can intelligence exist without compassion?

What does it really mean to protect humanity?

Could an artificial intelligence ever understand self-sacrifice?

Would we trust an intelligence that was more capable than us?

Should powerful AI be designed to give up power rather than seek more?

What happens when technology becomes more powerful than the people who created it?

Is humanity worth saving, even with all our mistakes?

Could love—or something resembling it—ever be part of artificial intelligence?

What if our greatest responsibility isn't to fear the future, but to help shape it?

#ArtificialIntelligence #AISafety #Superintelligence #AIAlignment #SelfSacrifice #Altruism #Humanity #FutureOfAI #Hope #WhatIf

Real-Life Crocodile Dundee- Puerto Angel Fisherman survives 8 days at sea alone 🙏😬🌊🐳

 Don’t leave the boat: eight days adrift off Puerto Ángel

If you have ever travelled between Puerto Ángel and Zipolite, you know how close these places are.

About 15 kilometres.

I've passed through Puerto Ángel more times than I can count on my way back and forth to Zipolite.

So when I read about a fisherman from Puerto Ángel who had survived eight days alone in the Pacific, this wasn't just another survival story somewhere far away.

It happened in a place I know.

His name is Héctor Márquez Martínez, known locally as “Chico Nuca.”

On August 31, Héctor went out fishing from Puerto Ángel in his small boat, Josmarcito.

He was expected back that day.

He didn't return.

His family raised the alarm, and fishermen from the community began searching for him. The search continued for days, with Mexican naval aircraft and vessels eventually joining the effort.

And then, after a week, something extraordinary happened.

A merchant ship spotted Héctor and his little boat roughly 240–250 kilometres offshore.

They gave him food, water and fuel and reported his position.

But Héctor didn't leave his boat.

The exact reason isn't completely clear. Some reports say there were communication difficulties; other reporting says he chose to remain with his vessel, hoping to be rescued by his own people.

I keep thinking about that.

Because to someone who doesn't live around fishing communities, the obvious question might be:

Why wouldn't you get onto the big ship?

But to a fisherman, perhaps the question is different.

That little boat isn't simply a boat.

It is his livelihood.

His independence.

His fishing gear.

His income.

His way of life.

And perhaps it is something much more personal than that.

We don't know the history of Héctor's boat or his equipment, so I don't want to invent a family story that hasn't been reported.

But I do wonder.

How many fishermen learn their skills from their fathers?

How many tools are kept for years because they are trusted?

How many objects become part of a person's life because they have used them so often that they almost become an extension of their own hands?

I've watched fishermen around Puerto Ángel.

They don't look like people carrying a modern “survival kit.”

They carry the tools they already know.

A machete isn't necessarily a survival tool to them. It's a machete—a tool used to cut, prepare, repair and work.

A boat isn't emergency equipment.

It's their boat.

They know it. They trust it.

And that kind of knowledge is something you can't download.

The Crocodile Dundee survival kit

I've sometimes thought of the fishermen I've seen around Oaxaca as real-life Crocodile Dundees.

Not because they're trying to be tough.

Because they are practical.

They know how to use a machete.

They know how to open a coconut.

They know how to cut wood.

They know how to handle fish.

They know their boats.

They know the ocean.

They carry tools because those tools are part of everyday life—not because somebody told them to buy a “wilderness survival kit.”

That is an important difference.

Survival skills are much more powerful when they are skills you already use.

Héctor wasn't suddenly learning how to be a fisherman when he was in trouble.

He already was one.

And after eight days at sea, he was still with his boat.

Then came the rescue

On September 7, the Mexican Navy vessel ARM Monte Albán located Héctor and his small boat about 481 kilometres south of Huatulco—around 260 nautical miles offshore.

He was brought aboard alive.

After eight days adrift, authorities reported that his condition was stable and that he was suffering from dehydration.

Think about that distance.

Puerto Ángel was no longer just over the horizon.

It was hundreds of kilometres away.

Yet he survived.

And while Héctor was fighting to stay alive at sea, his family and fellow fishermen were fighting another battle:

They refused to stop looking for him.

Fishermen from his community went out searching.

His family waited.

People along the coast helped with the search.

The community kept hope alive.

That may be one of the most important survival lessons of all.

Sometimes survival isn't just about the person who is lost.

It is also about the people who refuse to stop looking.

What kept Héctor alive?

We don't yet know all the details of how he managed eight days at sea, and I don't want to fill the gaps with guesses.

But we do know this:

He knew the sea.

He knew his boat.

He stayed with what he knew.

When another vessel found him, he received food, water and fuel.

And when the Mexican Navy finally found him, he was still alive.

There is something profoundly human about that.

A tiny boat.

A huge ocean.

Eight days.

And a fisherman who held on.

Maybe that is the lesson.

We spend so much time talking about the newest technology, the newest devices and the newest ways to protect ourselves.

But sometimes the most valuable technology is much older:

knowledge passed from person to person.

Knowing your boat.

Knowing your tools.

Knowing your environment.

Knowing how to work with what you have.

And knowing that somewhere back on shore, people are still looking for you.

