Talking White-Canadian

"Ms. Haines harboured resentment which manifested in snide remarks about the plaintiff's heritage and her work."
"[From] the beginning of [Samuel's] employment, Ms. Haines maintained an ongoing pattern of harassing plaintiff because of her national origin."
Partial text, discrimination lawsuit, U.S. District Court

©Washington Business Journal    In 2012, Laurie Samuel was named as "Employee of the Year" by Washington D.C.'s Municipal Police Force. Just one year later, she was drummed out of the force.

• National origin: Canada. 
• Gender: female. 
• Distinguishing characteristics: high degree of intelligence. 
• Ethnicity: black. 
• Academics: graduate of Humber College and University of Toronto; master's degree in criminology from Michigan State University. Doctorate in philosophy from Howard University, Washington. 
• Recognition: MPD [D.C.Metropolitan Police Department] "Employee of the Year". 

None of this, evidently, enough to garner respect from a colleague, a workplace superior who resented the precise English enunciation of someone born in Canada. Particularly a young woman whose educational achievement and ambition appeared to her superior to represent a challenge to both her authority and her own position with the employer they both served.

Laurie Samuel, a human resources specialist with a background in criminology, worked for years while suffering the indignity of being a victim of "national origin discrimination" by her immediate superior working at the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. She suffered workplace obstruction at the hands of a spiteful superior, and she is intent on seeing that Diane Haines Walton is punished for having destroyed that workplace experience for Ms. Samuel.

Ms. Walton is also black, and took umbrage at Ms. Samuel's pattern of speech, remarking that "'she talked white"', untypical of an African American". The lawsuit describes the situation of Ms. Haines beginning statements with the pointed caution: "here in America, we...", when reviewing Human Resources files. The level of academic credits that Ms. Samuel brought with her to her position with the MPD was perceived by Ms. Haines as a personal threat to her own position as her workplace superior.

When Ms. Samuel made application for a new position with the HR department, one that came with increased responsibilities, had she succeeded she would have ranked only one position below Ms. Walton's place in the departmental hierarchy. The prospect of any such thing was unappealing to Ms. Walton who informed colleagues she "wanted to 'hire an American' for the position", states the lawsuit.

Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post/Files   Diana Haines Walton

Accordingly, Ms. Walton "did not support the Police Chief's decision to support plaintiff. Ms. Haines questioned what was so special about her." She went so far as to replace Ms. Samuel's name on a MPD employment advancement list with the name of a friend. "Soon thereafter, Ms. Haines went to the Chief of Police and informed her that plaintiff [Samuel] was illegally in the United States."

This, after the MPD had applied on Ms. Samuel's behalf for a federal work permit extension to permit her to continue her employment, as a non-U.S. citizen. When U.S. Immigration granted the work permit extension in 2011 the approval notice, according to Ms. Samuel's claims, was delivered to Ms. Walton, who summarily proceeded to dispose of it.

Ms. Samuel had been hired as a human resources specialist in 2006. The quality of her work earned her praise and a ringing endorsement, as "Employee of the Year" in 2012. By 2013 the MPD "threatened her with termination for not having the proper work permit" and she was "constructively discharged" a month afterward.

She is now suing for back pay, damages and legal costs as well as "a declaratory judgement that MPD discriminated against her."

LinkedIn    The LinkedIn profile of Laurie Samuel

When First We Practice To Deceive....

"[Their high school] was the perfect community for a student like Jennifer. A social butterfly with an easy, high-pitched laugh, she mixed with guys, girls, Asians, Caucasians, jocks, nerds, people deep into the arts. Outside of school, Jennifer swam and practised the martial art of wushu."
"Jennifer's parents assumed their daughter was an A student. In truth, she earned mostly Bs -- respectable for most kids but unacceptable in her strict household. So Jennifer continued to doctor her report cards throughout high school. She received early acceptance [to Ryerson University in Toronto] but then failed calculus in her final year and wasn't able to graduate The university withdrew its offer. Desperate to keep her parents from digging into her high school records, she lied and said she would be starting at Ryerson in the fall. She said her plan was to do two years of science, then transfer over to University of Toronto's pharmacology program, which was her father's hope. Hann was delighted and bought her a laptop. Jennifer collected used biology and physics textbooks and bought school supplies. In September, she pretended to attend frosh week. When it came to tuition, she doctored papers stating she was receiving a (student) loan and convinced her dad she'd won a $3,000 scholarship. She would pack up her book bag and take public transit downtown. Her parents assumed she was headed to class. Instead, Jennifer would go to public libraries."
"Ultimately, it's a horrible crime. But because so many people have gone through the experience of growing up like Jennifer, it's not unfathomable to them that someone would just break."
"The more I learned about Jennifer's strict upbringing, the more I could relate to her. I grew up with immigrant parents who also came to Canada from Asia (in their case Hong Kong) with almost nothing, and a father who demanded a lot from me. My dad expected me to be at the top of my class, especially in math and science, to always be obedient, and to be exemplary in every other way. He wanted a child who was like a trophy -- something he could brag about."
Karen Ho, reporter, Toronto Life magazine

"This story did a number on me, because my life used to resemble hers. I come from an Asian family, with a lot of that immigrant parent mentality. I was an exceptional student in high school, getting scholarships for university and having my pick on which to attend. And then it went downhill from there."
"[My parents] gave me everything, sacrificed so much for my success and this was the result. I accepted those conditions from my parents to fix my life ... I don't have any sympathy for Jennifer Pan because I feel like I was in her shoes. After her parents found out, her dad reacted similar to mine, so did her mom."
"I used the opportunity to get my life back, she used it to wreck hers."
Anonymous Reddit respondent

"It's so easy to blame immigrant parents. The danger of highlighting cases like Jennifer's is that they contribute to a misconception that all Asian-American kids experience this extreme pressure and are mentally unstable."
"Jennifer's parents certainly had a role in making her feel trapped, but I think there's a broader discussion to be had about the expectations that teachers, peers and institutions place on people like Jennifer to fit that stereotype of the exceptional Asian-American student."
Jennifer Lee, sociology professor, University of California, Irvine, specializing in "tiger parenting"

All parents dote on their children, imagine them to be highly intelligent and many parents pressure their children to attain excellence in school work, insisting they have it in them to be scholars, to go on to university from high school and to distinguish themselves, ultimately to work in a prestigious, well remunerated profession whose standing in society is guaranteed. All of which makes parents immensely proud of their offspring.

