VOLUNTEERS BUILDING HOMES FOR HUMANITY ON RESERVE LAND

Officials join one of the Neyaashiinigmiling families in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new home.

Here's another good news story being created off the beaten path not far from my home in Southampton.

On Saturday, November 24, four families on the Neyaashiinigmiing Aboriginal Reserve No. 27, formerly Cape Croker, received the keys to their new homes thanks to Habitat for Humanity.

The Build is a unique pilot project in partnership with the Chippewas of Newash Unceded First Nation, Habitat for Humanity and the Government of Canada. The Chippewas of Nawash occupy Neyaashiinigmiing 27 on the east shores of the Saugeen (Bruce) Peninsula on Georgian Bay and have created a new 19 lot development of homes that are being built by the selected families and volunteers from across Grey and Bruce Counties.

The families partner with Habitat to build their homes by completing 500 hours of sweat equity, or 350 for a single parent. They can then purchase the house with a no-down payment, no-interest mortgage. Many of those in the homes will not spend more than 25 per cent of their income on on housing.

On Saturday, a ceremony was held at the Build site on Sydney Bay Road that began with a special traditional drumming ceremony by Paul and son Jackson Nadjiwon and Algonquin Chief Wayne McKenzie of Notre Dame de Nor who had traveled from Quebec..

Neyaashiinigmiing Chief, Greg Nadjiwon, said that he was as excited as the families to see the project evolve. “This was because of the way the collaboration of partnerships, donations and volunteers, who showed up day after day to participate in the build, happened. There were 270 volunteers on the project.”

Chief Nadjiwon also took the opportunity to announce that Chief and Council had “… found the funding to make this happen and that six more builds were to be done in 2019. We plan to continue this very successful endeavour because this was not just about building houses, this was about building community and having community members come together. We plan to proceed until there are 19 houses and then we are moving on to a water treatment plant. It is our hope that the success of this project will open doors to allow other First Nations to address the chronic housing crisis that exist across the country.”

Major donors to the project included Bruce Power, the Realtors Association of Grey Bruce Owen Sound and the United Way of Bruce and Grey among others. Francesca Dobbin and Chief Greg Nadjiwon

Francesca Dobbin, Executive Director of the United Way of Bruce and Grey, announced several initiatives for the new family homes that included providing new beds (18) complete with bedding and propane assistance thanks to donations by several companies in the area.

Al MacDonald, Construction Manager of Habitat for Humanity, who headed up the Build, said that it was only through the help of the many volunteers that the project was completed. “We work very safely as there are so many people who volunteer from a wide variety of life experiences and who have never been on a construction site,” said MacDonald. “This is a meaningful experience and a community effort. Every volunteer who comes out is for the benefit of somebody else. Quality is also paramount and, sometimes, we do things over to build an incredible house. It’s also behind the scenes with the meals and coffee and support that makes it a community effort. It’s working with the families and the volunteers who, frankly, don’t have the skills to build homes but who learn and do the work that needs to be done.”

Several other similar Habitat for Humanity projects are also underway in Bruce Peninsula Reserve communities north of Saugeen Shores.

Hearing of projects like this once in a while provides us with a welcomed respite from our constant news diet of conflict and discourse around the world.

TURNING INWARD WITH "WHAT'S LEFT IN LIFE" THOUGHTS

It has now been almost six months since my wife Rosanne passed away. For the second time in 20 years I have endured the initial stages of grieving the death of a spouse. I honestly believed that I had it all licked -- feeling stronger both emotionally and physically, getting on with life with a degree of normality as I remembered it.

Then out of the blue last evening as I was preparing supper, I felt the onslaught of a heavy ache in my upper gut and chest. Tears began to flow. "Good God almighty, it's happening again. I thought that I was all over this sort of thing," was my initial reaction. It was all I could do to control emotions and to return to the priority at hand -- getting supper.

For the balance of the evening, and even this morning, I have struggled with the depressive thought that for all intents and purposes, my life is over...nothing of significance to live for, not that my life has been of much significance anyway.

After all, when you stop to think about it, what does life really have to offer an 80 year old of meager means...One who has seen it all and done most of it?  The question does give one pause.

Strange how grief can crop up on you when you least expect it or when you are, often unknowingly, most vulnerable. It is all part of losing something, or someone, of significance. Nothing is more final than death. What is gone, is gone, forever. What was, is no longer. That is the worst part of it.

As an escape or divergence, my impulse was to turn to one of the few things that satisfies a need within me -- offering my thoughts in writing on Wrights Lane

I have always felt that there is an inherent sort of comfort in wrapping myself in words, either of my own creation or that of others, and losing myself to a different kind of world for just a little while.

Well-written words on their own sing just as much as any song, and what’s more, they have the power to truly speak to you (the part of you that’s hurting). Because, regardless of how you’re feeling, there is undoubtedly someone who has felt like you before, and the power of music and words can bring about that emotion and re contextualize it in yourself and your current suffering.

Also, if I try to create, whether it be any form of writing or art, I feel incredibly separate from whatever is going on in my day-to-day existance. Creativity lets me truly bond with whatever art medium I’m working with, and I think that engaging in the creation of something you’re naturally passionate about is the best cure-all on the planet.

It’s important to recognize, too, that often times, suffering brings about the best writing. Pain leads to many of the greatest songs and symphonies. The power of either losing yourself to the world created from words, musical notes or a paint brush, or creating a new world from your suffering is something that we all can look to when there seems to be nothing left, if there truly is nothing.  Then why not try to create something?

And, how do I go about creating that something?  I turn inward, because I am all that I have left.

I have to realize that I am temporarily being sucked into a familiar and painful vacuum, but this too shall pass. Maybe, just maybe there is something better in store for me tomorrow, giving renewal to a belief that Life's the greatest...Live it to the fullest!  You just never know what's in store for you.

Life is like a sine wave. It's a continual test of endurance and self-reliance, full of changes and surprises to the very end. It is not like me to back away from change and I like surprises.

That's the way I look at it, anyway.

Thanks for listening!

THE TRUTH TODAY NEEDS TO BE CONSTRUCTIVE AND ADAPTIVE, OTHERWISE IT IS NO BETTER THAN FAKE NEWS, BULL ROAR OR A LIE

In this day and age it is really difficult to know what is truth and what is not. We are living in a period when one man's truth can be written off as fake news by another with little attempt to justify opposition. There are no longer any beliefs, positions, issues or institutions that are sacrosanct. 

At best, selective and deceptive half-truths have become the order of the day.

