Berdie Fowler

One hundred years ago an unsinkable ship sank with great loss of life. The story has had much television coverage this past week and I think it gives us cause to contemplate the horrific effects of overconfidence in technical advances and the high cost of ignoring warnings of risk.

This week, March 11-17, is Canadian Agricultural Safety Week. I checked the December 2011 newsletter of the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA) to see if farm safety programs were having positive effects.

Getting public attention is easy if entitlements are threatened. Even though Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Switzerland when he stated that his government would be looking at Old Age Security (OAS) with a view to taking reformative measures, controversial comments about it immediately reverberated from coast to coast to coast across Canada.

We think of food, clothing and shelter as basic needs. In today’s world, there is another: education. For obvious proof, one has only to observe that, throughout the world, poverty is a companion of illiteracy – the lack of ability to read and write – which is said to affect about five percent of the world’s population.

At the beginning of 2011, a hockey story dominated the sports news. It was about promising star player Sidney Crosby’s double concussions which subsequently kept him off the ice for the rest of the season, left him unready to play when the 2011-2012 season opened and, to this day, an uncertain future because of physical brutality allowed – even claimed by some to be essential – in the game.

I am not a learned musician but one of the many nice things I like about Christmas is the music. We are treated to an extensive variety including vocal and instrumental, presented as solos, in small combinations such as duets and quartets, or in larger groups such as choirs, bands and philharmonic orchestras.

Each time I am in the Camrose Composite High School (which is not often), I am pleased with what I see. Last week was no exception when it was again my privilege to attend the ceremony to induct four new nominees to the CCHS Wall of Fame – three former students and one former faculty member. They were Douglas Bieber, Dr.

Time spins around and already there are plenty of reminders that Christmas is less than six weeks away.

Christmas holidays mean different things to different people. Some of us greet with the words “Merry Christmas” in deference to the Christ(ian) component of Christmas; others of different faiths wish “Happy Holidays” as an alternative.

Family violence is abhorrent. You don’t like to talk about it; I don’t like to talk about it. Yet, we must not turn our backs on  the many victims, especially children, who are dangerously trapped; nor can we shrug and ignore the fact that some victims have been silenced forever because they have been killed.