There is a public perception that young people of Asian, East Indian, Jewish heritage are genetically endowed to be outstanding students, geared by their culture and their ethnic origin with its emphasis on status and education to strive for perfection. In this instance, perfection as outstanding students capable of achieving grades and recognition to fulfill aspirations for the future that their parents have invested in emotionally. The pressure on these young people to succeed, if the will to do so is not internally self-directed, can be overwhelming.

And so, it seems, it was for young Jennifer Ho who lived with her mother and father, Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan and her brother Felix in a middle-class neighbourhood in the city of Markham, Ontario, north of Toronto. Jennifer was an excellent student, attending a Catholic school. That is certainly true, but she became skilled in gilding the lily to portray herself to her proud parents as a straight-A student to whom scholarships and early acceptance to college came easily.

One of her classmates at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School in north Scarborough decided to look deeper into the background of her former classmate who had been charged by police of planning the murder of her parents, feigning innocence, her mother's death the result of a violent home invasion. In fact, Jennifer Ho had hired a trio of young men to plot her parents' death, promising to pay them $10,000, ostensibly to come to her through inheritance.

Torstar News Service    Jennifer Pan is shown in court in Newmarket during her murder trial in the death of her mother.

Jennifer Ho's gilded post-secondary education that was to have landed her excellent employment opportunities began to unravel when a series of events alerted her parents to the unsavoury truth that their daughter had been lying to them about her scholarship successes. Their daughter informed them they couldn't attend her graduation from University of Toronto since tickets were in critically short supply. And they began to follow their daughter surreptitiously.

When they realized that their daughter had deceived them for years, they confronted her and she confessed. Her parents had restricted her social activities in favour of having Jennifer and her brother Felix concentrate on academic success. Jennifer's extracurricular school activities included figure skating, piano, martial arts, swimming, and most satisfying to her parents, late nights of study. She was forbidden to attend parties, and dating was just not on for her.

Once Jennifer's parents understood fully that all their restrictions and firmness had been wasted, they undertook to impose upon their now-adult daughter even further restrictions, denying her any kind of personal independence. Her laptop was taken away, her clandestine meetings with boyfriend Daniel Wong, were forbidden. Jennifer brooded over her stifling life and imagined the freedom that would be hers with her parents dead.

So with her boyfriend's help she hatched a plot to kill her parents who forced upon her a life of "house arrest". They planned a double murder scenario disguised as a robbery where events got out of hand. Jennifer herself became a 'witness' to the robbery, unable to do anything to help her parents when they were attacked, because the violent invaders had restricted her movements, locking her into her bedroom.

The three people hired to perform the vicious deed, David Mylvaganam, Lenford Crawford and Eric Carty ended up shooting her mother fatally, while her father was severely wounded. Jennifer dialled 911, hysterical with grief. Police investigating the case soon reached the conclusion that the shooting by random burglars was an elaborate scheme, and that Jennifer was involved in her mother's death. An Ontario court found her and her three co-accused, including her one-time boyfriend Daniel Wong, guilty of first-degree murder and of attempted murder.

Each was given a life sentence.

Police arrested and charged (from left) David Mylvaganam, Eric Carty, Daniel Wong, Jennifer Pan and Lenford Crawford (not pictured) with first-degree murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. (Images: court exhibits)

Survival of the Behavioral Brutish?

"Humans tend to try to establish a rank hierarchy. When you're in high school, it's a very limited arena in which you can establish your rank, and climbing the social ladder to be on top is one of the main ways."
"Bullying is a tool you can use to get there."
Jennifer Wong, professor of criminology, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

Fotolia   A just-published Canadian study has added heft to a provocative new theory about bullying: that the behavior is literally in the genes, an inherited trait that actually helps build social rank and sex appeal.

"The average bully isn't particularly sadistic or even deeply argumentative. What they really are is people driven for status."
Dr. Tony Volk, psychologist, Brock University, St.Catharines, Ontario

"This is kind of stepping backward and that's concerning. I don't want parents who have a child who is considered a bully to think, 'Well, it's something they're born with and there's nothing we can do to adjust their behaviour."
Rob Frenette, advocacy and support group, Bullying Canada

Dr. Wong, who led a study whose results were recently published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, speaks of her conviction based on the study results that people are hard-wired from birth to be bullies; their genetic inheritance doesn't just predispose them to become bullies, but steers them directly toward their manifest destiny as bullies.

And, as bullies their aggressiveness is generally rewarded by the achievement of higher social or business standing because they gain respect and admiration on the part of those who seek to emulate them or submit to their 'superior qualities' of assertiveness.

Dr. Wong and student Jun-Bin Koh surveyed 135 Vancouver area teens for their study, submitting them to a questionnaire posing queries such as how often they were "hit, kicked or shoved", ultimately dividing the students into categories of 'bully', 'bystander', 'victim', or 'victim-bully' based on parsing their responses. Roughly 11 percent of those in the group were slotted into the bully category.

And that 11 percent scored highest on issues of self-esteem and social status, while scoring lowest on depression, according to the published paper. Dr. Wong feels that bullies should have their aggressive impulses 're-directed' since punishing them doesn't work. Re-direction lies in persuading them to take up challenging assignments that others without their aggressive streak would find difficult to pursue; 'taking charge' type of assignments to appease their belligerence.

Tony Volk, a psychologist in St. Catharines, Ontario at Brock University helped to design the genetic theory of bullying. He was involved in a study of a pilot project at a school in Arizona which conceived of steering students identified as bullies into 'jobs' considered to be of a  high-status variety in an effort to steer their aggression in a a direction less socially harmful to others. The study resulted in a dramatic fall of bullying events at the school.

Fotolia   A pilot project at an Arizona school sought to steer students identified as bullies into high-status “jobs” — like being the school’s front-door greeters — to focus their aggression on something less harmful.

For those who advocate and support an enterprise attempting to deal with bullying like Rob Frenette, whose personal experience of being bullied as a person coping with cerebral palsy and who was victimized by bullies during his school years -- from receiving death threats to being pushed down stairs and even having the back of his neck burned by girls on a school bus -- the matter is a complex one.