It has been suggested that one way to understand truth is simply to look at its opposites, namely, lies and a form of deception commonly known as "BS". The liar must track the truth in order to conceal it. In contrast, the bullsh*tter has no regard or sensitivity for the truth, or even for what his or her audience believes.

Those who lie and those who tell the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as understood, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The BSer ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, BS is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Following his defeat at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Mark Antony heard the rumour that Cleopatra had committed suicide, and consequently stabbed himself in the abdomen—only to discover that Cleopatra herself had been responsible for spreading the rumour. He later died in her arms.

"Fake news" may be as old as humanity, but in our Internet age it has spread like a disease, swinging elections, fomenting social unrest, undermining institutions, and diverting political energy from health, education, and good government. Initially, “fake news” referred to false news with large scale popular traction, although Donald Trump seems to have extended the usage to include any news that does not serve him.

Those who are alarmed, or who feel they are in a minority, might take comfort in the words of Søren Kierkegaard:

"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority."

The Correspondence Theory of Truth: Truth is a property not so much of thoughts and ideas but more properly of beliefs and assertions. But to believe or assert something is not enough to make it true, or else the claim that ‘to believe something makes it true’ would be just as true as the claim that ‘to believe something does not make it true’.

For centuries, philosophers have agreed that thought or language is true if it corresponds to an independent reality. For Aristotle, “to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true." For Avicenna, truth is “what corresponds in the mind to what is outside it." And for Aquinas, truth is “the adequation of things and the intellect” (adaequatio rei et intellectus).

Unfortunately, but perhaps also fortunately, the mind does not perceive reality as it is, but only as it can, filtering, distorting, and interpreting it. In modern times, it has been argued that truth is largely constructed by social and cultural processes, to say nothing of individual desires and dispositions. Michel Foucault famously spoke, not of truth or truths, but of “regimes of truth." Categories and constructs regarding, for example, race and sexuality may not reflect biological let alone metaphysical realities.

The Coherence Theory of Truth: A thing is more likely to be true if it fits comfortably into a large and coherent system of beliefs. It remains that the system could be a giant fiction, entirely divorced from reality, but this becomes increasingly unlikely as we investigate, curate, and add to its components—assuming, and it is quite an assumption, that we are operating in good faith, with truth as our aim. So conceived, truth is not a property, or merely a property, but an attitude, a way of being in the world.

'Truth' is not a feature of correct propositions which are asserted of an 'object' by a human 'subject' and then are 'valid' somewhere, in what sphere we know not. Rather, truth is disclosure of beings through which an openness essentially unfolds. All human comportment and bearing are exposed in its open region.

The Pragmatic Theory of Truth: All the better, perhaps, if we can actually do something useful with our system and its components. If truth leads to successful action, then successful action is an indicator of truth. Clearly, we could not have sent a rocket to the moon if our maths had been wide off the mark. For William James, the truth is “only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our behaving”.

If something works, it may well be true; if it doesn’t, it most probably isn’t. But what if something works for me but not for you? Is that thing then true for me but not for you? For Nietzsche, who makes himself the natural friend of two-penny tyrants, truth is power, and power truth: “The falseness of a judgment is not necessarily an objection to a judgement… The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding…”

Short-term or long-term, and at what cost?

The Deceptive Theory of Truth: That a thing fits into a system, or leads to successful action, may suggest that it is true, but does not tell us much about what truth actually is. Beyond that, the correspondence theory of truth doesn't tell us very much at all, so thin as to be almost or entirely tautological—and perhaps for a reason.

It has been argued that to say that X is true is merely to say that X, and therefore that truth is an empty predicate. Truth is not a real property of things. Rather, it is a feature of language used to emphasize, agree, or hypothesize, or for stylistic reasons. For example, it can be used to explicate the Catholic dogma of papal infallibility: “Everything that the pope says is true.” But this is merely shorthand for saying that if the Pope says A, then A; and if he says B, then B…

For some thinkers, something can only be true or false if it is open to verification, at least in theory if not also in practice. The truth of something lies at the end of our inquiry into that thing. But as our inquiry can have no end, the truth of something can never be more than our best opinion of that thing. If best opinion is all that we can have or hope for, then best opinion is as good as truth, and truth is a redundant concept. But best opinion is only best because, at least on average, it is closest to the truth, which, as well as instrumental value, has deep intrinsic value.

By its very nature self-deception is hard to distinguish from the truth—whether our internal, emotional truth or the external truth. One has to develop and trust one’s instinct: what does it feel like to react in the way that I’m reacting? Does it feel calm, considered, and nuanced, or shallow and knee-jerk? Does it take the welfare of others into account, or is it all about me? Am I satisfied with, even proud of, my self-conquering effort, or does it make me feel small, angry, or anxious?

Self-deception doesn't ‘add up’ in the grand scheme of things and can easily be brought down by even superficial questioning. As with a jigsaw, try to look at the bigger picture of your life and see how the thought or reaction might fit in. Did you react from a position of strength or vulnerability? What would the person you most respect think? What would Socrates think? Talk to other people and gather their opinions. If they disagree with you, does that make you feel angry, upset, or defensive? The coherence of your reaction can speak volumes about the nature of your motives.

Finally, truth is constructive and adaptive, while lies are destructive and self-defeating. So we are left asking: How useful is a self-deceptive thought or reaction going to be for us? Are we just covering up an irrational fear, or helping to create a solid foundation for the future? Are we empowering ourselves to fulfill our highest potential, or depriving ourselves of opportunities for growth and creating further problems down the road? Is the cycle simply going to repeat itself, or will the truth, at last, make us free?

In retrospect, it takes a degree of honest soul-searching and fact-checking just to understand some things in a day and age where it is difficult to know what, or who, to believe.

Like Mark Anthony, some of us learn the hard way...Ain't that the truth!  

Because He Lives: I just had a feeling that someone in my viewing audience needs to hear this meaningful spiritual song at this time. Feel it, live it!

HOW'RE YOU DOING FRIENDS...?

...On getting out and making friends with people you have yet to meet!  (View video on full screen.)

A Stitch in Time – a timeless story of Remembrance

I meet David Gray quite regularly for coffee (he alternates two peanut butter cookies with a bran muffin) at Tim Hortons.  He also lives on the same street as I do. He often tells the story of his rather historic "quilt" and I share it on Wrights Lane, thanks to Sandy Lindsay of the Saugeen Times.

With the approach of Remembrance Day, David regaled members of Saugeen Shores Men’s Probus Club recently with the story of how the unique quilt with hundreds of hand-stitched names came into his possession. Here's the story.