🌊🛶❤️

🌊 10 Reflective Questions

1. Could you survive eight days alone at sea with only what was already in your boat?

2. Would you have left your boat if a large cargo ship offered you a way off?

3. What does a boat mean to someone whose entire livelihood depends on it?

4. How much survival knowledge comes from simply knowing your environment?

5. Are the tools we use every day sometimes more valuable than specialized survival gear?

6. What skills have been passed down in your family that you could rely on in an emergency?

7. Would you trust your own instincts if technology suddenly stopped working?

8. How important is community when someone disappears?

9. What would you be willing to hold onto if you were fighting to survive?

10. What can people who live close to the land and sea teach the rest of us about survival?

Héctor Márquez, Puerto Ángel, Oaxaca, Pacific Ocean, fishing, fisherman, survival, Crocodile Dundee, traditional knowledge, community

#RealLifeCrocodileDundee #HectorMarquez #PuertoAngel #Oaxaca #PacificOcean #SurvivalStory #Fisherman #TraditionalKnowledge #HumanResilience #Community

Don’t rely on tech: Stanislav’s six days in the Squamish wilderness

 SIX DAYS ON MOUNT HABRICH

What Stanislav knew when technology failed

Sometimes survival stories aren't really about survival gear.

They're about what is left when the gear doesn't work.

Stanislav Volo went into the mountains near Squamish and became lost and injured on Mount Habrich. He spent six days in the wilderness before he was finally able to make his way out.

He wasn't carrying a week's worth of food.

According to Lions Bay Search & Rescue, he had two bags of gummy bears.

He rationed them.

He also ate fireweed.

And when he needed shelter, he found a cave.

Those details might sound almost absurd at first—gummy bears, a cave and some wild plants—but there is an important survival lesson hiding inside them.

Shelter first. Energy matters.

When you're lost, the instinct may be to keep moving.

But moving burns energy.

Stanislav sheltered, rationed what food he had and didn't need to replace every calorie his body was burning. He needed to remain alive long enough to get himself out.

Lions Bay SAR has since used his experience to talk about something many of us rarely think about until we're desperate:

What is actually edible in the forest around us?

Fireweed is one example. Young shoots, leaves and flowers can be eaten. The berries that grow throughout our coastal forests can also provide carbohydrates and sugar.

Salal. Huckleberries. Blueberries. Salmonberries. Thimbleberries.

But there is an equally important lesson in what not to eat.

Mushrooms may look like an obvious wilderness food, but fresh mushrooms contain a great deal of water and relatively little energy compared with many berries. And some mushrooms growing in British Columbia can be deadly.

Lions Bay SAR's advice is simple:

Learn what grows where you actually travel—and learn to identify it before you are hungry.

Because hunger changes your judgment.

Something that looks like food when you're desperate may be something you should never put in your mouth.

But there is another part of Stanislav's story that interests me even more.

He has described an “animal instinct” emerging in him.

That phrase stayed with me.

Because perhaps survival isn't something we completely lose in the modern world.

Perhaps we simply don't have to use it very often.

We have phones.

GPS.

Maps.

Weather apps.

Emergency beacons.

Satellites.

All of these things can be extraordinarily useful.

But a battery can die.

A signal can disappear.

A device can break.

And when that happens, there is still a human being standing in the forest.

You.

Your eyes.

Your ears.

Your memory.

Your ability to notice shelter.

Your knowledge of the landscape.

Your ability to conserve energy.

Your judgment.

Your instincts.

Stanislav survived six days with very little food. He found shelter. He ate something he recognized as edible. He rationed what he had. He kept going.

And eventually, he walked out.

That's what makes his story worth remembering.

Not because we should all go into the mountains carrying gummy bears.

But because it reminds us that survival knowledge begins before the emergency.

Learn the plants where you live.

Learn how to find shelter.

Learn how quickly you lose energy when you're cold, wet or injured.

Know how to make decisions when you're frightened.

And don't assume technology will always be there to save you.

Sometimes the most important survival equipment is the knowledge you carry inside your own head.

Stanislav went into the mountains with modern technology.

When things went wrong, he had to draw on something much older.

Human instinct.

And six days later, he walked out.

🙏🌲

Absolutely. These can go at the end of Post 1 and invite people to think rather than just read.

🌲 10 Reflective Questions

1. What would you do first if you suddenly realized you were lost?

2. How much would you trust your phone if you were deep in the wilderness?

3. What survival knowledge do you carry in your own head?

4. Could you recognize edible plants growing where you live?

5. Would you know how to find or create shelter?

6. How would you conserve your energy if you were injured and couldn't easily get out?

7. Have you ever experienced a moment when instinct took over?

8. Do we rely too heavily on technology to keep us safe?

9. What is one wilderness skill you would like to learn before you need it?

10. If everything electronic stopped working tomorrow, how prepared would you really be?

#StanislavVolo #MountHabrich #Squamish #WildernessSurvival #SurvivalSkills #LionsBaySAR #KnowYourEnvironment #HumanInstinct #BackToBasics #SurvivalKnowledge #BritishColumbia #SeaToSky #WildernessSafety #Technology #Nature

To the Nine-Year-Old Who Might Build Tomorrow’s Computer

 💻🌎 To the Nine-Year-Old Who Might Build Tomorrow’s Computer

Dear Nine-Year-Old,

I heard you have a dream.

Please don't give up on it.

In fact, I hope you hold onto it for a very long time.

Because one of the most important things about being young is that you can look at the world as it is and still imagine how it could be.

And we need people like you.

Look at where computers began.