Charles Benn / Handout Rob Frenette, co-founder of the group Bullying Canada, rejects the notion that bullying is an inherited, genetic trait aimed at gaining social status and sexual attractiveness. He worries that new research promoting that idea could have a negative impact.

At the support group Bullying Canada which he helped found, from his perspective the problem of bullying runs wide and deep within society. Their 24/7 support line took 312,000 calls and received 86,000 emails seeking help for victims of bullying and their families in a year. It is his considered opinion that existing programs to overcome bullying help to decrease bullying.

Dr. Volk doesn't concur that bullies are "hard-wired", but that a genetic predisposition exists channelling them toward bullying. But which could be overcome by environmental alterations or through providing ways by which aggression can be directed toward more positive outcomes. "These kids aren't stupid, they know what they're doing, they're doing it for a reason. We're not saying give up on punishment necessarily, but what about the carrot?" he asks.

Existing evidence points to those considered to be "pure" bullies accounting for 80 to 90 percent of bullying, are more socially adept, become more popular and yet their bullying tactics are so covertly skilled they remain undetected. According to the evolutionary psychology theory holding that bullying is an adaptive behaviour, they are thus endowed with a genetic edge permitting to gain better opportunities and succeed in any enterprise they encounter.

Medical Condition Detection Advance

"You could be going around thinking you're completely healthy, yet have ongoing disease in your coronary arteries."
"...There hasn't been a way to detect this process [artery-clogging blood clots] in the body until we [GD Biosciences] developed this PULS test."
"Cholesterol is important [in detecting the presence of heart disease] because if it's elevated it tells you [that you] have a greater risk of developing heart disease. But those levels do not tell you if your heart already has [sustained some] injury."
"It's telling you [the blood test, akin to testing a vehicle's engine light] there's a problem but your 'car' hasn't developed symptoms yet."
Dr. Douglas Harrington, clinical professor, University of Southern California

Dr. Douglas Harrington presented information about the PULS test at the 20th World Congress on Heart Disease, held at a Vancouver hotel.   Photograph by: Arlen Redekop , Province

Those attending the 20th World Congress on Heart Disease taking place in Vancouver listened to and viewed a presentation by a clinical professor at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California speaking about a new and practical test, labelled Protein Unstable Lesion Signature (PULS). This is a blood test meant to detect protein leaking from lesions that develop in arteries as a result of cholesterol circulating in the blood stream and damaging those arteries.

The lesions are unstable, and when they rupture they produce blood clots which in turn block arteries and this causes heart attack. The ruptures are held to be responsible for up to 75 percent of all heart attacks. Until the development of this blood test there was no way of determining what was happening in the body and detection of the destructive process went undiagnosed. The testing that is done conventionally zeroes in on the measurement of cholesterol in the blood.

And while cholesterol remains a significant marker of what may be happening within the body, enabling clinicians to predict a breakdown of natural processes leading to a heart attack, the full landscape of the heart's health is not captured. The situation is complicated by the fact that 50 percent of people entering hospital with heart attacks show levels of cholesterol that fall into the normal range.

The test itself is designed to be used with people forty years of age and older. It measures nine protein markers for the purpose of gauging the state of current injury levels in the heart. It took fifteen years of research n the development of lesions appearing in animals and humans in a project involving the collaboration between USC, Stanford University and University of California Los Angeles, along with other institutions.

Jerusalem sheikh lectures kids on glories of martyrdom

‘Shame on you,’ says Old City passerby, trying to stop Muslim religious leader teaching group of young children about death and virgins

By Judah Ari Gross July 28, 2015, 1:12 am 

A sheikh in Jerusalem's Old City teaches children the glories of martyrdom on July 27, 2015. (Screen capture: Middle East Media Research Institute)

A Muslim sheikh was filmed in the Old City of Jerusalem, near the Temple Mount, teaching children about martyrdom and virgins in paradise on Monday. A passerby attempted to stop him, telling him “shame on you.”

In a four-minute video released by the watchdog Middle East Media Research Institute, Sheikh Khaled al-Maghrabi is seen instructing a group of children, the oldest of whom are barely adolescents, that “the martyr is absolved with the first drop of his blood.” 

The children were taking part in the so-called Al-Aqsa Mosque Summer Camp, according to MEMRI.

To the group of boys and girls, the religious leader explained, “The martyr would be married off to two virgins in paradise.”

On Judgment Day, the sheikh added, someone who dies while engaged in ribat — the Muslim concept of defending the faith, named after a fortress-like structure — would be able to save 70 members of his or her family.

After several minutes of this instruction, a passerby approached the sheikh and asked him to stop preaching to the children.

“Listen, sheikh, they do not understand what you are saying. They are children,” the man said in Arabic.

Passerby outside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City scolds sheikh for teaching children the glories of martyrdom on July 27, 2015. (Screen capture: Middle East Media Research Institute)

The sheikh attempted to quickly brush the man off, but was unsuccessful.

“You are talking to them about ribat, martyrdom, virgins of paradise,” the man told the sheikh, “Shame on you.”

The man went on, “You can teach lessons like this to adults like us, not to them. Look at what you’re planting in their minds.”

“Shame on you,” the man repeated before returning to stand with his friends.

The video ends with the same children chanting, “We shall sacrifice our souls and our blood for you, Al-Aqsa!” and “Khaybar! Khaybar! Oh, Jews! The army of Muhammad will return,” in reference to the fortress city once controlled by Jewish tribes, but later overtaken by Muslim forces.

The day before the video was filmed, dozens of masked Palestinian protesters hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails and firecrackers at police officers on the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, before being pushed back into the Al-Aqsa Mosque by security forces who were rushed to the area.

According to police, the protesters had stockpiled homemade explosives, firecrackers and wooden boards inside the mosque, with the intention of attacking thousands of Jewish worshipers gathered below for prayers at the Western Wall on Tisha B’Av, a fast and day of mourning that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Jewish Temples.