In Galt (ON) when David was a young boy of 10, he belonged to what was then the ‘Karry on Kids Klub’ that consisted of 22 children ages four to ten who raised money for the wartime effort with a garden party in the mid 1940s. A quilt was made and people who wanted their name on it would pay 10 cents and a grand total of $86.00 was ultimately realized. David's sister worked on embroidering the names on the guilt.

David Gray making his presentation.

When the quilt was completed, it was given to the Red Cross to be taken to a Veterans’ hospital in London, England. The understanding was that if there were any soldiers there who came from the Cambridge area in Ontario, the quilt would be put on their bed so that they could see the names and perhaps of some they knew. Stories and photographs of the quilt were carried in the Galt Reporter newspaper.

After the war was over, the quilt came back to Toronto with the Red Cross and no one knows where it went after that nor the hands it passed through

One day however, a lady in Mississauga was looking for a bed for her dog and spotted the quilt at a garage sale, paid two dollars for it and took it home. When she later looked more closely, it was then that she discovered the names stitched on it. As David explains it, further research determined that there were four families connected to the quilt located in Cambridge, Mississauga, Waterdown and Guelph. The relative in Waterdown felt that that the quilt should go back to an original owner.

Through someone in Guelph, then Kitchener and then Galt, it began to make its way back ‘home’.

Eventually David's twin brother Donald, also an original member of the Kids Club, received a telephone call at his home in Galt (Cambridge) advising him that someone had a parcel for him...and when he received the package it contained the quilt created by the Karry on Kids Klub of Galt that his sister had worked so diligently on more than 50 years prior. Donald passed away in June and David became benefactor of the quilt.

"It was a quilt that brought people together long after the war ended but it was the children in the beginning who wanted to honour the soldiers and help them financially."

“One can only wonder where the quilt has been, how many beds did it cover, who did it help and, even after what must have been countless washings, how the names are still there and visible,” David adds.

*To check out previous "older posts" just click to the right below.  ⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⤍⬇⬇⬇🔻🔻🔻

LEST WE FORGET...

I'm leaving this Wrightwords video up until Remembrance Day, Sunday, November 11. Click on video ➤ to watch...Large screen view is recommended.

SPOOKY STORIES:

Chilling (yet completely true) events from Canadian history 

Most Halloween stories involve ghosts, monsters or other unprovable phenomena. This may be fine for other countries, but Canada is at times a giant expanse of fog, snow, isolation...and madness: We generally don’t need tall tales to get creeped out.

Below are 11 events pulled directly from the pages of Canadian history that aren’t just bone-chilling, but entirely true.

Buried alive

Go to any historical graveyard in Canada and it’s likely that some of the coffin lids will feature scratch marks. Before the advent of modern medical monitoring, a few hours of unconsciousness could be all your loved ones needed to consign you to the nightmare of premature burial. A particularly chilling case was documented in Woodstock, Ontario in 1886. As the New York Times reported, a “girl named Collins” was being exhumed in order to move her to another burial place. When the coffin lid was removed, exhumers gazed in horror at evidence of dreadful torture. “Her shroud was torn into shreds, her knees were drawn up to her chin, one of her arms was twisted under her head,” the report stated.

Invasion of ghosts



Owen Beattie The perfectly preserved hand of John Torrington, an early Franklin Expedition casualty who largely dodged the total horror of the expedition's final months. 

The small party of Inuit camped at the southern end of King William Island around 1850 could count themselves as one of the most isolated people on earth: They had never met white people, they had never met Dene and they barely encountered other Inuit. So it was a uniquely terrifying experience for them to hear the sound of footsteps outside their igloo and find themselves facing a crowd of lurching figures with eyes vacant, skin blue, unable to talk and barely alive. These were the last remnants of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, the 1845 British voyage of Arctic exploration that ended with the death of all aboard. As ragged bands of expedition survivors split up and trudged south in a desperate bid to flee the Arctic on foot, Inuit throughout the region faced a real-life invasion of the walking dead. They saw men raving wildly, they saw camps strewn with emaciated corpses and they saw the Europeans begin to eat their dead. “They’re not Inuit; they’re not human,” was how one witness described their arrival, according to Inuit oral history.

The ghost soldier

A portrait of Canadian First World War soldier Lt. George B. McKean, painted while McKean was reportedly gripped with the haunted look of a shell shock victim. 

Canadian soldier Will Bird is one of the most celebrated memoirists of the First World War, with veterans often citing his work as the most realistic portrayal of trench warfare. Bird also believed that he fought his First World War in the constant company of ghosts. His brother Stephen had been killed on the Western Front in 1915, and Bird wrote that he decided to enlist after the spectre of Stephen appeared before him on a Saskatchewan farm in full uniform. In an even more fantastical occurrence, Bird was a corporal serving in France in 1917 when he reported being shaken awake by Stephen’s ghost. “Get your gear,” the ghost told Bird before leading him on a short meandering walk down a trench. The next morning Bird discovered that his original sleeping spot had been shattered by a high explosive shell, and he forever credited his survival to the watchful hands of his dead brother. Canadian historian Tim Cook found that Bird’s experience was not unique, and that many soldiers returned from the Western Front with the belief that they too had served time in an ethereal land of the dead. As one Canadian infantryman put it:“You could feel the pulse of the thousands of the dead with their pale hands protruding through the mud here and there and seeming to beckon you.”



A seascape of corpses, Nova Scotia Archives: Crew members of the recovery ship CS Minia pulling a lifebelted Titanic victim from the sea. 

Most survivors of the RMS Titanic never fully glimpsed the carnage of the sinking’s aftermath. Lifeboats had spent the night vigorously rowing away from the wreck and were well outside the main debris field when picked up by rescuers. Instead, the awful spectre of 1,500 floating bodies would be left for Canadians to encounter. Four ships were chartered out of Halifax to recover the Titanic’s victims, fating crew members to spend days living and working in a lonely patch of the North Atlantic inhabited only by endless fields of open-mouthed lifejacketed corpses. “Started to pick up bodies at six a.m. and continued all day till five thirty p.m.,” reads the diary of a crew member on the Mackay-Bennett, a cable ship that would handle more than 300 Titanic victims.