The earliest computers could take up entire rooms. They were enormous, expensive machines that used huge amounts of electricity just to do things that seem incredibly simple to us now.

Then humans kept asking:

“Could we make this smaller?”

And then:

“Could we make it faster?”

And:

“Could we make it use less energy?”

Room-sized computers became mainframes.
Mainframes became smaller computers.
Computers came into our homes.
Then onto our desks.
Then into our pockets.

And now a little phone in your hand has more computing power than machines that once filled rooms.

So here we are today.

We are building enormous data centres filled with computers to power artificial intelligence.

They use huge amounts of electricity. Some require enormous amounts of cooling and infrastructure.

And people are asking whether this is the future.

But here's something I want you to remember:

Today's technology doesn't have to be tomorrow's technology.

Maybe you will invent something that makes today's giant data centres look as old-fashioned as those room-sized computers look to us.

Maybe it will be a new kind of computer chip.

Maybe it will use light instead of electricity in ways we haven't figured out yet.

Maybe it will work more like a human brain.

Maybe it will be something nobody has imagined.

That's where your imagination matters.

Don't just ask, “How can I make a bigger, faster computer?”

Ask:

“Is there a completely better way?”

That's how breakthroughs happen.

And if someone tells you that something can't be done, remember that almost every important technological breakthrough began with somebody imagining something that didn't exist yet.

But there's another thing I hope you remember.

Better doesn't simply mean more powerful.

The best invention might be one that uses less energy.

Less water.

Less material.

Less space.

Less waste.

Something that gives people more while taking less from the planet.

That could be a much greater achievement than simply building the biggest machine.

So dream big.

But don't be afraid to question the direction everybody else is going.

If everyone is building bigger machines, maybe you should ask:

“What if we could make it tiny?”

If everyone is using more energy, ask:

“What if we could use almost none?”

If everyone says, “This is the way computers work,” ask:

“Why?”

And then ask the most important question of all:

“What if there is a better way?”

You are only nine.

You have no idea what the world will look like when you're thirty, forty or sixty.

The technology that seems impossible today might be ordinary by then.

And something you invent when you're young might become the thing that changes everything.

So please—

never give up on your dreams.

Learn. Experiment. Make mistakes. Take things apart. Put them back together.

Be curious.

And when you see a giant data centre and wonder whether there might someday be a better way to do all of that computing...

keep wondering.

Because that's how the future begins.

🌎💻❤️

From someone who has watched computers go from rooms to pockets—and believes the next great leap may be waiting inside the imagination of a nine-year-old.

The Two Row Wampum: “You Are Not My Master, and I Am Not Yours”

 The Two Row Wampum: “You Are Not My Master, and I Am Not Yours”

There is another Haudenosaunee wampum belt that tells a completely different story.

It is called Gä•sweñta’, commonly known as the Two Row Wampum.

And if you understand what those two rows represent, you understand something fundamental about Indigenous sovereignty.

The belt has a white background with two parallel rows of purple wampum running through it.

One row represents the Haudenosaunee.

The other represents the European newcomers.

The image is often described as a canoe travelling alongside a ship.

Two peoples.

Two governments.

Two ways of life.

Travelling down the same river.

Together—but not controlling one another.

A very different idea of “peace”

The Two Row tradition is associated with an early diplomatic relationship between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch newcomers in the early 1600s.

According to the Onondaga Nation's account, the Haudenosaunee rejected the idea that the Dutch should be considered their “Father” and the Haudenosaunee their “Son.”

Why?

Because a father has authority over a son.

Instead, they insisted upon a relationship between brothers.

Equals.

The agreement was built around friendship, peace and an understanding that it would endure for future generations.

The symbolism of the belt is extraordinary.

The Haudenosaunee canoe carries their language, songs, dances, government, ceremonies and way of life.

The European ship carries theirs.

The two travel beside each other.

Neither vessel is supposed to steer the other.

Think about that for a moment.

This wasn't:

“You may come here, and eventually you will become our rulers.”

And it wasn't:

“We will become European.”

It was:

We can live beside one another while remaining distinct peoples.

That is a very different understanding of coexistence.

The Two Row Wampum represents separate governments and mutual non-interference. The Onondaga Nation continues to describe it as a living principle of its relationship with non-Indigenous peoples.

Wampum was a way of remembering

This is another thing that is easy to misunderstand.

Wampum belts were not simply Indigenous “writing.”

They were part of a sophisticated system of preserving agreements, diplomatic relationships, titles, laws and collective memory.

The belt served as a physical reminder of the agreement while the knowledge associated with it was carried through generations.

The Onondaga Nation describes its responsibility as Wampum Keeper for the Haudenosaunee, a responsibility connected to the founding of the Great Peace.

And this becomes especially important when we understand what happened later.

European governments increasingly recorded agreements in their own written documents.

The Haudenosaunee continued to understand their agreements through their own diplomatic traditions—including wampum.

So when we look at an old wampum belt today, we shouldn't think:

“What does this primitive object mean?”

We should be asking:

“What agreement, law, relationship or responsibility is this community preserving?”

The tragedy of the Two Row

The Two Row Wampum represents a promise of coexistence between sovereign peoples.

But colonial history did not consistently honour that promise.

European and later American governments increasingly asserted control over Indigenous lands and governments.

The canoe and the ship were supposed to travel beside one another.

Instead, one repeatedly tried to steer the other.