Summer Camp Time

"Transitions is a 100 percent child-driven program with a different take on life skills and learning. At the beginning of each session each camper is given $5 and two sets of bus tickets. Most kids have never had cash or bus tickets and are really excited about the cold, hard cash."
"If, against the counsellor's advice the camper blows the $5, there is a quick lesson in consequences. They are unable to contribute to group decisions and the fun is gone."
"Our counsellors are trained to look for campers' interests and ideas on how to use the money. In turn, the campers learn the responsibility of money and how to make decisions around it."
Deborah Thompson, Children's Village of Ottawa-Carleton summer program

Nickolas, Suzie, Mutombo, Adnan, Ryan, Suzanne, Mubohe and Samuel are some of the campers involved with the Transitions camps. Ottawa Citizen

It's certainly a different kind of camp for children. There are fourteen locations throughout the city. Some of them set up for the summer using summer-empty schools, taking place as well in community centres and all manner of community buildings. While children attending the camps are given opportunities to have the kind of summer-camp experiences that traditionally form part of summer fun for children like swimming and playing sports in city parks, this really is a different type of exposure for most children.

The camps are offered free to children from low-income and social-assistance families. Children whose parents are able to afford the two-week sessions at $290 may also attend these camps. They operate until late August and are meant to accommodate children in two age groups; between five and seven, and between eight and 12 years of age. The Transitions camps have been in operation for about 150 years, offering innovative childcare services.

The children vote on activities and the majority votes win the day. The rules are set by the counsellors and campers are instructed to listen to others, and to behave respectfully. The children become accustomed to planning around ideas and the importance of communicating. And how to plan and share experiences.

"We're very happy to have Transitions here and so are the kids. You can actually see the kids developing self-confidence along with healthy relationships with other campers. The program is teaching them decision-making, planning, organizing and money-management", explained David Walsh, executive director of the Caldwell Family Centre, one of the 14 community centres where the camps exist.

There was a time when enterprising young children set up lemonade stands on their own initiative or with a little bit of nudging and instruction, counting on a minimum of parental supervision. Children learning at a young age the satisfactions inherent in entrepreneurship. And earning money for the very first time, of their very own. Learning how empowering a sense of independence can be.

The same kind of idea is at work here, only it is consummated at a group level. The children decide on some type of enterprise to embark upon as a group; they plan the details, assemble the required items, and then undertake to become temporary salespeople. A one-day breakfast cafe as an example, with the group pooling their $5 camp allowance to purchase eggs, toast and pancake mix, develop menus, advertise the cafe and set up in the community centre's kitchen.

They charged a reasonable $3 for each breakfast served and ended up with a net profit of $300 out of their week of action. With another camp, the children pooled their money to buy beads and accent pieces at a craft store to enable them to make bracelets, necklaces and headbands. They set up stands at a local mall in the community and realized a profit after sales of $250.

On another occasion three groups of eight to 12-year-olds pooled the proceeds they realized in the operation of three Ottawa sites where they held car washes and bake sales. The pooled proceeds enabled them to rent a double-decker bus to be taken on a tour of their very own, all over the city. Their sight-seeing tour included a picnic at a city park.

That's initiative and enterprise and experience that will translate into prospects for future entrepreneurs.

An Unspeakable Disease

"The message to folks in the community is if you are sexually active with more than one partner, consider getting tested on a routine basis."
"I knew there was an increase before public health reported it."
"[Up until the 1990s] nobody around here was seeing syphilis. Then we had our first spike (around 2006) and it really took everyone off guard."
"If in doubt [clinicians] do the test."
Dr. Paul MacPherson, infectious disease specialist, The Ottawa Hospital

Syphilis is transmitted through oral, vaginal or anal sex and through skin-to-skin contact with syphilis sores. Infamously, the disease was commonly spread during times of war, when military men had indiscriminate sex with women, whether by force or permission. In the 14th Century the horrible disease that caused cankers, genital sores, abscesses and ulcers led eventually to madness as the disease gradually attacked the brain, and death followed.

Mercury was used as a medicament to help people, and those people often died of mercury poisoning before succumbing to a syphilitic death.

"If I were asked which is the most destructive of all diseases I should unhesitatingly reply, it is that which for some years has been raging with impunity … What contagion does thus invade the whole body, so much resist medical art, becomes inoculated so readily, and so cruelly tortures the patient?"       Desiderius Erasmus, Dutch Scholar, Cleric, Humanist, Philosopher, 1520

Health officials in Ottawa now warn that over the past year they’ve seen a 76% increase in the number of syphilis cases, all of which have presented in male patients. Of those cases, over 90% have occurred among men who are sexually active with other men. Undiagnosed and untreated, the long-term effects of syphilis can be catastrophic, as the heart, liver, eyes and brain are eventually attacked.

If the disease is detected through a blood test and treatment given early enough, penicillin can stop it in its tracks.

Patrick O'Byrne with the Ottawa Public Health agency, a University of Ottawa nursing professor whose specialty is research into sexually transmitted diseases, explained that people most often have no idea that they have contracted syphilis. This blissful ignorance in the short term means they are unlikely to seek treatment. Their undiagnosed condition is highly infectious, and their ongoing sexual activity makes them a threat to the rest of the community with whom they interact.

Patrick O'Byrne, a public health nurse and associate professor at University of Ottawa, gets a blood test ready at the Ottawa Public Health Sexual Clinic, where they've seen a spike in syphilis. Photo: Ottawa Citizen

Common symptoms are rashes which can appear around the genital area, the abdomen, and on the palms of hands or soles of feet, along with painless sores. They seem innocuous, but are anything but that. Left untreated their surface appearance may resolve, but medical authorities warn that the infection  has simply gone underground. It's still there, still active, and if treated with antibiotics can be eradicated.

Secondary stage syphilis sores (lesions) on the palms of the hands. Referred to as "palmar lesions." -- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S.

Dr. MacPherson is concerned that doctors be alerted so that when they encounter a patient with an unexplained rash, if that patient is sexually active beyond one partner, a syphilis test should be recommended and treatment initiated if positive. Ottawa Public Health advises that the people who should be  screened are those with a sexual partner diagnosed with syphilis, those who exchange sex with multiple partners, in particular men who have sex with men, are sexually active and have symptoms that are recognized as consistent with syphilis.

Head, shoulders, and hands of a baby suffering from hereditary syphilis. Lithograph by Franz Mracek, published in the Atlas of Syphilis and the Venereal Diseases, 1898.

Image via Wellcome Library/London

Finally, women who are pregnant or who are thinking of becoming pregnant should also be alerted. The disease is highly infectious. It can be spread through the kind of sexual contact that is not penetrative, and the use of condoms is no assurance that infection can be prevented. Sometimes the symptoms of syphilis being present are so subtle they go unnoticed, and on occasion symptoms in the early stages of onset are simply not present.