The Kaiser’s UFOs

Every day, Canadians phone in an average of three sightings of unidentified flying objects, according to the Canadian UFO Survey. One hundred years ago, the country was experiencing a similar rash of UFO encounters. All across Ontario and Quebec came sightings of low-flying objects emitting guttural drones and sweeping the landscape with powerful searchlights. Parliament Hill was put into lockdown in February 1915 by reports of four of the objects cruising toward Ottawa dropping “light balls” as they went. In 1916, railway guards in Tillsonburg, Ontario opened fire on a shadowy figure they believed had been brought by one of the flying machines. Canadians didn’t think these were extraterrestrials; they thought they were Germans. German aircraft of the age could barely cross the English Channel and yet Canadians were convinced that the Kaiser’s airmen were threatening Canada from secret bases in the United States. Subsequent analysis of the sightings concluded that they had been sparked by little more than boat motors, kites and even straight-up hallucination.

The ship of the dead

Site historique maritime de la Pointe-au-Père: The recovered bodies of Empress of Ireland victims. 

Rammed by a coal ship in the St. Lawrence River in 1914, the Empress of Ireland took only 14 minutes to go down, taking 1,012 people with her. Located in only 40 metres of water near Rimouski, Que., the ship has been a well-known site for salvage divers almost from the beginning. But anyone entering the wreck knows they must navigate hallways and staterooms utterly choked with the bodies of men, women and children who spent their last moments in the frantic, clawing terror of a pitch black tomb quickly filling with icy water. The first brass-helmeted divers to explore the ship in 1914 reported shining their dim lanterns at crowds of bloated pale faces contorted in horror. Today, the victims are skeletons, and lie so thick within the wreck that divers have nicknamed it “the boneyard.”

The vanished airplane

San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives: A Lockheed Lodestar similar to the one lost over Vancouver in 1947. 

In April, 1947 the Vancouver airport received a routine radio call from Trans Canada Flight 3 from Lethbridge: The plane was banking over the Pacific Ocean for its final approach and would be touching down shortly. But the plane, a Lockheed Lodestar with 15 passengers and crew aboard, never emerged from the clouds. A search the next morning revealed no signs of violence: No wreckage, no smoke, no witnesses who could report hearing the telltale sound of a plane slamming into the ground. A twin engine plane had vanished from the sky overtop the largest city in Western Canada and nobody had seen a thing. It was only in 1994 that Vancouverites discovered the truth: Flight 3 had spent nearly 50 years in the city’s very backyard of the North Shore mountains.

The occult prime minister

Library and Archives Canada: Shirley Temple and W.L. Mackenzie King launch a war bond on Parliament Hill, Oct. 21, 1944. 

It’s often said that Mackenzie King believed he could communicate with the ghost of his dead mother. This didn’t used to be all that unusual: Spiritualism was the yoga of its day, attracting devotees ranging from author Arthur Conan Doyle to Mary Todd Lincoln. But what is less known is just how much faith King put in the world of the occult. He took leadership advice from the ghost of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was obsessed with patterns, basing momentous decisions on, say, the symmetry of a nearby clock face. In a particularly unhinged moment, King travelled to Nazi Germany in a euphoric haze believing that he alone had been placed on earth to meet Adolf Hitler and bring peace to an unsettled Europe. Almost none of King’s unorthodox beliefs were known to the millions who voted for him. It would be akin to finding out that Brian Mulroney had decided to implement the GST after being instructed by secret messages hidden in Beatles records.

The mad trapper

The Mad Trapper of Rat River wasn’t just any fugitive: He was a fugitive with seemingly supernatural powers. He held his own in two shootouts with RCMP patrols. He survived the total destruction of his cabin by dynamite. He slipped pursuers by climbing a 2,100 metre mountain in a blizzard with no mountaineering equipment. He moved 46 kilometres per day over rough Canadian wilderness in minus 50 temperatures while eschewing cookfires, living off the land and deftly covering his tracks. “The men seemed to be fighting a demon rather than a human being,” observed author Dick North in his definitive account of the 1932 manhunt. And the man known only by the pseudonym Albert Johnson had become Canada’s most wanted man for no reason: The RCMP had merely been looking to question him about a suspected trapping dispute when he opened fire without warning. Although the Mad Trapper would ultimately be brought down by a fusillade of Mountie bullets in the eastern Yukon, to this day nobody knows who he was, where he came from or even what he sounded like. Reportedly, the only sound Johnson uttered during the chase was an echoing laugh after he fatally shot Mountie Edgar Millen.

The hooded figurine

Deborah Sabo and George Sabo: A medieval Inuit carving of a non Inuit visitor. 


As they dug into the foundations of an ancient proto-Inuit house on Baffin Island, archaeologists George and Deborah Sabo were turning up the usual artifacts: Bones, baleen, harpoon heads, bits of wood. But then, their tools unearthed something downright eerie: A faceless man in a hooded robe with a simple cross emblazoned on his chest. To any modern Westerner the figure was instantly recognizable as a member of the Roman Catholic clergy. But to nomadic Thule people living at the time of the Middle Ages, it should have been a figure as alien as a Martian. To the Sabos, the eerie figurine was proof that the mythical Helluland mentioned in Viking sagas wasn’t mythical at all; it had been in Arctic Canada all along. Vikings had indeed walked these lands, met the inhabitants and left an impression — before vanishing as mysteriously as they had come.

The phantom terror attack

In May, 2004 a mysterious, olive-skinned man disembarking Vancouver’s number 98 bus offered an eerie remark to the driver. “How’s your day going?” said the man. When the driver replied that it was going well, the man replied “it won’t be for long.” Ten kilometers later, the bus driver was overcome by nausea and threw up. With other passengers reporting similar symptoms, the driver pulled over and radioed for help. Paramedics arrived on scene and they too fell ill. The whole episode carried the trademarks of a new and terrifying form of chemical terror attack. But Vancouver’s Chief Medical Health Officer, John Blatherwick, concluded that the true cause of the incident was weirder still: Nothing. There was no chemical and there were no terrorists, a cryptic comment had simply plunged an entire group of Vancouver strangers — including trained emergency personnel — into a state of sudden mass hysteria.

SOUTHAMPTON CHURCH GOES TO THE DOGS WITH A BLESSING SERVICE

"Getting to know you” … Lewis and Molly were dressed for the weather

Rev. Ann Veyvara-Divinski carried out a special ‘Blessings of the Animals’ at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Southampton last Sunday.

Thelma Kennedy’s Bailey snuggled up
 to Rev. Ann

“Saint Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals,” explained Veyvara-Divinski. “It is an opportunity to demonstrate our love and appreciation of our furry, feathered or fin friends who are our companions and to recognize the human-animal bond that exists.”