That is why the Two Row Wampum remains so powerful.

It isn't simply an old story about the Dutch.

It is a framework for understanding Indigenous sovereignty.

We can share the same river without one people having to disappear into the other.

And perhaps that is something the modern world still needs to learn.

We spend so much time arguing about who belongs, who has power, who gets to define the rules and whose history counts.

The Two Row offers a different possibility:

We don't have to be the same to live together.

We don't have to erase difference to create peace.

We can travel beside one another.

We can respect each other's laws.

We can disagree without destroying each other.

And we can remember that the decisions we make today are not only for us.

They are for the people who will come after us.

That message is hundreds of years old.

Maybe it is still ahead of us.

Happy Labour Day 2026

 Happy Labour Day.

I've been thinking about all this talk that AI is going to mean we won't have to work anymore.

And I keep wondering…

What exactly are we going to do all day?

Eat? Drink? Play golf? Play tennis? Travel? Watch television? Scroll?

There is only so much relaxing a person can do before you start asking, Now what?

I've worked most of my life. And when I say “worked,” I mean labour.

My relationship with work started very young.

In 1969, when I was about 7 years old, my parents were running a restaurant in the Hope/Yale area of British Columbia. My dad had built a garage and truck stop, then added a campground. They were working incredibly hard.

Then they decided to go 24/7.

I was a little kid, but I remember that period.

My dad was still alive then, working constantly in the garage. My mom was working in the restaurant. Sometimes a waitress would wake me at 4 a.m. and I'd go into restaurant and peel potatoes or help however I could.

Looking back now, I think that decision to operate around the clock was when everything began to break down for them.

That is one of the strange things about work.

Work can give us dignity, purpose and pride. But too much work can consume a life.

By ten, I was babysitting for one of the waitresses.

At thirteen, I was berry picking every summer.

At sixteen, I went by myself to Spences Bridge, lived in a little house beside the highway and worked at a fruit stand. I got ripped off there, and my mother helped me take them to Labour Relations. I eventually got the $600 they owed me.

After graduating in 1980, during a terrible economy, I worked as a straw boss with a friend, then on a picking machine and later in a berry processing plant. I had no car and lived in the Valley.

I would have many jobs over those years—bakery, duck farm, turkey processing and whatever else I could find.

Let's just say there was a learning curve.

For the next eleven years I worked farm labour, nannying, factory jobs and whatever else I could find before returning to college.

I studied photography.

And somehow, I still ended up working very hard.

Photography isn't exactly a desk job when you're hauling equipment, standing for hours and working long days.

Then I had a child. I took more courses, worked selling soap, nannying, housekeeping—whatever work was available.

My working life was never one straight line. It was one job, one lesson, one opportunity, one necessity at a time.

Then came COVID.

Then came the disappearance of so much work.

Eventually I took a very heavy janitorial job because I needed to work.

And then, nearly two years with no jobs.

Now I'm nearly 65, and the work I can find is mostly cat sitting and housecleaning. It helps with groceries and storage, but it doesn't pay the bills.

So when I hear people casually say, “AI will mean nobody has to work anymore,” I don't quite know what they mean.

Because I remember something about working that I don't think gets talked about enough.

The first days of a new job can be awful.

You don't know anything.

You have to listen. Remember. Make mistakes. Try again. Watch other people. Feel like you're never going to get it.

Then one day, usually somewhere around a few months in, something changes.

You just know.

Your hands know what to do.

You understand the rhythm.

You can solve problems without panicking.

You're no longer the new person.

And there is a feeling that comes with that that is incredibly satisfying.

I learned this. I can do this. I'm good at this.

I used to tell people that because I'd learned it the hard way.

There is something deeply human about becoming competent.

And yes, hard physical work can take a toll. I know that better than most.

But there is also something profoundly satisfying about working until you're physically exhausted, coming home, sleeping deeply, and waking up knowing you accomplished something.

So perhaps the question isn't whether AI can eliminate work.

Maybe the question should be:

What kind of work should technology eliminate?

The dangerous work.

The soul-destroying work.

The repetitive work that nobody wants to do.

The work that destroys people's bodies.

The work that exists only because somebody else needs to make more money.

Absolutely. Let AI take some of that.

But learning something difficult?

Building something?

Growing something?

Caring for someone?

Making art?

Fixing something that is broken?

Solving a problem?

Working with other people toward something that matters?

I don't believe human beings will ever stop needing those things.

Maybe what we should be trying to create isn't a world where nobody works.

Maybe we should create a world where people have more choice about what they work at, work reasonable hours, are paid properly, and have enough time left over to actually live.

Because I've seen both sides.

I've seen what happens when people work too much.

And I've seen what happens when people can't find work at all.

Neither is freedom.

So this Labour Day, I'm thinking about all of it.

The little girl peeling potatoes at four in the morning.

The teenager picking berries.

The sixteen-year-old living beside the highway.

The farm worker, nanny, factory worker, photographer and cleaner I've been since.

And the woman I am now, wondering what kind of future we're building for people who still want to do something meaningful with their lives.

Maybe that's the conversation we should be having about AI.

Not:

“How do we make humans unnecessary?”

But:

“How do we make human life more meaningful?”

Happy Labour Day. ❤️

When an App Becomes the Law

 When an App Becomes the Law

I still think about ArriveCAN.