In comparison with HIV, with its one percent risk of infection through a sex exchange with someone infected with HIV, transmission of syphilis stands at 60 percent under similar circumstances. And according to national surveys, condom use though not on the decrease in Canada, is unreliable in stopping syphilis infection. Neurosyphilis can occur decades after infection.

Syphilis sufferer with severe pustule crustaceous lesions. Pencil, white chalk, and watercolor drawing by Christopher D'Alton, 1855.

Image via Wellcome Library

Over Medicating Ourselves

"Society increasingly demands a  high level of performance on tasks that require sustained attention and multi-tasking."
"A rapidly increasing frequency of a once-rare condition may reflect increased recognition, but may also constitute a diagnostic epidemic."
"It's what I call a psychiatric fad, in which you have a medication which is known to work for certain people and you say, 'let's try it here, let's try it there'."
"And some of these patients do have a little bit more focus after you give them stimulants, because everybody is somewhat better focused if they get a stimulant."
Dr. Joel Paris, psychiatrist, McGill University

Sardaukar Blackfang / Wikipedia    Once considered rare, adult ADHD is rising sharply. In Canada, adults now account for more than a third of all prescriptions for ADHD medications, and while children still surpass adults as the main users of ADHD drugs (64 per cent versus 36 per cent), the number of adults on the drugs is increasing faster, according to Shire, makers of the ADHD drug Vyvanse

"Pharma has already created a wild and dangerous epidemic of prescription narcotics. Next on its agenda is pushing the sale of prescription speed."
"If we want to allow people to take speed for performance enhancement, or make it legal for recreational purposes, there should be a discussion of that."
"We shouldn't be sneaking in the legalization of speed for a fake diagnosis of ADHD in adults. It's medicalizing what should be a societal debate about the role of these medicines in society."
"You don't want to take speed -- and this is essentially speed -- if you're schizophrenic or have bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, sleep problems or a whole host of other psychiatric conditions."
Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus, Duke University

As far as Dr. Francis is concerned, the increase in stimulant prescriptions meant for adult use speaks of the fallout of aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical manufacturers to doctors and the public. In the U.S. in fact, pharmaceutical companies advertise their products widely, in a manner not seen in Canada. Pharmaceutical companies anywhere, however, use their sales and marketing personnel to wine and dine physicians, handing out samples and convincing them that their products represent solutions to peoples' ills.

The public succumbs and so do their doctors. For physicians, responding to their patients' requests for medications is a whole lot easier than convincing their patients that they don't really need drugs when a change in lifestyle toward a healthier way of living could make them feel better. Trouble is people become accustomed to abusing their bodies, insisting they're too busy and haven't the time to exercise, to eat properly, to educate themselves about healthful living, or to deal with vexing situations.

Canadian adults are increasingly being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, in many instances because the patients are convincing their doctors that this is what they have, despite that ADHD is a condition that surfaces in childhood, not adulthood. Along with the diagnoses goes prescriptions for speed-like stimulants. Even though the medical profession is becoming increasingly aware that people are abusing the system; using the drugs to obtain a mental-edge advantage.

Accounting now for over a third of all ADHD medication prescriptions, with their share of the $408-million Canadian market swiftly increasing, the situation has drawn the condemnation of psychiatrist Dr. Joel Paris who calls it a "diagnostic epidemic". And Dr. Frances too knows of what he speaks, having written the book Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt Against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life.

Dr. Paris deplores the diagnostic criteria for adult ADHD, so wide-ranging that anyone experiencing problems focusing could be a candidate. He is concerned that drugs are being used by healthy people as pharmacological brain "enhancers". A situation that reflects the hyper-competitive corporate culture prevailing in society at present. People become motivated to try out stimulant prescriptions to solve the dilemma of social forces of high expectation in work performance.

He is also concerned that the very people who are being misdiagnosed with ADHD may have other compelling issues that are not being addressed, ranging from anxiety, depression or substance abuse when they find they cannot cope with everyday stresses. Dr. Frances chaired the task force that produced the fourth version of the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used all over the globe for the diagnosis of mental illness. His credentials cannot be faulted.

High-stimulant dosages of these drugs are capable of raising blood pressure and arrhythmia, erratic heartbeat in people with underlying heart structural changes. Health Canada recently upgraded its warning to inform people that ADHD drugs have the potential of increasing the risk of having suicidal thoughts. Dr. Anthony Rostain, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania added that stimulants are clearly being misused.

"There is no question that there are forces at work to push people to increase productivity. Sometimes it's very conscious-like: 'I'm just going to go in (to see a doctor) and say I have it when I don't'. That would be a form of malingering: it's feigning ADHD." Dr. Rostain, however,  doesn't agree that evidence exists of an "epidemic" of over-diagnosis, but feels instead that adult ADHD is a relatively recent phenomenon leading to increased diagnoses.

Children, he says, become "fidgety and squirmy", whereas "...in adults it may be more restlessness and an inability to get things done and constantly being late or disorganized." One thing is beyond dispute, irrespective of the issues, professionals in any field of study don't always form a monopolistic bloc of agreement; there are always those who view matters from a different perspective.

Children surpass adults as the main users of ADHD drugs (64 percent versus 36 percent). Over 4.5-million prescriptions were filled by Canadian drugstores in 2014. And Dr. Paris is adamant from his perspective as a psychiatrist that ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that has its genesis in the childhood years. Official diagnostic criteria has it that an adult cannot have ADHD if he or she did not exhibit symptoms of it in their childhood years.

Lost and Found

"We chummed together for years."
"I used to help her [delivering newspapers]. And we used to do a little bit of smooching."
"I had two people that I loved. I had to choose one, and then put the other in a folder and put it on the top shelf."
"I married Jacky. My love for Joyce stayed on the top shelf until Jacky passed away."
"It wasn't hard [to rediscover love]. Once I was able to bring that folder down from the top shelf."
Bruce Elliott, 85, St.Catharines, Ontario

Bob Tymczyszyn/St. Catharines Standard/Postmedia Network

"Joyce?"
"Yes."
"This is Bruce."
"My Bruce?"