In October, Christians worldwide celebrate the Feast of Saint Francis with a blessing of animals and prayers for creation that goes back to ancient times. St. Francis is the patron of Animals, Merchants & Ecology and is also considered the all-inclusive patron saint against dying alone; patron saint against fire; patron saint of animal welfare societies; patron saint of animals, patron saint of the environment and many others.

(With thanks to Sandy Lindsay)

A SPECIAL HI TO MY TIM HORTONS FRIENDS MURIEL & DAVE...GLEN TOO

...See you folks there.

WAS JOHN GIBBONS JUST TALKING CLAPPTRAP?

By means of update for a few of my blog followers who are baseball fans...Former Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Ed Sprague was reportedly interviewed for the job of manager of the major league baseball club last week and a subsequent Sportsnet report had the list of candidates narrowed down to five, four of whom were believed to be Joe Espada (the Houston Astros bench coach), David Bell (the San Francisco Giants’ farm director), Rocco Baldelli (the Tampa Bay Rays’ major-league field co-ordinator), and Brandon Hyde (the Chicago Cubs’ bench coach).

Sprague is currently the co-ordinator of instruction for the Oakland Athletics, the team the Jays traded him to in 1998, and is known to be well respected in the Toronto organization.

John Gibbons

I was kind of surprised however, when at the end of the 2018 playing schedule, out-going Jays manager John Gibbons more or less nominated Stubby Clapp for the managerial job.  Knowing of Gibby's sense of humor, one has to wonder if he was being a bit flippant and off-handed after word of his firing was made public. No denying, it was an out-of-the-blue suggestion.

Stubby Clapp

Clapp himself was certainly taken aback when he received the news..

“My phone blew up,” Clapp said of the reaction he got. “No. 1, I thank him (Gibbons) for even thinking of me. Coming from Gibby, I have a lot of respect. It’s a tip of the cap and coming from him is special. He understands the game and you look at what he’s done.”

There is a little history between the two. Gibbons was actually the manager for an Arizona Fall League team that Clapp played on back in 2000. After two seasons of coaching with the Houston Astros, Clapp was hired as a hitting coach for Blue Jays and he spent four seasons in the organization. “I would stick my head in his office and he always had time to talk,” Clapp said. “We’ve kept a decent relationship.”

But Clapp left the organization two years ago to become manager for the AAA Memphis Redbirds, which is the top farm team of the St. Louis Cardinals. Under Clapps' management the Redbirds are repeat league champions.

A Canadian by birth (Windsor native), Clapp was a 36th-round pick by St. Louis in the 1996 MLB Draft and eventually reached the majors with the club in 2001. A second baseman/outfielder, he was a regular member of the Canadian national baseball team for a number of years. He spent a big chunk of his minor-league career in Memphis and the club retired his number in 2007.

“It’s a great organization, great people and they gave me the opportunity,” Clapp said of the Cardinals. But he doesn’t deny he wants to get back to the majors.

“It’s not a secret I want to be in the big leagues,” Clapp said. “If I do it, I want to do it to the best of my ability and at the highest level...That’s why I work so hard.”

But don’t expect the Blue Jays to announce a new manager anytime soon and, if the club is indeed interest in Clapp, there’s still a protocol to follow.

The 45-year-old Clapp is still under contract with St. Louis until the end of October.

“No. 1, there’s tampering rules,” Clapp said. “Usually, you have to wait for the season to end and if a team is in the playoffs, you usually have to wait until they’re done. It’s a courtesy.”

Clapp isn’t the only name being thrown out. Eric Wedge, who is a player development advisor for the Blue Jays and was American League manager of the year in 2007, is also thought to be in the running.

We'll just have to stay turned and wait to see if John Gibbons' pick is given consideration by Blue Jays brass. They could do worse!

A GUEST POST ON PUBLIC DISCOURSE

I could not let another day go by without republishing the following Saugeen Times item written by Rev. Bob Johnston.  I have often quoted Rev. Bob on Wrights Lane and once again he presents a rational and clear perspective on the all-too-common people "clashes" that are errupting in society today.

“Bridges or Barriers?”

By Rev. Bob Johnston

-October 21, 2018

Since the surprising 2016 election of Donald trump, I have been searching in vain for someone with whom I might share a calm, rational conversation about the 45th president of the United States. So far, no luck.

I raise that name, not to provoke yet another loud argument, but to point out that even normally reasonable people have difficulty listening to any positive opinion of Trump. I may not be a fan of the President but I would enjoy hearing a pro-Trump perspective if it were thoughtfully presented.

These days it seems as if public discourse, locally and nationally, is quickly heating up just as the weather slowly descends into the damp cold of November. In my town (Saugeen Shores) a recent meeting about the proposed location and design of a new building suddenly turned contentious. Many of us became reluctantly addicted to the bitterly-fought Kavanaugh hearings in Washington. An angry war of words erupted this week in our own House of Commons. Bipartisan consensus in the American Senate is becoming a distant memory and in the nation itself. Viewers and presenters on Fox News Channel and CNN at times seem to inhabit different planets.

When did we assume ”the other side” of any issue no longer has anything of value to contribute to the common good? Historically, the “commons” was a place where ideas could be freely shared, but more importantly were actually listened to and considered on merit. Many Renaissance towns and cities were redesigned to include a public square where the concept of free speech gradually became permitted then ultimately, over following centuries, guarded zealously as a fundamental right.

Universities have traditionally been bastions of free expression. Now, across North America, ideas which are deemed to be too unpopular are increasingly being disallowed on campus. Conservative speakers have had guest lectures disrupted or invitations hastily rescinded by nervous administrators.

Assuming most citizens, locally and nationally, at least pay lip service to the concept of free speech, how can this disturbing trend be reversed? Consider these reasonable steps:

—-recognize we do not possess the only truth on every issue.

—-offer our own opinions thoughtfully but without assuming our listener is automatically agreeing with us. Why do we always presume everyone present in a group shares our anti-trump tirade, position on abortion, immigration or our religious views? Their silence may not be assent but rather reflects a fear of being unfairly labelled should they voice an opposing viewpoint.

—-invite other opinions and listen without prejudging the presentation.

—-be open to changing our mind.

—-agree to disagree if necessary, rejecting the opposing argument but not the person presenting it.

—-recognize there is likely much more that unites us than divides us. What do we hold in common?

Of course, there should be exceptions to this approach toward bridge-building. Barriers can and should be erected against hate speech, libel and defamation. Some opinion is too odious to be given the light of day. Yet most ideas which radically differ from our own strongly held views need to be respected and encouraged to be given voice. This surely is the essence of democracy and a free society.