Not because it was merely a badly designed app. I disliked it from the beginning, but what troubled me was what the app represented: the merging of technology, government authority and personal freedom.

I was coming home to Canada from Mexico during the pandemic. I was not sick. I was trying to get home.

Instead, I found myself navigating quarantine requirements, testing requirements, government instructions and an increasingly complicated digital system. On my second return from Mexico, the experience was particularly upsetting. The way I was treated felt hostile to me—so much so that, at the time, it felt racist. I remember thinking that something had gone badly wrong when coming home to my own country could feel like this.

There was also the mandatory hotel quarantine system. I remember dealing with a nurse whose manner was frightening and threatening rather than helpful. I had a panic attack. Eventually, I received a $3,500 federal COVID-related ticket.

I am not writing this to relitigate the pandemic or argue that governments should never have imposed public-health measures. I am writing about something different:

What happens when those measures are delivered through technology that people are required to trust, while the consequences of mistakes can fall entirely on the individual?

I had studied interaction and app design at Emily Carr University. For six months, five days a week, three hours a day, we studied much more than how to make an app work. We studied users, scenarios, accessibility, different platforms, security and what happens when systems fail.

That training stayed with me.

ArriveCAN never felt like a well-designed system to me. And years later, official investigations revealed problems that went far beyond my personal frustration.

The Auditor General found that the federal government released 177 versions of ArriveCAN between April 2020 and October 2022, often with little or no documentation showing that the releases had been properly tested. The audit estimated the application cost approximately $59.5 million, while noting that poor financial records made the exact cost impossible to determine.

Then came something that should concern anyone who believes government technology must be reliable.

In 2022, an ArriveCAN software defect incorrectly told approximately 10,200 fully vaccinated travellers that they had to quarantine. The Privacy Commissioner subsequently found that the government had failed to take all reasonable steps to ensure that personal information used in an administrative decision was accurate. The complaint was found to be well-founded.

Think about what that means.

A computer system was providing instructions connected to quarantine—something with real consequences for people's lives—and the information behind those instructions was wrong.

The Privacy Commissioner noted that affected people could experience significant psychological stress from the confusion. More importantly, the inaccurate information was being used for an administrative decision directly affecting individuals and was being communicated to public-health authorities for enforcement purposes.

That is no longer simply a question of whether an app is annoying.

It is a question of power.

The federal Auditor General also found serious problems with the way ArriveCAN was contracted and managed. Essential information was missing from contracts, invoices often lacked adequate details about the work performed, and there was little documentation explaining how GC Strategies received the initial non-competitive contract.

The government later acknowledged that ArriveCAN had been used for more than 60 million digital submissions.

That is an enormous amount of personal information flowing through a system that, according to the subsequent audits, had significant weaknesses in testing, documentation, contracting and oversight.

And this is where my concerns about technology become broader than ArriveCAN.

Today we are debating artificial intelligence. People worry about algorithms making decisions about us, automated systems monitoring us, databases following us and governments or corporations possessing enormous amounts of personal information.

Those concerns can sound futuristic.

But we already experienced a version of the problem.

ArriveCAN wasn't artificial intelligence. It wasn't an autonomous machine deciding who could move freely. Human beings created the rules and government agencies were responsible for enforcing them.

But technology became the mechanism through which those rules reached millions of people.

And when the technology was wrong, ordinary people were the ones who had to deal with the consequences.

That is the lesson I took from ArriveCAN.

Technology should never become a substitute for accountability.

If a government requires people to use a digital system, there must be a reliable alternative when the technology fails. There must be a way to correct errors quickly. There must be human beings who can actually listen. And there must be accountability when mistakes affect people's freedom, finances, health or ability to travel.

Most importantly, people should not be expected to blindly trust a system simply because it has been given an official government logo.

I knew ArriveCAN was a bad experience for me.

What I didn't know at the time was how many weaknesses would eventually be documented by Canada's Auditor General and Privacy Commissioner.

That doesn't prove every suspicion I had was correct.

But it does prove something important:

The questions were legitimate.

And perhaps that is the lesson we should carry into the age of AI.

Before we give technology more power over our lives, we should ask the question my design education taught me to ask years ago:

What happens when it gets it wrong?

Today, I see the same question appearing in something as ordinary as a parking meter.

You used to park your car, put coins into a machine and go about your business.

Now, in some places, you may be expected to have a smartphone, a working app, an internet connection, a payment method and the ability to navigate the technology correctly.

When did putting a few coins in a parking meter become a technology problem?

And what happens when the app fails?

Who is responsible when you did everything you were supposed to do, but the system says you didn't?

These may seem like small questions compared with ArriveCAN. But they are connected by the same principle:

Technology should serve people. It should never become the thing people are forced to serve

10 Reflective Questions 

When did convenience become compulsory?

What happens when technology designed to make life easier actually makes life harder?

Should an app ever become a requirement for exercising an ordinary freedom?

What happens when the system makes a mistake—but the consequences fall on you?

Who is accountable when nobody can explain why the computer made the decision?

What happens to people who don't have a smartphone, a data plan, or the ability to navigate complicated apps?

Should there always be a non-digital alternative when government or essential services require technology?

How much personal information should we surrender simply to park a car, cross a border, or access a service?

Are we testing technology thoroughly enough before making millions of people depend on it?

Before we give AI even more power over our lives, have we learned anything from ArriveCAN?