One telephone call was all it took. It was serendipity, however, that brought them back together when one day, decades after the two friends who were children when they first dedicated themselves to their mutual close friendship, renewed that friendship. When Bruce's sister came across Joyce at a luncheon. And recognition set in and with it contact and renewal.

As children 70 years earlier, they lived in close proximity to one another, in the same neighbourhood. He was 14, she was 12. They roller-skated together, played outdoor games with their other friends, and became inseparable. Joyce had a newspaper route, and so did Bruce, for the local daily newspaper. He recalled folding the newspapers  so they could be thrown accurately and neatly onto subscribers' porches.

They grew into their late teens as two young people devoted to one another. But Bruce was older than Joyce and they somehow drifted apart after he went to college, then quit school to begin an apprenticeship with an area tool and die maker. Which was where he met Jacqueline, who became his wife in 1949. They were married for 64 years, and had eight children together before she died at age 82.

Joyce too left school at age 16 after completing Grade 9, going to work at a supermarket as a cashier. Seventeen years later she moved to Toronto where she lived for 40 years. She had two marriages, her second to a professional golfer whom she was married to for 38 years, until he died at age 75, in 2002. Which was when Bruce's sister came across Joyce, helping to put the old friends back in touch.

Bruce and Joyce Elliott on their wedding day. Handout/St. Catharines Standard/Postmedia Network

They began to meet three times weekly with a Breakfast Club. They met as friends, with the memory of their childhood friendship warming the ongoing relationship. And then Bruce's wife was moved to a nursing home where he visited with her daily. With his failing eyesight, Joyce accommodated his new circumstances by often driving him to the nursing home.

A year later Bruce's wife Jacqueline died. At that juncture it seemed a sensible decision that the two old friends would want to spend the rest of their lives together. Joyce is 82 to Bruce's 85, and they are once again always at one another's side. "I only wish my mother were alive to see it. She always thought it would happen", reminisced Joyce.

They were married a day after Bruce's 85th birthday.

85 year-old Bruce Elliott and his wife Joyce now 82 revisit their old neighbourhood Wednesday June 17, 2015. The couple lived across the street from each other as children, became teenage sweethearts but then lost touch and married other people. Their spouses have since died and the couple married this past year. Bob Tymczyszyn/St. Catharines Standard/Postmedia Network

An Unspeakable Burden

"In addition to the sexual assaults, the offender controlled the family through angry outbursts, arbitrary rules, and childish but serious physical assaults, which he masked as corrective or disciplinary action for his arbitrary rules."
"The offender established himself as the person in charge of every aspect of the life of this family."
"The offender's inexcusable treatment of [the eldest daughter], in particular, after she turned 16, and of the other girls, deprived them all of tremendously important formative years. They are truly lost years."
Ontario Superior Court Justice Timothy Ray, Ottawa

Ottawa courthouse Julie Oliver / Ottawa Citizen

To protect the identity of a woman and her daughters, the name of their abuser has been withheld from public view. The violent degradation involved in mental and physical abuse went on for years, during which time the children of the woman who had remarried were subjected to a family life that resembled hell. Their mother could not possibly have been ignorant of the strain and stress her daughters were living under, even if she could claim ignorance of the sexual abuse.

When the man she married turned out to be a ruthless disciplinarian who used physical assault and violent ridicule to enforce his idea of discipline, displeased if they laughed or disobeyed his orders, abusively insulting them, physically attacking them, forcing the girls to eat soap, the actions he submitted her daughters to could not possibly have been hidden from her knowledge. For fourteen long years the girls lived in misbegotten misery.

If her own innocent daughters' punishment for their mother's ill judgement in marrying such a man were not enough evidence of a household's private Gehenna, then the stepfather's behaviour toward the mother in raping her when she failed to agree to his demands for sex alone, should have propelled the woman to police and charges against her husband.

When one of the little girls was in Grade 3 the man, now 49 years of age, screamed at her for a failing mark in math, pinning her to the wall with his upper arm. He would often push the girls against a wall, slapping or hitting them. He poured liquid dish detergent into their mouths. From the age of seven onward the girls were exposed to this horrible abuse.

It took the eldest daughter's decision to move out of the house, warning her sisters to be on guard against the man they considered a father-figure, and his designs on them once she left and never turned back. She had suffered unspeakable and wretched attacks beginning in her mid-teens when he forced intimacy on her, even as she slept in a lower bunk bed with her youngest sister above her.

The oldest girl testified at trial that her stepfather would step up his abuse of the rest of the family if she resisted his sexual advances, so she stopped resisting his demands and, according to the judge who passed sentence on the man allowed him to "do what he wanted to her so that he would not be mean to everyone else".

The stepfather denied committing the offences he was charged with, other than forcing the children to eat soap, when he underwent a sexual behaviours assessment at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. He denied ever having had sexual contact with the eldest daughter. According to him, the young girl had been attracted to him.

A jury convicted the man of sexual exploitation, sexual assault and assault after considering the graphic testimony of his having abused the children, having forced himself on his 16-year-old stepdaughter, raping her and repeatedly raped his wife. He was sentenced to 6-1/2 years in prison for terrorizing his family.

It doesn't seem like a very hard punishment for ruining the lives of four people, particularly young vulnerable girls who were dependent on him. After serving his time in prison he can get on with his pathetic life. Their journey to any kind of fulfilment in life will be far more difficult after their bitter betrayal, demeaning experiences and life of fear.

JTA Jewish Telegraphic Agency

http://www.jta.org

European Maccabi Games to be held at Olympic venues built by Nazis

By Toby Axelrod   July 21, 2015 

Adolf Hitler, second from left, watching the Olympic Games in Berlin with the Italian crown prince, left, August 1936. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

BERLIN (JTA) – They are roaring through Europe, raising dust as they go: Jewish bikers bearing an Olympic-style torch all the way from Israel to this German city.

Next week, 11 core riders will pull their steel steeds into Berlin’s famous outdoor amphitheater, the Waldbuehne, to help usher in the 14th European Maccabi Games — the first ever in Germany — at a venue built by the Nazis for the 1936 Olympics. Other competitions will be held at the Olympic Stadium here, where Hitler presided over the opening of the games that year.

The riders are following in the treads of the Maccabiah Riders, who rode through Europe in the early 1930s to promote the games then being held under British mandate in Palestine.