WANNA TRY PLAYING HOCKEY GOALIE KID? HERE'S A PROGRAM FOR YOU!

I enjoy passing stories and interesting initiatives along to my readers who, for various reasons, might otherwise miss them. Here is one that meets that criteria.

In an effort to support kids who have dreams of becoming a hockey goaltender, once again the Ontario Minor Hockey Association (OMHA) Goalie Assist Program is providing a new set of CCM goalie equipment for select associations to loan to 5-7 year old players interested in trying out the position.

Now in its 7th year, the OMHA Goalie Assist Program has provided 330 full sets of goalie equipment. This season, there were more than 140 applications received from OMHA-member associations, with 40 sets being distributed across the province. While there is a formal application process, selection of recipients basically operates on a rotating basis.

Among the local associations in my area (Grey, Bruce and Huron counties) that were recipients of the program this year were Bruce Peninsula, Listowel, Lucknow, South Bruce and South Huron.

“The idea is to continue the positive cycle of introducing new goalies to the position,” says OMHA Executive Director Ian Taylor. “Hockey is a late-specialization sport and the Goalie Assist Program helps introduce the position to players who may not have otherwise had the opportunity. The equipment helps give every player a chance to try being a goaltender without families making the financial commitment.”

Each set of equipment will be retained by the local minor hockey associations at the conclusion of the hockey season to loan to players in following years, all in order to continue the positive cycle of introducing new goalies to the position.

The OMHA believes this program helps break down some of the barriers that may exist for new goalies. Being a netminder is a very unique position in hockey and requires specific equipment that may not always be readily available.

“A player who wants to be a goalie should not be discouraged for any reason and this program helps alleviate some of those worries,” adds Taylor. “The Goalie Assist Program could be the first time a player is able to try out net-minding.”

Each kit is equipped with a set of CCM youth pads, catcher/blocker, stick, chest protector and bag. Catching hands and sticks are available with common left/right combinations.

The Ontario Minor Hockey Association, founded in 1935, is a leader in community sport and oversees a participant base of more than 300,000, consisting of players, coaches, trainers, officials, hockey volunteers and parents across the province. The OMHA works with its 223 local minor hockey
associations and annually coordinates 28 leagues to create the best minor hockey experience in Canada.

THE CAN'T-WIN NATURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXCHANGES

With thanks to the Social Media Toolkit

You've seen it happen dozens if not hundreds of times. You post an opinion, or a complaint, or a link to an article on Facebook. Somebody adds a comment, disagreeing (or agreeing) with whatever you posted. Someone else posts another comment disagreeing with the first commenter, or with you, or both. Then others jump in to add their own viewpoints. Tempers flare. Harsh words are used. Soon enough, you and several of your friends are engaged in a virtual shouting match, sometimes with people you've never even met.

Admittedly, I've been there and done that!

There's a simple reason this happens, it turns out: We respond very differently to what people write than to what they say -- even if those things are exactly the same. That's the result of a fascinating new experiment by U.C. Berkeley and University of Chicago researchers. In the study, 300 subjects read, watched video of, or listened to arguments about such hot-button topics as war, abortion, and country or rap music. Afterward, subjects were interviewed about their reactions to the opinions with which they disagreed.

Their general response was probably very familiar to anyone who's ever discussed politics: a broad belief that people who don't agree with you are either too stupid or too biased to know better. But there was a distinct difference between those who had watched or listened to someone speak the words out loud and those who had read the identical words as text. Those who had listened or watched someone say the words were less likely to dismiss the speaker as uninformed or heartless than they were if they were just reading the commenter's words.

That result was no surprise to at least one of the researchers, who was inspired to try the experiment after a similar experience of his own. "One of us read a speech excerpt that was printed in a newspaper from a politician with whom he strongly disagreed," researcher Juliana Schroeder said in an interview. "The next week, he heard the exact same speech clip playing on a radio station. He was shocked by how different his reaction was toward the politician when he read the excerpt compared to when he heard it." Whereas the written comments seemed outrageous to this researcher, the same words spoken out loud seemed reasonable.

This research suggests that the best way for people who disagree with one another to work out their differences and arrive at a better understanding or compromise is by talking to one another, as people used to do at town hall meetings and over the dinner table. But now that so many of our interactions take place over social media, chat, text message, or email, spoken conversation or discussion is increasingly uncommon. 

It's probably no coincidence that political disagreement and general acrimony have never been greater. Russians used this speech-versus-text disharmony to full advantage by creating Facebook and Twitter accounts to stir up even more ill will among Americans than they already had on their own. No wonder they were so successful at it.

So what should we do about it? To begin with, if you want to make a persuasive case for your political opinion or proposed action, maybe you're better off doing it by making a short video (or linking to one by someone else) rather than writing out whatever you have to say. That is especially difficult for me because I am a more effective writer than I am a speaker and I tend to fall back on what I do best.

At the same time, whenever you're reading something someone else wrote that seems outlandish to you, keep in mind that the fact that you're seeing this as text may be part of the problem. If it's important for you to be objective, try reading it out loud or having someone else read it to you. Also try asking for clarification, so that you better understand what the other person is saying.

In the end, however, do not be surprised if a well-intended written offer of advice or rationality based on moral grounds is dismissed by the playing of the easy-to-fall-back-on sanctimonious card. That is a sure sign of dismissal when rebuttal wanes. People are selective in what they want to hear and who it is supposedly preaching to them, if ever that is the case.

Then again, perhaps it is just better to let matters drop altogether. In my experience, even though it may be fun trying, you may be batting your head against a brick wall.  

Of course, this is all very easy for me to say with my contradictory passive-aggressive, activist doer, devil's advocate, tongue-in-cheek personality. Still, I do not give up easily and that in itself may be another part of the problem.

CAREFUL OF HOW LONG YOU SLEEP...YOU MIGHT MISS SOMETHING

Oh my God...I'm a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, I thought to myself as I woke up the other afternoon and looked at the clock on my night table.  The red digital light flashed 3:11 p.m. -- a new record for me.

I had already missed half of the day.

It should be explained, however, that I did not hit the hay until 3:30 that morning.  Being the night owl that I am, I had lost track of time while working at my computer in the wee small hours of the morning. But no matter how you look at it, 11+ hours is still a pretty good night's/day's sleep. Guess I needed it!

In truth, when I first woke up during that marathon stretch of slumber it was just past 8 a.m. Matilda was still snoring beside me and I thought "what the heck", rolled over and went back to sleep.  Four hours later (roughly noon), I awoke again and thought "I'll just lay here for a few minutes before I get up."

