I am not saying the money has been stolen

 follow the tobacco settlement money

I knew something wasn't sitting right with me about B.C.'s tobacco settlement.

So I started following the paper trail.

Here is what we know.

In 2025, B.C. announced that it would receive more than $3.6 billion over approximately 18 years from the historic tobacco litigation settlement. The first payment was $936 million.

The total Canadian settlement is valued at $32.5 billion.

And B.C.'s government said its share would provide resources for cancer treatment, primary care, treatment research and smoking cessation.

But then we get to the accounting.

B.C.'s financial documents record a one-time net revenue of $2.7 billion from the tobacco settlement in 2025/26. The government explains that this represents B.C.'s portion of the global award, net of legal costs and discounted because the payments will occur over many years.

And Budget 2026 explicitly says that this $2.7-billion tobacco settlement reduced the projected provincial deficit.

That is where I want to stop and ask questions.

I am not saying the money has been stolen.

I am not saying the government has broken the law.

I am saying that billions of dollars resulting from decades of tobacco-related harm deserve extraordinary transparency.

If this money is supposed to help address the damage caused by tobacco, show British Columbians exactly how it is being used.

Where is the accounting trail?

How much has gone to cancer treatment?

How much to primary care?

How much to treatment research?

How much to smoking cessation and prevention?

And what about the people already struggling with addiction and mental health?

What about education?

What about young people?

What about art and creative programs that give people connection, purpose, expression and alternatives to addiction?

I want prevention, not just treatment after people are already sick.

I want education before addiction begins.

I want accessible addiction treatment and recovery.

I want mental-health support.

I want communities to have tools to heal.

And I want an independent investigation to follow the money from the tobacco companies, through the settlement and B.C.'s accounts, to the programs and expenditures it ultimately supports.

The government has told us what this settlement is intended to accomplish.

Now let's see the evidence.

ICIJ — please follow the money.

And B.C. Auditor General: please follow the accounting.

This isn't an accusation.

It's a request for accountability.

Because if billions were recovered from an industry for the harm it caused, British Columbians deserve to know whether those billions are actually helping prevent and repair that harm.

10 Questions

Why was $2.7 billion recognized as one-time revenue, and exactly how was that figure calculated?

Where is the $936-million first payment today, and what specific expenditures can be traced to it?

How much of the settlement has actually been spent on cancer treatment, primary care, treatment research and smoking cessation — the purposes the government publicly identified?

How much has simply improved the province's overall fiscal position by reducing the deficit?

Is there a dedicated accounting trail that allows the public to distinguish tobacco-settlement money from ordinary provincial revenue?

What independent oversight exists over the settlement funds?

What measurable prevention programs are being funded so fewer young people become addicted to nicotine?

Why shouldn't a portion support mental-health and addiction treatment for people already living with the consequences of substance dependence?

Could community arts, creative education and arts-based healing be funded as part of a broader prevention strategy — and if not, why not?

ICIJ, B.C. Auditor General and investigative journalists: will you follow the money all the way from the tobacco companies to the final public benefit?

#FollowTheMoney #TobaccoSettlement #BCPoli #PublicAccountability #Transparency #PublicHealth #AddictionPrevention #MentalHealth #ArtsForHealing #ICIJ

ICIJ: please follow the tobacco money

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists: please follow the tobacco money

B.C. is receiving billions of dollars from the tobacco settlement.

The province has already received a major payment — and Budget 2026 says tobacco-settlement money has helped reduce the provincial deficit.

That raises a question I don't think taxpayers should have to answer for themselves:

Where is the money actually going?

I am asking the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) to follow it.

Not because I can prove the money is being misused.

Because billions of public dollars deserve independent scrutiny.

Follow the money from the tobacco companies → to the settlement → to the B.C. government → into the provincial accounts → and ultimately to the programs, departments, contracts or other expenditures it supports.

Show us the paper trail.

How much has B.C. received?

How much has been spent?

How much has gone into general revenue?

How much is being used for prevention?

How much for education?

How much for smoking cessation?

How much for addiction treatment?

How much for mental-health services?

And what about art and creative programs that help prevent addiction, build connection and support healing?