The July 28 opening ceremony, which will feature remarks by German President Joachim Gauck and a concert featuring Matisyahu, Dana International and others, will usher in 10 days of sports, parties, a Limmud Germany learning event and more. Some 2,300 Jewish athletes from 36 countries will take part, cheered on by fans bused in from across the country by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. And the sports venues, including Berlin’s Olympiastadion, will be open to all, free of charge and under heavy security.

Elen Katz and Catherine Lurie-Alt participating in a motorcycle rally from Israel to Berlin for the opening of the European Maccabi Games. (Yosef Alony)

Athletes will compete in 19 sports, as well as a few exhibition games pitting Jewish athletes against German soccer and basketball stars. On July 31, they will try to break the Guinness World Record for the largest kiddush ever.

The European Maccabi Games grew out of the Maccabi movement, which traces back more than a century to Turkey when Jews, then shut out of local sporting clubs, founded the Israel Gymnastic Club in 1895. Jews elsewhere followed suit.

The first European Maccabi Games were held in Prague in 1929, and the second a year later in Antwerp. But with the rise of the Nazis, Jewish sports associations were banned. Germany’s Makkabi Club was reinstated only 50 years ago.

In 1969, the quadrennial competition resumed, alternating every two years with the Maccabiah Games in Israel.

Bringing the European Maccabi Games to Germany was a herculean feat, says Alon Meyer, head of Makkabi Germany.

“People told me they never could imagine setting foot in Germany because their parents and grandparents were sent away from there,” said Meyer, 41, a Frankfurt businessman whose father fled Nazi Germany for Palestine. “Now these people are coming back to see the changes [and take part in] the biggest Jewish event ever held on European ground.”

The Berlin Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Olympic Games. (Scott Heavey/Getty Images)

The change to which Meyer referred is the dramatic growth in Germany’s Jewish population. Only a few thousand of Germany’s prewar Jewish population of 500,000 remained in Germany after the Holocaust. Today there are some 240,000 Jews here, most of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Membership in Jewish sports clubs has grown, too.

Meyer wanted the competition to be held in the Olympic Stadium, those same stone halls where many Jewish athletes, though not all, were banned in 1936.

“They came all the way to Germany and in the morning they got a call, they were not allowed to run. They found out right before the race,” said Steven Stoller, 64, of New Jersey, a distant cousin of the late Jewish-American sprinter Sam Stoller, who was told he could not compete by Avery Brundage, then president of the U.S. Olympic Committee.

“I wanted to come to Berlin for my children, my future grandchildren, to have the story live on,” Stoller said.

Jed Margolis, the executive director of Maccabi USA, will fly in from Philadelphia to cheer some 200 participating American athletes aged 15 to 85.

“At one point in life I would say, ‘I will never go to Germany or buy a German product,’” Margolis said. “Yet there is a vibrant and growing Jewish community there. We want to support them and at the same time teach our next generation” about what happened there.

Security will be tight for the event, in the stadium and beyond. Berlin announced the creation of a new digital reporting system for anti-Semitic incidents just in time for the games.
“Security is the No. 1 priority,” said Lena van Hooven, spokeswoman for the games.

But Danny Maron is not worried. He and the other Jewish bikers have been traveling through Eastern Europe with Israeli flags attached to their bikes.
“We have no fear at all,” Maron said. “We are very proud.”

Maron’s father, Yoram, a Holocaust survivor, told JTA that he wanted “to show the whole world that after all the death, we are still alive, and we keep moving.”

At each stop, from Athens to Romania to Krakow, more Jewish bikers have woven into the pack. The Maccabi torch itself rides in a specially built case carried by Greek biker Kobi Samuel, 48.
“Two of our riders are descendants of actual Maccabi riders of the 1930s, nine are descendants of Holocaust survivors, and two of our bikers are actual survivors aged 73 and 78,” said filmmaker Catherine Lurie-Alt, who snagged Jewish talk show host Larry King as the narrator for her documentary about the motorcycle rally.

“This is where it all started,” Lurie-Alt said. “We are going through communities where Jewish populations were decimated, on our way to Berlin, where they will enter that stadium with jubilation and joy.”

Toby Axelrod is JTA's correspondent for Germany, Switzerland and Austria. A former assistant director of the American Jewish Committee's Berlin office, she has also worked as staff writer and editor at the New York Jewish Week. She has won numerous awards from the New York Press Association and the American Jewish Press Association. She has published books on Holocaust history for teen-agers.

Gaming the Job Market

"I was surprised, for sure. That's way higher than it's ever been."
"I guess they knew they were getting tested and still decided to do coke. It really makes me think."
"Imagine coming home and telling your wife why you didn't get this job? They all want to blame the system, but they should take a look in the mirror."
"I can't let someone like that work for me. They could hurt themselves or someone around them."
Leonard Banga, owner, Xtreme Mining and Demolition, Saskatoon

video still from Xtreme Mining and Demolition website

Mr. Banga's business is booming, and  he's expanding, prepared to enter the Alberta and British Columbia market with a growing number of contracts to be fulfilled. So he's looking to add to his experienced staff. He's managed to fill the positions he advertised, but the process hasn't been without its complications. The issue that bogged him down in the process of bringing in new employees for his business was the revelation that most of those applying initially for the advertised positions appear to have misunderstood the gravity of the business and what would be required of them.

Right on the application for employment with Xtreme Mining and Demolition it states that employees must be drug-free. There is a test they must undergo as part of the application process. Applicants are given advance warning when the test is to take place. The positions they apply for require intelligence, experience, capability and rational thinking. Drug use compromises all of those criteria. Which is a pity, since the work would appeal to many men who like working outdoors.

And the risks inherent in such work also appeal to many men, accompanied by the teamwork and the kind of atmosphere that prevails when men work together under such circumstances. All of which would be compromised if one worker presented under the influence of drugs, with severely impaired judgement. The seriousness of the matter cannot be over-emphasized; no owner of such a company would be happy to discover an horrible accident had occurred, and he is ultimately responsible.

Last month brought 26 people responding to Mr. Banga's company's search for workers. Of that 26, 22 were found in fault, failing a standard drug test. All of the 26 presented with the required equipment training in their background, some of them with sales experience or university education as well. The advertised positions are plum jobs to many people, and the pay can't be faulted at between $30 and $45 hourly.