Those "few minutes" somehow stretched into another unbelievable three hours. Miraculously, Matilda had not moved a muscle and I marvelled at how our bladders had held out that long.

As I sat at the kitchen table peeling an orange while the coffee percolated, I found myself taking stock of the things that I may have missed during that extended sleep. To my relief, I could not think of a single thing...Nothing important anyway. That's the upside, I guess, of living a single life with no particular commitments or responsibilities. The world keeps on rolling whether I'm in it or not.

That is also where my earlier spontaneous comparison to Rip Van Wrinkle ended. Countless changes took place in Rip's world during his 20-year sleep, and by golly that's the hidden message in that old yarn.

The story "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving is set in the mid-1700s, before the American Revolution in an unnamed village in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It is a tale that has fascinated me since early childhood.

The story could mean many things to different people. One might read it and think about a certain lesson, while another reads it and comes up with a totally different meaning and lesson. But a common moral most readers find in 'Rip Van Winkle' is the that time goes on and things keep changing, whether a person is conscious or not. In the story, Rip takes a 20-year nap, but time does not stop--the world keeps changing around him. Even though Rip is not aware of all of the changes going on, they still happen.

When he awakes, Rip finds that there are some changes that he likes. For example, he no longer has to answer to his wife (because she has died) and he does not have the same responsibilities and burdens that he used to. However, there are also some changes that he does not like, such as his dog getting older and his children growing up. Even though Rip was upset that he missed a lot of important events, the moral of the story is that time does not wait--the world will keep moving forward and changing whether we are ready or not...With us, or without us.

THE TRAGIC CHILD ABUSE STORY OF A HOCKEY STAR IN-THE-MAKING

I wish that I didn't feel compelled to reproduce this story. It is terrible -- almost unbelieveable -- but it cries out for help in a hockey world that would rather ignore it.  "Breaking Away" is Patrick O'Sullivan's story of survival. It's his story of being made an ancillary character to his own life by his father. It's also a story of how we are all capable of being bystanders in someone else's trauma. Somehow, up to now, this story has escaped my attention. Here it is in O'Sullivan's own words.

Now retired, Patrick O'Sullivan played eight seasons in the National Hockey League with 

Los Angeles Kings, Edmonton Oilers, Carolina Hurricanes, Minnesota Wild and Phoenix 

Coyotes, all the while being treated for mental health issues. He was born in Toronto but 

grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His father John O'Sullivan, a Toronto native, 

played for the minor-league Winston-Salem Thunderbirds of the Atlantic Coast Hockey 

League, but never made it to the NHL.

My father used to beat the shit out of me.

I don’t say that to be shocking, or to get your attention. I say that because it’s just a simple fact. He would throw punches. Not like he was hitting a small child — but like he was in a bar fight with a grown man. Whenever some people hear the phrase “child abuse,” it’s very hard for them to think about what’s really happening. They imagine discipline that gets out of hand once in a while, because it’s easier that way.

How many times have you heard someone say this?

“My parents used to give me the belt, and I turned out OK.”

So let me be really clear about what happened to me. From the moment I got my first pair of hockey skates at five years old, I got the living shit kicked out of me every single day. Every day after hockey, no matter how many goals I scored, he would hit me. The man was 6-foot-2, 250 lbs. It would start as soon as we got in the car, and sometimes right out in the parking lot.

By the time I was 10, it got worse. He would put cigarettes out on me. Choke me. Throw full soda cans at my head. Every time I stepped on the ice, I knew that my play would determine just how bad I got it when we got home. I’d score a hat trick, and afterward we’d get in the car and he would tell me that I played “like a faggot” (that was his favorite term, which says a lot).

Picture off innocence...on the surface.

I thought it was normal. As a kid, you just don’t know any better. He would wake me up at 5 a.m. and force me to work out for two hours before school. I remember I had this heavy leather jump rope, and if he thought I wasn’t working hard enough, he would force me to take my shirt off and he’d whip me with it. If the jump rope wasn’t around, he would use an electrical cord.

He always stopped short of knocking me unconscious, because that would defeat his purpose. See, if I was passed out, I couldn’t train.

As strange as it might sound, the routine physical abuse was something I learned to endure. A good day for me was when he beat me like normal. I could prepare myself for that. A bad day was when things got unpredictable. Sometimes I would be asleep and my father would wake me up in the middle of the night and just start hitting me for no reason at all. When you’re sleeping, you’re in your own world. You can’t prepare yourself. You can’t steel yourself for what’s coming. A few times, he locked me out of the house in the middle of winter in my pajamas, because I needed to “toughen up.”

I could go on for thousands of more words about the physical abuse, but there’s no point. When I tell people the insane details of my childhood, they have the same two questions.

Why in the hell would anyone do this to their own son?

And then …

Why in the hell didn’t anyone put a stop to it?

The first question is easy to answer. My father was a low-level pro hockey player who never made it past the minor leagues. He was living his failed dream through his child. As twisted and insane as it sounds, in his mind, everything he was doing was justified. It was all going to make me a better hockey player — and eventually get me to the NHL.

The second question is a lot more complicated. Why didn’t anybody step in and stop the abuse? My story will never reach people like my father. They’re so far off the deep end that it’s too late. But plenty of people witnessed what was happening. Every town has the Crazy Hockey Dad, but my father was so far above and beyond that cliche. I’d come into the locker room with bruises and cuts, and he’d spend the entire game screaming and banging on the glass. He got into brawls with parents from the other team right in the stands, many, many times.

But all I ever got from the other hockey parents was a concerned, “Are you ok?”

And, of course, I’d say, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

That would be the end of it. Nobody called the cops. Nobody ever confronted him. The overall mentality back then, especially in the hockey community, was “whatever happens in their house, stays in their house. That’s their own business.”

But even in my own home, the abuse was ignored. I’ll never forget this moment when I was 10 years old. I was about to leave the house for a game when my mother pulled me aside and whispered, “You better play well out there today, because if you don’t, it’s going to be bad tonight.”

Right then, it dawned on me that my mother was never going to do anything about it. Our neighbors weren’t going to do anything about it. The other hockey parents weren’t going to do anything about it. I was going to have to stop it myself.

That’s a very frightening feeling to have as a 10-year-old kid. I thought, Well, one day you’re going to get big enough to stand up to him. For the next six years, I just tried to survive. Each morning, I’d wake up and think: Here we go again. Just get through it.