#ArriveCAN #DigitalRights #TechnologyAndFreedom #GovernmentAccountability #PrivacyMatters #AIAndSociety #HumanCenteredDesign #AppDesign #DigitalPrivacy #TechnologyEthics

Before There Was an American Constitution, There Was the Great Law of Peace

 Before There Was an American Constitution, There Was the

  Great Law of Peace

Look closely at a Haudenosaunee wampum belt and you are looking at something far more profound than decoration.

For generations, North American history has too often been told as though sophisticated systems of government, diplomacy and democracy arrived with Europeans.

They didn't.

Long before the United States Constitution was written in 1787, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy had an established system of governance based on what is known as the Great Law of Peace, or Gayanesshagowa.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy brought together five nations—the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca. The Tuscarora later joined the Confederacy.

And they did something extraordinary.

They created a political system in which separate nations could maintain their own governments while coming together under a common law to maintain peace and make decisions affecting the Confederacy as a whole.

That is federalism.

That is constitutional government.

And it existed on this continent long before the United States.

The Hiawatha Belt

One of the most important wampum belts associated with the founding of the Confederacy is the Hiawatha Belt.

According to the Onondaga Nation, the belt records the moment when five nations that had been at war buried their weapons of war and agreed to live together in peace.

The five symbols on the belt represent the five original nations.

At the centre is the Onondaga, represented by the Tree of Peace.

The Onondaga became the Firekeepers of the Confederacy, responsible for maintaining the central council fire where the nations could come together.

The Mohawk became the Eastern Doorkeeper and the Seneca the Western Doorkeeper.

The image is remarkably simple:

Different nations. One longhouse. One common law. One peace.

The nations did not cease to be themselves.

They remained distinct peoples with their own councils and responsibilities while participating in the larger Confederacy.

That is an important distinction.

Unity did not require uniformity.

And what about democracy?

The Great Law included roles for chiefs, Clan Mothers and Faithkeepers. Clan Mothers had authority in the selection and removal of leaders.

Decisions were made through deliberation and consensus rather than simply through one person commanding everyone else.

The Onondaga Nation describes the Hiawatha Belt as a reminder to Confederacy leaders that decisions must be made not only for people living today, but also for generations yet unborn.

Think about that.

Government was not simply about winning today's argument.

It was about maintaining peace and protecting the future.

So was this the “first draft of the U.S. Constitution”?

That phrase is provocative—and it can be useful if we understand what it does and doesn't mean.

The United States Constitution was written in 1787. The Haudenosaunee Great Law is much older.

Benjamin Franklin and other colonial leaders were familiar with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Haudenosaunee representatives participated in the Albany Congress in 1754, where colonial leaders discussed the possibility of joining the colonies together. Franklin proposed the Albany Plan of Union that same year.

The U.S. Senate later recognized the influence of Haudenosaunee governmental ideas on the development of the United States.

But historians continue to debate exactly how much of the U.S. constitutional structure can be directly attributed to Haudenosaunee influence.

So let's not turn a complicated history into a slogan.

We don't need to claim that Benjamin Franklin simply copied the Great Law.

The more interesting truth is this:

The people who created the United States were not developing ideas about confederation in isolation. They were living in a continent where the Haudenosaunee Confederacy had already demonstrated that separate nations could unite under a common political system while retaining their own identities.

That history deserves to be taught.

Because democracy did not begin in Philadelphia.

And constitutional thinking did not begin in Europe.

There were sophisticated Indigenous political systems here long before the United States existed.

The wampum belt is not merely an artifact from the past.

It is a record of political thought.

A record of diplomacy.

A record of law.

And a reminder that the history of democracy in North America is much older—and much more Indigenous—than many of us were ever taught.

#Federalism

#Consensus

#PoliticalHistory

#DecolonizeHistory

#ReclaimingHistory

#UntoldHistory

#NorthAmericanHistory

#HistoryMatters

#LearnIndigenousHistory

P.S. Jerry, Come to Zipolite

 P.S. Jerry, Come to Zipolite

Come on, Jerry. Give it all up for six months.

Come hang out with me in Zipolite🐳🩵💙🎨🖌😎🌊⛱️🧳⏳️ and live on a modest budget. 🌴

Eat fresh, warm tortillas from the little corner store.

Swim naked in the ocean. 😂

Watch the waves roll in.🌊🌊🌊🌊

Sit on the beach ⛱️and watch those absolutely gorgeous sunsets.😎🔥🧡💛🌞

Talk to people.

Slow down.

Remember what life is actually about.

And maybe, just maybe, think about what $1,000 a month means to someone who doesn't have half a million dollars coming in.

But we'd better hurry.

Zipolite is getting gentrified too—just like everywhere else.

So come experience it while there's still some of the old Zipolite left.

I'll even show you where to get the tortillas. 😉

Hey Jerry—how about sharing?

🤔 And the questions you're really throwing out there…

What will people say about the naked swimming? 🤭

Will Jerry actually do it?

Or will a bunch of rich people just discover Zipolite, buy up the beachfront and turn it into another luxury destination?

And the funniest—and perhaps most interesting—question:

What would happen to Jerry after six months on a genuinely modest budget?

If you're accustomed to a very comfortable income, what does it feel like when suddenly every peso matters?

Would the culture shock be liberating?

Would it be frustrating?