The tobacco industry spent decades selling an addictive product while governments and taxpayers carried enormous health and social costs.

Now there is an opportunity to turn some of that settlement into something that prevents the next generation from becoming addicted in the first place.

Prevention. Education. Treatment. Recovery. Mental health. Art. Community.

I don't want another billion-dollar promise that becomes impossible for ordinary people to trace.

I want the public to be able to follow every dollar.

ICIJ — please follow the money.

Because transparency isn't an accusation.

It's accountability.

#FollowTheMoney #ICIJ #TobaccoSettlement #BritishColumbia #BCPoli #PublicAccountability #Transparency #AddictionPrevention #MentalHealth #ArtsForHealing #PublicHealth

The Treaty Canada Forgot: Two Boats on One River

 The Treaty Canada Forgot: Two Boats on One River

Imagine that two nations agree to travel down the same river.

One has a canoe.

The other has a ship.

They agree that each will steer its own vessel.

Neither will impose its laws, language or way of life on the other.

They will live beside one another in peace.

That is the powerful image of the Two Row Wampum.

So what happened?

How did we get from two boats travelling together to a Canadian government that once attempted to control almost every aspect of Indigenous life?

That is the uncomfortable part of the story.

The relationship was supposed to be ongoing

Treaties were not necessarily understood by Indigenous nations as one-time transactions in which they permanently surrendered their relationship to their lands and governments.

They were relationships.

They were renewed.

They were remembered.

They involved obligations on both sides.

Wampum belts could serve as reminders of those relationships.

Canada's own historical and legal materials acknowledge that Indigenous nations and European powers negotiated treaties according to diplomatic traditions that included wampum, oral histories and continuing renewal of agreements.

The relationship was not supposed to end when the ink dried.

Then Canada built a system of assimilation

After Confederation in 1867, Canadian governments increasingly pursued policies aimed at assimilation.

The Indian Act became a central mechanism.

Residential schools attempted to separate children from their families, languages and cultures.

Traditional governance systems were undermined.

Indigenous people could be subjected to government control over matters that most Canadians would consider fundamental personal and political freedoms.

This was not the relationship represented by two nations travelling beside one another.

It was closer to one government attempting to take control of the other vessel.

Canada's Department of Justice has acknowledged that after Confederation, Crown policy became one of assimilation rather than partnership.

But the canoe didn't disappear.

This is perhaps the most important part.

Indigenous nations survived.

Their languages survived.

Their laws survived.

Their memories survived.

Their stories survived.

Their wampum traditions survived.

And so did the understanding that treaties created relationships and responsibilities that did not simply disappear because a colonial government changed its policies.

In 1917, for example, Six Nations Clan Mothers invoked the Two Row and Covenant Chain wampum relationships in a petition to King George V.

The belt was still being used as a political memory and a statement about the relationship between the Crown and the Haudenosaunee.

The canoe was still there.

Canada today

Modern Canada now uses very different language.

We hear:

reconciliation.

nation-to-nation relationships.

Indigenous self-government.

treaty rights.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

And Canada's Department of Justice explicitly says treaties are living frameworks for relationships between Indigenous peoples and the Crown.

But words are easy.

Relationships are harder.

If the Two Row Wampum is going to be more than a beautiful historical symbol, then its principles have to mean something.

Peace.

Friendship.

Respect.

Mutual recognition.

Non-interference.

And the right of each nation to govern its own people.

Maybe reconciliation begins with remembering the original agreement.

Not remembering it as a quaint story.

Not putting a picture of the belt on a museum wall and walking away.

But asking what it actually means.

Two boats.

One river.

Neither steering the other.

Perhaps Canada has spent several centuries trying to steer the canoe.

Perhaps the work of reconciliation is learning how to stop.

And perhaps the most radical thing Canada could do is finally take seriously the relationship that Indigenous peoples have been reminding us about for generations.

The canoe was never supposed to disappear.

It was supposed to travel beside us.

Housing First March-Spread the word

 

housing first — october 10, 2026

Imagine being a little girl in a department store with your mother when suddenly a huge crowd of angry men comes marching through the store, demanding work.

😬😱

That happened to my mother.