The abuse got worse, and I just kept getting better and better on the ice. That’s the truly sick thing. I think part of the reason nobody said anything was because I kept putting the puck in the net.

Professional sports — and let’s be honest, Canadian Junior hockey is professionalized — is a meat market. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s all about performance on the ice.

By excelling, it was almost like I was reinforcing what my dad was doing. I can just imagine the thought process of the other parents and coaches:

“Well, his dad’s a nutcase, but he’s the best player on the ice, so it can’t be that bad. Hell, maybe that’s what it takes to be the best.”

Guess who's hockey gloves.

The thing is, my success had nothing to do with my father’s over-the-top training regimens. The ice was my safe space. The two hours I had out there was the only time I truly felt free. When I stepped onto the ice, he couldn’t touch me. Everything became easy.

Actually, the main reason I was scared to tell anybody about the abuse when I was young was because I thought my father would find a way to take away the only thing I loved — playing hockey.

When I turned 16, I became the No. 1 pick in the Ontario Hockey League draft. You might assume the abuse stopped there, but in my dad’s mind, his methods “worked.” I was on the path to the NHL. So the abuse only intensified. One night after a game during my first year in the OHL, I was sitting on the bus with my teammates when my dad came storming in and literally grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to his car.

“That’s it, you’re done with hockey. You don’t deserve this. We’re going home.”

I got in the car and he started driving home. And then something in me just snapped. We stopped to pick up my sisters at our grandparents’ house, and I jumped out and said, “This is all stopping right now. I’m not going home.”

We got into a fight. Our first real fight, where I fought back, and didn’t stop. My mom and grandparents watched from the window as we brawled right in the driveway. It went on for minutes, which is an eternity in a fight. I can’t even remember how it finally stopped. I just remember him jumping in the car and driving off. I ran into the house and called the police.

When the cops showed up, they put out an APB for him, but I just shook my head and showed them his photo. “Just come to my next hockey game,” I said. “He’ll be there. He can’t stay away.”

Two games later, he showed up. The cops arrested him at the rink.

When I filled out the police report, I just gave the basics. I could have gone on for hundreds of pages, and I wish I had, because my father got out of jail after a month or two. The restraining order I took out against him said he couldn’t come within 100 feet of me, but it didn’t stop him from showing up to my games.

I’d see him up there in his same spot, watching me.

A few years later, his dream finally came true. I was selected in the second round of the 2003 NHL Draft. The NHL assigned me an entire security team for the day, but I knew it was useless. He made sure he was seated right where I could see him.

So when my name was called and I pulled on the Minnesota Wild sweater, I knew he was in the building watching, and it made me absolutely furious. Not because of all the pain I endured. But because I knew that he believed, in his heart, that all his abuse was validated. He thought he was the reason I made it to the NHL. The ends justified the means.

That’s absolutely ridiculous. You know why I made it to the NHL?

Patrick today.

Because on the weekends, I’d get as far away from him as I could. I would stay out of the house all day by myself, with nothing but a hockey stick and a ball. Deking, deking, deking. Shooting, shooting, shooting. Over and over and over until the stick became an extension of my body.

That’s it. That’s why I made it.

Once you get to the pro level and you witness how fast the game moves, you finally realize that no amount of running or weight lifting or private lessons is going to change one simple question: Do you understand hockey? Do you really understand the game? Do you know where that puck is going next?

Either you have it or you don’t. Screaming at your kid in the car on the way to a hockey game isn’t going to get them to the next level. Having a 12-year-old kid run six miles after practice isn’t going to turn them into Jonathan Toews.

You know when you actually get good at sports? When you’re having fun and being creative. When you’re being a kid. When you don’t even realize you’re getting better, that’s when you’re getting better. If you’re not engaged in what you’re doing, it’s as helpful as taking the trash out. It’s just another chore.

But that’s not what some parents, even normal ones, want to hear. Honestly, that’s not the direction youth hockey is trending. When I was in the NHL, I’d be doing my off-season workouts at the gym with Daniel Carcillo and some other NHL buddies, and we’d look over and see 12-year-old kids doing the same two-hour workout we were doing, with a trainer screaming at them the whole time. Half the time their parents would be there, yelling at them, too.

And it’s absolutely comical. It’s doing nothing.

True story: I played with Drew Doughty his rookie year in Los Angeles. He came into camp and he could barely do one rep on the bench press. He’ll laugh about it now. He was not in shape at all, at least in the way these “Old Time Hockey” blowhards talk about it. Then we’d go out for practice and he’d be the best player on the ice. Doughty was just a pure, natural hockey player with incredible vision and a brain for the game.

He was in hockey shape. He could think circles around you.

Either you have it or you don’t. All this hard ass training stuff is just fluff, and it enables the same culture that allowed my father to treat me like an animal in front of other adults for so many years. It started right in the parking lot. People saw it. They just didn’t have the courage to say anything.

I’m not writing this article for my father. I’m writing it for the people in the parking lot.

Yes, if you say something, you may ruin the relationship you have with that person. You may get embarrassed in front of the other hockey parents. You may have to go through the awkwardness of filing a police report.

I can understand why a lot of people worry, “But what if I’m wrong?”

If you are wrong, that’s the absolute best case scenario. The alternative is that child is a prisoner in his own home. What you’re seeing in the parking lot or outside the locker room — whether it’s a kid getting grabbed and screamed at, or shoved up against a car — could just be the tip of the iceberg.

It’s so ironic, because the hockey community loves to talk about toughness and courage. In that world, courage is supposed to mean standing in front of a slap shot without flinching, or taking your lumps in a fight.

But that’s easy. That’s not real courage. Anybody can do that.

I guarantee you there’s hundreds of kids across North America who will get dressed for hockey this weekend with their stomach turning, thinking the same thing I did as a kid:

“I better play really good, or tonight is going to be really bad.”

It just takes one person to act on their instinct and stand up for that child. That’s real courage. The kind we don’t always glorify in the hockey world.

"Living in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Sophie, and two sons, O'Sullivan is a self-aware, no-filter, clear-spoken, 30-year-old man. His mind is nimble and smart. He probably would be an excellent TV analyst. He can navigate sentences and paragraphs to make his point vividly and clearly. In my opinion, he was born mentally tough. It's a skill. His parents contributed ZERO to his mental toughness. He would be mentally tough if he was raised by monks." ~~ Sports writer John Buccigross after an interview with Patrick O'Sullivan in 2015.

NOTE: Patrick has not had contact with his father John since the fight in the driveway of their home. A rift has also developed between his mother and younger siblings in recent years.

Tough stuff, in more ways than one!