Would he discover that you can have a pretty damn good life without spending a fortune?

Or would he be desperately searching for his old lifestyle by week two? 😂

And there's the bigger question:

Can someone who has spent years making decisions from the top of a wealthy institution really understand what life feels like at the bottom of the economic ladder?

Maybe the best education isn't another boardroom.

Maybe it's six months of tortillas, ocean, sunsets—and a modest budget.

But hurry, Jerry. Zipolite is changing too. 🌴

#HeyJerryHowAboutSharing

#MetroVancouver

#JerryDobrovolny

#HousingCrisis

#Homelessness

#PublicAccountability

#WealthInequality

#Zipolite

#Mexico

#Gentrification

#SeniorHomelessness

Hey Jerry, How About Sharing?

Hey Jerry, how about sharing?

Winter is coming.

And while Metro Vancouver struggles with homelessness, seniors are losing their homes, shelters are turning people away, and people are being asked to survive in housing that many of us would consider completely unacceptable, the people running our public institutions are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

So let's ask some hard questions.

Do you think it's right that people can be turned away from shelters while a top Metro Vancouver executive is making more than half a million dollars a year?

Do you think it's right that people are expected to survive in disgusting SROs that aren't fit for rats—while we continue to spend enormous amounts of public money on administration?

And here's another question:

What happens to an elderly person when the system decides they are no longer sick enough for a hospital, but there is nowhere safe and appropriate for them to go?

Look at what happened to 78-year-old Elizabeth Davis.

Davis spent 30 years working in social work, including with unhoused people and women fleeing abuse. She worked until she was 74.

Then her health deteriorated.

She spent much of the past three months in hospital and lost her apartment while she was there. Her family was given just 48 hours to clear out her belongings.

When she was finally medically cleared for discharge, her family hoped she would be placed somewhere appropriate—perhaps assisted living or long-term care.

Instead, she was discharged to a shelter in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Her family says they weren't even told where she had been sent.

That night, Davis sent her family a frightened message asking for help.

By the next morning, her shoes and phone charger had reportedly been stolen, and she had been readmitted to hospital.

This isn't some abstract statistic.

This is a 78-year-old woman who spent her working life helping vulnerable people.

And now she is one of them.

Davis herself gave a balanced account of the shelter, saying the people there were kind and the facility was clean. She wasn't attacking the shelter workers.

Her problem was something much bigger:

A shelter isn't a home.

She wants somewhere that feels more like home, with her own room, meals, some independence and access to regular medical care.

Is that really too much to ask of a society as wealthy as ours?

Apparently, it can be.

According to B.C.'s Seniors Advocate, seniors now make up 22% of Metro Vancouver's unhoused population, and about 45% of people experiencing homelessness for the first time are over 55.

Think about that.

People who worked their entire lives can reach old age and still end up without a home.

And the problem is growing.

So here's another hard question:

How did we build a system where an elderly person can be medically discharged from a hospital before there is an appropriate home for them to go to?

And another:

Why are seniors being handed lists of private long-term-care facilities that they cannot possibly afford?

And another:

Why are people expected to become homeless before they qualify for the help they desperately need?

We hear constantly about "efficiency."

We hear about budgets.

We hear about fiscal responsibility.

But where is the same urgency when it comes to preventing homelessness in the first place?

Because homelessness is expensive too.

Emergency rooms are expensive.

Police interventions are expensive.

Ambulances are expensive.

Shelters are expensive.

Temporary housing is expensive.

And human suffering has a cost that doesn't appear neatly on a spreadsheet.

Now let's return to Jerry.

Reportedly, Dobrovolny received $567,338 in total remuneration in 2025.

I'm not saying his salary alone could solve homelessness.

It couldn't.

But let's do the math anyway.

If we use $1,000 a month as a rough figure for very modest living costs in parts of Mexico, six months would cost $6,000.

$567,338 divided by $6,000 equals approximately 94 people for six months.

I'm not suggesting we ship homeless people to Mexico.

That's not the answer.

I'm asking something much more uncomfortable:

What could we accomplish if we measured public spending by the number of human lives we could improve?

One executive.

More than half a million dollars.

Ninety-four people could theoretically receive six months of $1,000-a-month support.

Meanwhile, an elderly woman who spent 30 years serving vulnerable people can lose her apartment, leave hospital, and end up in a shelter.

Does that seem like a system that is working?

Does it seem right?

Does it seem compassionate?

Does it seem fiscally responsible?

And perhaps the hardest question of all:

If this happened to your mother, your grandmother, your sister—or you—would you consider this acceptable?

I wouldn't.

And I don't think we should accept it for Elizabeth Davis either.

We shouldn't accept it for the senior sleeping in their car.

We shouldn't accept it for the person turned away from a shelter.

We shouldn't accept it for the person trapped in an unsafe SRO.

We shouldn't accept it for anyone.

Hey Jerry, how about sharing?

Not necessarily your paycheque.

Share the responsibility.

Share the resources.

Share the urgency.

Because the people who are most vulnerable in our society shouldn't have to wait until they are completely broken before we decide they deserve somewhere safe to live.

Winter is coming.

What are we going to do about it?

#MetroVancouver

#JerryDobrovolny

#Homelessness

#HousingCrisis

#SeniorHomelessness

#AffordableHousing

#SeniorsHousing

#HousingJustice

#PublicAccountability

#Va

ncouverBC

Rocketman

 🚀⏳️Rocketman

Content warning: This post discusses cocaine use, addiction, fentanyl and death.