It would have been around 1934, during the Great Depression.

Imagine being a child and seeing that.

Men desperate for work. Families struggling. People demanding the basic opportunity to earn a living and survive.

Nearly a century later, I can't help wondering:

How much have we really changed?

Because today, people are still being pushed to the edge — except now the crisis is also about whether you can afford a place to live at all.

finally — a housing march

On October 10, 2026, there is going to be a Housing First March in Vancouver.

And we need everyone to come out.

Come from Vancouver.
Come from Surrey.
Come from the Valley.
Come from the Island.
Come from the Interior.
Come from wherever you live.

Because this isn't just a Vancouver problem.

Every town and every community is being affected by the housing crisis.

In B.C.'s 2023 homeless counts, 11,352 people were identified as experiencing homelessness across 27 communities.

8% were under 25.

And this really stays with me:

47% of respondents said they had first experienced homelessness when they were youth.

In the previous provincewide count, 21% of people experiencing homelessness were 55 or older.

These aren't just statistics.

They're people.

Young people.
Families.
Workers.
Seniors.
People who never imagined they would become homeless.

And people are dying.

At least 458 people experiencing homelessness died in B.C. in 2023.

when housing becomes a health-care problem

And here's another part of this crisis that doesn't get talked about enough.

Hospitals are not housing providers.

Doctors and nurses can treat illness and injury. Hospitals can provide emergency and acute care.

But what happens when someone is medically ready to leave — and has nowhere safe to go?

A hospital cannot become someone's permanent home.

People can end up being directed toward emergency shelters or other temporary accommodations.

And we need to be honest:

a shelter is not the same thing as a home.

Some people don't feel safe in shelters. Some environments can be chaotic, crowded or difficult for people with health, mobility, trauma or other needs. And even a good shelter is still temporary.

We cannot keep expecting the health-care system to pick up the pieces of a housing crisis.

Housing is part of health.

If someone has nowhere safe to sleep, nowhere to store their medication, nowhere to recover after an illness, or nowhere to go when they leave hospital, their health doesn't magically stop being a housing issue.

how did we get here?

We need to remember some history.

In 1993, the federal government stopped increasing funding for social housing, effectively ending federal funding for new social housing outside the exceptions that remained. In 1996, the federal government began transferring responsibility for administering much of the existing social-housing portfolio to the provinces.

Much of Canada's existing social housing was built between 1946 and 1993.

Then came years of cuts, restructuring and inadequate social supports.

Meanwhile, housing increasingly became an investment before it was treated as a basic necessity.

We have watched housing prices soar while people struggle to find somewhere affordable to live.

We have vacant homes.

We have luxury developments.

We have luxury cars that can cost more than what many people can afford to spend on an entire home.

And we just hosted FIFA.

The games are over.

The visitors have gone home.

But FIFA didn't solve the housing crisis.

Another major event cannot substitute for housing policy.

Another luxury tower cannot substitute for housing policy.

Another announcement cannot substitute for housing policy.

People need homes.

Safe homes.
Affordable homes.
Homes they can actually afford to stay in.

My mother saw desperate men demanding work during the Depression.

I wonder what she would think if she could see people today — working, raising children, growing old — and still unable to afford a place to live.

We should have learned something by now.

so come out

October 10, 2026
📍 Victory Square — 1:00 pm

The march will travel west on Hastings, south on Granville, then west on Robson to the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Bring your friends.
Bring your signs.
Bring your voice.

Come from the Valley.
Come from your town.
Come from wherever you are.

Because every community is affected.

This is not somebody else's problem.

It is the young person who can't afford to move out.
The worker who can't afford to live near work.
The family living in an overcrowded home.
The senior who can no longer afford rent.
The person sleeping outside.
The patient leaving hospital with nowhere safe to go.

Housing shouldn't be a privilege reserved for people who can afford it.

My mother saw men marching for work nearly a century ago.

Now we need to march for something just as fundamental:

a place to live.

💜 HOUSING FIRST.

Let's show up.

#HousingFirst #HousingCrisis #Homelessness #AffordableHousing #SocialHousing #HousingJustice #WorldHomelessDay #Vancouver #BCHousing #October10

 

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