Not too many jobs in Saskatoon pay so well. A few months of special training is required, and for those who qualify to be trained, who are capable of performing well and display a sound work ethic, not even a high school diploma is required. People willing to work on sites in northern Canada, he pointed out, can earn up to $65 an  hour. But finding the workers who both qualify and haven't compromised themselves proved a head-scratcher.

Of the 22 who failed the drug test, 17 were identified as having traces of cocaine, while only one was detected with marijuana in his urine, and another with amphetamines in his sample. Two others were found to have used chemical agents in an attempt to mask their illicit drug use. One man went to the rather unorthodox method of securing a urine-filled bag under his armpit with a tube, to provide his urine sample.

Lori Boen of Your Choice Drug and Alcohol Testing who is contracted by Xtreme Mining and Demolition to undertake the drug-testing portion of the application process, the need for which is clearly set out in the application form itself, said a few of the failed applicants admitted they had conducted a home test before arriving for the screening. Their home test assured them they would present negative for drug use; the result of the professional screening surprised them.

Ms. Boen's specialized training as a registered nurse has equipped her well to know how rigorous the test she applies is, capable of catching drug use that other testers could not. Her test checks for seven types of drugs, along with masking agents. Her test is even able to detect abnormalities in the temperature of the urine, determining whether it emanated from within the applicant's body or not.

"I feel bad for them, but everyone has a right to come home safe", she observed.

The Farm and the Apiary

"[I have done] strip trials where I evaluated treated versus untreated seed. It always came out where it [pesticide] brought value to my farm."
"The government felt this was a good time to reach out and ask producers what they thought about it. And a lot of producers didn't have time to bring comments forward."
"Within my own farm I can have 16 different soil types -- minute variations but enough that it might affect the pest population. It's so hard to determine where [we need] and where we don't need these products."
Mark Brock, Hensall, Ontario farmer

On a farm near Listowel, Ont. a ‘strip trial’ shows the difference between a corn crop 
treated with insecticide, top, and not. Roger Drudge / Ottawa Citizen

"They [seed companies] are really trying to put pressure on beekeepers through the farmers. What they are trying to do is intimidation. I've had phone calls from seed companies. The pressure is coming downhill."
"They have found out who owns bee yards [land where hives are placed] and are contacting the farmer who owns the bee yards, telling them they are going to get sued ... by beekeepers."
"I'm getting calls from farmers now, telling me to move my bees."
Guy Anderson, beekeeper, Kincardine, Ontario

Bees are under stress from many factors — neonics are just the latest.  
Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen

"If you take away their habitat, if you feed them [bees] poison, if you stress them out by working them really hard, and giving them all these drugs and selecting [breeding] them for certain characteristics ... it's easy to imagine that, hey, we've pushed them a little too far." 
"If the bees have evolved to feed on a whole variety of things and now they are forced to feed on a monoculture [single crop], and also they have to ride on the back of an 18-wheeler ... you don't need too many degrees to appreciate how that would be stressing out the little insects."
Graham Thompson, entomologist, Western University, London

There are about 800 species of native bees in Canada. Roughly 60 of those are bumblebees.  Their well-being has been impacted in a number of ways. One of which is the pesticides that farmers spray on their fields. Fields where bees are exposed to those pesticides. Even if they're not directly fertilizing fields of grain, wind carries residue from the pesticides over a wide range of territory and exposure is almost guaranteed.

The latest problem to surface for the overall bee population which is in decline for a variety of reasons, pesticide contamination being one of the more serious ones, the exposure to neonics used as a pesticide has grown over the decade just passed. Neonicotinoids are chemicals whose molecular structure is matched to that of nicotine, and its purpose is to kill insects. The pesticide is applied to seed, designed to be a systemic and to kill bugs feeding on grain crops.

In minuscule amounts they are lethal to bees. Traces of the chemical, airborne, infect bees. Since the chemical makes its way throughout a plant's structure and enters the pollen that bees carry to the hive, the extent of bee loss to a hive is catastrophic. "The thing about bees is they're not just feeding on a single plant", points out Graham Thompson who specializes in bees at Western University in London.

There are other issues; Varroa mites suck fluids from bees, tracheal mites burrow into a bee's airways to choke it. A bacterial disease, American foulbrood, can infect a hive badly enough that the very frames supporting the bees must be burned. There are other parasites and there are fungal diseases drawn to the warm dry, sugary hive environment. "That's probably why they're so defensive in the first place" ventured Dr. Thompson.

Worker bees land on tens of thousands of flowers during their two- or three-week lifetime. The infected pollen is carried home to the hive, and fed to the offspring of the queen bee. Commercial bees are taken by truck from province to province to pollinate field crops. They are like migrant workers, going where the labour is needed; for the bees it is being hauled off to pollinate whatever any given farmer needs to be fertilized through pollination. There is stress in the travel for the bees, and stress in being exposed to a single cultivar.

Guy and Gail Anderson have been keeping bees for decades. They tend to almost 1,500 hives which they place at 54 farms, with permission from the farmers who take their rent in honey. The business produces 120,000 pounds of honey annually. And then along came the neonics and 62 percent of their bees perished in 2013 leaving 795 hives without bees. Honeybees are not native to Canada, they are imported from Europe. So they ordered more bees, and again lost the bulk of them.

Mark Brock farms 1,5000 acres of corn, soybeans and winter wheat. His concern is whether wireworms, aphids and other insect pests will destroy a large part of his crop because the Government of Ontario has ordered farmers to reduce their neonic use by 80 percent by the year 2017. Insect damage, points out Mr. Brock, can destroy 20 percent of a crop where the profit margin is already low.

And there it is, a new antagonism between bees, fruits and vegetables, and grain; fruits and vegetables require the pollinating action of bees and grains do not; they require protection from insect pests. And then the lawyers for Grain Farmers of Ontario began warning farmers that beekeepers could sue them for damage to hives. "Grain farmers may have to end these co-operative arrangements", went the warning.

Ontario farmers produced up to $2-billion in value of soybeans in 2014, another $1.4-billion in corn. Ontario bees pollinate about $897-million worth of crops each year in Ontario, and an additional $71-million of berries in Atlantic Canada, taken there by truck. They pollinate apples, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, cherries, blueberries, onions and more.

The principals struggle to find a mutually-useful solution.