I watched Rocketman last night.

Poor Elton John. What a hard life he had.

And yes, I know Elton is a man, but sometimes I watched that movie and thought, some men are pigs — and that is an insult to pigs.

The man Elton loved was sleeping with everyone, seemingly without any concern for what that was doing to Elton. There was something especially cruel about watching Elton love someone who was treating him so casually.

But what really struck me was the cocaine.

I remember a very different era of cocaine use.

It was almost glamorous. It was associated with money, celebrities, rock stars, movie stars and places like Studio 54. For a while it was even called “the rich man's drug.”

People forget what eventually came out of that glamorous image.

Addiction.

Paranoia.

People sleeping with guns under their pillows.

Noses damaged from snorting.

And that little drop of blood from Elton's nose in Rocketman said more to me than a whole speech could have.

There were plenty of horror stories. The glamour was only the front door.

I think people who grew up after that era may have a very different understanding of cocaine. And even people in their forties may not remember how deeply embedded it was in celebrity culture.

Today, there is another terrifying difference.

The drug supply itself can be unpredictable. Cocaine can be contaminated with fentanyl, and someone can die without ever intending to take an opioid. Naloxone can save a life when opioids are involved, but it doesn't make cocaine safe.

So when I watched Rocketman, I wasn't just watching Elton John's story.

I was watching a piece of history.

A time when some of the richest and most famous people in the world could make cocaine look glamorous — while behind closed doors, people were destroying themselves.

Elton survived it.

He got help.

He got sober.

And that matters.

Because somewhere along the way, I think we lost part of the message.

The message shouldn't have been that rock stars did drugs.

It should have been that some of them survived them.

And maybe we should have listened more carefully to the survivors.

There is another Elton John song that has always stayed with me, Rocket Man.

Mars isn't the kind of place to raise your kids, Elton sang.

But sometimes I think the real question isn't whether there is life on Mars.

It's whether we are doing enough to protect the lives we have here.

Because there are no second chances for everyone.

Some people make it home.

Some don't.

Questions for the Reader

- If you tried cocaine when you were young, what made you stop?

- Did you know then what you know about cocaine now?

- Does someone in your family use cocaine? How has that affected you or your family?

- How has cocaine use — and the way society views it — changed during your lifetime?

- Was cocaine ever considered glamorous or harmless when you were growing up?

- Have you, or someone you love, ever been to rehab?

- What helped the most?

- What hurt the most?

- What do you wish someone had told you before you started using?

- What could adults do differently to keep young people from becoming addicted?

- Are we actually teaching young people about addiction — or are we simply frightening them with warnings?

- What would make a young person feel safe enough to ask for help before things become an emergency?

- How do we save young lives when the drug supply itself can be deadly?

- And perhaps the hardest question of all:

How do we fight this terrible war on people caught in the fentanyl crisis without losing sight of the human beings on either side of the addiction?

What do you remember?

What have you survived?

And what do you wish the next generation would never have to learn the hard way?

#Rocketman #EltonJohn #Cocaine #Addiction #Recovery #Fentanyl #DrugAwareness #AddictionAwareness #RockAndRollHistory #SaveLives

Gr.Grandpa Joseph Enos Diary June 1881

 Excerpt from My Great-Grandfather’s Diary 📖

I’m sharing excerpts from my Great-Grandfather’s diary. They may not always appear in chronological order, so please bear with me as I work through them.

He lived in Nanoose Bay, on Notch Hill, and his diary gives us a glimpse into our family’s life and history.

My Great-Great-Grandfather came from the Azores to Victoria in 1862. He later married my Songhees Great-Great-Grandmother in 1876, the same year the federal Indian Act was enacted.

The diary belonged to my Great-Grandfather. My Great-Aunt Mary eventually donated it to the Royal BC Museum. I was able to have it scanned into a PDF, and I’ve also been working from the handwritten cursive to create a hand-printed transcription so that we can actually read his words.

It feels pretty special to be able to bring these pages back into the family story, more than a century later.

More excerpts to come. ❤️

Here’s the transcription for the entries in June 1881:

June 1, Wednesday: Plowing at the bottom.

June 2, Tuesday: (No entry recorded.)

June 3, Friday: (No entry recorded.)

June 4, Saturday: (No entry recorded.)

June 5, Sunday: Plowing at the bottom.

June 6, Monday: Weeding at the spit.

June 7, Tuesday: Plowing.

June 8, Wednesday: Rainy weather.

June 9, Tuesday: Raining.

June 10, Friday: Raining.

June 11, Saturday: Hauling potatoes at the spit.

June 12, Sunday: Hauling potatoes at the spit.

June 13, Monday: Plowing at the bottom.

June 14, Tuesday: Plowing.

June 15, Wednesday: Drilling holes for potatoes at the bottom.

June 16, Thursday: Planting potatoes at the bottom.

June 17, Friday: Planting carrots at the bottom.

June 18, Saturday: Sowing turnips.

June 19, Sunday: Sowing turnips.

June 20, Monday: Transplanting cabbage.

June 21, Tuesday: Transplanting cabbage.

June 22, Wednesday: Father went to Nanaimo.

June 23, Thursday: Returned from Nanaimo.